How would you like to apply for a job and have your prospective employer ask for the usernames and passwords for all your social-networking accounts?

Thats whats happened to applicants for jobs with the city of Bozeman, Montana, who were surprised to discover they needed more than a work history and references.

“Please list any and all, current personal or business websites, web pages or memberships on any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubs or forums, to include, but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, MySpace, etc.,” reads a background-check waiver form that applicants had to sign. Theres no mention of Twitter. The form then contains three lines where applicants are to list their logins and passwords.

via Want a job? Hand over your Facebook password – SciTechBlog – CNN.com Blogs.

New members of the Frederick County Board of Education believe they did a good thing last week when they addressed an ongoing concern for some parents and amended the drug and alcohol policy for student athletes.

The school board limited the student-athlete alcohol policy to cover only what happens on school grounds and during school time.

When China unveiled the world’s fastest supercomputer in October, surpassing the quickest American machine, there was no shortage of hand-wringing. The Chinese dash to the top was seen as an unnerving loss of high-tech preeminence by the United States.

Anyone worried about America’s place in global computing in the future should have other concerns, according to a report last week to the White House and Congress.

Facebook wants your address and mobile phone number.

But it’s not sure exactly how to ask.

It’s a complicated digital courtship, particularly because Facebook doesn’t just want this data for itself — it wants to “share” this info with all of its friends, which in this case happens to be app developers (think FarmVille, Compare People and Where I’ve Been — all that non-Facebook stuff that pops up in your news feed).

via Why Facebook wants your phone number – CNN.com.

That old stereotype that Internet users are isolated and anti-social is getting harder and harder to justify. In fact, the latest study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, aptly titled “The Social Side of the Internet,” challenges this notion even further, finding that Internet users are actually more active in voluntary groups and organizations than non-Internet users.

Sci-Fi writers seem to enjoy coining Laws: adages bearing their own names that live on past their appearances in Sci-Fi stories. Here are five of my favorites, plus one bonus law (actually a Principle) from the world of cartoons.

LIFE, as they say, imitates art. And the way things work commercially today across much of the Web recalls that chapter in “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” where Tom cajoles his guileless friends into whitewashing Aunt Polly’s fence. They supply the labor, but he gets the reward.

Miquel Barceló
(WebPage | Wikipedia Entry)

Abstract

“A panoramic vision about how science fiction narrative, in literature, comics and movies, has presented the future realities of computing technology: robots, cyborgs, AI, and so on…”

(In English:World map of social networks: Facebook’s leading 111 of 131 countries)

Courtesy of Nick Veenhoff

An Untapped Phone Call in Italy? It’s Possible

In Italy, you’re nobody if your phone isn’t tapped. But to rein in leaks, a contentious new law would restrict the ability to wiretap and publish the results.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/31/world/europe/31italy.html