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30 Sep 2010 11:18

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U.S.: Tyler Clementi may have posted cry for help online before suicide

  • People have commented on his profile with things like ‘how did you manage to go back in there? are you okay?’ and the fact that people he was with saw my making out with a guy as the scandal, whereas I mean come on… he was SPYING ON ME…do they see nothing wrong with this?
  • A quote reportedly from Rutgers student Tyler Clementi • Posted on an online forum not long before he committed suicide. The quote was from Cit2mo, and he described a situation very much like the one that Clementi suffered. While there’s no independent confirmation, the situation matches Clementi’s almost exactly. According to a friend of Clementi’s roommate Dharun Ravi, it was merely in good fun. “He’s very, very open-minded,” Michael Zhuang said, “and he, like if it had been a girl in the room it wouldn’t have been any different.” Tell that to Tyler. He seemed not to appreciate the gesture. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 1 Comment • Permalink

17 Aug 2010 21:58

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Tech: Will that webcam-spying school district face criminal charges?

  • NO but the class-action lawsuit is still on the table source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

02 Jun 2010 10:07

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U.S.: Oil spill: Our last hope, a diamond-blade saw, is now stuck

  • OH THE HUMANITY! BP has screwed up like four dozen times in the last month, so why wouldn’t the saw they were using to cut the pipe in the oil spill get stuck IN THE PIPE? Seriously. We bet you all thought it was going to be a bunch of aliens that were going to end the human race. But no. It’s a saw blade stuck in a #(&(@(&! pipe that did it. (Above is a clip from the most riveting television on the air right now, the oil spill webcam.) source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

13 Mar 2010 12:06

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Tech: Chatroulette’s founder feels your naked creepy guy pain

  • People that are naked are all over the Internet. I don’t like it, because I want a clean site, so I have added a ‘Report’ button. Now if someone is reported three times they are banned from the site.
  • Andrey Ternovskiy • Regarding the proliferation of naked people on Chatroulette, his site. Ternovskiy who is in the U.S. on a venture capital mission, says he won’t sell his nest egg right away and wants to protect the privacy of his users, a privacy slightly uncovered by Chatroulette Map, a Google Maps mashup which is actually kinda cool. He plans to do more to protect users’ privacy from sites like that one. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

08 Mar 2010 10:25

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Tech: Chatroulette’s maker may bring his randomness to the U.S.

  • Russian student Andrey Ternovskiy has reportedly applied for a visa. Could Chatroulette, that random piece of viral Internet goodness, go legit? Word on the street is that Ternovskiy is currently in a tug-of-war between Silicon Valley and his Russian homeland about where he goes to legitimize the service, which has grown from 500 to 1.5 million daily users in just three months (!!). One interesting fact from this ReadWriteWeb story: Google, Microsoft and Facebook alone have a combined market value, $500 billion, that equals a third of Russia’s annual economic output. Holy crap, kids. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

22 Feb 2010 21:37

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Tech: How the Lower Merion webcam-spying sausage was made

  • The dude talking on this clip, Mike Perbix, is the network tech for Lower Merion School District. In this webcast, he’s talking about the spying software installed on all of the machines given to students at Harriton High School, called LanREV. He’s promoting the product, which tells you exactly how invested Perbix was in this technology. Did it ever hit him, or the district, that parents and students might be really pissed about this? The author of the blog post investigating LanREV, by the way, tells you how to remove it in a later post. He calls it a trojan. source
  • Update: Oh, and the kid who got in trouble for reportedly using drugs? He was eating Mike & Ike candy. This school district is run by an institution of idiots.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

20 Feb 2010 15:36

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Tech, U.S.: Pennsylvania school district learns spying on students a bad idea

  • 42 number of times the school turned on the webcams to check on behavior (they did)
  • one student was nailed by the school for reportedly selling drugs in his home (he didn’t)
  • one class-action lawsuit was filed as a result of the privacy-infringing app (oh boy) source
  • The result? Students are totally up in arms about the violation in privacy, with some students noting the laptop is open in their bedrooms even when changing. Dear Lower Merion School District of Rosemont, Pa.: You guys are idiots. We don’t live in a nanny state.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

09 Feb 2010 22:25

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Tech: Chatroulette: A great social experiment that isn’t so great

  • We remember IRC back in “the day.” Internet Relay Chat, as the nerds called it, was a dangerous place and you never knew quite what you were getting into. Warez? Porn? Malware? Some dude who pretended to be your Internet friend but was really a 50-year-old man? And Chatroulette, a webcam-plus-anonymity phenomenon starting to get mainstream attention, is the 2010 version of IRC. Which is why it’s a minor (and fairly disturbing) phenomenon that will soon be forgotten. Here’s why:
  • This is old-school Why, do you ask, is this old school? Because it takes all the adventure of the Internet, the risk and reward, and puts it on your screen. Back in 1996, this wasn’t the exception. This was the rule. This is the dangerous end of the Internet, the dark neighborhood at 2 a.m. It’s like Craigslist at its best.
  • Not Web 2.0 at all Chatroulette’s interface is simple, but ragged. It isn’t forgiving. Like HotOrNot, you get one chance to make an impression. You don’t start relationships here. You see people. Then you don’t. There’s no friendly face here. This is the opposite of social media. It’s antisocial. Just like IRC!
  • Oh, there’s nudity Perhaps the one factor which ruins Chatroulette’s chances of being anywhere near as popular as Facebook is that half the people on it are perverts. It’s not safe for work at all. Some people get a kick out of the anonymity, while others use it to be socially depraved. You’ve been warned. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
 
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