There's an article on Newsweek about a controversial computer security curriculum at Sonoma State University. Professor George Ledin is teaching his students how to create malware such as spam bots and viruses. In a windowless underground computer lab in California, young men are busy cooking up viruses, spam and other plagues of the computer age. Grant Joy runs a program that surreptitiously records every keystroke on his machine, including ...

There's a new Facebook group called Go Global in IST that's been gaining traction in the community. Created by Matt Prindible (President, IST Student Government), the group has started an initiative to globalize the scope of the IST curriculum. If you haven't already, check it out and post to the wall. The following is Matt Prindible's introduction to the Facebook group: Hello everyone-- Last year, a cooperative effort between IST and ...

From Newsweek: College Teacher Shows Students How to Be Hackers. Ledin compares the companies' hold over antivirus technology (under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, the companies' codes are kept secret) to cryptography decades ago, when the new science of scrambling data was largely controlled by the National Security Agency. [. . .] Why should we shy away from learning something that is important to everyone?," Ledin asks. "Yes, ...

From the New York Times: China Orders Highest Alert Level. Chinese officials have thrown an almost smothering blanket of security across this capital of 17 million in preparation for the start of the Olympic Games on Friday. Above all else, Chinese leaders say, these Olympics will be “safe.” China, infamous for accusations of human-rights violations from Amnesty International and suppression of free speech by Reporters Without Borders, is investing heavily ...

Update: IST Wiki has been soft launched at http://wiki.istbuilding.com. I am looking for several reliable, enthusiastic people to become editors for the upcoming IST Wiki. Inquisitive individuals with a knack for writing would be ideal for this position. Please email me at daehee@istbuilding.com if you are interested in taking part of this effort. The IST Wiki will profile people, companies and research projects associated with the College of IST. I ...

With the onset of the new academic year, IST Building is shifting directions. Here are some items we have in store for you in the near future: Recruit more exceptional blogging/journalism talent from the College of IST. We will now handpick our writers and articles, so open registration is no longer available. Please email me at daehee@istbuilding.com if you are interested. Change the focus of IST Building from the currently internal ...

Re-posting from the mailing list... Hello everyone! I hope you are all having great summers. The IST Honor Society's officers have been hard at work all summer putting together a couple of cool initiatives. We hope to have our constitution revamped so keep an eye out for our first general meeting so that you can vote on this new constitution! Also - we are planning to continue ...

(Via Robert Shedd, at PSU Startups) Dr. Robert Macy, professor of entrepreneurship in the Smeal College of Business, passed along information on a new course that he will be teaching this fall for the first time. The course will cover the business side of video games. Macy said, “There are classes across this and other campuses that cover art, programming and development; but I see a real gap from ...

BusinessWeek magazine published an intriguing article in the June 2, 2008 issue. Beyond Blogs updates outlooks and predictions they made back in 2005 about blogs, social media, and other bleeding-edge web technologies. Stephen Baker and Heather Green, two BusinessWeek writers, compare and contrast the tech trends from 2005 to 2008. Three years have radically changed the way the main stream media and companies view the power of ...

It's official. Startup Weekend is coming to State College if my beautifully intricate relatively simple URL hack is any indicator. See for yourself: http://statecollege.startupweekend.com Startup Weekend has not advertised State College as a "Future Weekend" yet, but the city vote results were hard to ignore.