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i wash my hands – myopera

MyOpera:

Don’t let me stop, Your great self-destruction
DIE if you want to, You misguided martyr
I wash my hands of Your demolition
DIE if You want to, You innocent puppet

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mozilla location service

A couple of us in town are doing an activity that we are enjoying:  The Mozilla Location Service.  If you have an Android, you can install the MozStumbler app, and just run it while you walk, bike, or drive around.  It records wifi access points, cell towers, and GPS satellite signals.  Google has already done such a thing.  The goal of this project is to have the data open and public.

The stated goal is:

The Mozilla Location Service is a research project to investigate crowdsourced mapping of wireless networks (WiFi access points, cell towers, etc.) around the world. Mobile devices and desktop computers commonly use this information to figure out their location when GPS satellites are not accessible.

There are few high-quality sources for this kind of geolocation data currently open to the public. The Mozilla Location Service aims to address this issue by aiming to provide an open service to provide location data.

The fun part for us is that there are few people doing it in this area, so the locations we map are very striking on the map.  If you want to assign a nickname to yourself, you can track your ranking on the Leaderboard.

We are getting Greensboro, North Carolina, nailed down quite well.  Not all data on this part of the map is ours, but most of it is.  This project works anywhere in the world (see the map).  The requirements to upload are Android and access to data.

 

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how security drifts away

Initially:

Company has a policy that personal data cannot be accepted by e-mail.  It must be sent by hard copy or FAX.  Even if FAX is not always secure, it’s approved per privacy regulations.

 

1st Event:

HR requests that a document containing personal data be filled out and returned by e-mail.  Employees do not have encryption.

Complaint:  violates privacy policy.

Response:  Correct, policy was violated.  Rogue employee.  Issue corrected.

 

2nd Event:

Wording that “personal data cannot be accepted by e-mail” quietly drops from policy.

Complaint:  important privacy safeguard has been removed.

Response:  Employees are *encouraged* to send in personal data by secure means, but it is their choice if this is not followed.

 

3rd Event:

Requests for insecure transmission of personal data become routine and numerous.

Complaint:  encouraging insecure handling of data.

Response:  No policy is being violated.  There is no need to bring this up again.

 

4th Event:

More of the above.

Complaint:  I don’t like my data being requested this way.

Response:  Everybody is doing it.  What is the problem?

 

—

 

You can see how privacy goes away.  It gets to where e-mail is considered as secure as anything as far as privacy.  If this happens on the front end, you can imagine that back end data from one company to another is also handled this way, and it is happening among many companies.

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“reply all” at work

It’s not a good idea unless requested.  Little good will come of it.  I wish the employer would remove the “reply all” button from company e-mail, or institute a one dollar charge per recipient if the action is deemed unnecessary.  I only mention it because there is an orgy going on in my inbox today.   😮

It’s time to sit back, smell like a rose, and smile at the ones who fell for it.

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nexus 7 screenshot

A Christmas gift to myself.  It was on sale anyway.  A Nexus 7 tablet.  I swapped out the stock Android for Cyanogenmod so I’d have a little more fun tweaking it.

 

The home screen looks a little severe, but it will do for now.  Red is not a favorite.

 

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