Reinke Faces Life

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,26111924

Dear Verizon Internet User:

As part of our ongoing enhancements to the online customer experience, Verizon continues to ensure security for our Internet customers. As a result of this ongoing effort, Verizon Online is making modifications to the Internet access provided to you. These modifications will occur on August 21, 2011. For security reasons, Verizon will no longer allow users to FTP their HTML files to the personal web site Verizon offers.

Verizon recommends that current FTP users download their files prior to August 21, 2011 to prevent any data loss.

If you still wish to have a Verizon website, please go to our site builder tool available with Personal Webspace which can be found under My Services in My Verizon at:

»my.verizon.com/central/vzc.porta···WebSpace

Remember, after August 21, 2011, you will not be able to use FTP for uploading your files.

Thanks for being a valued Verizon Online customer. We encourage you to act now to protect your private information.

Sincerely,
Verizon Online

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And, why would you allow an ISP to control you?

Don’t use their email address, their webspace, and certainly if you do, don’t use it for anything important.

Cloud? Use it on whose terms?

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http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/07/18/0335204/Facial-Recognition-Gone-Wrong?

“John H. Gass hadn’t had a traffic ticket in years, so the Natick resident was surprised this spring when he received a letter from the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles informing him to cease driving because his license had been revoked. It turned out Gass was flagged because he looks like another driver, not because his image was being used to create a fake identity. His driving privileges were returned but, he alleges in a lawsuit, only after 10 days of bureaucratic wrangling to prove he is who he says he is. And apparently, he has company. Last year, the facial recognition system picked out more than 1,000 cases that resulted in State Police investigations, officials say. And some of those people are guilty of nothing more than looking like someone else. Not all go through the long process that Gass says he endured, but each must visit the Registry with proof of their identity. Massachusetts began using the software after receiving a $1.5 million grant from the US Department of Homeland Security as part of an effort to prevent terrorism, reduce fraud, and improve the reliability and accuracy of personal identification documents that states issue.”

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Gooferment’s overreaching and using technology wrong.

What happened to “innocent until proven guilty”?

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Facebook Bans Google+ Ads by samzenpus

Barbara, not Barbie writes “Not content with making it hard for people to export their Facebook contacts to Google+, Facebook has now banned all ads from app developer Michael Lee Johnson, who ran an ad saying ‘Add Michael to Google+.’ Facebook sent him the following message: ‘Your account has been disabled. All of your adverts have been stopped and should not be run again on the site under any circumstances. Generally, we disable an account if too many of its adverts violate our Terms of Use or Advertising guidelines. Unfortunately we cannot provide you with the specific violations that have been deemed abusive. Please review our Terms of Use and Advertising guidelines if you have any further questions.'”

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This is an example of why you can’t depend the Cloud for “production”. It can disappear on a whim. Taking all your data with it.

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http://m.techeye.net/security/us-spooks-arrest-artist-for-tinkering-with-apple-macs

US spooks arrest artist for tinkering with Apple Macs
It’s terrorism
08 Jul 2011 09:41 | by Nick Farrell in Rome | posted in Security

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Tinkering with Apple computers in one of its cathedrals of shallowness is now a terrorist act.

According to AP, the fruity cargo cult called in the US Secret Service after it discovered that some of the Apple Macs in its New York Store had been profaned by unauthorised software which appeared to take pictures of customers.

*** end quote ***

Unfortunately!

1. My little more than a year old MACBOOKAIR has as many problems as my old WINDOZE machine. And, it’s had two bare metal restores and three type 1 hardware problems.
     
2. APPLE is arguably as bad as MICROSLOTH! … but with better support at the genius bar.
3. Linux is the wild frontier. But maybe it’s better?
     
4. Google’s CHROMEBOOK is an interesting take on Cloud Computing.
5. Crony capitalism is one of the terrible feature of today’s Gooferment.

So what does one do?

Beats me.

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Recently I scored an invite to GOOGLE+, Google’s competitor to FACEBOOK. While my initial experience with it has been rough, I can see that this could be a BIG winner for Google in the “enterprise space”. It may even compete with LinkedIn, the recruiter’s white pages. This is also a competitor for various products and services that do “management of enterprise identities” (e.g., SALESFORCE; sales funnel management tools, Customer Relationship Management products). That’s how big it could be.

In a nutshell, it’s like FACEBOOK for a User’s define communities.

I’d suggest that every IT person should be grabbing a GOOGLE+ invite and try it for themselves. It’s going to be in the enterprise and everyone should understand the raw power that it represents.

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http://web.resourceshelf.com/go/resourceblog/64627

Millions of eBooks Available at the World eBook Fair
July 6, 2011 20:31

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The World eBook Fair runs from July 4 through August 4, 2011. Their goal is to provide Free public access for a month to 6.5 Million eBooks. Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive are both contributing organizations and will be presenting a number of items in other media this year, including music, movies and artwork, even dance choreography. The collections include light and heavy reading materials, more reference books, scientific items, etc., and about 50,000 music entries in addition to the 12,000 that debuted last year.

*** end quote ***

Wow, can one OD on content?

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http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/driverless-nevada

Driverless Nevada
Posted by Randal O’Toole

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The introduction of true driverless cars will significantly expand personal mobility because anyone—not just people over 16 who can pass a driver’s test—will be able to use them. Driverless cars will reduce congestion and improve safety. The new mobility will significantly change the way we live. And the cars will render obsolete any and all rail transit and moderate-speed rail lines now being planned or under construction long before taxpayers finish paying the heavy debts incurred to build such lines.

*** end quote ***

Having just driven recently for 8 hours from NJ to NH and a week later the reverse, I’d love to have had one!

Perhaps, if the car execs didn’t have their heads so far up the Gooferment’s <synonym for donkey>, then yhey could see that they are not in the “car biz”. They are in “satisfying people’s need to move” biz!

Argh!

I haven’t gotten around to a Segway yet. Looked on the website and you can’t even tell how much they cost.

Do people really try and do anything to make stuff easy for commerce?

Argh!

You’d think these people would be falling over people to sell ANYTHING that a buyer wants.

Sigh! If marketing is a conversation, then these folk have their listening ears closed.

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http://www.impactlab.net/2011/06/14/the-diwheel-gravity-defying-electric-vehicle/

June 14th, 2011 at 11:30 am

The Diwheel – gravity-defying electric vehicle

in: Alternative Transportation, Crazy Stuff, New Inventions, Science & Technology News

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The gravity-defying vehicle has two large wheels that are axially aligned with an inner frame. This holds the driver who is strapped in with a racing harness. A joystick is used to turn it on the spot and drive it forwards at up to 25mph. The bright yellow electric motor is affectionately known as Edward, which is short for Electric Diwheel With Active Rotation Damping.

*** end quote ***

I don’t understand “gravity-defying”.

If you do, can you explain it to me?

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http://www.hardwaregeeks.com/index.php/site/icann_new_open_domain_policy/#When:11:42:00Z

ICANN New Open Domain Policy

Posted by: Michael on Mon, Jun 20th, 2011

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Today ICANN voted to change the way we visit websites, they have pretty much allowed for any word to be a generic top-level domain (gTLD) starting in 2012. What is a g? You may know them as .com, .net, .org and .edu. There are currently 22 top level g’s.

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I don’t see a lot of value. Other than TLD<xxx> for porn.

I’m not sure that DNS provides a lot of value for the problems it has and point of failure it introduces.

And, it keeps us from “solving” the identity crisis. How do I find folks on the net and how do I know it the right one? Think Lilly Tomlin as the Telephone Lady: “Is this the party to whom I am speaking?”. Makes as much sense. It’s much worse on Twitter and little better on Facebook.

Argh!

Why can’t we have phone numbers as a TLD. AAA-BBB-CCCC.tel. I thought that was proposed a while ago. Require Google validation of the identity and then you have “identity” solved.

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http://www.salon.com/books/history/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2011/06/14/lind_information_technology

TOPIC: History
TUESDAY, JUN 14, 2011 07:01 ET
WAR ROOM
We need a New Deal for information technology
BY MICHAEL LIND

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America’s attention is focused on the faltering recovery from the Great Recession. But we cannot neglect another question: Where are we in the long-term technology cycle?

In the mid-20th cenIn the mid-20th century, the economist Joseph Schumpeter observed that technological innovation is not a continuous process, but tends to be concentrated in bursts of economy-transforming change. Within the industrial epoch that began in Britain in the 18th century and continues today, historians have discerned three or four or five successive industrial revolutions, driven by “general purpose technologies” like the steam engine, electricity, automobiles and airplanes, and information technology.

*** and ***

The evolution of a transformative technology can be retarded or accelerated by public policy. In particular, government policy can remove roadblocks on the path to the new technology’s implementation. These can take two forms: infrastructural roadblocks and social roadblocks.

*** and ***

Today’s universities and hospitals are the equivalents of neighborhoods hosting numerous individual blacksmiths working independently. They need to be replaced by higher education factories and health (not sickness) factories. Tasks done today by a few highly paid, credentialed elite professionals and an army of low-paid lecturers and health aides should be broken down, analyzed and reassigned to the moderately paid, middle-class Ed workers and Med workers of tomorrow. This may require a combination of capital deepening (the use of new technology) and deskilling (a moderately educated, moderately paid nurse with high-tech equipment may be a better diagnostician than today’s highly educated, richly remunerated M.D.)

*** and ***

Finally, we can promote “universal capitalism” by increasing ownership of income-generating assets, like shares in growing corporations, although the disastrous experience with 401K’s shows that any such programs must limit risk. Some combination of these reforms will probably be necessary to remove low wages as a social roadblock to the maturation of the information economy.

*** end quote ***

Michael Lind is Policy Director of the Economic Growth Program at the New America Foundation and is the author of “The Next American Nation: The New Nationalism and the Fourth American Revolution.” More: Michael Lind

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imho

The last thing we need is more Gooferment.

Part of the reason for the mess that “we” are in is the continued interference by Gooferment into the “free market”.

And, he wants the Gooferment to lead us into the “Promised Land”.

My personal connection with the Gooferment and “technology” is my cousin, who was a happy elevator operator, and me at AT&T. The elevator operator was thrown out of work by the minimum wage law. I was a casualty, along with Bell Labs and a lot of good folks, by Judge Green and divestiture.

Without Gooferment, people would just lead their lives. Instead, the “plantation masters” use Gooferment force to channel us like the cows in the stockyards.

Argh!

No thanks.

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http://technorati.com/technology/article/why-the-icloud-wont-be-my  

Why the iCloud Won’t be My Cloud
Author: Stephen Lee
Published: June 16, 2011 at 5:29 pm

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Talk of “cloud computing” and “cloud services” has been in the air for years, but (despite the remaining ambiguity in the minds of consumers) recent developments have garnered a little more of the consumer electronics limelight for this burgeoning technology.

*** end quote ***

While the jury is still out, I’m beginning to have a lot of concerns:

(1) Control

Apple’s stuff is aligned with Apple’s interest not just mine. Look at how it can dump stuff and change stuff willy nilly. The big argument against ANY “cloud service” is that you, the end User and PAYING Customer, can’t depend upon it staying the same.

(2) Music

Apple is at peace with the RIAA. That’s a concern! All this “service” on any music you have? And, of course, it would never report pirates to the Empire. Can’t you see the “possibilities”? (I envision subpoenas to ISPs coordinated by “iSnoop” to prove that someone bit torrent in a particular music file followed by “service” of lawsuits.)

<<to be continued>>

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http://apple.slashdot.org/story/11/06/19/1434211/Will-Capped-Data-Plans-Kill-the-Cloud

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With the introduction of its Chromebook, Google is betting big on the Cloud. As is Apple, with its iCloud initiative. So too are Netflix and Skype. Unfortunately, their very existence is threatened by data-capping carriers, who have set a course to make sure that the network is NOT the computer.

*** end quote ***

(3) Unlimited / Ubiquitous Connectivity

Clearly the assumption is as much as you want from where ever you are. Not necessarily a good assumption. Or an inexpensive one.

# – # – # – # – # 2011-Jun-19 @ 14:26

http://www.yatedo.com

People Search Engine

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I always am looking for Jaspers. Graduates of Manhattan College. THE Manhattan College. http://manhattan.edu

So I do a lot of searches for “manhattan college”.

I’m never surprised when it’s wrong.

I compensate a lot:

“manhattan college” -marymount -“marymount manhattan college” -“borough of manhattan college” -marymount -manhattan.edu -bmcc.cuny.edu -msmnyc.edu

I’m frustrated, but rarely surprised.

I did my usual search and it even offered a search.

schoolname:((manhattan college))

But I was disappointed when it returned BOMC and MMC.

Argh!

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http://advantage-marketingblog.com/2011/06/02/social-media-and-phishing/

Social Media’s Dark Side: Phishing and Scams

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Here’s what employees can do to avoid becoming the prey of phishing attacks:

1. Never click on a link or a bookmark which is associated with financial transactions or asks for any sensitive information; instead always manually type the URL in the address bar.

2. Don’t click on links which ask to download ActiveX or software on your system. These could be Trojan/malware which later becomes the control center to remotely control your system and others in the network.

3. Ensure that the site is authentic and using secure layer (https) before providing any sensitive information about yourself or your organization.

*** end quote ***

Good advice for real people as opposed to “employees”.

I’d add “Switch to Open DNS”. It’s free and will prevent you from being “speared” by a “phisher”.

(On a technical note, it does that by preventing your browser from resolving known bad names into ip addresses. Thus, you’ll see the Open DNS “warning screen” with the option “Get me out of here”. It’s not perfect, but another compensating control.)

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https://local.nixle.com/alert/4699441/?sub_id=241886  

Thursday June 9, 2011 1:51 PM EDT
NEW POLICE LANGUAGE SERVICE SAVES PERSON

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On Tuesday South Brunswick Police used a new language service to help locate a victim suffering a heart attack. At around 10am a woman called 911 from a cellphone seeking help. The dispatcher was unable to determine where the victim was or the problem. The dispatcher connected to a translator through a new program used by South Brunswick Police called Interpretalk. The translator was able to assist the dispatcher with identifying the location of the victim within two minutes of being on the call. When police officers and EMS arrived they found the 49-year-old victim was suffering a heart attack. The victim was taken to a local area hospital and is listed in good condition.

The new translation service – Interpretalk allows dispatchers and police officers to be able to communicate in 157 languages, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The service which has been available to the department since March of 2011 has been used 7 times. Chief Raymond Hayducka said, “Our community is diverse and we want to be able to assist anyone in need. This new tool gives officers and dispatchers another way to get help to people in need in an emergency.” He added, “This case clearly demonstrates the importance of being able to reach out to all aspects of our community.”

The service is used once a dispatcher or officer believes there is a language barrier. The dispatcher contacts Language Sevice Associates who provide the translation. Communication Center Supervisor James Deery said, “We could not understand where the victim was and her being on a cellphone made it more difficult. The service Interpretalk provided was quick and provided the lifesaving measures she needed.”

*** end quote ***

Neat use of technology. From a network perspective, it’s really just a fancy three way calling option. Getting it all set up, agreed to, and paid for that was the heavy lifting. That’s effective use of technology.

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http://it.slashdot.org/story/11/06/06/1321257/A-Brief-Sony-Password-Analysis

A Brief Sony Password Analysis
Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday June 06, @09:30AM
from the change-it-now-people dept.

troyhunt writes

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99% of passwords don’t contain a single non-alphanumeric character.”

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It would seem that two short words separated by a “special” character would be a great password.

9vfj#4fkh kdj5@3jdz 4ax4$32az

Give the hackers another 10 characters to worry about.

26 lower case, 26 upper case, 10 digits, 10 specials = 72

(72) ** password length *** equals a long time for crackers.

Even if you cheat like I suggested — [(62)**4 (10) (62)**4] — is still a long time.

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http://www.macworld.com/article/160120-2/2011/05/ebook_prices_outrage_innovation.html

E-Book prices fuel outrage — and innovation
by Narasu Rebbapragada, PCWorld May 30, 2011 9:00 am

*** begin quote ***

The evolution to digital will differ by publisher. Hachette’s Thomas anticipates, “Some print runs will decline, some will expand, and new readers (who were not previously regular physical book buyers) will enter the market because of the digital revolution.”

And only time will tell where in the pricing spectrum—from best-selling $25-plus hardbacks at one end to 99-cent music downloads at the other—e-book prices will settle. Some argue that there’s no incentive for publishers to cut prices. Despite the public protests, people are buying e-books in droves. Others point to the inevitable downward trend of digital content prices.

“It’s still a little bit like the Wild West out there,” says Brian Felsen of the current digital publishing landscape. But who lassos whom—publisher, retailer, or self-made author—remains to be seen.

*** end quote ***

Clearly, the inet is crashing existing business models.

If marketing is a “conversation”, then the model has to profit off that “conversation”. That’s what is important developing that community. Monetizing it is secondary.

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http://blip.tv/the-raxis-report/nh-clog-bill-d-s-speeding-ticket-trial-2571630

NH-CLOG: Bill D.’s speeding ticket trial
The Raxis Report

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(1) Entertaining to use the Gooferment’s court to fight a ticket.

(2) Imagine if they had to do this for EVERY ticket? The system would grind to a halt.

So that how we have to fight. Make small battles too expensive. And, clog their “courts” so they can’t get to the big issues.

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