Thursday, September 06, 2007

Someone argued poorly

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20070906054302978

Junk-fax senders win a victory in Ohio court

Thursday, September 06 2007 @ 05:43 AM CDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: In the Courts

While acknowledging yesterday that unsolicited "junk" faxes are an irritant, the Ohio Supreme Court curbed the ability of individuals to sue businesses that send them.

The court said yesterday that while individuals can sue senders of unsolicited fax advertisements under the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act, they can't seek higher penalties against senders who fail to disclose their name, phone number and the date and time of the fax -- as required by federal law.

Source - Columbus Dispatch



News?

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2179552,00.asp

Confusion 2.0: Keep a Tight Grip on Personal Data

September 5, 2007 By Brian Prince, eWEEK

Researchers at Fortinet call it Confusion 2.0—the unlearning of the golden rule of the Web: "Never give out any log-in credentials to an online service, regardless of the reason for the request."

But in their latest report on malware trends, they warned that some of the golden rule's shine has rubbed off as users are being lulled into violating the axiom by popular sites such as Facebook.com.



Technology can be used by anyone!

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/05/nyregion/05craigslist.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

As Prostitutes Turn to Craigslist, Law Takes Notice

... “Craigslist has become the high-tech 42nd Street, where much of the solicitation takes place now,” said Richard McGuire, Nassau’s assistant chief of detectives. “Technology has worked its way into every profession, including the oldest.”

... Sex and the Internet have been intertwined almost since the first Web site, but the authorities say that prostitution is flourishing online as never before. And while prostitutes also advertise on other sites, the police here and across the country say Craigslist is by far the favorite. On one recent day, for example, some 9,000 listings were added to the site’s “Erotic Services” category in the New York region alone: Most offered massage and escorts, often hinting at more.

... Experts say that under the federal Communications Decency Act of 1996, the ads are legal and Web site owners are exempt from responsibility for content posted by users. [Business Model: Hookers-R-Us? Bob]



This look like an old list, but it is dated yesterday? Nothing here is new. In other words, all of these “trends” should already be factored into your strategic plan...

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/10_future_web_trends.php

10 Future Web Trends

Written by Richard MacManus / September 5, 2007 /



Have I mentioned that this is a political blog? (I hope to be named Blogger Laureate of the US)

http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/05/1624239&from=rss

FEC Will Not Regulate Political Blogging

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday September 05, @05:11PM from the still-free-to-speak-your-mind-for-now dept. United States Politics

eldavojohn writes "Despite complaints that political bloggers should be subject to campaign finance laws since they are donating huge amounts of money in the form of advertising and media services to candidates, the FEC will not regulate political blogging. From the FEC statement: 'While the complaint asserts that DailyKos advocates for the election of Democrats for federal office, the commission has repeatedly stated that an entity that would otherwise qualify for the media exemption does not lose its eligibility because it features news or commentary lacking objectivity or expressly advocates in its editorial the election or defeat of a federal candidate.'"



The Tools are there, you just have to use them...

http://www.technewsworld.com/rsstory/59179.html

Prof Produces Tool to Highlight Wikipedia Whoppers

By Brian Bergstein AP 09/05/07 8:17 AM PT

By diving into Wikipedia's open volumes of edit histories, the software counts the degree to which any given contributor's work survives subsequent edits by other people. In general, the less tinkering your work on Wikipedia engenders, the more trustworthy you are deemed to be. That system is not foolproof, as accurate contributions might get quickly overwritten in articles on contentious topics.

... For now, the software is in demonstration mode and operates on an older subset of Wikipedia entries.



Trust your news? “The truth is whatever I say it is!” (ever read “Lying with Statistics?”)

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/08/san-diego-paper.html

San Diego Paper Sees Voter Confidence in Elections Where Others See Vote of No Confidence

By Kim Zetter EmailAugust 23, 2007 | 6:18:43 PMCategories: E-Voting, Election '08

"Electronic voting trusted, poll shows," reads the headline of an article published today in the San Diego Union-Tribune in California.

Yet the headline of an article in the San Francisco Chronicle about the same poll reads, "Most voters suspicious of ballot's accuracy, Field Poll finds."

So which is it? You be the judge.

The Field Poll (pdf), a telephone survey of only 402 likely voters, found that fewer than half of those surveyed (44%) said they had "a great deal of confidence" in the accuracy of California voting systems, while 41% said they had only "some" confidence in the voting systems.



Is this likely to become a trend? Will Church groups demand access? (Gee Bob, why do you say that? See next article...)

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601204&sid=as5xsnOZ_lOU&refer=technology

Google Seeks Partnership to Identify Illegal Content (Update3)

By Romina Nicaretta

Sept. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Google Inc., the owner of Brazil's most-used social networking Web site, is seeking partnerships to help identify illegal content.

Google will let non-governmental organizations in Brazil monitor the Orkut social-networking service, report illegal postings and request that data be saved for future legal action.


http://www.gospelcom.net/buzz/?p=481

Illegal file sharing: what every Christian parent should know

Several years ago, Napster brought the issue of illegal online file sharing into the public eye–and the topic hasn’t dropped out of the news cycle ever since. Today, laws about downloading copyrighted music and movies are controversial but quite serious, and most Christian parents and organizations abide by the law. But 9 out of 10 teenagers–a figure that includes plenty of Christian kids–disagrees that this sort of file sharing is wrong. How can parents approach their kids about this topic?

In a recent article at Christian Computing Magazine, Ben Woelk maps out what you should know about filesharing [PDF]–what’s legal and what isn’t, how to protect your computer from related dangers and yourself from legal problems, and how to talk with kids today about the ethics of the issue. He also provides plenty of links for additional reading.



The US transitioned to manufacturing in the 1950s, services came later.

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/05/1523256&from=rss

After 10,000 Years, Farming No Longer Dominates

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday September 05, @01:05PM from the long-row-to-hoe dept. The Almighty Buck News

Peter S. Magnusson writes "As reported widely in business and mainstream press, the ILO recently released world market employment statistics. Most outlets focused on US economic competitiveness vs. China and Europe. Few noticed the gem hidden away in the ILO report: for the first time since the invention of agriculture, farming is not the biggest sector of the global economy — services is. (Aggregate employment numbers often divide the economy into agriculture, industry, and services.) Workers are now moving directly from agriculture to services, bypassing the traditional route of manufacturing."


Related: Are they immigrant robots?

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/F/FARM_SCENE?SITE=VALYD&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Robots May Become Essential on US Farms

By JACOB ADELMAN Associated Press Writer Sep 6, 4:30 AM EDT

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- With authorities promising tighter borders, some farmers who rely on immigrant labor are eyeing an emerging generation of fruit-picking robots and high-tech tractors to do everything from pluck premium wine grapes to clean and core lettuce.



Gosh! Economics 101 was right?

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1801

Are Franchises Bad Employers? A Closer Look at Burger Flippers and Other Low-paid Jobs

Published: September 05, 2007 in Knowledge@Wharton

... But Cappelli, a management professor, and Monika Hamori, a management professor at Instituto de Empresa Business School in Spain, decided to investigate whether facts supported the conventional wisdom. In a recently completed study, "Are Franchises Bad Employers?" the researchers conclude that, in some cases, they didn't. "Once we control for size and industry, we find little evidence that jobs are worse in franchises and considerable evidence that they are better than in equivalent non-franchise operations," they write.



Because I like lists...

http://simplespark.com/

Cool Stuff for Your Life Online

Simple Spark is the place to find and share a new world of web applications.


Ditto (Plus I use Zamzar -- #1 on their list)

http://www.cogniview.com/convert-pdf-to-excel/post/conversion-central-101-tools-to-convert-video-music-images-pdf-and-more/

Conversion Central: 101 Tools to Convert Video, Music, Images, PDF and More

Posted on September 5, 2007 by Yoav Ezer



Research tool?

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/015886.html

September 05, 2007

Free Federal Court Opinions Website Now Searchable From 2004 to Present

Tim Stanley: US Federal District Court Opinions with Full Text Search: "We have put online the Federal District Court case opinions and orders that are available using the opinion report in the Federal Courts' ECF. These are updated daily. We have categorized the opinions by state, court, type of lawsuit and judge and combinations of judge and type of lawsuit. You can also subscribe to each of categories through RSS feeds to track a judge or court's decisions on different issues. And we also give the cause of action for each case.

We are using Google's hosted Business Custom Search Engine for the full text search. Google is now OCRing PDF image files, so even PDF files that have images of scanned documents will be in most cases full text indexable and searchable. Like the OCR of Google's Book Search. You will need to look at the cached copy to see the highlighted searched text though, and then find in the original PDF to be 100% that what you are reading is correct. Google should be doing a pretty good job of indexing and ocring these court decisions, although it may take a few days for a new document to show up in the index.

We have also noted on the federal district court case filing database when we have a judge's opinion (you will see a little gavel. The case filings are at here."

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