PSoTD

Why is it that seemingly all the bulletin board spammers use fake Russian email addresses when posting? Are they really Russian? Sure makes it easy to decide what bulletin board applicants to ignore...

Congress must keep the Internet free and open by voting for meaningful and enforceable Network Neutrality.

There are dozens of cell tower furor stories in the news these days, as residents and service providers battle for placement of towers. But I have never seen the news media ask the bigger question for any area. For example, in this story from Dauphin County in Pennsylvania:

When members of the Paxtang Borough Council consider the proposed installation of a 120-foot cell phone antenna tower in Saussaman Park, they're likely to hear a neighbors' chorus of "not in my backyard."

Council on Tuesday will review a proposal made by T-Mobile of Bellevue, Wash.

Couldn't the Harrisburg Patriot-News do a little digging and report on the cell-service coverage for that area, or the county of Dauphin, or for their zone of readership for that matter? Wouldn't that be more beneficial to all readers of the Harrisburg Patriot-News, to provide some sort of information on cell-service coverage - not by who provides the service, but whether geographic coverage is provided at all or not? Surely Paxtang Borough would know, since they're trying to address the issue. Surely Dauphin County would know. Surely the State of Pennsylvania would know. Surely the FCC would know.

And if they don't - isn't that really the story in itself?

You know, the underground ISP industry that's likely to pop up if dumb asswipe heavy regulatory requirements like this are foisted on legitimate businesses?

During his speech, Gonzales also warned that Internet service providers must begin to retain records of their customers' activities to aid in future criminal prosecutions--a position first reported by CNET News.com--and indicated that legislation might be necessary there as well. Internet service providers say they already cooperate with police and appear to be girding for a political battle on Capitol Hill over new regulations they view as intrusive.

Sara Bozich is putting together information about wireless availability in the Harrisburg area - favorite hotspots, surprise connectivity, etc. Share the wealth.

After all, the last crank-phone/switchboard operator telephone system in the United States existed until October 1983.

It is truly an Internet mystery to me why AOL continues to survive.

Bill Bostic has started his campaign to legitimize Pennsylvania's political bloggers by getting on a Pennsylvania Cable Network (PCN) talking heads show.

Specifically, he wants himself, or another blogger, at the table on Journalists Roundtable (JRT) that shows most Thursdays at 8 p.m.

Good luck to him, although I think it would be better if PCN came up with a Blogger Roundtable, and perhaps ran it every few weeks or so instead. I'm just not sure that the structure of the Journalists Roundtable lends itself to the richness and viewpoints of Pennsylvania's blogger community. But one step at a time, I guess.

From ComputerWorld:

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) blasted the DOJ and the FBI division for a recent five-year, $12 million contract for ChoicePoint to provide investigative analysis software to the FBI. In February 2005, ChoicePoint announced a data breach after criminals set up fake businesses that purchased private information from the data broker.

"What in heaven's name are we doing allowing someone as careless as ChoicePoint to be in control of our data?" Leahy said at a subcommittee hearing on the DOJ's 2007 budget. "I consider them the poster child for lax security protection."

Ouch.

Interesting piece: Pondering the use of cellphones as mandatory ID.