What we've learned about spam

Blended threats. Payload viruses. Spam. If you're one of the more than 15 million people whose work email is protected by <a href="http://www.google.com/postini/">Postini</a>'s email security products, we hope you don't spend a lot of time thinking about these things. And if we're doing our job right, they certainly shouldn't be showing up in your inboxes. But we process more than 3 billion business emails per day for our customers, culling the spam, viruses, and other threats out, so we do think about this stuff. A lot.<br /><br />On <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/look-back-at-spam-in-2008.html">occasion</a>, we like to share some of what we've learned, so that those of you who are interested can see what spammers are up to. If you're one of those people, head over to our <a href="http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2009/07/q2-2009-spam-trends.html">Enterprise Blog</a> for an update on spam trends over the past few months.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Ellen Leanse, Google Enterprise team</span>

What we've learned about spam

Blended threats. Payload viruses. Spam. If you're one of the more than 15 million people whose work email is protected by Postini 's...

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Human Subjects as Political Pawns

<div>When it comes to “alternative medicine” trials, it seems that the NIH is willing to experiment on people in ways that would be unthinkable for real biomedical research. The federal Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP) has posted a preliminary <a href="http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/detrm_letrs/YR09/may09b.pdf">determination letter</a>, dated May 27, 2009, addressing some of the <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18596934?ordinalpos=2&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum">charges we had made</a> against the politics-driven NIH Trial to Assess Chelation Therapy (TACT).</div><div><br /></div><div>It is a remarkably damning statement, particularly regarding an NIH study. That is, it found—or the recipients admitted—that each of several charges was valid. Among these are misleading statements and unstated risks in the consent form, and the embarrassing backgrounds of TACT investigators. According to the determination letter,</div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>…investigations revealed multiple instances of substandard practices, insurance fraud, and felony activity on the part of investigators.”</div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>On the other hand, the OHRP appears willing to let the TACT continue if it will ‘take corrective actions’. Regarding investigators who are felons, for example:</div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>While concerning, these things do not automatically preclude an investigator from participating in research…</div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>We recommend that the IRBs that reviewed this research re-examine the processes for evaluating study investigators to determine they are obtaining sufficient site and investigator information that is adequate to comply with HHS regulations…”</div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>As disturbing as that recommendation sounds, the OHRP can only regulate what it has statutory authority to regulate. It regulates institutions, not investigators and not IRBs.</div><div><br /></div><div>We, however, remain concerned that the TACT protocols and investigators did not provide accurate statements to the relevant IRBs in the first place. Wouldn’t such information have been important, not only for IRB deliberations, but for informed discussions with potential experimental subjects? From the determination letter, it sounds as though the OHRP cannot insist that the TACT address such inconvenient questions.</div><div><br /></div><div>Some of our most important charges are either not mentioned (e.g., a tainted NIH scientific review committee, investigators promoting ‘chelation therapy’ during the study in violation of federal code, a tainted Data Safety and Monitoring Board, and <a href="http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=132">evidence</a> that incompetent investigators have contributed to at least two deaths in the trial) or were deferred to the FDA. Presumably, there is more to come.</div><div><br /></div><div>We contended that if the TACT had been accurately represented in 2001-2003, no competent IRB or scientific review committee would have approved it. The OHRP determination letter implicitly raises this question: how could any IRB, after discovering the multitude of misrepresentations that were the basis for the study’s original approval, now allow it to continue?</div><div> </div>

Human Subjects as Political Pawns

When it comes to “alternative medicine” trials, it seems that the NIH is willing to experiment on people in ways that would be unthinkable f...

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Toolbar, now with advanced translation

If you saw this text on a webpage, how would you figure out what it means?<br /><br />Если вы читаете этот текст, вы, вероятно, уже говорите по-русски. Однако миллионы людей не знают русского и не могут прочитать миллионы русскоязычных веб-страниц.*<br /><br />You would likely need to translate manually via our <a href="http://www.google.com/language_tools">language tools</a> or in <a href="http://www.google.com/support/toolbar/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=20871">Toolbar</a>. Today we're excited to announce that translations will be even easier with the newest release of <a href="http://www.google.com/toolbar/ie/#tbbrand=GZEZ&utm_campaign=en&utm_source=en-et-gblog&utm_medium=et&rd=f">Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer</a>. We have been working with the Translate team to make translations a faster and more integrated part of your browsing experience.<br /><br />The Translate feature automatically detects if the language of a webpage you're on is different from your default language setting and allows you to translate it. With one click, you can now instantly translate the page and all of its text will appear in the new language.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ0C8T5-5-4PPyXsTVSCFnh23QVSFbBaNncS9CR3gdYVkJ7VBt1jGP64CCNyx6X9SWiN_RHq42TmgTL38zXberKPHstsG-BLChbARxskNCkLgVMao40MT3LJ_ENPqlQ-ULqkSOAi7KLv0A/s1600-h/translate-pip-3-wider.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5353280923590192706" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ0C8T5-5-4PPyXsTVSCFnh23QVSFbBaNncS9CR3gdYVkJ7VBt1jGP64CCNyx6X9SWiN_RHq42TmgTL38zXberKPHstsG-BLChbARxskNCkLgVMao40MT3LJ_ENPqlQ-ULqkSOAi7KLv0A/s400/translate-pip-3-wider.jpg" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 298px;" /></a><br />Language detection happens only on your computer, so no information is sent to Google until you choose to translate a page. You can find more details about how the feature works in our <a href="http://www.google.com/support/toolbar/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=146786">help center</a>.<br /><br />If you go to another page in the same language, you will continue to see translations rather than have to translate one page at a time. And if the page has dynamic content, like <a href="http://www.google.com/reader">Google Reader</a>, you will get translations in real-time. Finally, if you frequently translate pages in the same language, Toolbar will let you translate that language automatically without any extra clicks in the future.<br /><br />The new Translate feature is available in all international versions of Toolbar, including English, and the translation service supports 41 different languages: Albanian, Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.google.com/toolbar/ie/#tbbrand=GZEZ&utm_campaign=en&utm_source=en-et-gblog&utm_medium=et&rd=f">Download</a> Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer to try it out for yourself. We'll add this feature to Toolbar for Firefox soon, too.<br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><br />* In case you don't speak Russian, we translated the paragraph above for you using our translation engine:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">If you are reading this text, you probably already speak in Russian. However, millions of people do not know Russian and cannot read the millions of Russian-language webpages.</span><br /></span><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Jerry Tang and Dick Sites, Software Engineers </span>

Toolbar, now with advanced translation

If you saw this text on a webpage, how would you figure out what it means? Если вы читаете этот текст, вы, вероятно, уже говорите по-русски....

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Celebrating Gay Pride 2009

All around Google, we're proud of our work, our culture and, most importantly, our people. In the spirit of celebration, this spring and summer Googlers have participated in Pride celebrations in Tel Aviv, New York, Zürich, San Francisco and many other cities around the world. Pride is a time for the LGBT* community along with families, friends and supporters to stand up for equality, and to honor those who paved the way for us to express sexual orientation and gender identity openly.<br /><br />In the U.S., this year's celebration is historically important: it's the 40th anniversary of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_riots">Stonewall riots</a> in New York City, a response to what was then routine police harassment of LGBT people. Some 75 Googlers, family members and friends marched with several hundred members of New York's <a href="http://www.gaycenter.org/">Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center</a>. Hundreds of Googlers also joined other U.S. celebrations in Pittsburgh, Chicago, and San Francisco.<br /><br />Earlier this month, around 50 Googlers and friends gathered to celebrate at Europride, Europe's best-known Gay Pride celebration. This year it was in Zürich, Switzerland. After weeks of sunshine, on the morning of the parade it began to storm, but that didn't deter our intrepid Googlers from being out at 6:30am turning a 28-ton truck into a rainbow-colored nightclub on wheels. Hundreds of nuts, bolts and gallons of helium later, the truck was transformed, the sun came out and we were ready to march through the city streets, cheered on by a crowd of 50,000.<br /><br />Google is a company that supports its LGBT employees, taking a <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/our-position-on-californias-no-on-8.html">public stand</a> on <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/transgender-remembrance-day.html">issues</a> that are important to our community. This is not the first year that Google has supported Pride, and it will certainly not be the last. We hope you enjoy this photo album of our global celebrations.<br /><br /><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf" flashvars="host=picasaweb.google.com&captions=1&hl=en_US&feat=flashalbum&RGB=0x000000&feed=http%3A%2F%2Fpicasaweb.google.com%2Fdata%2Ffeed%2Fapi%2Fuser%2Fgblogphotos%2Falbumid%2F5352881840391025089%3Falt%3Drss%26kind%3Dphoto%26hl%3Den_US" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" width="400" height="267"></embed><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">*LGBT stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered people and is also intended to include people who identify as queer, asexual or intersexed, amongst others. </span></span><br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Cynthia Yeung, Partner Strategy Team</span>

Celebrating Gay Pride 2009

All around Google, we're proud of our work, our culture and, most importantly, our people. In the spirit of celebration, this spring and...

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Google heads to grade school: New resources for K-12 teachers and students

We use the Internet all the time: at home, at work (especially at Google!), on the move, and, increasingly, at school. We believe that the Internet and cloud-based tools are a key part of a 21st century classroom, helping students learn and teachers teach in collaborative and innovative ways. Students use Google Docs to work on group projects; classrooms use Google Sites to show off their work; and teachers use Forms in Google Docs for instant grading and Google Calendar for lesson planning. <a href="http://www.google.com/a/edu/">Google Apps Education Edition</a> is helping schools build online communities for students, teachers and parents, and we now have 4 million students using Google Apps Education around the world.<br /><br />This week the Google Apps Education team is launching a few new ways to make it easier for K-12 schools to use Google Apps, and attending the National Education Computing Conference (<a href="http://center.uoregon.edu/ISTE/NECC2009/">NECC</a>) in Washington D.C. To help address schools' email security needs, <a href="http://www.google.com/postini/email.html">Google Message Security</a> (GMS) will be offered free to current and new eligible primary and secondary schools globally that opt in by July of next year. GMS filters out email messaging threats, and education IT departments can customize the filtering rules and group messaging lists to suit their schools. We're also launching the <a href="http://edu.googleapps.com/">Google Apps Education Community site</a> for educators and students to share tips and ideas for using Google Apps in their classrooms, as well as the <a href="http://www.google.com/educators/p_websearch.html">Search Education Curriculum</a> and a <a href="http://www.google.com/apps/eduresources">Google Apps Education resource center</a> with more than 20 classroom-ready lesson plans for teachers. We'll be adding more to these resources going forward.<br /><br />If you're at NECC this year, come visit the Google team in booth #3148. If not, the teaching and learning continues with some cool <a href="http://edu.googleapps.com/tutorials-and-tips/necc-presentations">presentations and lesson plans</a> on the Google Apps Education Community site, or you can learn more at <a href="http://www.google.com/a/edu">google.com/a/edu</a>.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Dana Nguyen, Google Apps Education team</span>

Google heads to grade school: New resources for K-12 teachers and students

We use the Internet all the time: at home, at work (especially at Google!), on the move, and, increasingly, at school. We believe that the I...

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Media and citizens meet in the YouTube Reporters' Center

<span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">This is the first of a series of posts from YouTube's news and politics blog, <a href="http://www.citizentube.com/">Citizentube</a>.</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> -Ed.</span></span><br /><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/">YouTube</a> is the biggest video news site on the Internet, and at no time in our site's history was that more apparent than in these last two weeks of the crisis unfolding in Iran. As hundreds of thousands of Iranian citizens took to the streets of Tehran to protest the national elections, the government kicked out foreign journalists, leaving citizens themselves as the only documentarians to the events unfolding there. We've been highlighting many of these videos and keeping track of the latest developments on our YouTube news and politics blog, <a href="http://www.citizentube.com/">Citizentube</a>.<br /><br />Though the circumstances in Iran are unique, this isn't the first time that citizens have played a crucial role in reporting on events around the world. Burmese citizens uploaded exclusive video footage to YouTube during the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/blog?entry=i_r4JhbhmgU">protests in Myanmar</a> back in 2007; people in China's Sichuan province documented the devastating and historic <a href="http://www.youtube.com/blog?entry=pB40GKtrVQY">7.8-magnitude earthquake</a> of 2008 in real-time; and eyewitnesses to the shooting of young <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Tmh9B8LVxM">Oscar Grant</a> by Oakland police forces captured the event on their cell phone cameras and uploaded videos to YouTube for the world to see. Citizens are no longer merely bystanders to world events. Today, anyone can chronicle what they see and participate in the news-gathering process.<br /><br />Though it's the phenomenon of citizen reporting that YouTube is probably best known for, we also have hundreds of news partners who upload thousands of videos straight to YouTube every day. You can see lots of these on our news page at <a href="http://www.youtube.com/news">youtube.com/news</a>. Many of these organizations have used YouTube in unique ways, like asking the community to <a href="http://www.citizentube.com/2009/01/washington-post-asks-your-government.html">submit questions for government officials</a>, providing a <a href="http://www.citizentube.com/2009/04/view-from-press-corp.html">behind-the-scenes look</a> at traveling with the Obama press corps and accepting video applications for a <a href="http://www.citizentube.com/2009/02/last-chance-to-win-trip-with-nick.html">reporting assignment in West Africa</a>. We believe the power of this new media landscape lies in the collaborative possibilities of amateurs and professionals working together.<br /><br />And so today, we're launching a new resource on YouTube to help citizens learn more about how to report the news, straight from the experts. It's called the <a href="http://youtube.com/reporterscenter">YouTube Reporters' Center</a>, and it features some of the nation's top journalists sharing instructional videos with tips and advice for better reporting. Learn how to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eOynrI2eTM">prepare for an interview</a>; or how to be an <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVKGUctuoXE">investigative reporter</a> from the legendary Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward; or how to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVVdH8n5470">report on a global humanitarian</a> crisis from Nick Kristof of the New York Times. All of the videos are available on the<a href="http://youtube.com/reporterscenter"> </a>YouTube Reporters' Center channel.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Olivia Ma, YouTube News and Politics</span>

Media and citizens meet in the YouTube Reporters' Center

This is the first of a series of posts from YouTube's news and politics blog, Citizentube . -Ed. YouTube is the biggest video news sit...

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UK's National Programme for IT in the NHS Known Doomed at Outset?

It would seem likely.<br /><br />In May 2009 at "<a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/05/machinery-behind-healthcare-reform-how.html">The Machinery Behind Healthcare Reform: How the HIT Lobby is Pushing Experimental and Unsafe Technology on Unconsented Patients and Clinicians</a>" I wrote:<div><br /><div><!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal"></p><blockquote>... I can add that if this initiative <i>[the U.S. multibillion dollar ARRA push towards national healthcare IT by 2014]</i> <b>blows up as it has in the UK</b>, then the only triumph will be the financial triumph of the trade group and its apparatchiks. The losers will be the administration, patients, clinicians, and everyone else in the healthcare system.</blockquote><o:p></o:p><p></p> <!--EndFragment--> <div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size:100%;">The UK situation is much worse than I thought. The UK's NPfIT in the NHS was suspected to have been doomed from the start, but proceeded anyway; see "<a href="http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/tony_collins/2009/06/16-key-points-in-gateway-revie.html">16 key points in Gateway Reviews on NHS IT scheme</a>" and the secretive Gateway Reviews <a href="http://www.connectingforhealth.nhs.uk/about/foi">themselves</a> upon which the preceding article was based, released under UK Freedom Of Information laws. </span>From ComputerWeekly.com author Tony Collins on <a href="http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2009/06/22/236526/government-ordered-to-publish-reviews-of-risky-it-projects.htm">Gateway Reviews</a>:<br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><p></p><blockquote><p>... Gateway reviews are mini-audits at critical stages in projects. The reports in question gave a red, amber or green status at each stage to help the project’s senior responsible owner decide whether to move to the next phase. </p> <p>The government’s policy on Gateway reviews is to keep them confidential. <a href="http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/tony_collins/2007/06/shredding-of-gateway-reviews-d.html">All copies of a review are shredded</a>, with the supporting material, to ensure only two reports remain – one for the Treasury’s Office of Government Commerce (OGC) and the other for the project’s senior responsible owner.</p></blockquote><p></p><br /><span style="font-size:100%;">Highlights of the secretive health IT program reviews, now made public:<br /><br /></span><ul><li>the NPfIT was probably doomed from the start, in Spring 2002. As one Gateway Review put it, many dedicated people were working hard on building the components for a car that hadn't been designed. To some extent that's still true today.</li></ul><ul><li>people didn't really know what they were doing in the first critical months in 2002</li></ul><ul><li>the initial plan was for new IT - not for changes to the way people work. So the preoccupation was with IT and not patients. It was hoped that new IT would drive change. But that rarely if ever succeeds.</li></ul><ul><li>that the costs and complexity were initially underestimated - by about £7bn - because nobody had an understanding of what was needed.</li></ul><ul><li>that speed was unduly important. One gateway review suggested that key staff didn't have time to take action on recommendations or learn lessons.</li></ul><ul><li>the programme as a whole, according to one Gateway Review, was not assessed against a list of <a href="http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2009/06/22/236526/government-ordered-to-publish-reviews-of-risky-it-projects.htm">Common Causes of Failure</a>, as published by the National Audit Office. Only individual projects were assessed against the list.</li></ul><br />How many of these findings apply in the U.S. Health IT program in 2009?<br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span>Finally, about the aforementioned May 2009 post, Matthew Holt of the Healthcare Blog wrote that I had "gone loopy", i.e., crazy (see footnote to the above-linked May 2009 post). The Chairman of CCHIT Mark Leavitt wrote that concerns about health IT are expressed by "fearmongers" and should be <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/06/mark-leavitt-head-of-cchit-behind-times.html">"laughed off</a>."<br /><br />These cavalier attitudes are a major part of what has gone wrong in HIT, as well as our society more generally.<br /></div><!--StartFragment--> <!--EndFragment--> <div><br /></div><div>Not to draw a specific comparison with these individuals, but our society is crumbling, and it's in no small part due to clowns in leadership roles, rather than as performers in <a href="http://www.ringling.com/">Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey's Greatest Show on Earth</a>.<br /><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_ua1_lRABJ68f47sbMisvEhaS__tAHh3ZNSvzy98-RFP2_gIfx6DJC_tmBU9D_7vo3af1R0ba8GOM3gzS3Sz3P-udpjon_jKL-_S6-gDyltS70zdHl9zEeX2LdmsLxeWZAAQx5fbn08aX/s1600-h/bozo.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5352759728388489490" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_ua1_lRABJ68f47sbMisvEhaS__tAHh3ZNSvzy98-RFP2_gIfx6DJC_tmBU9D_7vo3af1R0ba8GOM3gzS3Sz3P-udpjon_jKL-_S6-gDyltS70zdHl9zEeX2LdmsLxeWZAAQx5fbn08aX/s320/bozo.jpg" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 90px; height: 114px;" /></a></div><div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:85%;">According to Matthew Holt and Mark Leavitt, Health IT concerns are a laughing matter, expressed by crazy people.</span><br /></div><br /></div><div><br />I (and many <a href="http://www.jamia.org/cgi/content/full/16/3/291">like minded colleagues</a>) don't find healthcare information technology issues a laughing matter, however.<br /><br />-- SS</div><div><br />July 1 <span style="font-weight: bold;">Addendum:</span><br /><br />More analysis is at E-Health Insider at <a href="http://www.e-health-insider.com/comment_and_analysis/476/it%27s_history_%28repeating_itself">this link</a>.<br /></div></div></div></div>

UK's National Programme for IT in the NHS Known Doomed at Outset?

It would seem likely. In May 2009 at " The Machinery Behind Healthcare Reform: How the HIT Lobby is Pushing Experimental and Unsafe Tec...

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