May 30, 2008
Get those fat, lazy kids away from the computer!
IT World Canada
Sharky reveals some shocking, or maybe already known stats on Canadian youngsters and just how much time they spend in front of monitor screens.
“According to a recently-published report card from Active Healthy Kids Canada: ‘Among Canadian youth in Grades 6 to 10, screen time on weekends worked out to seven hours and 25 minutes per day, while weekday time amounted to five hours and 56 minutes a day,’ CP reported. Sounds like they’re ready for jobs in tech support. Assuming they don’t have heart attacks first.”
Why do we accept signatures by fax?
Wired
Bruce Schneier raises the security issue when it comes to faxing signatures.
“There is so little security in fax signatures that it’s mind-boggling that anyone accepts them. I’ve signed book contracts, credit card authorizations, nondisclosure agreements and all sorts of financial documents — all by fax. I even have a scanned file of my signature on my computer, so I can virtually cut and paste it into documents and fax them directly from my computer without ever having to print them out. What in the world is going on here?”
Google AppEngine pricing: Get in for free; only pay if you drive serious traffic
Techdirt
Mike Masnick examines Google’s AppEngine and the pricing that comes into play once usage is ramped up.
“Google has released the pricing and it’s pretty much what we expected: the platform is totally free for anyone who isn’t driving that much usage, but as you ramp beyond a certain level, fees kick in. Assuming that the rest of the system works well, the free bottom end will hopefully lead to some interesting innovations. For developers, the only cost of building and testing a web app is their time. This effectively lowers the barrier for developing new web apps even further.”
