Stories by Paul McNamara

Half of adults believe social media sites hurt youth?

If the results of a recent telephone survey are to be taken at face value - a reasonably big if, in my opinion - roughly half of American adults believe that Facebook, <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/slideshows/2010/052610-twitter-quiz.html">Twitter</a> and their ilk are harmful to the social development of today's young people.

Written by Paul McNamara21 Nov. 11 17:31

Stallman parody site catches Stallman's eye

A recent online posting of Richard Stallman's astonishingly long set of instructions for those who would hire him as an event speaker has spawned a parody website -- The Stallman Dialogues -- as well as some debate over the propriety of people constantly poking fun at the enigmatic and controversial founder of the Free Software Foundation.

Written by Paul McNamara07 Nov. 11 22:28

Anonymity vs. real names on social networks

Let's cut to the chase: This one is really about whether Facebook and the new kid on the block, Google+, should get to throw their considerable weight around by requiring that users post to their social-networking sites using real names.

Written by Paul McNamara02 Nov. 11 21:33

Fun with naming Wi-Fi nets

According to a media report out of San Antonio, the man recently accused of planning to assassinate a Saudi diplomat in Washington, D.C., was not the sharpest tool in the box. However, if neighbor accounts are to be taken at face value, the same could be said of the FBI agents tasked with foiling his alleged plot.

Written by Paul McNamara24 Oct. 11 15:29

Rogue game server admins tell all

Back in January, Scandinavian gamers hijacked a New Hampshire medical center's server to host "Call of Duty: Black Ops" sessions. When asked about that incident, Stephen Heaslip of the gamer site Blues News said hackers are not the most likely individuals to commandeer corporate servers for illicit gaming: Such appropriations are more often the work of IT administrators. When asked if he could put us in touch with some of these rogue game server admins, Heaslip posted a call to his readership - and four volunteers stepped forward.

Written by Paul McNamara21 March 11 20:44

Google apologizes for Gmail bug that shook 150,000 users

Google says it is "very sorry" for a Gmail software bug that reset some 150,000 accounts and left their owners contemplating the prospect of having lost years worth of data. The outage affected only a fraction of one per cent of Gmail users, but its severity was particularly noteworthy.

Written by Paul McNamara02 March 11 03:45

Social networks all over the map on reliability

That Twitter had more downtime last year (84 hours) than any of 15 social network sites measured by an uptime monitoring service should surprise no one: The site's "fail whale" is so famous it was just featured in the New York Times.

Written by Paul McNamara24 Feb. 09 08:53

Do We Really Need a Security Industry?

Security expert/pundit/provocateur Bruce Schneier, always entertaining, had one of those "He's right but so what?" columns on Wired.com. The headline - "Do We Really Need a Security Industry?" - is the giveaway in that you'd expect Schneier's answer to the question to be no, just as you might expect the TV news tease "Big storm headed our way?" to mean that there's a big storm headed our way.

Written by Paul McNamara07 May 07 11:57
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