Before she suggested she could see Russia from her bedroom window or was unable to name a single newspaper in the world, it probably seemed like a real achievement for David Kernell to infiltrate the Yahoo webmail of Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
Kernell, the son of Tennessee congressman Mike Kernell, may have thought embarrassing the Alaskan Governor was helping his father’s Democratic Party push ahead in the Presidential polls. But had he waited a few weeks he would have seen Palin’s failure to name a Supreme Court case or understand the fundamentals of mortgage lending do even more damage to her party. (Link)
But now the 20-year old faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine for accessing Palin’s account using publically-available information and changing her password to “popcorn”.
The McCain campaign said that the action would "send a clear signal to reassure all Americans that their personal email accounts cannot be hacked into with impunity."
It’s nice to know that political parties with no ideas about how to end the war in Iraq, halt the slide in to recession or combat rampant domestic poverty are at least tacking one vote-winning issue head-on.
The end of embarrassing emails?
I have to hand it to Google, they come up with the most brilliant tosh ever. This month’s great idea is a Gmail feature that will make it harder for you to make a fool of yourself when drunk.
“Google Goggles” aims to test your sobriety before you send an email by making you do mathematics. It’s the electronic equivalent of being made to walk in a straight line or recite the alphabet backwards by a traffic cop.
(Link)
Jon Perlow of Google said:
“Sometimes I send messages I shouldn't send. Like the time I told that girl I had a crush on her over text message. Or the time I sent that late night email to my ex-girlfriend that we should get back together. When you enable Mail Goggles, it will check that you're really sure you want to send that late night Friday email. And what better way to check than by making you solve a few simple math problems after you click send to verify you're in the right state of mind?"
It certainly will circumvent my usual method of disguising drunkenness – swallowing half a dozen polo mints.
It sounds like a lot of fun but what’s next - a pop-up breathalyser?
From cyberspace to outer space
I’ve read this story about five times and I still don’t know what the point is.
Five hundred and one users of social-networking site Bebo have had their messages beamed to Gliese 581c, a planet 20.5 light years away as part of the “Message From Earth” project. Apparently the messages – which included a picture of Hilary Clinton for some reason – reached Mars in four minutes. However, it’ll be 2029 before the radio wave reaches its final destination. (Link)
Aside from celebrity pictures, there are plenty of messages sent by ordinary folk like us about our life on earth, including this profound one:
"I wish I could be alive to see the day contact between the two worlds is made, I've been born way too early."
I can picture the scene now. It’s 2029 on Gilese 581c and a radio operator picks up the intergalactic message, travelling through space for 21 years. He runs the communication through Norton AntiVirus 2029 (Outer Space Version), downloads it to his levitating, solar-powered LCD panel, double clicks on the icon and gets
“Address Not Found
www.bebo.com could not be found. Please check the name and try again.”
