I Wish I'd Written That: Part Two

For this week's installment of "I Wish I'd Written That" I decided to focus on Newsweek, as many of their blogs are quite interesting to read.

1. When a Family Tragedy Turns Into a Youtube Sensation

This blog immediately caught my attention due to the title, because in my many adventures around the internet I have watched my fair share of gruesome death videos. I don't know why I watch these videos, but the morbid side of me forces me to watch them. The part of this blog that stood out the most to me was this:

"The Brancheau video isn’t autopsy imagery, but it is an issue of free speech and privacy—and in many ways, say legal experts, the precedent set by Earnhardt could still apply. 'Certain speech is not as valuable as other speech, and I think we need to say that,' says Solove, the author of The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet."

My only problem with this logic is that it could possibly open the floodgates of what is "valuable" and what is not. I personally believe that all speech is valuable to someone in some way. Who can decide what future generations will decide what is valuable?

2. Educating Elite Hackers

The idea of having a cyberspace "army" has been around since the early days of networking computers together. The idea of private companies educating people to form our "defense" against electronic attacks. This was the one part of the article that stood out the most to me:

"It was the first Cyber Challenge, in 2009 and sponsored in part by Paller's organization, that piqued Coppola's interest. The cybersecurity simulation (titled "Netwars") required the 240 contestants to hack into 12 servers. Each server was worth points and whoever had the highest tally at the end of the game would be declared the winner. But instead of going from server to server, Coppola decided to hack the scoreboard and give himself the most points."

The best part about this is that he actually won the competition by essentially cheating.

3. What Ever Happened to the Gender Gap?

This article caught my attention, as I was under the impression that the gender gap in the workplace was almost non-existent, but apparently I was completely wrong. The opening to the article caught my attention the most:

"A new report by the World Economic Forum finds that even though more women are employed around the world than ever before, and now make up 52 percent of U.S. workers, major multinational companies are failing to capitalize on their talents."

It amazes me that we live in 2010, and problems we faced fifty years ago are still around.