politeness

As if the White House doesn't have enough things to deal with at the moment, a collective of 15 House Democrats are now putting pressure on the president to deal with the AT&T and T-Mobile merger.

Led by U.S. Representative Heath Shuler (D-N.C.), the group is asking President Obama to direct the Justice Department to settle the government's lawsuit that would block the proposed acquisition, which is supposed to be decided upon quite soon.

The Department of Justice filed a lawsuit last month against the $39 billion deal citing potential violations of U.S. … Read more

Facebook has appointed Erskine Bowles to its board of directors, the social network announced today.

With him, Bowles is bringing serious political power to Facebook's board. In 1993, Bowles served President Bill Clinton as administrator of the Small Business Administration. In 1994, Clinton promoted him to deputy White House chief of staff before giving him White House chief of staff duties from 1996 through 1998. Most recently, Bowles served as the co-chair for President Barack Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.

All that political experience could come in handy for Facebook. As the company continues to … Read more

You may have read last week about Microsoft losing a patent-infringement case to Canadian software vendor i4i. The patent in question covers a technique for implementing XML in word-processing software.

If you use a recent version of Word or nearly any other word-processing program, you probably benefit from the software's use of XML, which makes your files smaller and more efficient, among other advantages. It's only right that whoever invents a technique that improves software should be rewarded.

The question the courts wrestled with in the i4i-Microsoft case is whether the innovation i4i patented is actually patentable. In … Read more

I suppose, if you were of charitable mind, you could think of it as an in-depth analysis of the currently unemployed.

But isn't there something in itself entertaining about the relentless, breathless, technologically boundless pursuit for nuggets of joy from the collected digital works of Sarah Palin?

Should you have unaccountably lost several of your faculties and had to advertise for their recovery on Craigslist, you might not have noticed that Alaska has released 24,199 pages of e-mails sent by and to the state's former governor.

These seem to signify that she spent 38 digital pages a … Read more

Sometimes, one's congeniality can get one into trouble. So much so, that those with wicked intentions attach a Twitter hashtag to your persona--one that turns you into, well, a target of sorts.

In case you have been recently incarcerated for actions against the state (or otherwise out of touch with current events), you might not know that Sarah Palin visited Boston yesterday and shone something of a fading bulb on American history.

She seemed to be believe Paul Revere's midnight ride involved bell-ringing and gun-shooting, rather than lantern-displaying, and that the Revolutionary War hero's intent was to … Read more

Welcome to News Hacking Week, in which you must decide what is real and what is not. You aren't normally troubled by this because you commit yourself to one or other highly skewed news source.

However, having possibly not got over the fact that PBS didn't really report that Tupac was alive, well, and living in New Zealand, you must now decide whether Fox News ticker in New York was hacked with a slightly unusual form of fairness and balance.

Please watch the video I have embedded and decide whether you believe it to be real.

It seems … Read more

If you're not a fan of the Patriot Act, you may not appreciate the fact that it was extended for four more years by a machine.

President Obama used an autopen to renew the controversial legislation on Thursday, raising some eyebrows with the mechanical surrogate.

Obama was in France when he authorized the signing just before a midnight expiration deadline. It followed a House vote of 250-153.

First developed 200 years ago by British inventor John Isaac Hawkins, autopens are machines that trace engraved signatures and are often used to sign cards and letters sent by the White House. … Read more

How would you feel if a male politician sent you a photograph of boxer briefs that were, um, well filled?

Perhaps, these days, an appropriate answer might be: "Not in the least bit surprised."

However, in the case of New York City Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner, he reportedly says that a nefarious hacker infiltrated his social network's undercarriage.

Politico, encouraged by a report from BigGovernment.com offered that Rep. Weiner's Twitter and yfrog handles may have been used to send a somewhat boastful image of a male package in boxer briefs to a female student in … Read more

Just months after becoming Twitter CEO, Dick Costolo will also be joining a presidential advisory committee.

Last night, President Obama announced his intent to appoint Costolo to the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (NSTAC). Costolo became the CEO of Twitter in October, taking over from site co-founder Evan Williams. Prior to becoming CEO, Costolo served as Twitter's chief operating officer.

The president also announced plans to appoint to the committee Scott Charney, corporate vice president for Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing Group, and David DeWalt, McAfee president.

"I am proud to appoint such impressive men and women to these … Read more