Congress targets social-networking sites | CNET News.com

Most of this news piece deals with Congress deliberating about mandating records being stored about users by social networking sites and ISPs. The activity logs are supposed to help counter child pornography/abuse, and terrorism.

A couple of suggestions to counter the child abuse on social networking sites such as Myspace has been offered. However, I do not think that restricting access to such sites in libraries and schools are the answer. It’s is not a solution, it’s a work around that is bound to fail. If people in China can circumvent their national firewall (Golden Shield aka Great Firewall of China), what makes you think that can’t happen in the US? Computer technology enthusiasts hate road blocks like this, and are bound to retaliate.

I see one advantage of logging IP addresses of users during registration, and usage. It can be used to isolate addresses and then cross-reference those addresses to the sexual predators list of addresses. One kink I see in this, is the use of public internet access points, to circumvent this type of snooping.

It is practically impossible to know if the person is lying during registration. If I am mistaken, correct me with a detailed rebuke. It’s as easy for sexual predators to lie about their ages, as it is for a minor to lie about their age. Right now, short of loss of absolute privacy, there is no way to combat this problem comprehensively.

It is not the fault of the social networking sites that some of the users are depraved. One analogy to this issue I can think of are guns and people. Just because there is a massive illegal market for guns doesn’t stop the gun manufactures from selling guns. This is because people with licenses and right to own guns, create the demand. It’s the same case here. People who use the social networking site judiciously and ethically should not be penalized for the actions of depraved individuals. I would be mad if I was blocked from Facebook or Myspace due to the actions of someone else.

Technorati Tags: information, internet, Opinion, Policy, privacy, USA, social networking, myspace, facebook, china

I am sitting at the HUB, and see a big group of people sitting on my left. I am waiting for the Amnesty International meeting, and wanted to see if they were part of the group. I go to their Amnesty group page (PSU) on facebook, and then quickly navigate to the profile pages of the officers. And guess what, I see the profile images, and instantly recognize them as people sitting in that group.

That’s the power of Facebook (did someone say Stalker-Net?). Long Live Facebook!

God Bless Facebook and Nothing Else!

PS: The last bit doesn’t sound too good, does it? Then stop using it with your own friggin’ country?!!

Technorati Tags: Facebook Privacy Internet College Information

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Oh my God! I was wondering why I had absolutely no comments since I started this blog. I just figured it out. It was a CoComment error as I placed the code in the wrong section of comments.php.

It is fixed now.

I can’t wait for comments and discussion!

Technorati Tags: cocomment, troubleshooting, wordpress

TechCrunch: Google Research prototypes ambient audio contextual content

Visit this blog post for more information, and links to the official Google Research site and Google blog on this project.

Here is what I have to say:

Is google crazy?!? I can’t even imagine what this current project would make the privacy advocates say. Letting it hear us over a mike, and then making ads? This is giving me the creeps, and I have no intention in allowing 1984 style loss of privacy coming any quicker that it already is. I can see this information being used for good, but in the hands of the wrong people. Oh my god! What if the government is successful in subpoening google for information? So, now apart from phone calls, they literally tap into our living rooms, and hear our conversations.. Absolutely not! I will not allow that to happen. Google is becoming the Information blackhole. Anything I want to know, I just google it. I don’t want people or bots being able to tap into my private life unless I willingly disclose it.

Technorati Tags: google, internet, privacy, 1984, techcrunch, computers, audio, ads, business, opinion, information

AUDIOGRAPHY is a collaborative music (mp3) blog. Envisage this community as a place to discover new music and then BUY it legally.

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However, for free fully legal, and authorized streaming prime time shows on ABC, visit’s ABC’s streaming video website. This is an experimental bed for ABC and I hope they keep this up. For now, it is going to be up from May 1, 2006 to June 30, 2006. I have watched part of the latest Desperate Housewives. The other shows are Lost, Commander in Chief and Lost thus far. They are going to put up Grey’s Anatomy up too.

PeekVid

* 24 (17 episodes)
* Arrested Development (4 episodes)
* Battlestar Gallactica (2 episodes)
* Becker (16 episodes)
* Boondocks (12 episodes)
* Boston Legal (9 episodes)
* Buffy (57 episodes)
* Chappelle Show (1 episode)
* Charmed (20 episodes)
* Desperate Housewives (9 episodes)
* Earth 2 (4 episodes)
* ER (1 episode)
* Everybody Hates Chris (2 episodes)
* Everybody Loves Raymond (13 episodes)
* Family Guy (22 episodes)
* Farscape (4 episodes)
* Fat Actress (6 episodes)
* Greys Anatomy (16 episodes)
* Hoges The Early Years (5 episodes)
* Home Improvement (40 episodes)
* I Dream of Jeannie (11 episodes)
* Inspector Gadget (16 episodes)
* Lois & Clark (8 episodes)
* Lost (1 episode)
* MacGyver (16 episodes)
* Monty Pythons Flying Circus (44 episodes)
* NBA Action (1 episode)
* NCIS (5 episodes)
* Numbers (3 episodes)
* One Tree Hill (9 episodes)
* Pink Panther (32 episodes)
* Prison Break (3 episodes)
* Relic Hunter (3 episodes)
* Robot Chicken (10 episodes)
* Scrubs (12 episodes)
* Seven Days (9 episodes)
* Smurfs (38 episodes)
* South Park (4 episodes)
* Star Trek Deep Space 9 (10 episodes)
* Starhunter (44 episodes)
* Superbowl (2 episodes)
* Supernatural (3 episodes)
* The Ben Stiller Show (13 episodes)
* The Colbert Report (9 episodes)
* The Daily Show (21 episodes)
* The Exorcist - Movie (2 episodes)
* The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air (12 episodes)
* The Net (4 episodes)
* The Shield (1 episode)
* The Sopranos (14 episodes)
* Thundercats (31 episodes)
* Tom and Jerry (2 episodes)
* Tonight Show With Jay Leno (9 episodes)
* Untouchables (11 episodes)

Tags: Videos, Links

And Sunday has been very unmemorable so far. My room is very warm, and I have been training Riya to recognize faces in my pictures. It’s doing a decent job so far.

I read a blog of a female high school student talking about drinking, smoking and doing drugs. How stupid can you be to post something like that on the web for eternal posterity furthered by Google. Now, a copy of the entry is going to be around forever. So, if her prospective employer or even her employer read that, how do you think it would affect her job.

Update: New York Daily News - What a tangled Web we weave: Being Googled can jeopardize your job search (Via /.)

Here are a few quotes from her blog:

Pre -

im going to a mt. cabin with three friends after school tomorrow, for the weekend.

its gunna be lots of fun. lots of drunk, lots of stones, lots of drugs.

but little sleep.

green jello shots, im excited about that idea. i just cant seam to help myself.

i still havnt packed. i need to. im bad at this game.

i really do like pills. i just cant seam to help it. theres nothing i can do. so i bought some, toDAY. what? no, did.. is that…. no…. i.. no.. asp… no.. asperin. right. yeah. i bought asprin toNIGHT.

Post -

this weekend was fucking great. it was so calm and chill. i didnt have to think about going to work, or how i would get home. just me and three friends in a small wonderful cabin.

we didnt even get too fucked up. we got drunk on fri. form the jello, did salvia on sat. and smoked later that sat.(only to have me sleep for like three hours) and later at night i had a ‘night cap’.

but i got destressed.
and when i got back today i smoked.

i didnt even go through a full pack of cig.s in the mt.s. which is amazing for me. i normally smoke at least half a pack a day. but i didnt, heheh.

not im sleepy from the pot.

I don’t want to mention the url of the blog just for that modicum of privacy but I am talking about people not realizing about the consequences of posting private, and illegal experiences online.

Here is a post I found on Collegev2 about this issue on facebook. He posted a picture of a girl doing drugs and then putting it up on the photo section for the world to see.

This is one of the new web 2.0 start ups that I use all the time. If you do use coComment, definitely look into the greasemonkey script by John Sundstrom to automate calling the coComment bookmarklet.