Posts by slfisher

The embattled WiMAX communications standard is taking another hit as WiMAX vendor Clearwire Communications is the recipient of a class-action lawsuit by users contending that its service is slow and unreliable.

While the lawsuit is not about Clearwire's WiMAX service specifically, Clearwire is the main company providing WiMAX services in the U.S., after taking over Sprint Network's XOHM service in the fall of 2008. Currently Clearwire offers WiMAX in two cities, Baltimore and Portland. Damage to the company from the lawsuit, even though it is about a service Clearwire refers to as "pre-WiMAX," could affect the company's ability to support and continue to roll out WiMAX services.

WiMAX was supposed to be the next generation wifi standard but it has not been adopted as quickly as expected, and major vendors such as Nokia are backing the 4G wireless standard LTE instead.

The lawsuit, through the Washington, D.C. law firm of Tycko & Zavareei LLP and the Seattle, Washington law firm of Peterson Young Putra, consists of five users, ranging from Washington, Hawaii, Minnesota, and North Carolina, who complained that after finding the service to be slow and unreliable, they were hit with large early-termination fees, even if it was due to a situation such as moving away from a coverage area.

"The complaint also alleges that Clearwire engages in false advertising of its Internet and telephone services. Although Clearwire advertises its internet service offering as a reliable, comparable, …

Taser International, which makes electric stun guns, is suing Linden Research Inc., the owner of the Second Life virtual environment, for selling unauthorized virtual versions of its product.

The trademark infringement case claims that the online sales of virtual products are damaging the company’s reputation and hurting its sales. Second Life is “selling virtual weaponry in a fully fledged copy of plaintiff’s real ones for use in the Second Life computer simulation," the lawsuit said, adding that this is particularly harmful because the online stores also sell adult-only explicit images and drugs.

The complaint also names Linden founder and Chairman Philip Rosedale, as well as its chief executive officer, Mark Kingdon, and chief financial officer, John Zdanowski, plus third-party companies such as Virtualtrade LLC.

It is not clear whether this lawsuit is behind an announcement by Linden this week that it was setting up "Adult" and "Mature" areas that would enable people to avoid, if they chose, some of the more racy images and activities that had been Second Life's forte'.

The Department of Agriculture's Office of the Inspector General has issued a report finding that the Rural Utilities Service continues to grant loans to areas that already have broadband service and to communities near major cities.

For example, 77 percent of loans were said to have been made in areas that were already served by broadband Internet providers.

"We remain concerned with RUS' current direction of the broadband program, particularly as they receive greater funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act," Assistant Inspector General Robert W. Young wrote. "RUS' broadband program may not meet the Recovery Act's objective of awarding funds to projects that provide service to the most rural residents that do not have access to broadband service."

Since 2001, RUS has released approximately $1.35 billion in loans intended to help bring broadband Internet to rural areas.

In 2005, the office had made 14 recommendations on how to improve RUS. In this new audit, the IG finds that RUS has not implemented 8 of them, including:

• adopting an appropriate definition of "rural area"
• focusing loans in areas where broadband service does not already exist
• developing and implementing internal guidelines for the grant and loan programs
• recovering funds from defaulted loans
• maintaining a database of all grant and loan information

RUS said it had not followed more of the recommendations because it was waiting for the 2008 Farm Bill to pass, which it believed would have required them to revise …

Amazon users this weekend noticed that a wide variety of books with gay and lesbian themes -- including Heather Has Two Mommies and books on how to come out -- were reclassified as "adult" and consequently no longer given sales ranks, nor would they come up on search requests, even though what appeared to be heterosexually oriented books with similar themes were not so classified.

Discussion broke out among a variety of social media systems, most notably on Twitter, using the hashtag #amazonfail, as people checked various books and reported back. The controversy also hit major print media, including the New York Times and Los Angeles Times. There is also the requisite Facebook group, amazonfail, with 2,180 members.

Amazon called it a "glitch" and said it would be repaired, and in fact as of Monday morning people were reporting that sales ranks were back on a number of the books. It was also pointed out that some authors had been reporting this "glitch" since February.

However, Amazon is not saying how the "glitch" happened, and the Internet continues to be ablaze with speculation, ranging from posts calling Amazon a Republican-oriented company to an organized plot by religious conservatives over the holiday weekend to mark gay-themed books as "adult" and so have them removed from the system. One LiveJournal poster even claimed responsibility.

Meanwhile, though, Heather Has Two Mommies is no …

It has nothing to do with it; it's spam. It'll be deleted shortly. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Despite a study earlier this year that the fears of Internet predation against kids were overblown, the U.S. Department of Justice is offering $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 will be administered by the Department's Office of Justice Programs' (OJP) Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), the Department of Justice said. The ICAC program supports a national network of 59 coordinated task forces, representing more than 2,000 federal, state, and local law enforcement and prosecutorial agencies engaged in proactive investigations, forensic examinations, and criminal prosecutions.

According to the DOJ, during the past two years, the ICAC task forces have conducted more than 24,371 forensic examinations, identified nearly 1,439 children who were victims of some form of abuse or neglect, and arrested 5,450 individuals. Of the total arrests, 2,073 resulted in the defendant accepting a plea agreement.

The due date for applying for funding under this announcement is 12:00 p.m. Eastern Time on April 8, 2009. However, grants are only available to those state and local law enforcement and prosecutorial agencies that are currently receiving funds under the ICAC Task Force Program, and they needed to register by March 16.

The program includes all forms of sexual exploitation of children (SEC) and commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) facilitated by technology. These offenses include, but are not limited …

Remember the teenagers getting charged with child pornography for taking revealing pictures of themselves with cell phones?

They're fighting back.

According to an article in the New York Times by Sean Hamill, 17 students -- 13 girls and 4 boys -- accepted a plea bargain requiring them to attend 10-hour class on pornography and sexual violence, and accept random drug testing.

Only the students in the pictures -- not the people distributing them -- were threatened with legal action.

But three girls, who refused to attend the class even after they were threatened with a charge of sexual abuse of a minor (themselves), have instead filed suit in federal court against District Attorney George P. Skumanick of Wyoming County. His threat to do so was “retaliation” for the families asserting their First and Fourth Amendment rights to oppose his deal, the Times reported.

The girls and their families are getting some heavy-powered legal aid, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The ACLU's focus is on the girls' right to take such pictures of themselves. According to the Times, the EFF's interest is whether the pictures were found during an illegal search, though that is not, as yet, part of the lawsuit.

Skumanick told a group of parents and students that he has the authority to prosecute girls photographed in underwear, like the three girls, or even in a bikini on the beach, because …

The non-technical world is starting to understand the concept of Twitter -- which means that they're starting to try to control it.

Courtrooms have already begun dealing with jurors Googling, Facebooking, and Twittering their way through the case. Now, some courtrooms are starting to set regulations ahead of time. The Associated Press is reporting that the Idaho Supreme Court's criminal jury instruction committee is discussing guidelines that would prevent jurors from using electronic devices to post their thoughts or do research on cases that are in progress.

While nothing has yet been approved, if instructions for jurors are approved, they would be recommended for use in both magistrate and district courts throughout Idaho, the AP said.

Meanwhile, the National Basketball Association has fined Mark Cuban -- who has a reputation for complaining -- $25,000 for comments he made in Twitter about the officials.

Cuban had also been fined $25,000 for non-Twitter-based "inappropriate interaction" earlier this season. "It'd be stunning if David Stern [the commissioner of the NBA] didn't order Cuban to cough up some cash for finding a new way to question NBA officiating," reported the Dallas Morning News.

Google Earth now supports the use of historical imagery -- back to 1945 in some areas -- that lets users see how certain areas have changed over time.

As described by Wikipedia, Google Earth is a virtual globe, map and geographic information program that was originally called Earth Viewer, and was created by Keyhole, Inc, a company acquired by Google in 2004. It maps the Earth by the superimposition of images obtained from satellite imagery, aerial photography and GIS 3D globe.

To access historical imagery, do one of the following within the Google Earth application:

Click View > Historical Imagery
or
Click the Clock icon in the toolbar above the 3D viewer.

The small vertical lines on the timeline indicate the dates of different imagery available for your location.

Looking at my neighborhood let me realize the truly horrendous amount of development that occurred between 1991 and 1992, as agricultural fields suddenly became covered with houses.

Time magazine displayed a number of interesting shifts, such as Nevada before and after the development of Las Vegas, New Orleans before and after Katrina, and glacial melting.

The digital generation brought up Googling, Wikipediaing, and Twittering their way through their lives is starting to have problems when it turns out they don’t see why they can’t do the same thing when they’re in a courtroom, according to the New York Times.

In a recent case, it was found that 9 out of 12 jurors were doing research about the case on the Internet, which forced the judge to declare a mistrial after eight weeks of testimony.

Similarly, a building products company has asked an Arkansas court to overturn a $12.6 million judgment, claiming that a juror used Twitter to send updates during the civil trial.

The problem is that people can use their usual Internet tools from their cell phones and Blackberrys, and it can be difficult to take those devices away from jurors -- plus, unless they're sequestered, they can look things up when they get home. But judges are apparently having trouble explaining to jurors why they shouldn’t do that – partly because the people, perhaps overly influenced by Perry Mason and CSI: Miami, are trying to help.

“Jurors are not supposed to seek information outside of the courtroom,” said the New York Times’ John Schwarz in the story. “They are required to reach a verdict based on only the facts the judge has decided are admissible, and they are not supposed to see evidence that has been excluded as prejudicial.”

“There's no need to change any rules,” …

Remember last fall, when people were terrified that pedophiles were using Google Streetview to find parks and schools so they could more readily find their young victims?

Apparently a California legislator has been listening to them, or someone like them.

Last month, California Assemblyman Joel Anderson, R-El Cajon, introduced a bill to limit the amount of detail someone could see on screen using online mapping tools such as Google Earth, Microsoft Virtual Earth, and Google Streetview. It also calls for fines of up to $250,000 per day.

In particular, the bill -- which has been languishing in the Committee on Arts, Entertainment, Sports, Tourism, and Internet Media since March 4, and won't be heard before March 27, if then -- says the mapping tools can't display a school or place of worship, or a government or medical building or facility, unless those photographs or images have been blurred.

Anderson's concern (expressed in his recent op-ed "Google Earth Should Stop Helping Hate Groups & Terrorists") is that terrorists will use the software's images to decide where to put bombs.

Aside from the fact that, were the bill to be implemented, all terrorists would have to do is look for blurry pictures and plant bombs there, Anderson's bill has the same flaws and inappropriately blames technology in the same way that the Pedophiles on Streeview did: Numerous other sources of the same information exist -- including other online maps, paper maps, telephone books, …

"Most Americans can easily find videos of water skiing squirrels on the Internet, but they’ll have less luck finding out whether their children's school buses and classrooms are safe, or if neighborhood gas stations are overcharging," said the Sunshine Week 2009 Survey of State Government Information online.

Results ranged from Texas, as the most accessible, to Mississippi, as the least accessible.

Participants across the U.S. tried to find 20 different types of public records online. The categories were: death certificates, financial disclosures, audit reports, project expenditures, department of transportation projects, bridge inspection reports, fictitious registration of business names, disciplinary actions against attorneys, disciplinary actions against medical physicians, hospital inspection reports, nursing home inspection reports, child care center inspection reports, statewide school test scores, teacher certifications, school building inspections, school bus inspections, gas pump overcharges, consumer complaints against businesses, environmental citations, and campaign finance information.

Information most frequently found online were statewide school test scores and Department of Transportation projects/contracts, online in 50 and 48 states, respectively. Close behind was campaign data, reported in 47 of the 50 states; disciplinary actions against medical physicians, 47 states; and financial audits, 44 states.

The information least likely to be found online were death certificates, found on the Web sites of only five states, and gas pump overcharge records, available online in eight. Death certificates are apparently a revenue source for many states, as they charge relatives and "legitimately" interested parties for copies of the records, or farm out the …

The Maryland Court of Appeals has reversed a lower-court ruling that a website must reveal the names of anonymous posters during a defamation hearing, and has issued guidelines for how such requests should be made in the future.

The court ruling laid out the following steps in its decision:

1. The plaintiff has to try to notify the anonymous posters that they are the subject of a subpoena, including posting on the message board
   
2. give them a chance to respond, including legal filing
   
3. identify and set forth the exact statements purportedly made by each anonymous poster
   
4. determine whether it's defamation on its face or requires other evidence

After all that, the court can still decide that the anonymous posters' First Amendment rights of free speech can override the plaintiff's charge of defamation.

While this only covers Maryland, and isn't considered a legal precedent for anywhere else, it's certainly an indication of which way courts are leaning -- indicating that the Texas court order requiring another website to turn over the names of 178 anonymous posters might be overturned on appeal as well.

It is also similar to a process laid out by a New Jersey court in 2002, reported the Washington Post, indicating that some consensus is developing.

The case involved NewsZap.com, an online forum run by Independent Newspapers Inc., which hosted a 2006 online exchange about the cleanliness of a Dunkin' Donuts …

It wasn't that long ago that we were thrilled when politicians started using Twitter. Now we kinda wish they'd stop -- except for the one who has, it seems, actually stopped.

President Barack Obama, who began Tweeting during his campaign last summer, has fallen silent since Jan. 19 -- the day before he was inaugurated. After 264 updates, his 339,540 followers have been left bereft. And some of them are, at least tongue-in-cheek, unhappy.

"Can’t the guy type a one-line update?" asked Paul Boutin of the New York Times.

But at the same time President Obama has seemingly abandoned Twitter, Congress has discovered it. Embraced it, even. And guess what -- Congressional representatives can be just as inane on Twitter as anyone else.

During President Obama's Feb. 25 speech on television, Dana Milbank of the Washington Post followed the tweets of a number of Congressional representatives and reported back. Sad to say, they might have saved themselves -- and us -- the trouble.

""Capt Sully is here -- awesome!" announced Rep. John Culberson (R-Tex.), spotting the US Airways pilot in the gallery," the paper reported. Tubular, dude.

"I am sitting behind Sens Graham and McCain," wrote Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.). Good to know.

"I did big wooohoo for Justice Ginsberg," Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) broadcast, misspelling the name of the ailing Supreme Court justice, the paper said, adding that McCaskill could be seen applauding with BlackBerry in …

A recent study shows that, while the consumption of online pornography doesn't vary a lot between states, the states with the highest rates are the ones that are more conservative and religious.

The study, by Benjamin Edelman, assistant professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, controls for the amount of broadband access available in a region, and looked at pornography consumption by zip code.

The most-subscribed state, by a variety of criteria? Per thousand people, per thousand home Internet users, per thousand home broadband users -- Utah was Number One.

Other states in the top 10, per thousand home broadband users, were Alaska, Mississippi, Hawaii, Oklahoma, Arkansas, North Dakota, Louisiana, Florida, and West Virginia.

Least-subscribed states in the category were Montana, Idaho, Tennessee, Ohio, Oregon, New Jersey, Delaware, Connecticut, Wyoming, and Michigan.

Other factors that increased online porn subscriptions were average household income, an increase in residents of ages 15-24, and college degrees. Factors that reduced online porn subscriptions were an increase in residents of ages 65 or older, and graduate degrees.

Urban areas were more likely to have subscribers; increases in both marriage and divorce were likely to reduce subscribers; and in areas where more people reported attending religious services, subscriptions were more likely to start on Sundays.

More specifically, "adult escort sites are more popular in “blue” states that voted for Gore in 2004, while visitors from the “red” states that voted for Bush in 2004 are more …

Though it hasn't gotten as much attention, one of the biggest recipients of largesse from President Barack Obama's stimulus package is the health care information technology industry.

The bill requires utilization of electronic health care records for everyone in the U.S. by 2014, when only about 28 percent of health care providers use such systems now. The effort is intended to streamline health care records, reduce test duplication, and reduce errors. (Want to read it for yourself? Start on page 230.)

Health data exchanges, also known as health information exchanges (HIEs) and regional health information organizations (RHIOs), provide a standard way for computer systems used by hospitals, doctors, and insurance providers to exchange information, to help provide more complete information, reduce fraud, and reduce costs. They were called for in 2004 by President George W. Bush as components of a National Health Information Network that is intended to be complete by 2014.

But regions within states such as Indiana offered such services as long ago as 1994, and the state of Delaware said it was the first to offer such a service statewide, in March, 2007. As of a year ago, more than 150 regional efforts were underway, including the Inland Northwest RHIO in Washington and the Quality Health Network in western Colorado.

Obama's proposal, though, goes much further.

It includes:

• Planning grants of up to 100 percent for entities that apply before 2010, with a stepdown function for later …

178 Web posters who thought they were anonymous are being sued, and the website where they made the offending posts has been ordered to release information to help identify them.

A couple, Mark and Rhonda Lesher, was accused of sexually assaulting a woman, and the websites for McKinney, Clarksville, and other Texas cities near where the couple lived, soon became Ground Zero for tens of thousands of graphic attacks about them -- even after they were acquitted.

The couple's attorney has offered conditional immunity to people who revealed information about some of the most egregious of the posters.

Topix.net, which has removed many of the postings, has until March 6 to comply with the court order, and is considering its options. According to one article about the case, however, Topix.net may be able to provide only IP addresses at most, because it does not require registration.

An Idaho legislator late last year proposed making such anonymous posting illegal.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama has been booted from Twitter after the social networking service said an account set up in his name was by an impersonator.

The account, @OHHDL -- for The Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama -- launched over the weekend and gained more than 20,000 followers (including me, around 8,000 or so).

"Welcome to the official Twitter page of His Holiness the Dalai Lama -- administered by The Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama," the first message read, followed several hours later by "Our office is currently overwhelmed by responses from our first day on Twitter. We will make every effort to answer your questions in time."

Unfortunately, it was not to be.

"The account was suspended because it violated our Terms of Use regarding impersonation," Twitter co-founder Biz Stone wrote in an e-mail message. "Using Twitter to impersonate others in a manner that does or is intended to mislead, confuse, or deceive others is also cited in the Twitter Rules."

Bummer.

Aside from the utter coolness of actually having the Dalai Lama on Twitter, it would have been interesting to see whether Twitter could have served as a focal point for support of Tibet, given that China, which claims sovereignty over the country, censors its citizens' use of the Internet. The service has been used by several other protest movements.

Coincidentally, the New York Times today did a story about a girl who got slapped with the "cyberbully" label for criticizing a teacher -- and now she's suing.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/us/08cyberbully.html?_r=1

Remember the Idaho legislator who wanted to outlaw anonymous blogging?

He’s back.

The good news is, Representative Steve Hartgen, R-Twin Falls, no longer is trying to outlaw anonymous blogging. According to Jared Hopkins in the Magic Valley Times- News, Hartgen told the Idaho House State Affairs Committee that he had dropped that effort because too many people made fun of him. "After receiving many thoughts and submissions on that I decided not to introduce that," he said. "I think people blogged about that almost everywhere from between Maine to Hawaii."

Instead, Hartgen now proposes extending existing telephone harassment laws to cover online communication including e-mails, text messages and posting comments on Web sites. This is in response to the Megan Meier case, where Lori Drew’s impersonation of a teenage boy led Meier to kill herself. Repeat offenders could face five years in prison

Because this is one-on-one communication, and because it extends existing harassment laws, it would not impinge on people’s First Amendment protections of free speech, said Hartgen, a former newspaper publisher, though some people posting comments on Idaho newspaper web sites don’t buy this argument. In addition, public officials would still be “fair game,” he told the Times-News.

The amusing part of this story was apparently watching a bunch of Idaho 60-somethings try to decide how to describe such sites. Originally Hartgen’s bill had listed Facebook, MySpace, and so on by name, but some legislators …

Long, long ago, when the net was flat and only geeks knew how to register domain names, a few savvy people started signing themselves up to own domain names like "www.mcdonalds.com," with the thought that, someday, McDonald's Corp. might want to be on the Internet and would offer them oodles of money to buy the name from them.

Eventually, it was determined that URLs could be subject to trademark infringement, and people who had registered domain names in hopes of earning a windfall had to give them up to the registered trademark holder. (Which also meant that there were problems like Virtual Works, Inc. v. Volkswagen of America, Inc., a dispute over the domain vw.net.)

This brings us to today, where the problem is "Twitter squatting." While this might sound like a bout with intestinal flu, in actuality it's someone registering a Twitter account, either to profit from a corporation wanting to buy the name, or by sending out information purportedly from the company. As far back as last fall, people were warning of the problem.

Now, Twitter is doing something about it. The company has added Twitter squatting and trademark infringement to its terms of use policies. A trademark violation is "Using a company or business name, logo, or other trademark protected materials in a manner that may mislead or confuse others may be considered trademark infringement," Twitter says. "Accounts with clear INTENT to mislead others will be immediately suspended."

As a sign of how mainstream social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter are, people are starting to wring their virtual teeny hands about the proper etiquette around various situations.

Do romantic partners get veto power on Facebook and Twitter friends? What's appropriate fundraising behavior for politicians? Should you be friends with your boss? If you're friends with a couple and they break up, are you obligated to de-friend one of them?

Eek!

One can only imagine the tizzy these people would be in if they were faced with the "ahoy vs. hello" problem of early telephones.

Needless to say, there's plenty of people out there ready to help navigate you through these choppy waters -- preferably for money. One new book, due out this year, is Get Digital: Reinventing Yourself and Your Career for the 21st Century Economy . "The first thing to consider when creating or updating your social networking profile is whether or not it is intended for personal or business use. It cannot be both," author Shelley Palmer finger-wags. "Make a choice and stick to it."

On the other hand, take some of this advice (not to mention her grammar) with a grain of salt. Palmer goes on to say, "You will get more from a close network of 50 friends than you will from a network of 500 people you barely know."

This, actually, is not true. More than 80 percent of the time, people found their jobs …

A government is rolling out a wireless network, starting with 18 cities, using WiMAX technology that supports mobile networking, for $30 a month.

The real news is where it is: Libya.

WiMAX, based on similar technology to cell phone networks, offers wider coverage than is possible using wifi. Like wifi, computers connect to it using an internal card or USB dongle. Depending on topography, laptops can connect to the network within 30 miles of any WiMax tower.

WiMAX is popular in rural and developing areas because of its wider coverage and because it doesn't need an expensive wired infrastructure. According to the BBC, it is also used in other African countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria, but their coverage is more fixed and limited.

The new network, provided by Libya Telecom and Technology, will reportedly be able to support 300,000 subscribers, with business clients taking priority next week, and individual customers following the week after. It will be available in Tripoli, Benghazi, Sabha, Sirte, Misurata, Khomus, Ijdabia, Al Baidha, Gharyan, Benwaleed, Zuwara, Tarhun, Al Brega, Obari, Zleitin, Zawia, Raslanuf, and Ghadames.

The network infrastructure was supplied by Alcatel-Lucent in a US$60 million contract, awarded last April. The project was announced at that time by Mohammed Gaddafi, head of Libya's state-owned General Telecommunications Company and eldest son of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

$30 is twice the cost of standard broadband in Libya, and requires an advanced payment …

President Barack Obama will be able to continue to use a personal digital assistant like the Blackberry he used during the campaign, which naturally required security improvements. But more important, the new administration has agreed that any messages he sends through the device will be subject to the Presidential Records Act.

Coming on the heels of a series of court orders intended to force President George W. Bush's administration to turn over more than 14 million email messages it said it had lost, it's a welcome change.

Certainly, security plays a major role in Obama's use of the device, not just technologically but also with "social engineering." In two press briefings, on January 22 and 23, press secretary Robert Gibbs described Obama's use of the device.

"The President has a BlackBerry, through a compromise that allows him to stay in touch with senior staff and a small group of personal friends in a way that use will be limited and that the security is enhanced to ensure his ability to communicate, but to do so effectively and to do so in a way that is protected," Gibbs said. "There's a process by which people that have access to the email will be briefed before anything like that can happen." Recipients will be "a limited group of senior staffers and some personal friends -- it's a pretty small group of people," he added.

Gibbs also confirmed that records would be kept …

Prince Harry is now single.

The Associated Press is reporting that Britain's News of the World tabloid says Chelsy Davy, who has been dating the heir to the British throne for five years, announced the end of her relationship with him by changing her status on Facebook to: "Relationship: Not in One."

Harsh.

More than one person on Facebook has announced a new relationship, or the change in status of a relationship, to friends by specifying that one is in a relationship with so-and-so, or that one is married (always fun when someone who's actually been married for years finally sets that up on Facebook). Conversely, more than one person has been surprised when they downgrade their relationship and suddenly are treated to an outpouring of sympathy from their friends.

(Facebook also has two other categories -- "in an open relationship," though it doesn't allow people to set up multiple relationships," and my favorite, "It's complicated.")

But while setting up a relationship with someone else on Facebook, or even noting that one is now engaged or married, requires confirmation by the other person, ending a relationship -- which Facebook calls "canceling" a relationship -- does not, and it's likely that as time goes on, more and more people are going to find out their relationship is over through their Facebook status.

Thing is, some people don't take that sort of news well. Also in England, a man ended up killing …

A recent report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project suggests that even if broadband Internet is made more widely available in the U.S., 9% of adults said they aren't interested in switching from dial-up, and 25% of adults aren't on the Internet at all and are unlikely to change, according to two separate surveys.

Of that 9%, dial-up users who were asked what it would take for them to switch to broadband said the following:

Price must fall 35%
Nothing would get me to switch 19%
Don't know 16%
It would have to become available where I live 14%
Other 11%

Of that 25% who don't use the Internet at all, they listed the following reasons:

Not interested in getting online 33%
Can't get access 13%
Difficult 9%
Other reason 9%
Too expensive 7%
Too busy/no time 7%
Waste of time 7%
Don't have computer 4%
Too old to learn 3%
Physically unable 3%

While a broadband expansion program espoused by the Obama administration would address the problems of availability and price, two-thirds of the people who currently don't use broadband still aren't likely to start using it, Pew said.

On the other hand, the dial-up survey was performed in May, 2008, and the non-Internet-users survey was performed in December, 2007. It's easy to imagine that a similar survey held even now, not to mention when the …

Teens who take revealing pictures of themselves to send to other teens are getting more than embarrassment: They're getting a criminal record as a sex offender.

The problem of revealing teen pictures has been getting a great deal of attention lately, with a recent survey finding that 36 percent of teen females and 31 percent of teen males have posted or electronically sent nude or semi-nude pictures of themselves.

But now, because both the senders and the recipients are underage, teens are starting to get slapped with child pornography charges -- charges that will, as the saying goes, be on their permanent record and could require them to have to register as sex offenders in the future.

In Pennsylvania last week, three high school girls were charged with manufacturing, disseminating or possessing child pornography. Three high school boys found with the photos on their cell phones are charged with possession of child pornography. The girls, who took their own pictures, are 14 or 15 years old, while the boys are 16 or 17 years old.

While it is not the first time such charges have been filed, it may be the first time that girls taking their own pictures have been charged. In Texas, a 13-year-old boy was arrested on child pornography charges in October after he received a nude photo of a student on his cell phone (a particularly ominous development -- getting back at someone by sending a nude photo …

The Bush administration was ordered this week to take a number of steps intended to help preserve email messages sent between 2003 and 2005 that had been thought to have been deleted -- but the way the court order was phrased offers a number of loopholes to avoid the intent of the order.

Aside from the political issues about jurisdiction regarding the Federal Records Act and the Presidential Records Act -- which the Bush administration is using to fight the court order -- there are a number of technical and procedural issues that are applicable to any IT department facing electronic records discovery associated with a court case.

"The dispute over recovery of the missing e-mails was provoked by the disclosure four years ago that the White House, in switching to a new internal e-mail system shortly after Bush's election, had abandoned an automatic archiving system meant to preserve all messages containing official business," reported the Washington Post. "Under the new system, any of the 3,000 or so regular White House employees could access e-mail storage files, enabling them to delete messages."

Potentially millions of email messages -- including those covering key moments related to the invasion of Iraq and to a federal probe of the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson's classified employment with the CIA -- could have been missing.

The Justice Department reported last week that after a $10 million investigation, it had located 14 million email messages, …

A Harvard-based task force convened by 50 Attorneys General that spent a year researching the issue of sexual solicitation of children online has found out that there actually isn't a problem.

According to the New York Times, which obtained a copy of the report from the Internet Safety Technical Task Force due to be released Wednesday, the fears that older adults were using popular Web sites such as Facebook and MySpace to deceive and prey on children are a "moral panic."

Instead, a far more serious problem is that of child-on-child bullying, both online and offline, which no one is addressing, the report concludes.

This is quite a turnaround, considering that Attorneys General such as Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Roy Cooper of North Carolina publicly accused the social networks of facilitating the activities of pedophiles, noted the Times.

The task force was formed about a year ago by the Attorneys General from 49 states (Texas, apparently, doesn't care about Protecting The Children) and the District of Columbia, and led by The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, a month after the Attorneys General Multi-State Working Group on Social Networking and MySpace issued a Joint Statement on Key Principles of Social Networking Safety.

The report is 39 pages long and incorporates comments from dozens of academics, childhood safety experts, and executives of 30 companies, including Yahoo, AOL, MySpace, Facebook, Verizon and AT&T, according to the Times.

…

Remember the Idaho elected official a few weeks back who got in trouble for forwarding a message, comparing Michelle Obama to a black widow spider, to 26 people from his official email account?

It gets better.

The Kuna-Melba News, a weekly paper that covers western Ada County and eastern Canyon County, is reporting that Canyon County has refused a Freedom of Information request for the messages Canyon County Commissioner Steve Rule sent out from his county email account on Dec. 2, comparing First Lady-elect Michelle Obama to a black widow spider.

“I understand from Commissioner Rule that he does not retain sent email,” the paper reported it was told. “I also consulted with the County IT Department and understand that Commissioner Rule’s sent emails are not archived by them.”

The paper reported that it had filed one FOI request on Dec. 15, asking for a copy of all of Rule’s sent e-mails for the months of October and November. “Two days after the Dec. 15 request was referred to the Canyon County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Samuel B. Laugheed sent a letter to the Kuna Melba News on Dec. 17, seeking an extension of the deadline on my request,” the paper reported. “On Dec. 29, Laugheed sent another letter, denying the request for information.”

Thinking that perhaps the email messages had been automatically deleted after 30 days, the paper re-filed the request on Dec. 29, asking for sent email …

A number of localities have tried to recreate the magic that resulted in locations such as Silicon Valley in California and Route 128 in Massachusetts. Now it's Idaho's turn.

More than 100 Idaho business executives and politicians want to turn some 79,000 acres of land in Idaho, about 20 miles northwest of Boise, into the Eagle-Star High-Tech Corridor, named after the two cities involved.

Part of what made Silicon Valley successful is that it became known as a "cluster" -- companies in the same industry or otherwise linked through customer, supplier, or similar relationships, representing a critical mass of skill, information, relationship, and infrastructure in a given field -- as described by Michael Porter in his seminal 1995 article "The Competitive Advantage to the Inner City" in Harvard Business Review. This builds a critical mass of such companies, not only giving them more resources but giving workers more choices in employment.

It's the lack of this cluster factor, which the ESTech project is trying to correct, that has limited growth in Boise, because it has primarily a couple of major high-tech employers: Hewlett-Packard and Micron, which have each gone through layoffs this year.

Proponents note that "the region's temperate climate and multitude of outdoor activities; the State of Idaho's progressive business posture; its sound, high-tech educational infrastructure; and solid, regional venture capitalist opportunities," calling it "an attractive place for the companies' leaders, workers and families to work and play." Richard Florida's book,

Incidentally, LiveJournal went through this a couple of years ago as well. http://community.livejournal.com/boob_nazis/1763041.html

What's triplification?

A simmering Facebook controversy came to a...head?

Female Facebook users are up in....arms?

Sigh. It's hard to write about this seriously.

Today was the live and virtual nurse-in on Facebook, as a protest against the social networking site's policy forbidding pictures of nursing moms (reports vary on whether it's when the whole breast is exposed, the areola, or what). Participants were supposed to change their profile picture to show themselves nursing, while a group of women also planned to hold a live protest at Facebook headquarters, which reportedly only a handful of women attended.

According to the event's page on Facebook, some 10,000 women said they would participate, though it is not clear how many of them actually changed their profile pictures; looking at the list of RSVPs, the majority of pictures do not show nursing. The sponsoring group, "Hey, Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene!" had 70,057 members as of Saturday night.

The whole situation started last summer, when reports began circulating that women were finding that profile pictures and other pictures showing them breastfeeding were being removed by Facebook. Some women were kicked off of Facebook as well. The "Hey, Facebook" group was formed in June to create a place to track the reports.

It is not clear why the group chose today for the event, which it said was intended to raise awareness of the situation.

One thing is for sure (and other …

Ah, yes, the wonderful Christmas tradition of watching Santa's travels around the world using a missile defense system.

It's actually a very sweet story. "The tradition began in 1955 after a Colorado Springs-based Sears Roebuck & Co. advertisement for children to call Santa misprinted the telephone number," explains the NORAD Santa website. "Instead of reaching Santa, the phone number put kids through to the CONAD Commander-in-Chief's operations "hotline." The Director of Operations at the time, Colonel Harry Shoup, had his staff check radar for indications of Santa making his way south from the North Pole. Children who called were given updates on his location, and a tradition was born."

Shoup must have had a hell of a sense of humor for a military man during the Cold War. The call actually came in on the red phone.

CONAD was replaced by NORAD in 1958, and the tradition continued, each year using state-of-the-art technology to track Santa. Currently, the organization said it uses four high-tech systems to track Santa – radar, satellites (using the infrared signature from Rudolph's nose), Santa Cams, and fighter jets.

Google got involved in 2004, before Keyhole Systems was even part of Google, and has since used Google Earth and Sketchup to help track Santa. In 2005, Google devoted 20 machines to the project, which let 250,000 people track Santa; in 2006, more than a million people tracked Santa.

In 2007, Google became an official "Santa tracking partner' …

For many people, the first they heard of Saturday's plane crash at Denver International Airport was via a Twitter message from someone who'd been on the plane, which quickly made its way through the Internet:

"Holy ****ing s*** I wasbjust in a plane crash!"

(Despite what some overly dramatic news reports say, however, Denver resident Mike Wilson was not texting from a burning plane but waited until he was safely off the plane before sending his message.)

Wilson's texting of the incident that night, including such details as "Continental keeping us locked up at the presidents club until they can sort everything out. Won't even serve us drinks." a photo of the crash site, and the fact that the president of Continental was on Wilson's replacement flight to Houston, added important on-the-ground details to the official story, while Continental was still keeping the passengers physically separated from the news media.

Especially coming at the same time that the military is issuing dire warnings of Twitter being used by terrorists, it makes one think of the possibilities.

For example, if Twitter was around in 2001, we might not still be puzzling over the meaning of "Let's roll" -- the last cryptic phone comment from the doomed United Flight 93 on September 11.

Twitter offers a number of advantages of calling on a cell phone:

• It's silent, thus not drawing attention to the person sending the message
• People are likely to be able …

ha! yes, I hated the dress, too, but sartorial questions aside, it's the forwarding it from his government account -- in fact, taking specific action in *order* to forward it from his government account -- that I have a problem with, regardless of his political views. And how interesting that there's apparently no law preventing it. Let's hope the Idaho legislature takes that up this session.

Perhaps Idaho politicians and government workers just shouldn't be allowed near the Internet.

Steve Rule, commissioner for Canyon County, was criticized earlier this month for forwarding an email message, comparing Michelle Obama to a black widow spider, to 26 people, many of them at Canyon County government email accounts. To add insult to injury, while he had received the original email at a personal account, he forwarded it from his official Canyon County email address.

Making matters worse, Rule apparently didn't violate any laws in doing so, according to the Idaho Statesman. "Canyon County has an e-mail policy that states county e-mail accounts "are to be used for job-related communications only," but that policy applies only to county employees, not to elected officials, county spokeswoman Angie Sillonis said. Commissioners and other elected officials must abide by state code, but Sillonis said she could find no state law that prohibited an action such as the e-mail forwarded by Rule."

The message in question compared Michelle Obama, in her black-and-red dress at President-elect Barack Obama's acceptance speech, to a black widow spider, which features a red hourglass on its belly.

Sillonis relayed a message from Rule saying in the future he would not use a county computer to forward emails not directly related to county business.

In comparison, the head of the tourism agency for the state of Hawaii recently resigned after coming under similar criticism -- led by its governor …

A newly elected Idaho state legislator is considering drafting a bill to make anonymous blogging illegal.

Ironically, the legislator in question is a retired newspaper editor. (Idaho has a "citizens legislature" that meets only three months a year; few of them are professional politicians.)

Steve Hartgen, R-Twin Falls, was quoted in the Lewiston Tribune as saying, "Anonymity takes away the responsibility to say things in a civil and accurate manner. It provides a cover for the ugliness we see in the debate today. It's hard to read political blogs any more because they are so inflammatory." The paper went on to say he was considering introducing legislation requiring people to use their real names online.

Other papers in the state were quick to chime in. The Pocatello-based Idaho State Journal praised the effort, saying "No name, no credibility seems like a good rule." The Nampa-based Idaho Press Tribune, another conservative paper, said, "Give me a break." The Boise-based Idaho Statesman, a liberal (for Idaho) paper, agreed that anonymity was a problem but disagreed that it should be legislated. The Spokesman-Review (based in Spokane, Washington, and considered to be "the capital of Northern Idaho") called it "a loony notion." Numerous Idaho bloggers, starting with the unequivocal notion, have also weighed in on the subject.

The first reaction, of course, is the whole free speech thing. And yes, cases such as Doe v 2TheMart.com, Inc. upheld …

It's an annual event: Churches and other facilities putting out creches and other displays for Christmas find parts of it -- typically the baby Jesus -- stolen, with both a financial and a sentimental cost.

Now, those facilities are equipping their baby Jesuses with GPS in order to track them down when they're stolen.

According to the Associated Press, New York-based BrickHouse Security is offering up to 200 nonprofit religious institutions a free month's use of security cameras and LightningGPS products it distributes. Chief executive officer Todd Morris said the idea was born after a few churches asked about one-month rentals.

So far, about 70 churches and synagogues have taken him up on the offer. In fact, the first 20 or so applications came from synagogues looking to protect menorahs, Morris told the AP.

Using GPS is a step up; as of a couple of years ago, facilities began using security cameras to help deal with a rash of thefts (including one perpetrated by a 70-year-old grandmother). GPS units to track baby Jesuses were reportedly first used last year, when a Florida city repurposed a unit used for mosquito spraying.

Statistics on annual thefts of baby Jesus and other December acts of religious vandalism are sadly lacking, but according to BrickHouse, it amounts to the hundreds every year.

Churches interested in applying for the offer can do so through the BrickHouse website.

In 1964, a woman named Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death in New York while, reportedly, about a dozen people were able to hear her screams. Her death became a cause celebre about the callousness of New Yorkers, though in reality they may not have realized what was going on.

On November 19, a 19-year-old man named Abraham Biggs posted online that he intended to kill himself, including a list of drugs he was taking, and in full view of a webcam while people watched, some of them expressing concern and some egging him on. How quickly anyone reported it is not clear, but it was 12 hours before police arrived, at which point he was dead. Similarly, this case is being used to demonstrate the callousness of the Internet.

(Incidentally, I don't mean to be making this blog All Internet Crime, All the Time. I just report it, you know?)

As with the Megan Meier case, there is a great deal of thundering about "Something must be done!" without any clear idea of just what should be done.

Suicide is a tragic waste of a life. I've been a member of online communities since the 1980s, and I've known a number of people who've committed suicide, some acting in ways that telegraphed it, though none declared their intentions online before the act nor conducted it online.

The problem is that it's not always easy to tell when someone's serious, and …

Well, I don't fault them for setting up the lobbying arm. That's the way the law is written, and lots of organizations do it that way. The redacting of the contributors is more problematic.

oh, thanks! I didn't know you could do that!

sigh. don't know why but most of the links ended up with an extra http: in front of them.

'Internet for Everyone' sounds like a laudable goal. Very Mom and apple pie. Who could be against that?

The problem is that the name of an organization doesn't necessarily accurately depict what it's trying to do, and what Internet for Everyone is actually trying to do is far from clear -- and could end up making broadband Internet less accessible, say critics.

The organization is having what it calls a "Town Hall Meeting" in Los Angeles, on the campus of the University of Southern California, Saturday, Dec. 6. "Our broad alliance is working together to see that our nation's leaders adopt a national plan to bring open, high-speed Internet connections into every home, at a price all of us can afford," the organization's Facebook site reads.

Its website calls the meeting "the first in a nationwide series of public conversations to get every American connected to an open, fast and affordable Internet. The event is designed to bring together people from across the city to formulate a broadband plan for the new administration and Congress."

Again, who could be against that? But how the organization proposes to do that is unspecified. The group's website (which, ironically, is heavy on Flash usage that makes it difficult for someone who doesn't already have broadband Internet to gain access to it) is thin on details, too, though it offers a long list of members.

Both Internet for Everyone and Save …

She pleaded guilty because she has unspecified health problems and she didn't want to deal with it any more, apparently. She isn't planning to teach again anyway.

and airplanes.

http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3369.html

thanks! glad you liked it!

some version of Symantec. I can look up the exact name if you wish.

Ever had some computer malware spit a bunch of porn onto your screen?

Now imagine it happening in a roomful of schoolchildren.

Now imagine it could send you to jail -- for forty years.

That's what happened to Julie Amero, a substitute teacher in Norwich, Conn., in 2004. Using a computer in a room of seventh-graders -- a computer she'd been instructed not to turn off -- after a couple of the students had gone to a hairstyling website, it suddenly began displaying pornographic images that she couldn't stop.

Prosecutor David Smith contended at her original three-day trial that Amero had actually clicked on the graphic Web sites, according to an Associated Press story at the time. She was charged with four counts of risk of injury to a minor, but after her sentencing was delayed four times, her conviction was thrown out and a new trial granted.

This week, facing health problems, Amero pleaded guilty to one count of misdemeanor disorderly conduct, paying a $100 fine and losing her teaching license, just to settle the case.

As it turned out, not only was the computer in question unprotected by firewall, antispyware, or pop-up blocking software -- because the district hadn't paid for updates -- but the prosecution hadn't checked the computer for malware, nor would it allow the defense to present evidence of that, because the defense team had not raised it as a possibility early enough …