How should I read this? Children can't be prosecuted for creating and distributing “child porn?”
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=20511
TX: Attorney General Abbott, Sen. Watson Announce Sexting Prevention Legislation
February 7, 2011 by Dissent
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott today joined State Sen. Kirk Watson, who announced the filing of Senate Bill 407, legislation that will help curb the dangerous practice of sexting.
If enacted, SB 407 would classify a sexting offense as a Class C misdemeanor for first-time violators less than 18 years old. Judges would be authorized to sentence minors convicted of sexting – and one of the minor’s parents – to participate in an education program about sexting’s long-term harmful consequences. The new law would also allow teens to apply to the court to have the sexting offense expunged from their records.
“Studies show that teenage students are increasingly taking, sending and receiving explicit pictures of themselves on their mobile telephones,” Attorney General Abbott said. “This dangerous trend is harmful to young Texans. We are joining with Sen. Kirk Watson to address the growing problem of sexting and educate – not criminalize – young Texans who make the unwise decision to participate in it.”
“This bill ensures that prosecutors – and, frankly, parents – will have a new, appropriate tool to address this issue,” Sen. Watson said. “It helps Texas laws keep up with technology and our teenagers.”
Sexting – a harmful and dangerous practice – typically occurs when teenage students use cell phones to send each other sexually explicit messages or images electronically, primarily between cell phones. A 2008 report from The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy indicates that 22 percent of teen girls said they have electronically sent or posted online nude or semi-nude images of themselves.
Sexting message senders have no control of their message’s ultimate distribution. Embarrassing or sexually explicit messages can be forwarded to other students and later spread quickly through a school or anywhere in the world.
Under current Texas law, anyone who transmits an explicit image of a teen can face felony charges of possessing or trafficking child pornography. As a result, children who send images of themselves and their friends face serious criminal repercussions. SB 407’s legal provisions ensure that minors are punished for their improper behavior, but do not face life-altering criminal charges.
Source: Attorney General Greg Abbott
(Related)
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/026464.html
February 07, 2011
State Cyberbullying Laws
State Cyberbullying Law - A Brief Review of State Cyberbullying Laws and Policies, Sameer Hinduja, Ph.D. and Justin W. Patchin, Ph.D., Cyberbullying Research Center, updated January 2011
You can criticize your boss, but only if you are in a union?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20030955-93.html
Company settles Facebook firing case
A Connecticut ambulance company that fired an employee after she criticized her boss on Facebook agreed Monday to settle a complaint brought by the National Labor Relations Board.
The NLRB sued American Medical Response of Connecticut on October 27, 2010, claiming the employee, Dawnmarie Souza, was illegally fired and denied union representation after she posted negative comments about her supervisor to her Facebook page.
… In response to the NLRB complaint last year, AMR claimed Souza's comments were not protected activity. However, the NLRB contended that AMR's termination of Souza's employment violated the National Labor Relations Act, which allows employees to discuss the terms and conditions of their employment with co-workers and others.
The Chinese government gets behind Cloud Computing. (and the comments are priceless...)
China Building City For Cloud Computing
"First it was China's 'big hole' sighting that brought us the supercomputing race. Now China is building a city-sized cloud computing and office complex that will include a mega data center, one of the projects fueling that country's double-digit growth in IT spending. The entire complex will cover some 6.2 million square feet, with the initial data center space accounting for approximately 646,000 square feet, says IBM, which is collaborating with a Chinese company to build it. A Sputnik moment? Patrick Thibodeau reports that these big projects, whether supercomputers or sprawling software development office parks, can garner a lot of attention. But China's overall level of IT spending, while growing rapidly, is only one-fifth that of the US."
(Related)
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/026461.html
February 07, 2011
Facebook Enables Full-Session Encryption
EPIC: "Facebook will now allow full-session HTTPS. The switch to encrypted cloud-based computing promotes privacy and security, particularly when users access Facebook from public Internet access points. Previously, Facebook only used HTTPS when users’ passwords were being sent to the site. Third party applications currently do not support HTTPS. Users can opt into HTTPS through their “Account Settings;” however, HTTPS is not yet the default. Facebook will use "social authentication, rather than traditional CAPTCHA, to deter hackers. EPIC has previously recommended the adoption of strong privacy techniques for cloud-based services. In 2009, EPIC filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, urging an investigation into Google’s cloud computing services to determine the adequacy of privacy and security safeguards. Google subsequently established HTTPS by default for Gmail. For related information, see EPIC: Facebook, EPIC: Cloud Computing, and EPIC: Social Networking Privacy."
Un-Googling yourself?
Crazy Characters Help Indie Bands Outsmart Google
On the Internet, new-band buzz travels faster than the speed of sound. So how can emerging musicians maintain their indie cred as they amass fans? Create a completely unintelligible moniker. A growing number of artists—largely from a dark electronic genre known as witch house—have found that by using symbols in their name they can make it to the top of playlists even if they’re not ranked at the top of Google results.
Using crazy characters to subvert the music industry isn’t entirely novel. Prince did it when he became 
… The musicians fronting this movement, however, say the use of characters is largely aesthetic and note that their names aren’t meant to alienate listeners. Some say they’re simply speaking to an audience raised on the web. “Nothing’s un-Googleable to a 14-year-old,” says Chris Dexter, who performs as oOoOO.
It is government's duty to protect its citizens (especially those who contribute...)
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20030956-281.html
White House will propose new digital copyright laws
The Obama administration has drafted new proposals to curb Internet piracy and other forms of intellectual property infringement that it says it will send to the U.S. Congress "in the very near future."
It's also applauding a controversial copyright treaty known as the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA, saying it will "aid right-holders and the U.S. government to combat infringement" once it enters into effect.
Those disclosures came from a report released today by Victoria Espinel, whom President Obama selected as the first intellectual property enforcement coordinator and was confirmed by the Senate in December 2009. There's no detail about what the proposed law would include, except that it will be based on a white paper of "legislative proposals to improve intellectual property enforcement," and it's expected to encompass online piracy.
The 92-page report (PDF) reads a lot like a report that could have been prepared by lobbyists for the recording or movie industry: it boasts the combined number of FBI and Homeland Security infringement investigations jumped by a remarkable 40 percent from 2009 to 2010.
… No less than 78 percent of political contributions from Hollywood went to Democrats in 2008, broadly consistent with the trend for the last two years, according to OpenSecrets.org.
(Related) “We can't risk eliminating either a tax or payments to large contributors.”
FCC Moves To Convert Phone Fund To Broadband Fund
"The Federal Communications Commission is expected to change the Universal Service Fund so that the funds are directed toward broadband infrastructure instead of rural phone infrastructure. '... while the world has changed around it, USF – in too many ways – has stood still, and even moved backwards. The program is still designed to support traditional telephone service. It’s a 20th century program poorly suited for the challenges of a 21st century world.' You can see a transcript of what was presented to the FCC (PDF) online."
It is good to know that Academia is studying these things.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20030954-71.html
Study: Facebook replacing Craigslist for prostitutes
When Craigslist withdrew from the adult services business last year, some wondered whether the prostitution business would be driven to less obvious and, perhaps, more dangerous places.
However, a Columbia University professor is suggesting that the business might have gravitated to somewhere even more obvious: Facebook.
Sociology professor Sudhir Venkatesh published the results of his work among New York prostitutes on Wired. And it makes for a stimulating insight into how technology is influencing the prostitution business.
Technology seems to have made men's behavior suddenly sophisticated.
"No self-respecting cosmopolitan man looking for an evening of companionship is going to lean out his car window and call out to a woman at a traffic light," Venkatesh said.
Instead, Venkatesh estimates that 83 percent of prostitutes have a Facebook page. Moreover, he believes that by the end of 2011, Facebook "will be the leading online recruitment space." Indeed, he says, even before Craigslist beat its retreat, Facebook was becoming a happy home for many prostitutes.
“We gotta have a way to deliver our nukes!”
Iran's New Space Program
"Coinciding with the 32nd anniversary of the Iranian revolution, Iran opened a center to receive satellite images built 'entirely by Iranian engineers.' Iran promised that by the end of their year (March of 2011) they would launch two observational satellites: Fajr (Dawn) and Rasad-1 (Observation-1). You might recall two years ago when they launched Omid, which completed about 700 orbits in two weeks. There are reports that new launch rockets will be revealed in February to launch the new satellites — all equipment is claimed to be entirely Iranian made. Iranian media is reporting that one of the satellites 'carries remote measuring equipment that would be used in meteorology and identifying sea borders.' The Iranian Student News Agency says Explorer 4 (Kavoshgar 4) is meant to transport humans and other living organisms into space, and that the sensory on the satellites 'is able to find gas and oil resources, identify coal mines, jungles and agricultural products as well as salty-marsh and contaminated environments.' These rapid fire achievements are not the only bragging Iran has done as of late; they also claim 'new gamma radiation units for medical treatments and a supercomputer billed as among the top 500 most powerful in the world. But, fact or fiction aside, the satellites have old enemies speculating."
The world, she is a changing.
ComScore: Hulu Is Watched Twice As Much As The 5 Major TV Networks Online Combined
(Related)
ComScore Says You Don’t Got Mail: Web Email Usage Declines, 59% Among Teens!
Here's one I'd buy, buy it's probably vaporware... Could even be an electronic etch-a-sketch.
NoteSlate, an E-Ink Tablet Made for Writing
The NoteSlate is … an E Ink tablet which comes with a pop-out stylus to write on the screen, and while it also comes in white, the black version looks just like a real slate –- those stone chalkboards on which schoolkids worked in the dreary mists of the past.
A huge 13-inch display takes up most of the front panel of the device.
… The NoteSlate has a single purpose: to act like a piece of paper. You can sketch and write, and the three hardware buttons let you delete a whole page (with the pen acting as an eraser for localized corrections), store the current page, or flip to the previous page (no mention is made of skipping to the next page).
At $99, it looks like an awesome gadget, but has the distinct whiff of vaporware. The mockups on the site show a color version along with the black-and-white ones, and promise a “free Wi-Fi module on request with order”.
… The launch date is promised as June 2011, and I’d love to see something like this as a replacement to paper notebooks. I have a sneaking feeling, though, that this will just disappear and never be seen again. I have set myself a calendar reminder for the middle of June to check up on things.
Is this the ultimate ego booster?
http://www.killerstartups.com/Web20/memeoirs-com-turn-your-emails-into-a-book
Memeoirs.com - Turn Your Emails Into A Book
A book with all your emails. That is what this new site will let you have created and delivered straight to your doorstep. You will be able to specify a time period for the application to focus on, and also to individualize these contacts whose interactions you want to have compiled. Once you have chosen that, you will be given the chance to customize the way the book will look like.
For the time being, the two email providers which are supported include both Gmail and Yahoo. Pricing itself is actually determined based on which kind of content you choose to have featured. Obviously, the more contacts you go for and the longer the time period then the more pages the book is having, and the more expensive the book is going to be.
For the Swiss Army folder...
http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/freeonlineocr-pdf-file-image-to-text/
FreeOnlineOCR: Convert PDF Files & Images To Text
If you have an image that contains text, FreeOnlineOCR is one of the quickest tools to convert it into text. It works with several image formats including JPG, GIF, PNG, BMP, TIFF and even PDF files. Simply upload your image, select the desired output format, click convert and the tool will convert your document into text.
You can have your output in TXT, DOC, PDF or RTF format. No registration is required and no tools need to be downloaded. The tool automatically takes care of low-resolution images and rotates the image if need be. It keeps the layout and formatting and read the text from within your image with great precision. The tool can also be used simply to convert PDF documents to Microsoft Word.
Similar tools: OCRConvert, OnlineOCR, OCRTerminal, Free-ORC and OCROnline.
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