house

If you think the biggest problem with a camera phone is the poor quality of the photos, a member of Congress might make you think again. Earlier this month, Rep. Pete King (R-N.Y.) introduced a bill in the House of Representatives that would ban camera phones from having a silent mode when taking a picture.

The Camera Phone Predator Alert Act (H.R. 414) would "require any mobile phone containing a digital camera to sound a tone whenever a photograph is taken." What's more, the bill would prohibit such handsets from being equipped with a means … Read more

Someone at the White House appears to be listening to those of us in the privacy community.

For the third time in just six days, the Obama administration has modified the White House Web site privacy policy in response to criticism from the blogosphere.

When the site launched on January 20, it exempted YouTube from federal anticookie tracking rules that would have otherwise cast a legal shadow over the use of embedded videos on the White House blog.

Reacting to criticism from the blogosphere, the White House first modified its Web site on Friday to limit the cookie exposure to … Read more

Comic Sans really is a terrible look for a font. It might've been cool to write an essay about Christopher Columbus in it in third grade, but now it makes you seem uneducated. Do like Obama and stick with Helvetica or Georgia. Anyway, on today's show we tackle the hard issues and correct a few mistakes, like coming down too hard on Obama for screwing up the Presidential Oath. Also, a rather large helping of Calls from the Public calling Wilson out on his b.s.--no surprise there! (Wilson's note: Just because Jeff and Justin don'… Read more

Yahoo announced on Thursday that it has added Wikipedia deep links and images to its search results. The company, which is using its SearchMonkey platform to add more third-party content to its results, claims that all Wikipedia results in its search will now include links to the first four sections of the article, as well as an image. The feature can be turned off through Yahoo's preferences pane.

MediaGlow, AOL's publishing unit, announced the launch of a new sports site Thursday. Dubbed FanHouse, the site sports a new design and "an expanded lineup" of national sports … Read more

With less than a week left before the Obama administration moves in, the Bush White House was ordered Wednesday to turn over any devices that may contain e-mails from March 2003 to October 2005, a period from which millions of the executive office's e-mails appear to be missing.

In an emergency court order, Judge Henry Kennedy of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia directed the Executive Office of the President to search staff workstations and personal storage table files, and to preserve any e-mails from the period in question.

The court order also directed the … Read more

Short of an USB drive you keep on your person, a password-protected and encrypted folder is the easiest way to protect sensitive files. SafeHouse Professional Edition is easy to install and use, and quickly delivers a protected folder.

Installation is the most time-consuming aspect of this app, and it is a short process. Users merely answer a few questions with simple pull-downs and check boxes. You can create the safe folder in any size to fill the hard-drive free space. There are six folder encryption methods including the popular AES 128 and 256 bit, but the publisher recommends Twofish 256-bit. … Read more

It's year-end time, and the critics are weighing in with their year-end lists, from the maddening mix of obscure and popular at Pitchfork to the back-and-forth over at Slate.

I'm not a music critic, so I don't get to listen to hundreds of new CDs for free. That means I've missed plenty of the music on these critics' list, though I know I hate No Age and am indifferent to Girl Talk.

Even so, without checking the data, this year seemed pretty good: TV on the Radio, Beach House, and Portishead all made strong impressions, and … Read more

Thanks to Dan the Mantern's two-week-long extended vacation, we're left helpless and alone. Luckily for us, the Intern Formerly Known as Mark (IFKM is a bad acronym) saves the day, helping us scrutinize stories like Microsoft entering the T-shirt market, the Knight Rider show cancellation, the first Vietnamese House Representative, and other kooky, borderline-tabloid stories we found on the World Wide Den of Filth.

In today's episode of What's Happening With Those Asians, we discuss an important milestone in Asian American history: Louisiana has elected the United States' very first Vietnamese-American House Representative. It's an … Read more

It was revealed this week that the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain were hacked over the summer. Now, a report has surfaced that the White House has suffered multiple attacks in recent months as well.

According to a story by the Financial Times on Friday, U.S. officials have confirmed that the White House e-mail archives were attacked several times in recent months. The report says the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force, a new unit established in 2007 to tackle cybersecurity, detected the attacks on the White House, and also traced the attacks back to servers … Read more