If your an Internet geek like me, this issue will have a great influence on your vote.

“It wasn’t a contentious topic at last night’s presidential debate, but network neutrality is the hot-button issue on the mind of PM’s senior tech editor. He explores the candidates’ stands on the issue in a Geek the Vote edition of his biweekly trends column.” – digg via PopMech (link below)

Obama’s view on Net Neutrality:
Protect the Openness of the Internet: A key reason the Internet has been such a success is because it is the most open network in history. It needs to stay that way. Barack Obama strongly supports the principle of network neutrality to preserve the benefits of open competition on the Internet.

McCain’s view on Net Neutrality:
OOPS! – the link doesn’t work.
The page cannot be found
The page you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.
——————————————————————————–

The irony is that Obama’s likely win is probably specifically because of the Internet. His teams organizational skills on the ‘Net have been unparalelled. The only other guy who came close to his fame on ‘Net is Ron Paul.

read more | digg story

I was wondering why conservative talk were accusing the Dems and/or liberals for hacking Palin’s account. Apparently, the guy who hacked into her account (gov.palin@yahoo.com) is the son of Rep. Mike Kernell, Tennessee state lawmaker. He simply used the “forgot my password” feature and then used publically available information to answer the security questions.

“Gov. Palin’s Alleged Hacker Indicted; Password Was ‘Popcorn’
A 20-year-old student at the University of Tennessee has been indicted for breaking into one of the email accounts of Gov. Sarah Palin and then posting screenshots of personal information obtained there to a public Web-site.

David Kernell, the son of a Democratic state lawmaker, was led into a Knoxville federal court wearing handcuffs and shackles on his ankles today and was released without posting bond, according to the Associated Press.”

Hope she’s changing all her passwords because more than likely they are all “Popcorn”.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/25730

read more | digg story

Life these days has become largely dependent on passwords – whether we’re checking our emails, transferring funds or shopping online, passwords have their part to play.

Security Comedy by Digg user Garfoli:
Cthon98: hey, if you type in your pw, it will show as stars
Cthon98: ********* see!
AzureDiamond: hunter2
AzureDiamond: doesnt look like stars to me
Cthon98: AzureDiamond: *******
Cthon98: thats what I see
AzureDiamond: oh, really?
Cthon98: Absolutely
AzureDiamond: you can go hunter2 my hunter2-ing hunter2
AzureDiamond: haha, does that look funny to you?
Cthon98: lol, yes. See, when YOU type hunter2, it shows to us as *******
AzureDiamond: thats neat, I didnt know IRC did that
Cthon98: yep, no matter how many times you type hunter2, it will show to us as *******
AzureDiamond: awesome!
AzureDiamond: wait, how do you know my pw?
Cthon98: er, I just copy pasted YOUR ******’s and it appears to YOU as hunter2 cause its your pw
AzureDiamond: oh, ok.

**Popcorn!

read more | digg story

A new encryption system, which its creators say is unbreakable, got its first test run Wednesday in Vienna, scientists from the European Union project SECOQC announced.

digg user kinthiri explains:
Quantum cryptography is unbreakable because if any 3rd party views it that does not have the credentials and is not the intended recipient, the simple viewing of the encrypted data by that third party changes that data such that even the intended recipient can’t decrypt it. Thus they know that there is a 3rd party viewing the stream. Effectively the data self destructs if anyone attempts to intercept it or decrypt it. This is not a new phenomenon.

What is new is that its being used commercially. It had previously been used experimentally by the military in association with researchers, but this is the first time its been brought to life outside test environments and is available commercially.

The nature of quantum mechanics makes this truly unbreakable. You couldn’t even factor this using your own quantum computer, if you could even get one with enough qbits.

read more | digg story