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About Me

People thought it was weird enough that I was both a writer and a computer geek. So then I went and started getting involved in government to pull that in, too. And, y'know, there's a heck of a lot more connections than one might think!

Interests
I go to meetings for fun.
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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 …

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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] …

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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, …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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"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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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Along [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commemorative_months"]with [/URL]Vegetarian Awareness, Toilet Tank Repair, and Pet Wellness, October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month. Who knew. "The National Cyber Security Alliance, along with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center, sponsors National Cyber Security Awareness Month every October since its …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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] …

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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 …

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[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, …

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