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CWmike writes
"Heather Havenstein writes that the increased viewing of online political videos and the use of social networks to gather campaign data and online donations for candidates has fueled use of the Internet in this year's election cycle that is shattering records, according to a study released this week. (Download a PDF of the study.) A record-breaking 46% (compared with 31% in the last cycle) of Americans have used the Internet, e-mail or cell phone text messaging to get news about a campaign or to share their views, according to the "The Internet and the 2008 Election" report compiled by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. So far, according to the report, supporters of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) are using online tools for election matters more often that those of rival Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). Obama was an early supporter of Web 2.0 technologies, and that effort appears to be paying off, the study finds."
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David W. White writes
"Wired mag's Danger Room carried an article today that highlighted how desperate the US Military's DARPA has become in its attempts to bring in additional brain power. The tactics include filmed testimonials, folders and even playing cards all screaming join DARPA! Where are all the Einsteins who want to be on the cutting edge for the Government?"
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Geoffrey.landis writes
"The Massachusetts Department of Industrial Accidents fired worker Michael Fiola and initiated procedures to prosecute him for child pornography when they determined that internet temporary files on his laptop computer contained child porn. According to Fiola, 'My boss called me into his office at 9 a.m. The director of the Department of Industrial Accidents, my immediate supervisor, and the personnel director were there. They handed me a letter and said, "You are being fired for a violation of the computer usage policy. You have pornography on your computer. You're fired. Clean out your desk. Let's go."' Fiola said, 'They wouldn't talk to me. They said, "We've been advised by our attorney not to talk to you."' However, prosecutors dropped the case when a state investigation of his computer determined there was insufficient evidence to prove he had downloaded the files. Computer forensic analyst Tami Loehrs, who spent a month dissecting the computer for the defense, explained in a 30-page report that the laptop was running corrupted virus-protection software, and Fiola was hit by spammers and crackers bombarding its memory with images of incest and pre-teen porn not visible to the naked eye. The virus protection and software update functions on the laptop had been disabled, and apparently the laptop was 'crippled' by malware. According to Loehrs, 'When they gave him this laptop, it had belonged to another user, and they changed the user name for him, but forgot to change the SMS user name, so SMS was trying to connect to a user that no longer existed ... It was set up to do all of its security updates via the server, and none of that was happening because he was out in the field.' A malware script on the machine surfed foreign sites at a rate of up to 40 per minute whenever the machine was within range of a wireless site."
