Let's open the news to the back page...
Welcome to another back page for Friday Afternoon.
Imperfect Citizen…
the whole thing reminds me of the place in Sims 3 called “outstanding citizens’ warehouse” where you go start a criminal career. Such is the name for the Whitehouse version of the cybersecurity bill which is now being called “Perfect Citizen” – considering that this version of a cybersecurity program would fall under the review of the National Security Agency I could have thought of a lot better names for the program. The name just screams “illegal wiretaps” even if it isn’t the case. T his is from this morning’s report that crossed our news desk from Politco.com
“ A NOT-SO-PERFECT CITIZEN – Few seem satisfied that the White House’s forthcoming cybersecurity program – dubbed “Perfect Citizen” – will fall under the NSA’s purview. While the program is meant to secure critical IT infrastructure from crippling cyberattacks, such as a plot on the power grid, the WSJ’s scoop still prompted skeptics on Thursday to compare the once-secret plan to the NSA’s heavily criticized wiretapping program launched during the Bush administration in 2007.” – Poltico.com, Morning Tech Report
Playdom continues to acquire Facebook Developers, and with the new released by the San Francisco Chronicle one can only wonder “Why?” – do they know something we don’t know or are they just playing the proverbial long shot. As more source continue to quote slipping numbers for both Facebook games and Facebook in general it begins to summon up images of the aftermath of the “dot-com” expansion and subsequent crash. This from the San Francisco Chronicle:
Inside Facebook, which analyzes user data that the social network provides to advertisers, noted that in the last 31 days Facebook registered 320,800 new active members – first-time users and those who logged into Facebook for the first time in over a month. The figure is notably low compared with the astronomical 7.8 million new active users registered in May, which represented a 6.7 percent monthly growth….”They don’t necessarily need to grow user population to become a profitable, highly valued company,” he said. “They do need to maintain their value proposition and keep users engaged even as the novelty factor wears off. It’s not about getting users to sign on, but about getting them to log on.” – San Francisco Chronicle, U.S. Facebook growth sputters in June
Um…what was I saying?
Breaking news from a new study by the University of Iowa…too much gaming makes your mind wander. Via Kotaku.com , the study found that exceeding the guidelines of the American Academy of Pediatrics (a limit of 2 hours a day of television and gaming per day) causes attention problems. Here is a quote from our Kotaku.com news feed that brought a smile to my face…
“Those who exceeded the AAP recommendation were about 1.6 times to 2.2 times more likely to have greater than average attention problems.”
At first, this completely shocked me. Then I found a neat picture of a bunny and posted it at the top of the article. Hello there, bunny! – Kotaku.com
I suppose it’s fortunate that I am neither a child, nor a teenager because I exceed my maximum recommended dosage a LONG time ago.
Slaying the Beast
Playings in WoW have long been used to slaying mighty dragons and terrifying beasts…now it appears that they have slain the mightiest beast of them all…Blizzards Plane for Real ID. This comes to our news feed via Slashdot.
“Earlier this week, Blizzard announced that they were going to be implementing changes in their official forums (for StarCraft II when it launched, and for WoW prior to Cataclysm) that would require users to post under their real names, as part of the Real ID system. After perusing nearly 14,000 European and 50,000 US forum posts, the majority of which decried this move with various levels of vehemence, it looks like Blizzard has given in to the pressure. From the official statement: ‘We’ve been constantly monitoring the feedback you’ve given us, as well as internally discussing your concerns about the use of real names on our forums. As a result of those discussions, we’ve decided at this time that real names will not be required for posting on official Blizzard forums.’
[posted for Julie Whitefeather by The Webmaster - still with no Real ID, and loving it]