A lot of people seem to be (rightly so) looking for internet safety games to help teach their children (and in some cases themselves) about safety online and what you should or shouldn’t say about yourself or where you live, etc.
I’ve found a good collection of sites that have some internet safety games here….
Well, the weekend saw news stories of Google planning to eavesdrop over pc microphones to hear what you’re watching on tv to target ads….. (I’m not holding my breath on that one, but… I do know how to disconnect the microphone.) Also, there was the story of Browzar which was supposedly THE solution for private web browsing…. well, it turns out it set’s it’s own search engine as the default and uses your search information to give sponsored links. Sans also mentions that the last visited url may be saved to disk as well. Really, we have several places where information is kept on us anyway (ISP/etc.) But, if you’re really concerned about private browsing you might try out the vmware browser virtual machine (or a portable web browser on a usb-key.)
Think about it: one pc, 3 monitors, 3 keyboards, 3 mice, 3 users all on the same machine at the same time doing different things. Ah yes, some of you are saying terminal clients, been there… Think of a standard whitebox pc powering it and a full graphical user interface and you have what’s known as multiseat X. There’s a mini-howto up at blog.chris.tylers.info on setting this up with XR11 v. R6.9/7.0
I was reading that Apple had offered free copies of OSX for the $100 laptop project aimed at bringing cheap laptops to schoolkids in the developing world and in some cases even here in the US. They don’t have the price down to $100 yet, but OSX was rejected because it isn’t open source, apparently the designers want an Open Source OS to work with so they can tweak and tinker with it.
Since the massive id theft ring was uncovered, I’ve been reading the Sunbeltblog frequently. Today, they have an interesting post about the various explanations for spyware on peoples computers. They tag it the “other person syndrome”. I’ve heard this before too. “Well, the neighbors kids were over and ever since then we’ve had all sorts of problems.”, “My son was up from college and since then I just haven’t been able to…”, etc. etc. etc.