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A must-read series on online privacy by the Wall Street Journal.  If you browse the web, if you write email, if you have an ISP you should know about this  

I know we've discussed in class how Google (and other entities) seems to know so much about us, but isn't it a bit naive to assume the opposite? We expose a piece of our private lives in every way: credit cards for example track where we go, where we eat, what we buy, and the like. Even if paying cash at places, we're signing up for list servs, blogs, campaigns, donating to charities that require contact information, filling out surveys. Given this, is it all that surprising that we are being "watched"? I don't think it's possible to function in today's society without exposing much of ourselves (when you want to pay cash somewhere, the bank knows when, where, what time of day you withdrew money), unless we change our names or deliver false information.

AT&T will start sending copyright warnings to subscribers when identified as infringers by ISP

Possible generation-gap-type issues for digital educational publishing for colleges: "Today, the college assumes all students not only have computer skills but a plethora of high-tech devices and services. The class schedule and registration procedure is entirely online-even if you're in the registrar's office....In the first class, the professor handed out her e-mail address and the URL where the syllabus could be found--instead of her office phone number and a copy of the syllabus. Unfortunately, the college sites are full of graphics and animations and download very slowly on my dial-up connection. (Even if I could afford a broadband connection, my ISP doesn't provide it in my area.)" "At least one exercise in each chapter requires accessing the publisher's textbook Web site. Many of these exercises could just as easily be put on the computer disk also sold-at an increased profit (I used to work for a textbook-preparation company)-with the text....Again, a dial-up connection won't download the videos. The audio files are .mp3; I can't open them, don't have the skill to know what program I need, and have no access to free technical support....So once every chapter I head for either the heavily used public library or the equally heavily used computer lab in the college's suburban learning center (branch campus)--and hope that a computer is available."