Enacting new laws to stem identity theft and online crime might make some people feel better. So might the occasional stings we hear about from the Justice Department. But the data-theft problem will continue to worry Internet users every time companies that maintain private information about us (think Choicepoint and Lexis-Nexis) disclose that hackers have breached their security walls.
Learning to live with spam is one thing. But we shouldn't let fears about our personal security online evolve into just a daily distraction. Five hundred spam messages advertising printer supplies and porn constitute an irritation. One successful phishing e-mail can ruin your credit and your good name.
| ___About Random Access___ Random Access is a daily column by Robert MacMillan that explores the latest trends in technology and how they are changing daily life. Random Access won't tell you why a new gizmo will revolutionize your ad server. It will tell you about episodes from daily life -- exasperated waiters who use blogs to vent about their customers, whole runs of salmon injected with nanoparticles for individual tracking in Norwegian fjords and the growing number of DJs who are sick of being sidelined in favor of iPods. (Only one of these stories is fake.) Most of what you see will be culled from news sources and blogs from around the world, though we will supplement Random Access with original files on the novel, unusual, bizarre and reactionary happenings in the world of technology and society. E-mail: Send links and comments. | | |
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Pardon the Interruption
Fourteen percent of the world's cell-phone users say they have interrupted a sexual encounter to answer their wireless phone, AdAge reported today. The finding came from a survey of 3,000 wireless product users titled "Wireless Works: Exploring New Brand Connections," that was conducted by Omnicom Group's BBDO Worldwide and Proximity Worldwide.
Fifteen percent of American respondents said they practice what AdAge and others are calling "Cellus Interruptus." The good news is that we Yanks are not quite as tethered to the wireless world as our German and Spanish counterparts. Those two nations clocked in at 22 percent, the survey found. Italy, the homeland of Casanova, clocked in at just 7 percent of cellularly-interrupted encounters.
Why would such findings excite the advertising industry? Besides the rising trend of using the mobile phone as an, uh, accessory in intimate relations, it seems that some of use believe it might be more appropriate to interrupt an intimate moment than, say, dinnertime. More from AdAge: "'People can't bear to miss a call,' said Christine Hannis, head of communications for BBDO Europe. 'Everybody thinks the next call can be something really exciting. And getting so many calls proves social success,' she said. 'It fulfills a fundamental insecurity.'"
Doesn't she realize that we're usually worried about other fundamental insecurities at those times?
Downloading With Dubya
What's playing on Radio Free Bush, you ask? Since receiving his iPod in July as a gift from his daughters, his personal aide has loaded it with about 250 songs, according to the New York Times's Elisabeth Bumiller.
"First, Mr. Bush's iPod is heavy on traditional country singers like George Jones, Alan Jackson and Kenny Chesney. He has selections by Van Morrison, whose 'Brown Eyed Girl' is a Bush favorite, and by John Fogerty, most predictably 'Centerfield,' which was played at Texas Rangers games when Mr. Bush was an owner and is still played at ballparks all over America," the Times reported. "Centerfield?!" Mr. President, please, John Fogerty has done much better before and since. (Do see the reference to CCR's "Fortunate Son" further down in the article.)
Other selections were downloaded by Mark McKinnon, one of Bush's biking buddies and his chief media strategist in the 2004 campaign, Bumiller reported. Songs include "Circle Back" by John Hiatt, "(You're So Square) Baby, I Don't Care" by Joni Mitchell and "My Sharona" by the Knack. The prez also digs on Kenny Loggins (not surprising) and Alejandro Escovedo (Who doesn't?).
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