Social Networking for Gadget Lovers

By JR Raphael
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

Need a second opinion before you make your next electronics purchase? A new social network called PEBuzz (Personal Electronics Buzz) hopes to help.

The site, launched about a month ago, features user-generated reviews and opinions on everything from high-end TVs to random gadgets. The site lets you set up a personal profile page and connect with users who have interests in similar kinds of products. Like most sites of this type, users rank public posts to give them more or less weight based on their usefulness.

So far, PEBuzz has in the ballpark about 1,000 members and says it is quickly growing with more gadget enthusiasts by the day.



Court rules your boss can’t read your email & texts

By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

In a landmark ruling, a US federal appeals court has declared that employers are not allowed to read employees work emails and text messages without getting a warrant first.

But the ruling only applies to situations where the company outsources its email and texts to an outside company and not if it is done in-house on internal servers.

The ruling comes after a police officer, Jeff Quon, sued his department for reading his work text messages, some of which were personal and sexually explicit to his wife.   The company that stored the messages, Arch Wireless, was found to have violated the Stored Communications Act and the court said that Quon’s messages were protected under the Fourth Amendment.

Personally speaking, how stupid is Quon to use a police department pager with taxpayers money to send sexually explicit messages to his wife?   Then when he is caught, instead of apologizing and offering to reimburse the department, he proceeds to sue his department (who then has to use more taxpayers money to defend themselves) for more financial compensation!

To be honest, I am not all that sure that this ruling is actually good.   Shouldn’t employers have the power to check to see if idiots like Quon are abusing their employer’s trust?   I am all for privacy, but if employees are using work accounts for personal gain, the employer should have the ability to verify what’s going on.

Your opinions, as usual, are always welcomed!

Via Los Angeles Times



The Tech Effect: Are Computers Making Us Stupid?

By JR Raphael
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

Technology lets us do things that once seemed like science fiction. From thoughtless navigation to limitless recollection, machines have made nearly every facet of our lives easier. But in doing so, have they also taken away skills that were once second-nature? An expanding argument suggests the internet and general abundance of technology may, in fact, be making us stupid.

The Atlantic‘s Nicholas Carr points out how his mind doesn’t work the way it used to. Reading long articles or books, he says, seems like an impossible feat now; he loses focus after a few pages. The idea of getting information so quickly and easily has seemingly shifted the way his mind works.

Carr notes how Nietzsche observed changes in his writing style with the advent of the typewriter decades ago. “Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts,” he is quoted as writing.

So could our brains again be evolving, so to speak, as a result of our dependence on modern technology? There’s certainly evidence to suggest some kind of change. A scientific study conducted a couple years ago found the ability to remember personal information — anything from a birthday to a phone number — is significantly lower in younger people who have grown up with cell phones and computers than in members of previous generations.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s seen the effect firsthand: I used to know the phone number of every friend, relative, and business I called with any level of frequency. Nowadays? Not so much. Outside of a few basics, I’ve inadvertently moved from storing the information in my brain to archiving it in my Outlook Contacts list.

Memory may not be the only function affected, either. An ABC News report out this week suggests the sudden ubiquity of GPS technology may be causing us to lose our senses of direction, as well as our drives to explore unknown terrain.

The question that remains, then, is if there is a true physiological shift as a result of all of this. Is technology actually making us stupid? Are we losing brain functionality with every previously mind-driven task we farm out to a machine?

Science doesn’t have a definite answer yet, but maybe you do. The floor is open to discussion — unless, that is, your short attention span and limited memory capacity have already caused you to drift away.

World’s Largest LED Screen Looks Amazing

Located in the lobby of the brand new Comcast Center in Philadelphia, this Barco video wall is composed of 10 million pixels, runs via six dx-700 led digitizers, seven encore video processors and three matrixpro routers. The screen measures 83.3ft x 25.4ft and has cost a whopping $22 million to design, construct and install. Hmmm, I think I need one of these in my living room! Video after the jump.

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France to adopt “three strikes” law for illegal downloaders

By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

You only have to look at the issue of online file sharing to see how different the European Union is.   Some political parties in Scandinavia want to legalise it while German prosecutors think it’s a waste of their time and taxpayers money even prosecuting such “petty offenses”.   But France is taking the extreme opposite approach – President Sarkozy is forcefully pushing through a new law that would ban internet access for up to one year to anyone caught illegally sharing files online.

The “three strikes” law is, as you can imagine, hugely controversial, judging from media reports.   Some newspapers have accused Sarkozy of only supporting this law because his new wife is a singer, therefore he must have a personal financial interest in protecting musical profits.    Needless to say, the music and movie industry are jubilant.   Other companies, such as Google, are most definitely not.

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Firefox 3 about to hit 8 MILLION downloads!

By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

According to Mozilla’s official live downloads page, Firefox 3 is about to hit 8 million downloads (at the time of writing this, it was at around 7.9 million and rising VERY fast).   This is in the first 24 hours of its release.

According to the page, this translates to about 5,400 downloads per minute AND RISING.

This is a staggering accomplishment for Mozilla and a remarkable achievement for an internet browser.   Never before has so much demand been there for an internet browser and it obviously goes without saying that Mozilla have their world downloading record that they were after – but was there a record to beat in the first place?

I think Mozilla has set the record for the first time!