Bozeman Montana doesn't really think much of keeping passwords SECRET
Topic: Miscellaneous
2:41 pm EDT, Jun 18, 2009
Horrifyingly, Bozeman MT has taken an unfortunate step further in the decay of the privacy of individuals by adding a few new lines to their job applications.
These lines are to be filled in with the names of whatever social networking sites you might be on, including your username and password there.
It's one thing to pull explicitly public (but restricted) information like credit records and background checks to screen potential employees, but inquiring about private affiliations is rather questionable. Asking for explicitly private login information which the users of said sites are by contract bound to not reveal has got to be legally actionable by someone--especially since it amounts to an outright invasion of privacy and violation of law.
For those who haven't had it sink in yet, should Bozeman, MT actually use anyone's username and password to invade their prospective new employee's facebook account, it would be a violation of law.
After a years of development work, the technology has finally been perfected that allows users all over the internet to review the disjointed web clippings of possibly noteworthy in almost realtime.
Federal Reserve Inspector General says they've lost HOW MUCH?
Topic: Current Events
11:14 pm EDT, Jun 1, 2009
I am a little surprised that I didn't see anything about this in the media yet. I can somewhat understand why it's being kept low-key at the moment but still...
Many of you've already heard/seen this, and by now some of you have probably heard about the eff-up of epic proportions that Warner Music has made by issuing a DMCA takedown request of one of, get this, Lawrence Lessig's presentations about copyright and copyright law.
Well, if you haven't yet seen the lecture, now is as good a time as any. In fact, go ahead and forward it to your non-technical friends and relatives as payback for all those dancing hamsters. If you're lucky they'll watch it and they might learn something.
Notably, they might learn that this "copyright war" is seriously mucking up the human experience as a whole, and it's not the "pirates" who are exactly at fault. They might think about a few points like that the unwholesome arrangement we have at present is teaching children beyond a doubt that the rule of law is not to be respected, it's to be skirted around as long as no one important notices them. It's teaching them that they have no actual rights to anything at all, and that they can't usefully contribute to culture so they might as well just sit back and consume what they're given.
They might for a moment consider the effect these factors are going to have twenty years down the line, and whether or not they're going to want to be a part of that future at all.
So, in case you hadn't heard, since no one hunted down and shot the execs when they started airing pro-wrestling dramas on Sci-Fi they've been emboldened to decide the network needs a name change so they can have something trademarkable.
So, I own a scooter now, and since the weather is turning nice again, I'm looking into what can be done about little things like it's depressingly inaccurate speedometer and it's complete lack of front mounted laser weaponry (economy's fading fast and lasers don't need to reload).
While considering that perhaps I could use an Arduino to control an LED array and get an accurate speedometer read (and maybe control laser intensity) I stumbled across this video.
I wouldn't want to be the guy having to solder all those connections, but it might be worth it.
So, there's text on an alternate tab for this story, but it doesn't really put the "flavor" into things like hearing this woman breathe fire and brimstone about the hideous pillaging that financial executives have been engaging in. Literally skimming the bailout money while people are still being foreclosed on with no change in policies...
Wow. If you ever needed a reason to be mad enough to take up shoving rags into bottles of flammable liquids...
