9 results for month: 11/2014
Obama Pushes for More Internet Access in Schools
President Obama made a promise not long ago to get all students nationwide connected to high-speed internet within the next four years, and next week he will host a summit of school superintendents from across the nation. According to administration officials, around 125 superintendents will be in attendance and will each make their own pledges to get their school districts connected and help others to achieve the same goal.
Cecilia Munoz, the director of Obama’s Domestic Policy Council, said that high-speed internet is essential for students to improve their college attainability and will also help students to be able to compete in a global …
Switzerland’s Net Neutrality Solution
These days Net Neutrality is taking hold in more and more places. One country that has embraced the concept is Switzerland. They have enacted a unique form of net neutrality, and it’s an approach that might not work so well in the U.S. The Swiss have established a set of rules for ISPs that may work well to save lawmakers and regulators from having fruitless battles over this issue.
The code of conduct put in place by Swisscom, Sunrise, Orange, and UPC Cablecom promises to allow subscribers to “use the content, services, applications, hardware and software of their choice. No services or applications will be blocked. Freedom of information and …
Study Shows Online Price Discrimination is a Reality
Online Price Discrimination has long been a rumor and something that many people suspected to be true. Now, thanks to a new study by Northwestern University, there may just be proof that price discrimination is a reality. Researchers discovered that prices quoted on some retail websites and travel websites tend to differ based on your particular internet search history and the device on which you are searching. They found that some sites, such as Travelocity and Home Depot, gave different results to different customers even if they used exactly the same search terms.
For example, on Travelocity regular users were charged $633 a night for a …
Study Shows Parents are Becoming Desensitized to Violent Content
The Annenberg Public Policy Center released a study that shows parents are becoming increasingly tolerant of violent and sexual content in movies. The study consisted of 1,000 people who were shown a variety of graphic scenes from PG-13 and R rated movies. Some of the films clips included in the study came from movies like ‘Die Hard’, ‘Casino Royale’, and ‘8 Mile’. PG-13 movies were included because these days the PG-13 rating comes with more violence that it used to. In some cases, a PG-13 film might have more violence than one rated R, but it would escape the R rating due to milder language and lack of sexual content.
The danger with this is …
A Woman is the First Person to be Charged Under Virginia’s New ‘Revenge Porn’ Law
Rachel Lynn Craig, 28, has become the first person to be charged under the new revenge porn law which was established in Virginia in July. this legislation was created to address “the unlawful dissemination or sale of images of another”. Craig was charged under this new legislation after she allegedly took a nude picture of a 22-year-old woman from her ex’s cellphone and posted it on Facebook. The woman whose picture was posted was informed by others who saw it. Craig has admitted to stealing the picture.
In order to be charged under this law, there must be proof of “the intent to cause substantial emotional distress”. Brian Edward, a sergeant …
Community Plays a Role in Countering Extremism
One of the greatest threats we face today is violent extremism, and there is an urgent need to combat it. With terrorist organizations operating overseas and many terrorists having access to the internet which they use to spread their propaganda, the U.S. Department of Justice is doing everything possible to respond to these threats. One of their goals is to work within local communities in order to identify threats before they appear, disrupt any attempts at domestic terrorism, and stop any potential violent extremists before they strike.
As recent news cases have shown, young people who feel alienated from their community, adopted country, or …
Online Stalking Affects 26% of Women
It may seem that men and women are on equal footing in terms of harassment as most of the mild forms such as name-calling are fairly common for both sexes. However, this dies not make the internet a level playing field by any means. A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center found that while the number of young men and women (ages 18 to 24) reporting name-calling were relatively equal (50% for women, 51% for men) and a higher percentage of men, about 44%, actually reported being harassed online compared to only 37% of women, the rates of online harassment still affects women far more than men, especially in its more dangerous forms.
Ap…
Texan Charged in first Ponzi case regarding bitcoin securities fraud
On Thursday. a Texas man who operated Bitcoin Savings and Trust was charged with bilking his investors. According to prosecutors, this will be the first federal criminal case for securities fraud that has arisen from a Ponzi scheme related to Bitcoins. Trendon Shavers, 32, from McKinney, Texas, was charged with allegedly misappropriating as much as 146,000 bitcoins out of the 764,000 bitcoins he raised from September 2011 to September 2012 which were then worth over $4.5 million. He did so by promising his investors interest rates which were absurdly high. Bitcoins are a form of virtual currency that are traded over the internet without backing …
The Shepard-Byrd Hate Crimes Act Celebrates its 5th Anniversary
Five years ago, on October 28, 2009, President Obama signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act into law. This landmark civil rights legislation was named after two people: Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old student at the University of Wyoming who was gay, and James Byrd Jr., a 49-year-old African-American man living in Jasper, Texas. Both were brutally murdered in terrible acts of hate and intolerance.
The Shepard-Byrd Act, named in their honor, expanded the list of federal hate crimes protections to include those based on sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, and disability. The act also removed a number of …
