Look out for Lookout: online security at its’ worst

December 15, 2009 in Media, Technology | No comments

Last week, a reporter for MPR covered a story involving the state of Minnesota warning its’ agencies not to use a contractor’s service it had been using due to security problems:

This week, Minnesota Public Radio was able to access state employee data on Lookout Services’ Web site without using a password or encryption software. Employee names, birth dates, Social Security numbers and hire dates were visible on the Web site for every state agency using the service.

This week, the state and MPR are being countersued for breach of contract, stealing trade secrets and “hacking.”

It’s bullshit, of course.
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Christian Privilege in America

December 13, 2009 in Politics | No comments

target-christmasAccording to interviews conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life in 2007, 78% of American adults identify themselves as Christians. While that number is down 10% from 20 years ago, most aspects of life in America are still dictated by Christianity: we have “winter break” over Christmas, “spring break” over Easter, and not much thought is given by professors regarding scheduling an exam on days such as Yom Kippur or Eid ul-Fitr.

With the appearance of conspiracy theories in recent years regarding a “war on Christmas,” it has become evident that conservative Christians believe that they are losing their supremacy in popular American culture. Commentators such as John Gibson at Fox News Channel claim that “a cabal of secularists, so-called humanists, trial lawyers, cultural relativists, and liberal, guilt-wracked Christians–not just Jewish people” are persecuting the American Christian majority. Read the rest of this entry »

Women = Shopping!

December 6, 2009 in Media, Politics | No comments

I was so disgusted at this lede that I didn’t even read the rest of the article. That doesn’t sound like much, but I am someone who can’t help but read everything.

When you get 36 local women-owned companies and nearly 1,200 women in one room at Minneapolis’ Graves Hotel, there’s only one possible result — high-energy shopping.

Best/worst part: it was written by a woman.

9/11 texts: ‘Got my zebra thongs on!!!’

November 26, 2009 in Politics, Technology | No comments

Wikileaks has released a half-million pager messages from the hour before, during, and after the September 11th terrorist attacks, which were intercepted over the air by whomever was monitoring pager frequencies for unencrypted messages:

Text pagers are usualy [sic] carried by persons operating in an official capacity. Messages in the archive range from Pentagon, FBI, FEMA and New York Police Department exchanges, to computers reporting faults at investment banks inside the World Trade Center

The archive is a completely objective record of the defining moment of our time. We hope that its entrance into the historical record will lead to a nuanced understanding of how this event led to death, opportunism and war.

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Don’t start nothing, won’t be nothing: newspaper comment edition

November 20, 2009 in Media | No comments

The latest in ignorant rage on the internet: Some idiot resigned from their job after being confronted about a vulgar comment they made twice on a news site that didn’t conform to their employer’s policies but surprisingly, lots of people are up in arms over it. Yet, you’ll still see many griping over the comments at such newspaper sites.

Personally, I don’t believe that newspaper sites should have comment sections. That’s what blogs are for, so nobody has to read the dumb stuff that you write! If it wasn’t written well enough to even be published in print as a letter to the editor, why should it go online? (Hint: “freedom of speech” is incorrect.)

Yeah, you bet if you leave a shitty remark anonymously on my blog, I’ll WHOIS your IP address. Which I already have done in the past, so my ex-boyfriends have learned to use proxies when visiting my blog.

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