Vashon Software

Federal Computer Week notes some issues (i.e. lack of the ‘overall velocity’ benchmark in the Post-9/11 GI Bill education benefit claims processing system) the GAO had with the VA. Apparently the GAO is not too used to agile methodologies!

KLAS’s December 7th report, Single Sign On: To Identity Management and Beyond, reviews Single Sign-On providers and at least the abstract is covered in this brief synopsis at HealthSystemCIO.

Imprivata lead the bunch with Microsoft (nee Sentillion) & HealthCast...

My take on the FCC’s Tuesday 3-2 vote is that while some sites won’t be entirely blocked by ISPs, content providers will now have to pay ISPs to obtain quality delivery of their content.

That’s OK for the huge ad generating or otherwise rich sites like YouTube/Google and Netflix - but not so good for innovative start-ups and mere individuals who can ill afford such fees.

ISPs already get some $3-4K annually from many households to provide broadband service (that doesn’t compare with that available in Europe and Japan) – and now they’ll also get richer from content authors.

Since the plan is not fully released and expected to go through multiple court...

HIEs and Beacon communities would use the national provider directory registry system and HHS may require its broader use in the longer range. The workgroup will refine what individual provider directories look like next. See Government Health IT for details.

Here’s a good news story looking at recent progress of life expectancy and income over the last several hundred years for some 200 countries. I’m not sure those are the ideal metrics to gauge quality/meaningfulness of life, but they are certainly reasonable and among the easiest to obtain.

It is interesting to see the impact of disasters and wars.

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Joseph Menn’s fascinating book Fatal System Error – The Hunt for the New Crime Lords who are Bringing Down the Internet was published last spring (with an update this fall) and paints a damning picture of most nations’ ability and political will to stem the trillions of dollars of damage a relatively small number of powerful crime lords and their bot networks are doing to corporations and increasingly citizens. The damage and impact on society is laid out clearly for once – as is the relative dearth of action being taken.

The book tracks entrepreneur Barrett Lyon’s career - hired by off-shore gambling organizations facing extortion backed by DDoS attacks. He founded Prolexic, but as his underwriters’ mob connections became painfully clear he extracted himself...