Truly an out of touch legislature. After ignoring warnings, they claim to be shocked that citizens actually read the bill and found it objectionable.

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/03/25/2321216/Utah-Repeals-Anti-Transparency-Law?from=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashdot%29

Utah Repeals Anti-Transparency Law

"After enduring two weeks of public fury, Utah lawmakers voted Friday to repeal a bill that would have restricted public access to government records. While Senate President Michael Waddoups accused the media of lobbying on the issue and others blamed the press for biased coverage that turned citizens against them, Sen. Steve Urquhart said bluntly: 'We messed up. It is nobody's fault but ours.'"

For my Risk Management students. Never test (or practice) on a live system.

http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/03/25/202235/Univ-of-Illinois-Goes-War-of-the-Worlds-On-Students?from=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashdot%29

Univ. of Illinois Goes War-of-the-Worlds On Students

"'Strange beings who landed in New Jersey tonight are the vanguard of an invading army from Mars.' (Orson Welles, 1938). 'Active shooter at BUILDING NAME/INTERSECTION. Escape area if safe to do so or shield/secure your location.' (Univ. of Illinois, 2011). An alert message sent out Thursday to 87,000 emails and cell phones warning recipients to escape from an 'active shooter' at the University of Illinois was an error, the Office of the Chief of Police confirmed. 'The alert sent today was caused by a person making a mistake,' explained an email. 'Rather than pushing the SAVE button to update the pre-scripted message, the person pushed the SUBMIT button. We are working with the provider of the Illini-Alert service to implement additional security features in the program to prevent this type of error.'"

I can see no obvious reason for MS to do this (unless they are signaling that governments have a backdoor into their “secure” communications?

http://politics.slashdot.org/story/11/03/26/0053203/MS-Removes-HTTPS-From-Hotmail-For-Troubled-Nations?from=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashdot%29

MS Removes HTTPS From Hotmail For Troubled Nations

"Microsoft has removed HTTPS from Hotmail for many US-embargoed or otherwise troubled countries. The current list of countries for which they no longer enable HTTPS is known to include Bahrain, Morocco, Algeria, Syria, Sudan, Iran, Lebanon, Jordan, Congo, Myanmar, Nigeria, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. Journalists and others whose lives may be in danger due oppressive net monitoring in those countries may wish to use HTTPS everywhere and are also encouraged to migrate to non-Microsoft email providers, like Yahoo and Google."

Geeky stuff

http://download.cnet.com/8301-2007_4-20047349-12.html

Everything you need to know about Firefox 4

Interesting hack...

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/03/kindlefish-turns-kindle-into-worldwide-universal-translator/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29

Kindlefish Turns Kindle Into Worldwide Translator

Nicholas found that Google Translate is badly suited to the e-reader’s admittedly limited web browser. “Standard Google Translate doesn’t work for the Kindle,” he writes on his blog, “and the mobile Google Translate page returns text that is too small to be easily read, and a little clunky for use on the Kindle.”

To get around this, he wrote a new front-end called Kindlefish, a homage to the universally translating Babelfish from Douglas Adams’ five-part Hitchhiker’s trilogy. The interface is simple, letting you set three preferred languages for quick access, and one input language (English by default). You just type your phrase on the Kindle’s little keyboard and hit the “Translate” button.

… If you want to try it out, head over to the Kindlefish site on your Kindle. The site is on free hosting, but if it is swamped by traffic then Nicholas plans to move it to a more permanent home.

You never know what you'll find in lists like this one.

http://savedelete.com/best-free-windows-business-software.html

Top 10 Extremely Useful Free Windows Software For Your Small Business

4. Calibre Ebook Management : calibre is a free and open source e-book library management application developed by users of e-books for users of e-books. It has a cornucopia of features such as Library Management, E-book conversion, Syncing to e-book reader devices, Downloading news from the web and converting it into e-book form, Comprehensive e-book viewer, Content server for online access to your book collection.

If you too into reading books, here you can check our article on 30 sites to download free ebooks and best free Microsoft ebooks for business persons.