It’s only one week until the much hyped “Quit Facebook Day” arrives. One website reports that up to 60 per cent of users could quit Facebook in the near future over privacy concerns. Proponents of quitting Facebook point to a veritable laundry list of privacy violations. And you know what? They’re right. Facebook’s privacy policy is a disgrace of epic proportions.

You know what’s not going to get you your privacy back? Quitting. And here’s why.

First, we all signed up voluntarily and nobody forced us to post the results of the “Favorite Sex Positions Quiz”, even if we regretted it later when we realised our great-aunt and our boss now know that reverse cowgirl is how we like it. It was more disturbing later, of course, when we discovered we had that in common with our great-aunt, and the less said about the boss’ preferences, the better.

We don’t need more proof that Facebook is part of how we run our lives now, so IF everyone quits Facebook, something will rise up in its place, and there’s no reason to believe that a new Facebook will be any more concerned with privacy than the old one, and Facebook are 100 per cent unconcerned about privacy.

In July 2009, Sara Kennedy deleted and purged her Facebook account. She had many reasons and those included privacy concerns. She didn’t think about Facebook again until late in February 2010 when she started receiving strange emails that appeared to be from Facebook but were in a foreign language. Worried these emails were a phishing scam, she wrote to the only Facebook email address she could find: privacy@facebook.com.

She received no direct response to her query, but the situation just got weirder and weirder. Although she never actually heard from a person at Facebook, she eventually discovered herself that someone had used her email address to sign up to Facebook and had managed to log in and post some rather risque photos without access to her email account. Then, Facebook started recommending those who had been her friends on Facebook to the person who was using her email address. Ultimately, she put a stop to it herself by logging in and changing the password.

Facebook may be the immediate problem but it’s only the tip of the iceberg. While it seems like everyone is using the internet, many users are completely unaware of basic privacy safeguards and have never thought through the implications of posting their more personal vital statistics on a website that is owned by somebody else.

However, if individual users are naive when it comes to the internet, our countries and legislative bodies are positively blind when it comes to appropriate regulation for social network providers who control such volumes of sensitive information.

Private companies are in business to make money and will work in the interests of their customers — the advertisers — not in the interests of their non-paying users. Unfortunately the only way forward with this is legislation that enforces the kind of freedoms over our own information that the EFF have laid out in their Bill of Privacy Rights for Social Network Users.

And before you all start shouting — I’m no fan of regulating the internet. I am a fan of regulating for-profit private businesses who make money by sharing sensitive information without our informed, clear and explicit consent.

So, instead of quitting Facebook on May 31st, which will accomplish exactly nothing other than making it a billion times harder to keep up with your friends and families (and remember birthdays), fire off an email to your elected representatives, attaching a copy of the EFF’s Bill of Privacy Rights for good measure and share this post on Facebook so all your friends do the same.

Fight Facebook with Facebook. You know I’m right.

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Wanna Repeal Prop 8? Yeah, There’s An App For That

3/16/10-by Paula Brooks
Passed by a slender majority in 2008, as we all know, California’s Proposition 8 eliminated the right for same-sex couples to marry.

Now Restore Equality 2010, the campaign working to repeal California Proposition 8 has until April 12 to collect just under 700,000 signatures to qualify ballot initiative for Prop 8’s repeal in November’s General Election.

Using an application developed by Verafirma, a Silicon Valley technology company, today the group announced that it would be collecting at least some of those signatures needed for that effort via iPhone.

Now California voters can now sign Restore Equality 2010 petition via their iPhone’s or iPod Touch’s.

Said Sean Bohac, Chair of the Restore Equality 2010 Statewide Advisory Panel, “California is known for being a state that leads change. Our team looks forward to using this revolutionary technology to augment our grassroots efforts and change the way campaigns are run.”

If you are a registered California voter, you can access the digital signature tool and instructional video at http://restoreequality2010.com/ipod.htm.

However, if you’re a California voter without access to an iPhone or iPod Touch you can still do it the old fashioned way and print out you’re own petition, sign it, and mail it in by accessing www.signforequality.com, or by going to www.RestoreEquality2010.com for more information.

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Now, all publicly accessible information capabilities and application available across the Internet in locations not owned, operated, or controlled by the Department of Defense are considered by the military to be integral to operations. This means all you military Facebookers, Twitter tweeters, YouTubers and blog readers can now access these services from non-classified government computers, as long as that access doesn’t compromise operational security or involve prohibited activities or Web sites.

While saying the new policy recognizes the importance of protecting military networks and operations, Deputy Assistant Secretary Of Defense For Information Management And Technology David M. Wennergren, explained, “The world of Web 2.0 and the Internet provides these amazing opportunities to collaborate, ” and said the new policy will promote what Wennergren calls “secure information sharing,” providing the balance needed to tap into the capabilities social media networking provides without compromising security.

Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn III, who signed the policy, said it strikes a critical balance between the benefits and potential vulnerabilities of these applications. “This directive recognizes the importance of balancing appropriate security measures while maximizing the capabilities afforded by 21st-century Internet tools,” said Lynn.

Last June, Defense Secretary Robert Gates acknowledged that the DoD was way behind the rest of the world in using social media, “This department, I think, is way behind the power curve in this; it’s an area where I think we have a lot of room for improvement,” said Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, speaking to reporters at a Pentagon news conference.

“For leaders, it’s really important to be connected to [social-networking tools] and understand it,” said Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, noting that he has his own Facebook page. “I think communicating that way and moving information around that way — whether it’s administrative information or information in warfare — is absolutely critical.”

That’s not to say the DoD has been totally social media illiterate up till now. The DoD has at least 46 YouTube channels, 91 Twitter feeds, 35 Flickr streams, 46 blogs, and 106 Facebook pages.

However, the military has, until now, had a rocky relationship with social media, the Marines completely banned access to all public social networking sites in 2007, while the Army allowed access to only handful and then only to troops stationed in Stateside Bases and with this new policy, all those restrictions are now lifted.

That also means, that since Lez Get Real.com is not to the DoD’s list of contraband sites thus far, all you soldiers, sailors, marines and air people out there in the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell underground can now read LGR from your work computer.

So here is what we’re going to do:

Lez Get Real To Launch Radio Free Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

Beginning next week, we are starting a new feature for all you military types here on LGR, and will be featuring not only our regular lezzy fair and news items, but also news you can use as military people and will be covering, stories of interest to you from around the services, plus we will also have a wide variety of military career and DoD policy news.

To do this, we have enlisted the help of present and former LGBT members of the services to keep us current on what is happening in the Military Bases and on Navy Ships around the world.

So stay tuned… to LGR’s New… Radio Free DADT… Unidos Venceramos!!!!

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The gadget Breastlight helps women detect any change in your breast regularly.

Using a red light against the breast, the device illuminates the skin so you can see details within the region. Should be used in dark conditions so that the light has more effect.

With its continued use, the woman will get used to seeing and knowing the appearance of her breasts, making the veins and blood and family. The important thing is to look for any change during the examination, as darker spots. If this is the case, the search for a doctor is advisable!

Even with the Breastlight, the manufacturer points out that mammography should never be discarded.

It can be purchased here for 84.99 pounds.

I’m Brazilian and best known as Menina Digital (Digital Girl!) I have a site about gadgets, techies and the web… the internet is my world and I try to use my site to show this!! Have a look at www.meninadigital.com.

Wherever you are super tight and a serpentine queue tells you have to wait…or when you are traveling by car, and you can’t find a gas station, or worse..you found one but the bathroom is worst than your true nightmares…well, I bet you wished you could pee standing huh?

A brave and good soul decided to help us and just invented a GoGirl gadget!!

The GoGirl is made of flexible, medical-grade silicone and comes with its own underwear (optional) to help you take perfect aim during those absolute emergencies.

A single pack (one GoGirl, tissue and biodegradable bag) costs $6.99 while a pack of 3 costs $18.99. You can purchase the GoGirl from Amazon.com using this link here.

I’m Brazilian and best known as Menina Digital (Digital Girl!) I have a site about gadgets, techies and the web… the internet is my world and I try to use my site to show this!! Have a look at www.meninadigital.com.

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My Gay Go is “for gays on the go” and was “built by the LGBT community, for the LGBT community”.

You can buy the app  for your iPhone at the iTunes store.

Msnbc - MINNEAPOLIS – “The $1.92 million verdict against a Minnesota woman accused of sharing 24 songs over the Internet could ratchet up the pressure on other defendants to settle with the recording industry — if the big fine can withstand an appeal.“Normally in our American legal system, we say the punishment should fit the crime,” said Ken Port, director of the Intellectual Property Institute at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul.”

The Federal law states that the recording companies can get up to $750 to $30,000 per song. Like that isn’t bad enough, the law also allows the jury to arbitrairily raise that to as much as $150,000 each. This jury decided on $80,000 per song, which is probably more than I’ll make in my entire life.

Its all pretty strange. She downloaded such a small amount of songs, it doesn’t make sense that she’s the one who gets busted. How many users are on Kazaa? Millions probably, and I’m pretty sure the majority of them have about ten times as many downloads. All four major recording companies, Warner Music Group Corp., Vivendi SA’s Universal Music Group, EMI Group PLC and Sony Corp.’s Sony Music Entertainment were going after this woman for what wouldn’t have cost fifty bucks on Itunes. Why?

I mean, I can even understand a big faceless corporation suing someone for downloading. There’s been 36,000 people sued so far. What’s strange is that this MSNBC article also reports that the companies all said back in December that they weren’t going to go after individuals anymore. They said they were going to go after the P2P sites instead.

So why this woman for just 24 songs?

OFFICIAL NASA STATEMENT

On June 11, 1999, President

Image via Wikipedia

Clinton issued Presidential Proclamation 7203, the first Proclamation to designate June as Gay and Lesbian Pride Month. In that proclamation, the president said “…Since our earliest days as a nation, Americans have strived to make real the ideals of equality and freedom so eloquently expressed in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution. We now have a rare opportunity to enter a new century and a new millennium as one country, living those principles, recognizing our common values, and building on our shared strengths. I encourage all Americans to observe this month with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities that celebrate our diversity, and to remember throughout the year the gay and lesbian Americans whose many and varied contributions have enriched our national life.”

The first Gay Pride parade was held on June 28, 1970, on the first anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion. In the early hours of June 28, 1969, New York City police entered a gay bar on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village and began harassing and and arresting gay and transgendered patrons. The patrons fought back in a protest that lasted for the next three days. For many gays and lesbians, this protest marks the first organized effort in the United States by gays and lesbians to openly gain equality under the law, and gave birth to the modern gay civil rights movement.

During Gay and Lesbian Pride Month, we focus on our efforts to embrace acceptance and welcome diversity in communities regardless of sexual orientation. Gay and lesbian groups celebrate this special time with pride parades, picnics, parties, memorials for those lost from HIV and AIDS, and other group gathering events that attract thousands upon thousands of individuals.. This month is meant to recognize the impact Gay, Lesbian and Transgender individuals have had on the world.

Symbols of LGBT pride include the rainbow flag, the Greek lambda symbol, and the pink as well as black triangles reclaimed from their past use.

The statement also said NASA will be hosting events in conjunction with Pride Month….

http://eeo.gsfc.nasa.gov/#Ann1

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The Army’s New Surveillance Blimp

“Since the airship glory days of the early part of the century, blimps have certainly lost some of their cachet, relegated to hovering over sporting events and not much else. However, the Army is about to test launch an unmanned hybrid airship to be used for surveillance missions in Afghanistan.”

Meet your knew stalker: LEMV (Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle). I found out more about this crazy spy blimp (that I heard about I think last year, in a special about UFO’s, but didn’t believe it then) at Aviation Week’s site:

“LEMV  has replaced the Persius (Persistent Elevated Reconnaissance Surveillance Intelligence Unmanned System), which was planned as a FY2009 joint capability technology demonstration. Persius was to be awarded to Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, to build a version of its P-791 proof-of-concept hybrid airship, which flew back in January 2006.

The Persius and LEMV specs look almost identical. Army Strategic Command is looking for a demonstrator that can carry a payload of at least 2,500lb to 20,000ft for three weeks. At 20,000ft, the payload line-of-sight would be 173 miles.

The hybrid airship is to be untethered and unmanned, but optionally manned for self-deployment, with the ability to fly a 2,500-mile roundtrip mission. The payload gondola and airship structure is to be capable of carrying a heaver, 5,000lb payload to lower, 10,000ft altitude.”

I haven’t been able to find video of LeMV, yet, but here’s the very simillar Lockheed-Martin “Skunk Works” P-791 LTA:

And this is the demo-model’s capabilities! Well, if the fact that google was already capable of getting detailed street views, imagine the detail this can get. Maybe the could just write BIG BROTHER down the side? What’s the point of being subtle with giant, unmanned spy balloons?

“This new generation of -user-friendly spy-phone software has become widely available in the last year—and it confers stunning powers. The latest programs can silently turn on handset microphones even when no call is being made, allowing a spy to listen to voices in a room halfway around the world. Targets are none the wiser: neither call logs nor phone bills show records of the secretly transmitted data.

More than 200 companies sell spy-phone software online, at prices as low as $50 (a few programs cost more than $300). Vendors are loath to release sales figures. But some experts—private investigators and consultants in counter-wiretapping, computer-security software and telecommunications market research—claim that a surprising number of people carry a mobile that has been compromised, usually by a spouse, lover, parent or co-worker. Many employees, experts say, hope to discover a supervisor’s dishonest dealings and tip off the top boss anonymously. Max Maiellaro, head of Agata Christie Investigation, a private-investigation firm in Milan, estimates that 3 percent of mobiles in France and Germany are tapped, and about 5 percent or so in Greece, Italy, Romania and Spain. James Atkinson, a spy-phone expert at Granite Island Group, a security consultancy in Gloucester, Massachusetts, puts the number of tapped phones in the U.S. at 3 percent. (These approximations do not take into account government wiretapping.) Even if these numbers are inflated, clearly many otherwise law-abiding citizens are willing to break wiretapping laws.”

The only way to make sure nothing funny is going on with your phone, from what I’ve read so far, is to take the battery out when its not in use. I’m seeing a lot of reports that say the phone can be shut off and activated without it alerting you. Isn’t this fun? I’m so happy we’re going to have a Cyber Czar, with the power to shut down the internet, and spy on all our phones and computers. This is great.

OH, and they still won’t say wether or not cell phones give you cancer:

“However, society “must not repeat the situation we had with the relationship between smoking and lung cancer where we … waited until every ‘i’ was dotted and ‘t’ was crossed before warnings were issued,” said David Carpenter, director of the Institute of Health and Environment at the University of Albany, in testimony before a subcommittee of the US House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Reform.

“Precaution is warranted even in the absence of absolutely final evidence concerning the magnitude of the risk” — especially for children, said Carpenter.”

Some scientists (including one of the worlds top neurosurgeons) do think the link may be akin to that of lung cancer and cigarettes. We should look into that soon, huh? Cell phones could be the new Cigarettes, only worse.

The Speakal iPig was recently released in a limited edition version which is in the color black.

As of today there are still some of these in stock and it looks like the price is $20 off of retail too. Some lesbians I know are really into electronics and the black iPig seems to be a coveted item right now. After the announcement on GayWired that they had debuted, I thought for sure they would be gone in a flash.

Although there are still some of them in stock, there is no count of what is in stock visible so I couldn’t say how close they are to actually being sold out.

The press release did mention that these were one-of-a kind and only available in limited quantities, so if you are a lesbian looking for a new toy to play with the iPig might be for you. It’s got a lot of features and boasts eco-friendly design. You can find the iPig only on Amazon.com, and only for a limited time so be sure to take a look at that one today.

Julie Phineas is a work at home mom of 2 who lives in Southern California. You can find out more about her by visiting her page on MySpace.

On the 17th Apple Inc revealed the latest version of the iPhone operating system called “3.0″.

The upgrade is free and will be available sometime in the summer. This latest update will touch base on what some user’s wanted.

*All information below comes from the trusty site of cnet.com

Systemwide search

Apple has integrated its Spotlight search technology across the entire device. This will let users search for specific e-mail messages, applications, contacts, and any other data from within those applications in one place. Users get to it from a new menu that’s to the left of their first home screen. Swiping to the left brings up an open search box that brings in results as you type, similar to Spotlight search on Mac OS X.

Copy and paste for text, photos, and SMS
One of the most-wanted features, the ability to copy and paste text will be making its way to OS 3.0. Users will be able to select sections of text and take them to other applications. MMS You can now send and receive multimedia messages (MMS). This means text messages can be sent with photos and voice recordings, all without using the built-in mail application to do it. Missing, however, is any kind of video support, which is an MMS feature found on many other phones with built-in cameras.

Push notifications

The feature that was supposed to appear in September of last year will finally be making its way to phones in version 3.0. Scott Forstall, the head of iPhone software development, noted that Apple had been late on this, and blamed the delay on scaling, saying that the original system was too taxing on both the handset’s battery and its processing power. The new system works just like old one, but has been optimized for over-the-air data transfer. It still relies on Apple’s servers as a go-between to send audio alerts, text messages, and badge notifications. Users still have to fire up the application to get at the data though.

In-app micropayments

Apple has built in a new system for developers to charge users after they’ve purchased an application. Previously there was no way to do this, forcing developers to hike up the initial price, or use external payment systems, similar to what Amazon did with its Kindle application. Apps will now be able to charge you for additional levels or in-game items like this screen from the upcoming Sims game from EA. Apple’s new system, dubbed “In-App Purchase” lets developers create an application where extra content can be purchased from within it to expand what it can do. All the billing is handled by Apple, and goes through the user’s iTunes store account. This same system has been used in console games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero with extra music track purchases. On the iPhone this was demoed on the upcoming EA title The Sims 3, which will let users buy items for their virtual character using an in-game store interface. This payment system is only for paid apps, meaning free applications cannot be upgraded to a paid premium version. Apple is also using the same revenue model for per-app purchases, meaning developers can charge whatever they want, and keep 70 percent.

Better GPS baked into apps

Apple announced that Core Location would now be available for developers to build into their applications, meaning they’ll be able to include turn-by-turn directions into their apps. However, they won’t be able to build it off the iPhone’s Google Maps application. Apple says this is due to licensing issues. However, map providers may step up and start selling mapping data to iPhone developers.

P2P networking and hardware communication

No longer will handsets exist as single entities. A new system, built off Apple’s Bonjour technology, will let devices talk to each other. This would let people play multiplayer games with one another, and potentially exchange data files—all without the need to be connected to a third-party server or a central Wi-Fi hub. To do this Apple is using the iPhone’s built-in Bluetooth antenna. Apple is also opening up how much control accessory makers can have over external hardware. Forstall showed how the iPhone would be able to hunt for FM radio signals using an attached dongle, and even read a patient’s blood pressure—putting the controls on the iPhone instead of the attached device. This is very similar to the partnership that Apple has with Nike and its Nike+ running attachment, which could be controlled using an iPod. This new system works both from the dock connector and over Bluetooth.

Other tidbits
• Original iPhone users will not be getting all the new features. Apple has already said that MMS and stereo Bluetooth music playback will not be available.
• Apple has sold 13.7 million iPhones through 2008, and 17 million iPhones total. This figure includes first generation hardware.
• There have been 800,000 downloads of the iPhone SDK.
• 62 percent of developers never done an Apple application before.
• Landscape (sideways) mode across all Apple native applications.
• Notes made in the Notes.app can now be synced to your computer.
• Shake to shuffle is coming to the iPhone.
• Safari browser is getting antiphishing and auto-fill.
• Parental controls will work on the App Store. This could mean a new explicit-content rating for applications, similar to what’s been done for music and films.
• No Adobe Flash for the iPhone, although the device will play HTML 5 video, and developers now have API access for streaming audio and video in their apps.

Kayla Tate is a 19 year old high school graduate looking to attend Winnipeg Technical for Carpentry. Kayla had a 19 year old mid-life crisis and decided that her voice needs to be heard, so she writes to help the LGBT community.

Photo by Glutnix

The government is proposing a law that will make all internet providers to filter out and block inappropriate content.

They want to ban items like terrorism and abusive images of kids on the internet. A list of websites that the government has drawn up includes a lot of gay sites.

What they did not realize when they were making the “black list” that YouTube links and some Wiki entries have been included in the “blacklist” as well along side gay and straight porn sites.

The blacklist is said to include over 2,395 websites the list it self was said to be obtained by Wikileaks a site that allows anonymous people to leak official documents.

Wikileaks plans to reveal the “blacklist” since they already revealed ones for other countries who have also”blacklisted” sites.The Sydney Herald gained the “blacklist” and went through only to find out that over half of the “banned websites” are not even associated with kids porn.

This list is said to include:

• Poker portals.
• Youtube links.
• Gay/straight porn.
• Wiki entries.
• Euthanasia pages.
• Homepages of private companies.
• Medical practitioners.

The creator of Wikileaks Julian Assange told the Sydney Herald that the secret censorship systems were “invariably corrupted”. He pointed out over 1,000 sites that criticized the Thai royal family which were already on the Thailand censorship list originally made to prevent child porn.

Wikileaks only got the blacklist because Wikileaks itself was added to it after Julian Assange decided to publish the blacklist. The Australian Communications and Media Authority is investigating how the black list got leaked and debating on taking criminal action.

The communications minister said that leaking the blacklist would be “grossly irresponsible and undermine efforts to improve cyber safety”.

He goes on to say “Under existing laws ACMA blacklist includes URL’s relating to child sexual abuse, rape, incest, bestiality, sexual violence and detailed crimes. No one interested in cyber safety would condone the leaking of the list. The black list itself is provide to the makers of internet filtering software that parents are able to install on there PC’s. However, if the government proceeds with its purposed internet filtering scheme, sites on the blacklist will be blocked for all the Australians.

Kayla Tate is a 19 year old high school graduate looking to attend Winnipeg Technical for Carpentry. Kayla had a 19 year old mid-life crisis and decided that her voice needs to be heard, so she writes to help the LGBT community.

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