It’s often a thankless job and I can tell you that honestly since I am an Systems Administrator myself. I often tell people that “If all goes well people never know I was even here.” This is very true. The thing is that most complex systems have a way of breaking down. Call it job security, or call it poor planning, or blame the shitty architecture decisions but the reality is that most computer systems will always require gentle care and feeding. Enter the world of the Systems Administrator. Continue reading
Teh Interwebz
299 posts
While we’ve all been watching the Tea Party squeeze the government by the balls, a measure was passed by the House Judiciary Committee that could have a profound impact on our privacy should it be passed into law. Internet providers would be required to maintain records of customer activity for 12 months in the event it’s needed for legal investigations.
Data retention has been high on the Republican wish-list for a decade. It’s ostensibly intended to help law enforcement build cases against child pornography and internet predators. If that’s the case, they are throwing an awfully wide net: Continue reading
Hackers identifying themselves as members of LulzSec claim to have successfully hacked into computer systems belonging to NATO and claim to have obtained one Gigabyte of sensitive data from the organization. A tweet account, purportedly run by representatives of the group made the announcement at about 8:30 am EST. Continue reading
Certainly, I’ve been more bored in my life. Usually, as a journalist, I’m being paid to be bored to death. This time, at this conference on how health care industries can use social media to enhance their public relations and marketing, I had paid almost two hundred bucks to observe massive piles of old news.
There was, of course, the gigantic movie-style screen on the center of the stage of the auditorium of the midtown facility, showing endless PowerPoint slides. Continue reading
Remember the data visualization of racial and ethnic divides in America we saw a few months ago? The man behind it all, Eric Fischer, is back. This time he looked at geotagged Flickr photos and Twitter tweets to create See something or say something. He used red dots to represent Flickr photo locations and blue dots to represent the locations of tweets. If something was posted to both, a white dot was used. Like his previous projects, the results are pretty and informative. Continue reading
Friends. Who needs ’em? Well it turns out that we all need ’em. Without friends, who will bail us out of jail, run to CVS for the Morning After pill or send us those dirty text messages?
And you know who really needs friends? Craigslist People! In the Gathering of the Juggalos on Poppers-esque subterranean hellscape that is Craigslist, a “friend” is someone who is game for whatever random quasi-illegal fetish you’re into. It’s a beautiful thing, really.
Quick question. How many bearded men do you follow on Twitter? If you answered less than 5 you are a total slacker. There are two important things about following people (or spam bots) on Twitter, you should have a well rounded list of both bearded and non-bearded people and you should always be loyal to your fellow Crasstalkers.
The good news is now you can combine those two guiding lights of Twitter following.
Like Moses coming down from Mount Sinai, I interrupt your Golden Calf internet orgy to present to you the Ten Commandments of Internet Commenting. I bring them down from an angry internet God who has judged you and found you wanting.
Much like the other God, they are presented without comment or explanation. Because, honestly, they should be self explanatory. But you can spend the next 2000-3000 years discussing and misinterpreting and generally believing they don’t apply to you.
Those of us on the American coasts may be familiar with a website network called Patch. Basically it’s a blog covering extremely local news. It’s a great way to stay current on local events, politics and shopping. My local version is Long Beach, NY. Since our local paper is owned by the local cable network, it’s refreshing to get a different perspective on things.
No, this Twitterama has nothing to do with Independence day, it’s just a clever shtick to get attention. Or something. Anyway, on with the show! Continue reading