Digital Parsimony

Holden Frith of Wired wrote a great article titled Little Brother is Watching You, which covers the importance of using technology (surveillance) in protecting our civil liberties.

An innocent man died after being pushed to the pavement by a police officer and it was caught on civilian camera , a perfect example of crowdsourcing (CCTV, the “Big Brother” surveillance system was experiencing “technical issues” at the time). This horrific sequence of events strangely reminds me of Rodney King.

“Surveillance is still talked of as something done to us by them, but increasingly it’s something done to everyone by everyone else. What that means for the authorities is that they can no longer control the flow of information about their actions.” -Holden Frith, Wired.co.uk Editor

Cory Doctrow’s wrote a book called Little Brother, it’s about a modern-day technologist who proves that individuals can level the playing field against agents of the state by using their own understanding of digital tools to subvert and confront them. It’s available for free, published through a creative commons license, and available here. I can’t wait to pick it up on Amazon.

[Wired Blog: Little Brother Is Watching You]

Over time, Microsoft has increased the importance of security in their pecking order, but Microsoft Excel’s password protection is still rather lack-luster. A few days ago, a co-worker had asked me for help in recovering a password she had forgotten for an old Excel spreadsheet. Luckily, this can be done with absolutely no additional software.

This routine provides a password to unprotect your worksheet. However, it may not give you the original password that was used. Read the rest of this article »