Gongol.com Archives: January 2007
Brian Gongol


January 5, 2007

Business and Finance Maybe players should be the most outraged by high coaches' salaries
College players are the ones who actually win games, but because of the NCAA monopoly, they don't get any money. Perhaps they should be the ones most outraged of all about multi-million-dollar coaches' salaries.

Science and Technology Child safety seats need more attention and improved design

The United States of America The top 10 state legislative issues in 2007
Among them: Real ID, huge budget shortfalls (to be aggravated by cost-shifting from the Federal government), minimum wages, and changes in higher education

Computers and the Internet Designing websites for mobile access is more important than usually thought
One prediction for 2007: "[M]obiles will become east Africa's primary portal to the Internet." People may scoff at first, but the importance of reaching and engaging Africa, both economically and philosophically, could be one of the most important things the free world needs to do. We've already seen miraculous economic progress in many Asian countries over just a few short years, and it won't be long before Africa becomes a source of cheap labor for outsourcing work that's presently being done in places like India. China is already aggressively trying to build official relations with African countries, and Al Qaeda has already developed plenty of relationships there that are hostile to Western interests. What free countries have to offer that Communism and terrorism do not is ideas -- big ideas about how to make life better. Delivering those ideas via the Internet in a way that considers ease of use for mobile users is a key element to that effort.

News New York Times could use a lesson in tact
New York Times online obituary of former Jewish mayor of Jerusalem is sponsored by the movie Borat

Socialism Doesn't Work Democrats take over with promises of higher minimum wages
But raising the minimum wage creates problems which the proponents rarely (if ever) acknowledge. People shouldn't talk about raising the minimum wage without acknowledging that the bigger problem is that household breadwinners should have adequate job skills, education, and experience to be worth well more than the minimum wage.

Weather and Disasters Scientists to emergency planners: Learn to use Google Earth
Report from the National Academies says that it's long overdue for emergency plans to include the use of GPS and geospatial data

Computers and the Internet Spammers introduce another trick: Hijacking legitimate content for a ride
Added to the list of insidious practices used by spammers, now we have legitimate content (like the real weather warning below) that's hijacked and used to create a legitimate-looking e-mail that's nothing but a carrier for image spam (blocked by Gmail in this example). The image most likely was another pump-and-dump scheme. What this means is that we're probably within a few months of spammers using viruses to lift legitimate e-mails out of Outlook inboxes and then re-sending them. Thus, Aunt Sally may send you a legitimate e-mail, and your hijacked computer ends up sending Aunt Sally a reply to that message, which looks exactly like a normal reply from you, but with a spam image attached. It's almost certain to happen soon.

Spammers now sending image spam attached to legitimate content lifted from legitimate websites


Water News How the incoming Iowa Legislature will address the environment

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