Topics by slfisher

Despite a study [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3795.html"]earlier this year[/URL] that the fears of Internet predation against kids were overblown, the U.S. Department of Justice is [URL="http://www.ojp.gov/newsroom/pressreleases/2009/OJJDP09031.htm"]offering[/URL] $50 million through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, commonly known as the stimulus program, for Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) program initiatives. The programs …

One of the biggest security stories so far this year is that of the high school that remotely triggered webcams in laptops given to students -- which the school said it only did to help track stolen laptops, and which some students and families said was a violation of their …

A New Zealand company is [URL="http://businessblogs.co.nz/2010/07/18/suspended-on-twitter-businesses-be-very-worried/"]reporting [/URL]that its Twitter account has been suspended due to “Updates consisting mainly of links, and not personal updates" -- which, if true, means that any other business that posts a lot of links could suffer the same fate. "I suspect the Reuters account [url]http://twitter.com/reuters[/url] …

You've been able to use the Internet to swap [URL="http://www.paperbackswap.com/index.php"]books[/URL], [URL="http://www.swapacd.com/index.php"]CDs[/URL], and [URL="http://www.squidoo.com/swap-dvds-online"]DVDs[/URL]. Now -- kids' clothes? [URL="http://www.thredup.com/home"]ThredUP[/URL] offers a standard form factor for exchanging kids' clothes -- a UPS flat-rate box, packed full of clothes for a girl or a boy, of a certain size, for a certain season, …

Okay, [URL="http://newsmap.jp/#"]this [/URL]is cool -- a single screen that shows an aggregation of Google news stories, with size representing the number of stories on a topic, color representing the category, and hue representing the stories' age. The site is designed by a company called Maramushi, headed by Marcos Weskamp, who …

It's not unusual for a government IT department to warn its users about downloading malware onto their government-issued computers. It's more unusual, though, for the source of the malware to be the ads on the website of the newspaper of record. In July, the cyber security coordinators in the state …

We're already heard about people being fired for calling in sick and then [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/news/post977333.html"]posting on Facebook[/URL]. Now a woman has lost her insurance. According to [URL="http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2009/11/19/quebec-facebook-sick-leave-benefits.html"]CBCNews[/URL], Nathalie Blanchard, 29, has been on leave from her job at IBM for the past year and a half after she was diagnosed with …

LiveJournal users are up in arms over a modification to the service that they say allows users commenting to their online journals to also post those comments on Facebook or Twitter, even if the journal is set up to be restricted only to the owners' friends. In response to the …

According to a new [URL="http://pewresearch.org/databank/dailynumber/?NumberID=1072"]study [/URL]from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 21 percent of American adults do not use the Internet. And of those, 90 percent say they have no intention of using the Internet in the future. Among the non-internet users, 34 percent do have some relationship …

An Internet Service Provider (ISP) has finally been given permission to reveal that he was the recipient of an National Security Letter (NSL) from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) six years ago, demanding information about his clients. Nicholas Merrill, president of the New York ISP Calyx, still can’t say …

The Maine State Bureau of Consumer Credit Protection reported today that it has received a query from an unnamed out-of-state finance company about placing Global Positioning System units into vehicles it finances or that its customers used as collateral, according to an [URL="http://www.bangordailynews.com/story/Statewide/GPS-data-intruding-on-privacy,151289"]article [/URL]in the [I]Bangor Daily News[/I]. Such GPSes …

"It's unbelievable, the kind of data that's out there about you," Cisco's principal security strategist Patrick Gray told a crowd in Boise, Idaho, this morning. The problem is that criminal hackers can use that kind of information to target a company, Gray said. He described one case where criminals in …

Google said on Wednesday that it was killing its Wave collaborative development environment, citing lack of interest, according to published reports such as [URL="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704017904575409873762885194.html?mod=googlenews_wsj"]in [/URL]the [I]Wall Street Journal.[/I] Blog entries from Google appeared as recently as July 27; in fact, the Google Wave [URL="http://googlewave.blogspot.com/"]blog [/URL]does not yet have any information …

Two groups are working to set up a .gay top-level Internet domain, with plans for using some of the proceeds for registering sites in that domain to support gay causes, according to an [URL="http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/23/competing-groups-press-for-a-gay-internet-suffix/"]article[/URL] in the [I]New York Times[/I]. While it can cost up to $400,000 to set up a …

The state of Oregon is holding a series of informational meetings in 20 areas around the state to identify the barriers to bringing Internet resources to their community. While obviously meetings are being held in urban locations such as Portland and the state capital of Salem, they are also being …

The issue of death and how to deal with it has already come to social media, with a number of social media sites having [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/reviews/post978070.html"]policies [/URL]on how to deal with dead members, notifying the dead person's friends, allowing people to memorialize the dead, and so on. But a new problem …

After two years of criticism against the online classified ad site Craigslist because people post ads for prostitution there, the site is now being accused of hosting ads for child prostitution as well. "Last month, two girls trafficked for sex through the website Craigslist wrote an open letter to its …

A number of civil liberties groups announced today that they are [URL="http://www.nacdl.org/public.nsf/NewsReleases/2010mn30/$FILE/BorderSearchComplaint09072010.pdf"]fighting [/URL]U.S. Department of Homeland Security [URL="http://www.dhs.gov/ynews/releases/pr_1251393255852.shtm"]policies [/URL]that allow them to search all electronic devices -- including laptops, cameras, and smart phones -- that cross the border. Between October 1, 2008 and June 2, 2010, more than 6,500 people …

There's a map for that. And now nonprofits can get it for free. ESRI, the company that produces the ARCView series of geographic information systems applications, [URL="http://www.esri.com/nonprofit/index.html"]announced [/URL]today its Nonprofit Organization Program, intended to provide copies of the seminal mapping software for free to nonprofits. "The Esri Nonprofit Organization Program …

Nations such as Russia and China who have malicious hackers should be held accountable for the actions of those criminals, according to a [URL="http://www.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/Cybersecurity_CSR56.pdf"]report [/URL]from the [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_on_Foreign_Relations"]Council on Foreign Relations[/URL], an independent, nonpartisan membership organization. "Though the United States cannot expect countries to prevent all malicious behavior, it can expect …

This year's version of the Cybersecurity Act was approved by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs after amending it to limit the president's authority in the event of a cyber emergency, [URL="http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/105377-senate-homeland-security-committee-approves-cybersecurity-bill-"]reported [/URL][I]The Hill[/I]. The [URL="http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:S.3480:"]bill[/URL], sponsored by Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), and Tom …

A lovely juxtaposition of two articles at TechCrunch this weekend: One expressed concern about discrimination against older workers in the computer industry; the other said that if women weren't successful in the tech industry, it wasn't men's fault. (H/T to @jmhodges, whose Twitter posting provided inspiration for the title.) The …

A two-day marathon of almost real-time, personalized ads based on social media requests was so successful that it was causing Internet outages, according to an [URL="http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/agency/e3i190b1d465625a16da56dd5e7075cb1a3?pn=1"]article [/URL]on the campaign in [I]AdWeek[/I]. The 'Old Spice Guy,' actor Isaiah Mustafa, made more than 200 little videos over the course of two days …

Not only is there a [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/news/story304425.html"]debate [/URL]about the constitutionality of using Global Positioning System units to help fight crime – now there’s concern about using Google Earth as well. The Associated Press [URL="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100814/ap_on_hi_te/us_eyes_in_the_sky"]reported [/URL]a few days ago that government officials in regions ranging from the Riverhead, N.Y., to the country …

Geolocation features in cameras are giving thieves new information when someone proudly posts a picture of their new acquisition, whether it's a boat, a flat-screen TV, or a new car, according to an [URL="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/12/technology/personaltech/12basics.html?_r=1"]article [/URL]last week in the [I]New York Times[/I]. Some cameras and smart phones embed location-specific information, such …

A blogger for liberal sites such as AlterNet and News Junkie Post has [URL="http://blogs.alternet.org/oleoleolson/2010/08/05/massive-censorship-of-digg-uncovered/"]reported [/URL]discovering a conservative group of online users who systematically work together to bury, or vote down, stories on liberal subjects and by posters they believe to be liberal, in order to keep those stories from becoming …

The troubled newspaper industry has been railing for years about how the Internet is destroying their business model, and taking actions such as paywalls and talking about [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/news/story220640.html"]changing [/URL]copyright law. Now, one newspaper is going further -- it's taking bloggers that posted its stories to court, with the result that …

I write like Dan Brown. At least, that's according to the I Write Like [URL="http://iwl.me/"]site[/URL], which was sweeping the Intertubes yesterday (more than 100,000 [URL="http://www.codingrobots.com/blog/2010/07/14/100000-in-one-day/"]hits [/URL]in a single day) as people tried to find out which Famous Writer their deathless prose most resembled. (Brown is the critically slammed author of[I] …

If you're a woman, it'll tick you off. If you're a man, hopefully it'll educate you. It's "My Fault I'm Female," or "[URL="http://myfaultimfemale.wordpress.com/"]MFIF[/URL]" for short, a compendium of everyday horror stories from women about how they've been treated on the job, by public servants, and by their family. It's also …

[I]"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, …

What do children's book author Beatrix Potter, painter Mary Cassatt, and artist Frida Kahlo have in common? According to one [URL="http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2010/07/06/google-says-the-world-was-made-made-pretty-by-men/"]blogger[/URL], they are the three women -- compared with 109 men -- who have been honored by having a Google logo designed for them that is used on the worldwide …

Some industry experts are expressing concern about a [URL="http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/ns_tic.pdf"]proposal [/URL]from the White House to develop a "National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace," now up for public comment, saying it is vague, might no longer allow online anonymity, potentially gives government too much access to personal information, and provides a …

Just [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/news/story283037.html"]weeks [/URL]after Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales came under criticism for being overly zealous about removing information, particularly images, that could be considered to be child pornography from the electronic encyclopedia, the site is being accused by Fox News of harboring pedophiles. "Wikipedia has become home base for a loose …

In a move that some are hailing as a new frontier for independent political candidates, the Utah Supreme Court ruled today that nominating petitions can be signed electronically as well as on paper and still be valid. "[W]e conclude that the plain language of section 20A-9-502 is not limited to …

A study by a computer security lab has found that porn sites "harboured malware or used "shady" practices to squeeze money out of their visitors," according to an [URL="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/10289009.stm"]article [/URL]by the BBC on the study. (In other news, rocks are hard and water is wet.) Researchers from the [URL="http://iseclab.org/about.html"]International Secure …

A series of angry email messages to a U.S. Senator has landed a man in jail, possibly because he didn't sign them with his correct name or location. Bruce Shore, who is from Philadelphia, sent email to Senator Jim Bunning, of Kentucky, after the Senator complained on the Senate floor …

Remember Richard Blumenthal? The Connecticut Attorney General who has led a pack of other state Attorneys General for more than a year chasing [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/news/story220115.html"]pedophiles [/URL](who may or may not have been there) on social networks and [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/news/story220488.html"]prostitutes [/URL]on Craigslist? And who, in what is surely just a coincidence, is running …

As it turns out, if you give people the ability to have other people look at them anonymously via the computer, some of them do very, very nasty things. Imagine. [URL="http://www.chatroulette.com/"]Chatroulette[/URL], released in November, 2009, by a 17-year-old Russian boy, is often described as a website for voyeurs, but really, …

Go Google the term "oil spill." I'll wait. First item? "BP [url]www.BP.com/OilSpillNews[/url] Info about the Gulf of Mexico Spill Learn More about How BP is Helping." It's a "sponsored link," meaning that BP paid for it to be there and to come up as the first item when someone searched …

We've all seen them -- a user survey, often performed by Respected Independent Firm, but promoted by Vendor Y -- which just happens to come up with the result that users want the products, or the features, that vendor Y provides. Amazing how that works. Here's the six telltale signs …

At a time when Facebook users are being warned to reduce their exposure online, UK-based Skinbook is encouraging them to increase it. The site hit the big time this past week, with an [URL="http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1992300,00.html#ixzz0pZ0XuyZL"]article [/URL]in [I]Time [/I]Magazine, which sent a naked horde running towards the community. Based on Ning.com, the …

It sounds great in theory: Use the power of the Internet to get ideas from people, have people vote on the ideas, and then use the ideas that get the most votes. However, it doesn't work so well for some people. "Republicans are drafting a new plan to win back …

All of the applications for the second round of broadband stimulus funding have been posted -- sort of. In the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, also known as the stimulus package, Congress appropriated $7.2 billion for broadband grants, loans, and loan guarantees to be administered by the USDA’s …

Hewlett-Packard released this week a research [URL="http://www.hpl.hp.com/news/2010/apr-jun/HP_ASME_PAPER.pdf"]paper [/URL]describing how a data center could be powered by the waste from a dairy farm. (Would that make it a 'green' data center, or a 'brown' one?) "The HP ASME paper shows how a farm of 10,000 dairy cows could generate 1MW of …

It's not clear whether it's an application, a virus, or Facebook itself, but in the past couple of days something is sending out large numbers of friend suggestions that the original friend didn't make. Typically, it works like this. You have a friend, B, and a friend, C, and you …

In response to [URL="http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/04/27/wikipedia-child-porn-larry-sanger-fbi/"]claims [/URL]from cofounder Larry Sanger that Wikimedia is harboring images of child pornography, founder Jimmy Wales has gone on a search-and-destroy mission against pornographic images in the company's family of websites, causing an outcry about his heavy handedness and resulting in his [URL="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/wikipedia/7711486/Wikipedia-porn-row-sees-founder-give-up-his-editing-privileges.html"]giving [/URL]up some privileges to …

The Washington State Supreme Court [URL="http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2010/may/06/libraries-can-filter-porn-washington-high-court-sa/"]ruled [/URL]earlier this month on a 6-3 decision that libraries had the right not only to use Internet blocking software, but to refuse to lift the block for a particular site even when an adult requested it. The case was significant because it's thought that …

Perhaps it was [URL="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/26/technology/26craigslist.html"]reading [/URL]that Craigslist expected to earn $36 million this year from sex ads that set him off. Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has issued a subpoena to Craigslist Inc., seeking information on whether it is fulfilling its promise to crack down on ads for prostitution in its …

People who are unhappy with the progress of the military actions in Iran and Afghanistan finally have something to blame: PowerPoint. “PowerPoint makes us stupid,” Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps, the Joint Forces commander, said in an [URL="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/world/27powerpoint.html?emc=eta1"]article [/URL]in the [I]New York Times[/I] this week. The article …

Scrapping scissors and knitting needles at the ready, sellers on the handcrafting site [URL="http://www.etsy.com/"]www.etsy.com[/URL] are [URL="http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=6425050&page=1"]up in arms[/URL] over what they say are sites stealing their designs and images and then hiring other crafters to produce them. Discussion on the topic started earlier today, with more than 600 postings at …