Amazon has reportedly begun removing content that touches on various forms of incest—from both its online store and buyers’ Kindles.
Source: Amazon’s latest Kindle deletion: erotic, incest-themed fiction | Ars Technica
It’s the “big brother” aspect of this that bothers me the most.
IT spending has hollowed out labour markets, to the detriment of middle-income workers
Source: Automatic reaction | The Economist
Not surprising by itself, but it is nice to have some numbers to confirm what I (and I suspect most other people) had suspected about the effects of IT on the job market.
I wonder where IT workers fall in the low-middle-high income scale.
Do you need antivirus software on your PC? If you’re not sure of the answer to that question, then the short answer is yes. The longer answer is that security software is only one piece of what should be a simple, straightforward, and systematic approach to your PC’s health. Here’s my seven-step program.
Source: Do you really need antivirus software? | ZDNet
My favorite part of this is that people are mostly getting infected by malware exploiting vulnerabilities that were patched 2-3 years ago (but YOU keep ALL the software on your computer updated, right?) and the rest of the top-10 most common are installed through social engineering. There is no software or hardware that provides security against the user’s ignorance or gullibility.
A well-known and respected computer-security researcher was detained for several hours Wednesday night by border agents who searched his laptop and cellphones before returning them to him.
Source: Another Hacker’s Laptop, Cellphones Searched at Border | WIRED
When did it become okay to check anyone, whenever, without cause or suspicion? Or, perhaps more accurately, when did everyone become suspicious?
Companies spend billions on rent, offices, and office equipment so their employees will have a great place to work.
However, when you ask people where they go when they really need to get something done, you’ll rarely hear them say it’s the office.
If you ask, you’ll usually get one of three kinds of responses: A place, a moving object, or a time.
Source: Why the office is the worst place to work – CNN.com
Obviously, as with all generalizations, there are exceptions. However, for “creative” jobs (programming, music, graphics, art, writing, designing, etc.) I think this is largely true.