Geek Stuff category archive

Lower Merion School District, outside of Philly, has been sued again.

That’s the school district that was surreptitously taking pictures of schoolkids via webcams, because they could.

A school district near Philadelphia that paid out $610,000 to settle a complaint over spying allegations related to school-owned laptops has been hit with a similar lawsuit.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports a former Harriton High School student filed suit against Lower Merion School District on Monday over the monitoring software installed on laptops given to students.

The school district claims he’s suing just for the money.

I have little sympathy with them.

Let them pay. Consider it the price of arrogance.

Full Disclosure:

I used to live in Lower Merion, many years ago.

Great place to live.

Excellent schools. Great teachers. Dumb administrators. (Sort of like many other school districts.)

Twisted coverage:

What the author leaves out is that Facebook doesn’t let anyone “friend” anyone else without permission.

What privacy rights and protections do teenagers have on the Internet? In a twist of authority, Facebook won’t let parents “friend” their teens or access their accounts unless kids give parents permission.

Follow the link to read the entire tirade, unless you’ve got something better to do, like get a root canal.

If parents can’t control the “off” switch on the device, their kids are already out of control, and phony phacebook phriendships won’t make a difference. Keyloggers, anyone?

Afterthought:

This occurred to me as I drove to downtown Norfolk this evening:

If permission were not required, what kind of creeps could “friend” kids by claiming to be their parents?

There aren’t many creeps like that out there (despite the sensational press), but one is one too many.

Opera Software ASA, the Norwegian company responsible for the Opera browser, honors Oprah Winfrey by opening its archives of emails sent to them by Oprah fans who apparently believe that, in addition to being Queen of All Media, Oprah is also the world’s best web browser.

It’s a giggle.

Parallel Universes:

Opera provides their own news server with newsgroups about Opera products. Occasionally persons stumble into one of the newsgroups promoting the next performance of La Boheme. We usually suggest that they check out the Opera browser, then look two floors up and to the left for altos and tenors.

Via the Linux Outlaws.

Virtual subpoenas:

Two years after an Australian lawyer caused a stir by sending a foreclosure notice via Facebook, the practice of online legal service is spreading as a means for courts to keep their dockets moving.

Courts in New Zealand, Canada and the U.K. have adopted the Australian example to avoid having cases stall when people can’t be located and served in person. Lawyers said the U.S. may not be far behind in using the world’s most popular social- networking service.

Bet they don’t let you respond with an avatar.

Contagion:

Psychologists have long known that emotions, just like germs, are contagious. People exposed to a person experiencing strong emotions may experience similar feelings, catching them through facial expressions, tones of voice or some other means. But now there is a new means of transmission — social media.

Facebook data scientist Adam D.I. Kramer analyzed postings by about 1 million English speakers and their roughly 150 million friends in multiple countries on the social network to show that the words people use in their status updates drive the emotions of their online friends, even days later. Kramer found people who used emotionally loaded words like “happy,” “hug,” “sick,” and “vile” in their status updates sparked similar emotions in later Facebook postings by their friends.

Microsoft cannot innovate.

Every one of their major products has been bought or copied from someone else.

Now, they are working on Windows 8 and have invented (gasp)

the iPhone:

(One of the TWUUG members showed me this video last night and the level of dumb left me speechless.)

Afterthought:

This, of course, is a great may to make every Windows user buy new touch-sensitive monitors.

128 spam comments between 2:30 p. m., when I did my regular database cleanup and backup, and now. Ten to 15 a day is typical.

The gnomes have been busy.

Akismet caught every one of them.

Learn about the wonderful world of free and open source.

What: Monthly TWUUG Meeting.

Who: Everyone in TideWater/Hampton Roads with interest in any/all flavors of Unix/Linux. There are no dues or signup requirements. All are welcome.

Where: Lake Taylor Transitional Care Hospital in Norfolk Training Room. See directions below. (Wireless and wired internet connection available.)

When: 7:30 PM till whenever (usually 9:30ish) on Thursday, June 2.

Directions:
Lake Taylor Hospital
1309 Kempsville Road
Norfolk, Va. 23502 (Map)

Pre-Meeting Dinner at 6:00 PM (separate checks)
Uno Chicago Grill
Virginia Beach Blvd. & Military Highway (Janaf Shopping Center). (Map)

. . . because it rewards dumb.

Presenters let Powerpoint use them; they don’t use it.

Some unfortunate conference participant, undoubtedly still suffering flashbacks, who harbours a lingering animus towards Bill Gates and his software, once dubbed the PowerPoint presentation as “Killing You Microsoftly”. Such an invidious metaphor is unfair. To death. At least when you die, you’re fortunate enough to have endured your last PowerPoint presentation. The unlucky who go on living must continue to endure PowerPoint, an invasive species threatening the information ecosystem, the kudzu of software.

And like kudzu, PowerPoint continues to proliferate beyond the boardroom, medical meeting and conference room. It has become a preferred method of presentation for the US Military and Pentagon. The linear, concise format makes it easily adaptable for the standard military briefing, even at the expense of clarity and content. Reportedly, when a critical briefing is required, some senior officers unfamiliar with PowerPoint seek out subordinates who have technical mastery of the software’s nuances, dubbed “PowerPoint Rangers”.

Aside:

I get a kick out of the title segment for the mystery show, Numb3rs, in which the college professor protagonist is shown walking in the glow of a projector between the audience and the screen.

Competent presenters do not do that.

Ever. In one act, it belittles both the image on the screen and the presenter.

I shall be curious how this plays out.

Bourne firefighter Richard Doherty said he repeatedly complained about poor workplace conditions at the department only to see town officials ignore his gripes. So he flipped on a computer, logged into his Facebook page, and vented to his 40 friends.

Soon after, town officials fired him in a letter that accused him of making inflammatory statements not only against his superiors and colleagues but also against gay people. Now, Doherty, a 16-year veteran who said his comments were taken out of context, is alleging that officials violated his First Amendment rights. Yesterday, his lawyers filed a complaint in US District Court, seeking his job back, back pay, and other damages.

Later on in the story, Doherty is quoted as saying that he set his privacy settings in Facebook so that only his “friends” can see his posts.

Privacy. Facebook. It is to laugh.

If the internet is a public place, Facebook is its naturists’ resort.

The internet is a public place.

Learn more here.

What it was, was football.

Attempts to identify a famous (English–ed.) footballer hiding behind a privacy injunction have spiralled into an online battle over freedom of speech, as internet users responded to high court action by repeatedly naming him on Twitter.

Read it. It’s delicious.

Also, the free market place of ideas, UK (where there is no legal protection for free speech) version. A nugget:

Twitter and other social networks were accused of making “an ass of the law” by the culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, and politicians after a number of celebrities with injunctions were allegedly exposed online.

As Dickens said, “The law is an ass.” As it is already in that condition, it needs no help from twits on Twitter to attain it.

I do sympathize with those who do not wish their privacy invaded. And the British tabloid press may well be the least-principled, sleaziest media in the English-speaking world, making America’s National Enquirer look like the Journal of the American Medical Association.

At the same time, I have no sympathy for persons who feed at the public trough, but who wish to protect themselves from the consequences of their own bad behavior.

All in all, I lean towards the idea that fresh air is better than no airings.

. . . here’s the new OS for your computer:

Click the image for more information.

May 20, 2011 | Posted by: Frank | Posted in: Geek Stuff | Bookmark this post

Another reason not to use Bing!

Microsoft added more Facebook features to Bing today so people searching on Bing can see what their friends think of various search results.

Science 2.0 reminds us of a news a recent news story:

A US court just slashed alimony payments (Cardone v. Cardone, 2011 WL 1566992, Conn.Super. April 4, 2011) to an ex-wife because of her blog posts, which detailed how she was sailing around the Caribbean for months with her new boyfriend while she rented out her apartment. The poor sap ex-husband had been paying for 10 years and the court reduced it by 70% because she was clearly living with someone else and being subsidized by her ex-husband. Get back to Connecticut for a moment. The guy was being forced to pay until she died or got remarried. 10 years.

The article goes on to suggest five rules for staying out of this sort of trouble.

No, “don’t get married” is not one of them, though “don’t get divorced in Connecticut” does make the cut–they are five rules for on-line behavior. Share them with your friendly local on-line hothead.

It’s reaching a critical mess.

It has been revealed that Facebook embarked on a smear campaign against rival Google.

The social network has admitted that it hired a PR firm to plant anti-Google stories related to user privacy.

It has already been well established that privacy is a concept that Facebook does not comprehend. Guess it felt lonely and wanted some company.

Facebook, of course, denies that this was a smear campaign.

Details at the link.

Given that, according to Zuckerberg, at Facebook “the default is social,” this surprises us how?

Access to hundreds of thousands of Facebook accounts may have accidentally been leaked because of a flaw in some applications.

Security firm Symantec discovered that programs were inadvertently sharing access tokens which could be used by advertisers.

It estimates that, as of last month, 100,000 applications were still enabling leaks.

This sort of stuff is exactly why you don’t see me logged into Facebook very often.

You also don’t see me walking naked on the beach very often either.