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Glynnis MacNicol |
Posted Thursday March 15, 2007 at 08:44 AM
Google's gonna rub you out: In an effort to further secure the privacy of its users, Google plans to erase "huge tracts" of identifying information from its servers. Google, which last year fought off a an attempt by the US government to force internet companies to reveal their databases, will erase information such as who searched for what, and when, after a period of 18-24 months. This, however, will not affect your casual late-night "where are they now?" searches for your exes, so carry on. [Guardian]
- In a newly released transcript Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind behind the September 11 attacks, confessed to the 2002 killing of Wall Street Journal writer Daniel Pearl. Mohammed has long been suspected of carrying out the killing. He also confessed to participating in plans for the Shoe Bomber, Bali bombing and numerous other attacks. [AP]
- Make space Maureen: Catherine Orenstein, activist and op-ed contributor, is aiming to change the fact that 60-75 percent of unsolicited op-ed manuscripts come from men by teaching women at universities, foundations and corporations, to write essays and get them published. "Women tend to back away [in the sessions] from "what we know and why we know it...it's never happened with men."[NYT]
- The New York Times is set to launch "City Room" a new online metro website, headed up by the very prolific prolific Sewell Chen. The site will offer "breaking news and human interest, updates and follow-ups, local history and color, Q&A's with newsmakers and our reporters, photos, audio and Web links to other New York sites." But will it also include poetry for fools like us, we wonder? [NYMag]
- A Prairie Home Longtime Companion? Er, not quite, according to Garrison Keillior, who thinks that "stereotypical gay men" who "live in over-decorated apartments with a striped sofa and a small weird dog and who worship campy performers" need to tone it down, dammit, if they want to make it in society. And while they're at it, they should tone down that whole high-earning high-achieving highly-educated non-violent thing. [Salon]
- Lenoir is lost nevermore, courtesy of Google, who is reviving the small NC town by choosing it as the site of its new server farm. Google says it hopes to take advantage of the area's "underused electric power grid, cheap land and robust water supply," and employ many of the area's laid-off furniture workers.[NYT] (What is lost to us, however, is the ability to hear Poe's famous poem without adding a "doh" to the end).
