I stand by the 4th Amendment against spying …

Do you?

Did Google just start pimping out their home page?

Perhaps it’s just me, but I just noticed this today …

Does this make good business sense for Google, or does it shatter the illusion — that of the biggest ad revenue generating machine known to man being (previously) naked of any advertising on their home page? 

SOPA’s dead: What to watch out for next?

The WTO authorized Antigua to suspend U.S. copyrights: Will there be a new Pirate island in the Caribbean?

The World Trade organization (WTO) today authorized Antigua to suspend U.S. copyrights, which means they can move forward with plan to start a download portal offering movies, music and software without paying royalties to the American companies that own them.

According to LiveStrong what would you expect to find in American panties?

Velveeta, “that gooey product has a permanent home in many American panties” claims an article on LiveStrong! Really?

White House Petition: Remove United States District Attorney Carmen Ortiz from office for overreach in the case of Aaron Swartz …

Likely more symbolic than to have the outcome it pleads for I signed the White House petition to “Remove United States District Attorney Carmen Ortiz from office for overreach in the case of Aaron Swartz.”

If you would like to lean a little into the pain of Aaron’s persecution The New York Times article Internet Activist, a Creator of RSS, Is Dead at 26, Apparently a Suicide and Lawrence Lessig’s blog Prosecutor as bully are good places to start.

Sign the White House petition here.

Links: TechDirt’s Carmen Ortiz Releases Totally Bogus Statement Concerning The Aaron Swartz Prosecution

Ummm, shouldn’t Amazon be paying me to take this unusual deal?

List Price $19.99
Gold Box Discount -$28.64
Shouldn’t Amazon be paying me to take Today’s Deal?

Sounds more like some presidential hopeful’s fuzzy budget math, eh?

Product listed: AmazonBasics Wireless Remote Control for Nikon P7000, D3000, D40, D40x, D50, D5000, D5100, D60, D70, D7000, D70s, D80 and D90 Digital SLR Cameras offered at 11.10.40 PM on 10/16/2012.

How can I remove the Places map which shows up on my Facebook Timeline?

Invasion of privacy or not, I wasn’t enchanted to see a Places map turn up on my Facebook Timeline recently.

How to get rid of it?

Tired of “big money” and corporations buying votes? Register to vote for yourself …

“On behalf of big media companies, elected leaders almost passed SOPA & PIPA, bills that would have censored the web and destroyed some of the best sites online.

Why did so many politicians side with media companies instead of voters? It’s simple: they thought they could get away with it. Only 41% of Americans voted in the 2010 elections. And turnout for Americans under 30–who overwhelmingly knew about SOPA and opposed it–was just 20.4%.

But this year we can change that, forever. Why? Because the Internet gives us a perfect platform to register and mobilize new voters, and we’re building the tools to make it happen.”

Link http://www.internetvotes.org/

Can a subconsciously remembered password be unbreakable?

“A cross-disciplinary team of US neuroscientists and cryptographers have developed a password/passkey system that removes the weakest link in any security system: the human user. It’s ingenious: The system still requires that you enter a password, but at no point do you actually remember the password, meaning it can’t be written down and it can’t be obtained via coercion or torture” writes Sebastian Anthony in this Extreme Tech article Unbreakable crypto: Store a 30-character password in your brain’s subconscious memory, worth of a read. Something akin to playing Guitar Hero they say!

Pinterest: Microsoft Morgue vs Google Graveyard …

Finally, something more of interest to men on Pinterest:
Microsoft Morgue vs Google Graveyard …

Mac: Blocking websites like pulse360 in the admin account …

On my Mac, MSNBC seemed to be throwing a popup to annoying low-rent ads served by http://content.pulse360.com/. There’s a delay between navigating to MSNBC and the popup launching — which helps blur the connection between the two sites.

Solution: Simply bock popups and this site in particular, right? Not so easy!

• One of our corporate sites requires popups to be enabled.
• Mac’s Parental Controls won’t let you block sites on the admin account.
• There might be browser specific options, but I prefer something global.

 
What to do? Here’s one solution, by editing your Hosts file …

Facebook’s recent grab for your email traffic …

If you’re suddenly getting more FB messages than usual, you’ve likely fallen victim to Facebook’s recent shenanigans to stop displaying your real email address of choice and have replaced it, instead, with their own first.last@facebook.com address for you — which delivers to Facebook messages, not your regular email. They have forced this on us, rather than inviting us to opt in. Why? Likely to draw down traffic from gmail and other competing services. Read on to learn how you can set things right …

Scout: Alerts you when congress or state capitols talk about issues you care about …

Here’s a site that may help you keep up with your lawmakers …

DRM: Defective by design …