Kathleen Kalk
The rise of on-line cheating
A recent story by the Vancouver Sun said that on-line based acts 0f academic dishonesty have tripled in the past five years at Canadian universities. Using data from the University of Waterloo, plagiarism was highlighted as the most common form of cheating. The revelation is certainly a shock, but it shouldn’t be that much of […]
Fired for Tweet
Hold that thought. No really. Hold that thought. We all have opinions. At the water cooler an opinion is between you, the person beside you, and the hearsay network of the person who cares enough to repeat your ranting. Twitter, however, is not a person, it is a broadcast network, something people often forget when […]
Anonymity tested – Wikileaks under fire
Gone are the days of uncontested truth. Hegel’s thesis – antithesis – synthesis is unfolding in front of our eyes as the continued evolution of the information society unfolds. If we consider media conglomeration and state surveillance as the thesis stage of a new era of social organization, Wikileaks just might be its antithesis for […]
Editing the controversial – Wikipedia taking new steps
Wikipedia announced recently that it will make it possible for a broader swath of users to edit controversial subjects on the site whose pages are locked due to abuse and political manipulation. Generally, any reader can edit a page, but there are certain people and topics that the Wiki masterminds do not allow ‘editing’ of […]
Street View accused of collecting private data
Google has been up in arms in recent months over unscrupulous monitoring and hacking of its search engine by the Mainland Chinese government. Today, however, Google finds itself at the other end of the finger pointing, accused by Internet watchdogs of infringing on privacy. The saga gas been going on for weeks, and today the […]
Canada attempts new copyright law
The Canadian government is about to enter round three of amending its outdated copyright legislation after two prior attempts, Bill C-60 and Bill C-61, died on the parliamentary floor. [linebreak] It is difficult to wade through the jingo of the proposed on-line copyright changes, but in a nutshell the bill legalizes existing practices like personal […]
Facebook Privacy in one click
The new one button, one page, one click, approach to Facebook privacy has arrived. [linebreak] Yesterday, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook will be simplifying its revamped privacy settings so that users no longer have to wade through the nearly 200 individualized options in order to secure the information they post is not distributed without their […]
Privacy! Privacy! Privacy! Who Cares?
In the past few months Internet users have been bombarded with stories about government espionage and privacy loopholes on the most popular social networking sites and search engines. While we can be assured that our on-line banking purchases and credit cards are safe (unless you get phished), the information about what we buy, where we […]
Scaling the Great Fire Wall one donation at a time
The United States government is set to donate 1.5 million dollars to a Falun Gong affiliated Internet freedom organization, Global Internet Freedom Consortium (CIFG), a recent story on the BBC has claimed. CIFG provides free technologies to people living within Internet repressing states, allowing users to circumnavigate censor code and access outlawed sites. [linebreak] China […]
Cows on Twitter
“Dying to get into the pen for a milking. Not happening yet.” [linebreak] That’s what Jersey cow, Charge Mabel, tweets as she waits with the rest of the bovines to get into the milking pen. One-third art, one-third gimmick, and one-third awareness campaign, an Ontario farmer has allowed a group of students and faculty from […]
