Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
Please pardon its vulgarity, but for those of you out there who are as tired of the b.s. dished out by many self-labeled “social media gurus” as I am, I think you will very much enjoy this bit of humor from freelance journalist Markham Nolan. Too funny.
Gotta love The Onion… [Make sure to keep a close eye on the messages on the Twitter pages. And I like the “E-Mom’s” advice to “Just make sure you spell everything wrong and swear a lot” to fool your kids. Great stuff.]
Facebook, Twitter Revolutionizing How Parents Stalk Their College-Aged Kids
Clearly, something must be done to counter the evil corporate cabal known as “the Cloud Elders” and the “Knights Doppler” who are behind the blatant pro-weather bias displayed daily on the Weather Channel. Perhaps a Fairness Doctrine for Weather Reporting?
Thank God the hard-working folks at Fairness in Media unearthed this vicious anti-democratic conspiracy.
Weather Channel Accused of Pro-Weather Bias
I’ve been trying to catch up after a week-long cruise with my kids down in the Caribbean and as I was doing my best to sort through thousands of e-mails and articles in my RSS reader, I stopped and did a double-take when I saw some headlines from last week about how the Federal Communications Commission is spending $350,000 taxpayer dollars to sponsor a NASCAR team. For that money, NASCAR driver David Gilliland “has agreed to use his No. 38 car as a high-speed billboard promoting the February 2009 national transition to digital television,” according to Multichannel News.
In the annuls of idiotic government spending initiatives this one has to be a potential hall of fame entry. Over on the PFF Blog, my PFF colleague Barbara Esbin has a humorous piece explaining why:
what signal does FCC sponsorship of a stock car racer send to the beleaguered American public in this autumn of our discontent? The FCC Chairman claims that this sponsorship is an “extremely effective way for the FCC to raise DTV awareness among people of all ages and income levels across the United States who loyally follow one of the most popular sports in America.” Well, those loyal sports fans will have to be following No. 38 at the three sponsored races with some pretty high-speed binoculars to catch the DTV message. Although the $350,000 does get the government posting of its informational website URL, www.dtv.gov, along the track — doubtless not the only advertisement to lure spectator eyeballs — it is primarily receiving posting on the car’s sides and on the driver’s helmet and suit. Let’s just hope No. 38 has a large fan base, does exceeding well in the three races, and, more importantly, avoids accidents, injuries, and fleeting expletives.
Maybe this is just another federal government bailout. On the same day that the FCC announced its investment in NASCAR, the Raleigh News & Observer ran an article entitled, “Global crisis threatens NASCAR.” It seems that “motor sport” team sponsorship has been down this year, “with sinking auto showroom sales, declining attendance and rising operating costs.” And let’s not even talk about the carbon footprint of stock car racing.
Of course, what’s even more pathetic about this move is that FCC Chairman Kevin Martin’s likely motivation for doing this is probably political: He probably thinks this is a good way to win blue collar votes with all the NASCAR fans down in North Carolina for a future run for office. [It’s widely rumored that he will seek some office down in his home state after his tenure at the FCC is up.] After all, NASCAR is hugely popular in that state. I don’t know about you, but I’m none too happy subsidizing a get-out-the-NASCAR-vote effort for one of the most regulatory-minded FCC Chairmen in history.
A little XKCD-style humor:
If you don’t get it, “c” this. Incidentally, you can easily add links to other search engines (as I have) by installing the CustomizeGoogle Firefox extension, among many other cool features.
And so the series continues. The Washington Post reports that the Department of Justice has just released “a scathing report” finding that over a 5-year period the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) “lost dozens of weapons and hundreds of laptops that contained sensitive information.” The DOJ’s Inspector General Glenn A. Fine found that 418 laptop computers and 76 weapons were lost. According to the report:
Yesterday’s report showed that ATF, a much smaller agency than the FBI, had lost proportionately many more firearms and laptops. “It is especially troubling that that ATF’s rate of loss for weapons was nearly double that of the FBI and [Drug Enforcement Administration], and that ATF did not even know whether most of its lost, stolen, or missing laptop computers contained sensitive or classified information,” Fine wrote. […]
Many of the missing laptops contained sensitive or classified material, according to the report. ATF began installing encryption software only in May 2007. ATF did not know what information was on 398 of the 418 lost or stolen laptops. The report called the lack of such knowledge a “significant deficiency.” Of the 20 missing laptops for which information was available, ATF indicated that seven — 35 percent — held sensitive information. One missing laptop, for example, held “300-500 names with dates of birth and Social Security numbers of targets of criminal investigations, including their bank records with financial transactions.” Another held “employee evaluations, including Social Security numbers and other [personal information].” Neither laptop was encrypted.
The findings regarding lost weapons were equally troubling, if not a bit humorous:
I love the lolcats. (Or perhaps I should say, Iz Luvz Da Lolcats.) Here are a couple of my favorite tech-related cats from recent months:
more animals
more animals
more animals
more animals
Too funny. Not quite as good as the Diebold one Tim posted last week, but this is still great…
FCC Okays Nudity On TV If It2019s Alyson Hannigan
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
