AOL Archives - Identity Woman

WOW this is really intense.
The freedom to meet and organize is FUNDAMENTAL to what it means to be a citizen in this country.

This was in slashdot headlines and is quite shocking.

MySpace and other social-networking sites like LiveJournal.com and Facebook are the potential targets for a proposed federal law that would effectively require most schools and libraries to render those Web sites inaccessible to minors, an age group that includes some of the category’s most ardent users.

High Impact
What’s new:

A proposed federal law would effectively require schools and libraries to render social networking sites inaccessible to minors.
Bottom line:

Law would likely affect more than just social networking sites. Blogger.com, AOL and Yahoo’s instant messaging features might be included in proposal’s definition.
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“When children leave the home and go to school or the public library and have access to social-networking sites, we have reason to be concerned,” Rep. Michael Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican, told CNET News.com in an interview.

Fitzpatrick and fellow Republicans, including House Speaker Dennis Hastert, on Wednesday endorsed new legislation that would cordon off access to commercial Web sites that let users create public “Web pages or profiles” and also offer a discussion board, chat room, or e-mail service.

That’s a broad category that covers far more than social-networking sites such as Friendster and Google’s Orkut.com. It would also sweep in a wide range of interactive Web sites and services, including Blogger.com, AOL and Yahoo’s instant-messaging features, and Microsoft’s Xbox 360, which permits in-game chat.

Fitzpatrick’s bill, called the Deleting Online Predators Act, or DOPA, is part of a new, poll-driven effort by Republicans to address topics that they view as important to suburban voters. Republican pollster John McLaughlin polled 22 suburban districts and presented his research at a retreat earlier this year. Rep. Mark Kirk, an Illinois Republican, is co-sponsoring the measure.

The group, which is calling itself the “Suburban Caucus,” convened a press conference on Wednesday to announce new legislation it hopes will rally conservative supporters–and prevent the Democrats from retaking the House of Representatives during the November mid-term election.

Last week for two days I was at the W3C workshop on usability and authentication. It was hosted at the top of a citibank building in Brooklyn. We had to present ID at the door to get upstairs.

The room was a very long rectangle room with three presentation screens and 2 giant columns. It is a terrible lay out. The first morning we heard 3 ppt presentations about ‘the problems’ of for usable security and authentication. Maybe people are 1/2 present doing e-mail and other things.

I really wanted to interactively (as in facilitated face to face discussion) create a map of the problem space. By the end of two days I sort of got it but I know we as a room could have come up with that in 1/2 a day and then sent the rest of the time really working on ideas for solutions.

There are a bunch of constituencies.
Browsers – Firefox, Opera and IE (Microsoft)
Big websites – AOL, Yahoo, Google.
Certificate Authorities – Verisign
Banks

They all want security of verifying websites to be more usable and understandable to normal folks. So there was usability experts.

I think I understand why ‘standards bodies’ and processes get bogged down. They are really not very innovative in their face to face technology – presentations for a two days do not create a positive energetic vortex and community to move forward on solving problems.

I am really tuned into this need to get better at our face to face process so our ideas and innovations for the online world can actually work.