What I am reading today 3/12/2014

#politics #bushsfault #Obamacare #DDoS #MOOCs #CIA #WarOnTerror #Surveillance

ObamaCare's Secret Mandate Exemption - " last week the Administration quietly excused millions of people from the requirement to purchase health insurance or else pay a tax penalty."

  (You know, for healthcare reform being the key to America's return to greatness Obama sure is taking his time implementing it.  What is he some sort of communist or something?)

Attackers trick 162,000 WordPress sites into launching DDoS attack - By sending spoofed Web requests in a way that made them appear to come from the target site, the attacker was able to trick the WordPress servers into bombarding the target with more traffic than it could handle. Besides causing such a large number of unsuspecting sites to attack another one, the attack is notable for targeting XML-RPC, a protocol the sites running WordPress and other Web applications use to provide services such as pingbacks, trackbacks, and remote access to some users.

A Journalist’s Plea On 10th Anniversary Of ‘The Passion Of The Christ’: Hollywood, Take Mel Gibson Off Your Blacklist - Gibson made several comments that went public, made him seem anti-Semitic and racist. They made him persona non grata at major studios and agencies, the same ones that work with others who’ve committed felonies and done things far more serious than Gibson, who essentially used his tongue as a lethal weapon. As a journalist who vilified Gibson in The New York Times and Entertainment Weekly until my coverage allowed me to get to know him, I want to make the case here that it is time for those Hollywood agencies and studios to end their quiet blacklisting of Mel Gibson.

(I just don't see this happening.  Gibson has made enemies of too many people and provided them with way too much ammo to launch attacks at him.  One of his biggest sins, being successful with films that the studios said couldn't be successful. )

Are MOOCs Really Failing to Make the Grade? - What is clear from all the fur flying is that people aren’t satisfied with the current state of affairs in U.S. education. But are MOOCs really failing to make the grade?

A look at Senate's CIA interrogation report

A vast hidden surveillance network runs across America, powered by the repo industry - the most significant impact of Sousa’s business is far bigger than locating cars whose owners have defaulted on loans: It is the growing database of snapshots showing where Americans were at specific times, information that everyone from private detectives to ­insurers are willing to pay for.

(And this is why I am not nearly as outraged by the Snowden revelations than almost everyone else I know.  Because on the domestic side all that data is freely available for purchase, and on the foreign side well that's the NSAs fucking job.  That isn't to say I want the government surveilling me.  I don't, but honestly I am far less worried about what the NSA is  doing with my data than what companies like Digital Recognition Network (or local cops if you want to drag government back in) are.  

So what do we do about this?  Honestly, probably nothing.  You can pass some laws.  They will be ignored.  People will sue. Nothing will change.  I mean I guess you could go the extreme route but at what point does the cure become worse than the disease?  We just have to face it until something radically changes privacy as we thought we knew it is essentially dead.)