?Disposable? web accounts to keep you private online

Here, I’ve listed some excellent web sites to enhance your privacy online tenfold!  To check them out, simply click their headings.

 

Mint Email

 

 

This is a great service for those websites that force you to register before giving up the goods.  If you’d rather not give out your personal email address, simply hop on over to Mint Email, where you will receive an instant, one-time, three hour temporary email address.  Simply use that email address for the site on which you’d like to register (copy/paste for best results).  The new address is valid for three hours and, when the registration confirmation email arrives from the originating site, Mint Email will display it.  Then, simply follow the confirmation instructions of the site on which you’ve just registered.  Easy!  And, your real email addy stays private.  Just don’t close the browser  window until you’re finished.

Drop.io

This is a really powerful website for file-sharing and collaboration.  Basically, you created a “drop” for for whatever file you’d like to either share or on which you’d like to collaborate, and drop.io takes care of the rest.  First, it assigns you a permanent website address (which you can, for a fee, upgrade).  Then, you upload your file(s) and send out invitations.  Free accounts are limited to 100MB, but you may very well find yourself wanting to upgrade because of the multitudinous features drop.io provides.

Skype

 

Skype is an incredible telephony service.  While it isn’t free for the purposes of this post (you’ll have to sign up and pay for a “virtual” phone number), it’s well worth the cost.  To sign up, just head on over to skype.com and go through the process. The cost of a “Skype Out” virtual phone number is minimal:  about $.02/minute.  So, if you use it only to provide a completely anonymous telephone number for websites (or to anyone to whom you’d rather not give out your real telephone number), something like $10.00 in Skype credit will last quite a long time.  The Skype Out service’s features are vast and deep (such as free voicemail and Caller ID), and you can make free Skype-to-Skype calls, as well.  Plus, you can download their mobile application and make calls using your cell phone’s data service (check to make sure you have a data service as part of your plan before you do this, however).

Facebook privacy

The privacy settings on Facebook are many and confusing.  Some people are showing aspects of their profiles to the world that they don’t realize and which they’d rather not.  Here, then, are my settings, which allow only friends to see just about everything I post, pictures and videos I’m in, and comments people make about my posts while still allowing the world to find me and add me as a friend on Facebook.  Click the images for larger views.

 

Photos and Videos of Me:  One very cool feature in Facebook is the ability to “tag” other people who appear in photos and videos.  This allows others who browse the owner of the photo’s profile to see who else on Facebook appears.  This also allows those same people to access your profile.  Therefore, this setting is important to understand because even if you’ve set your level or privacy to mostly (or completely) “Only Friends,” the world can still access pictures and videos of you from other people’s profiles unless you set this to allow “Only Friends.”  Then, only friends of yours (and not friends of your friend who tagged you in the photo) will gain access to these tags.

Photo Albums:  If you click this setting, you’ll be presented with all of your photo albums where you can select the level of privacy for each one.  This is another really great feature because it allows you to create albums with various levels of privacy.  Therefore, you might want one album with pictures of, say, a new car you’re considering buying to be accessible to the world (perhaps to get feedback on, or whatever), and another album of, say, vacation photos that you only wish to share with friends.

Posts by Friends:  This setting allows you to display your posts by friends on your profile but, depending upon the level of privacy you’ve set in “Posts by Me,” still disallow the world to see your own posts.  This is especially useful if you have defined a group of people with whom you’d like (or not) to share this information.  A practical use for this setting would be to allow a group of colleagues to see posts made by other colleagues while still disallowing these same posts from being viewed by friends and/or the world.

IM Screen Name:  You might consider allowing the world to see this because, depending on the information that you’ve supplied on your IM profile, it’s a good way to allow anyone to contact you without revealing your email address.  Also IM clients all have their own privacy settings, so you’re really not losing very much privacy if you allow the world to see this.

Website:  This displays any websites you’ve added to your profile.  The only reason not to allow this setting for the world to see is if one of them is, say, a corporate intranet.  Otherwise, they don’t call it the world wide web for nothing! ;)  Also, because almost everyone is on Facebook, it’s a very good way to promote your website(s).

Hometown:  Disallowing this setting will keep your hometown from showing up in the Facebook directory.  One important caveat to this is that you won’t show up in the search results of anyone looking to reconnect with you.  On the other hand, if you set this to “Everyone,” you’ll be able to be “friended” by those people.

Send me a message:  Facebook has an internal email application which allows people to send you private messages, much like email.  I choose to allow only friends to contact me in this way because if someone wants to get in touch with me, they can just request my friendship – if they don’t want to do that, I probably don’t want to hear from them, either!  ;)

These settings are really important to understand.  Facebook allows open access to their API, which means that anyone can develop and deploy applications which run on the Facebook platform.  And there are thousands of them.  Virtually all of them will pull information about you from the various fields of your profile – i.e. hometown, name, email address(s), etc.

What you share:  These settings are pulled from your PRIVACY SETTINGS >> PROFILE settings.  Therefore, applications will have access to this information, as well.  However, it’s important to note that applications will not be able to circumvent your privacy settings in any way; so, if, for example, you’ve allowed “only friends” to see photos of you, these applications will follow the same rules and not display photos of you, either.

What your friends can share about you:  Many Facebook applications allow their subscribers to share profile information.  Depending upon the privacy settings of your friends, these applications can (and oftentimes do) pull information from the user’s profile, such as his/her friends.  Therefore, if you’re a friend of someone who’s using an application that does this, whatever information you’ve elected to share will also be available to these applications.  Clicking “Edit Settings” will give you another layer of privacy control.

Activity on Applications and Games Dashboards:  Many of the Facebook applications are “social,” which means that they’re popular because they involve many people’s participation.  This setting, then, will allow you to restrict what information about you and your participation with the particular application is displayed to your friends as well as anyone else who is using it.  While this is an important aspect of such social applications, you may want more control over who sees what.  Like I said, applications cannot circumvent your privacy settings, but this setting does give you another layer of privacy by disallowing even your friends to see your interactions with any of these applications.  If you want to disallow everyone from seeing this information (which could significantly limit the appeal and/or game-play of such applications), there’s one extra step that you must take:  on the setting dropdown, select “Custom” and then “Only Me” from the “These People” dropdown.

Facebook Search Results & Public Search Results:  This one is important because I want to be able to be found by anyone searching for me from within Facebook but not in world-wide search engines like Google, Yahoo, etc.

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Healthcare FAQ?s

The House of Representatives passed health care reform Sunday night. This new legislation will extend coverage to millions of uninsured Americans, prohibit insurers from discriminating against sick people, and reduce the federal deficit in the coming decades, according to official estimates. Yet many questions remain unanswered. Here's a sampling.

Say I have a pre-existing condition. Can I get affordable insurance now?
Wait three months. The requirement that insurance companies take any and all comers—known as "guaranteed issue"—doesn't kick in until Jan. 1, 2014. But the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act allocates $5 billion for the establishment of "high risk pools" within 90 days across the country. These group insurance plans will provide coverage only for people with pre-existing conditions who can't find insurance through normal avenues. By law, they must take all eligible applicants and can't charge more than the standard rates.

The bill costs nearly $1 trillion in the first 10 years. How exactly does it reduce the deficit?
First, it slows spending on Medicare and Medicaid by reducing the rates those programs pay for services such as hospital visits. (It also reduces the amounts paid out through the Medicare Advantage program.) Second, it introduces new taxes, including a 0.9 percent Medicare payroll tax hike for workers who make more than $200,000 a year (and couples who make more than $250,000 a year) and a 3.8 percent tax on unearned income for the same tax brackets. Both taxes will take effect in 2013. Lastly, the so-called "Cadillac" tax on relatively high-end employer-sponsored insurance plans will target individual plans that cost more than $10,200 every year and family plans that cost more than $27,500. (The "Cadillac" tax won't roll out until 2018.) The Congressional Budget Office estimates that, together, these measures will decrease spending and increase revenue enough to reduce the deficit by $143 billion over the first 10 years and more than $1 trillion in the second decade.

There's a fine for not having insurance. How does the government know whether you have insurance or not?
Through the tax system. The legislation doesn't explicitly say how the individual mandate for health insurance will be enforced, but taxpayers will probably be required to prove that they own insurance when filing their taxes each year. (If you get insurance through your employer, they'll help take care of it. If you're self-employed, your insurer will probably send you a document to submit with your other tax forms.) If a taxpayer doesn't have insurance, the IRS will notify him of his nonenrollment and show him how to sign up through their state's insurance exchange. If he still refuses to enroll, the IRS will levy a fine that shows up on his tax forms. The fee starts small in 2014—$95 or 1 percent of income—but edges up incrementally until 2016, when uninsured individuals will have to pay $695 a year, with a family maximum of $2,085 or 2.5 percent of household income.

What if I have federally subsidized insurance and need an abortion? Who pays for it?
You do. The compromise struck between the House and the Senate says that federal funds cannot be used to pay for abortions. So if the federal government fully subsidizes your plan, you have to pay out of pocket for abortions—except in cases of rape or incest. (This is the same arrangement for women covered by Medicaid.) Even if the government only partly subsidizes your insurance, you still have to pay for the portion of the insurance that covers abortion. Here's how it works: You write two separate checks to your insurance company every month—one to cover possible abortions, one for all other treatments and services. The federal government then contributes a third stream of money, which cannot be used to pay for abortions. Insurers that offer abortion coverage are required to keep those three pots of money separate. So any time someone gets an abortion, it's paid for from the account devoted exclusively to abortion coverage. (Pro-life advocates who claim that the health care bill subsidizes abortion argue that even if you keep the pots of money separate, the government is still contributing to plans that allow abortion.)

The Virginia attorney general has promised to file a lawsuit against the federal government claiming that it can't compel Virginians to buy health insurance. His supporters say health care reform violates the 10^th Amendment. Does it?
Probably not. The 10^th Amendment states that "[t]he powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people." The federal government, however, can claim two Constitutional justifications for mandating health care. One is the right to regulate interstate commerce, which includes any business that operates across state lines. (Even if not all health insurance companies operate in more than one state, Congress can still regulate them as long as that regulation is part of a comprehensive interstate scheme, acc

ording to the Supreme Court.) Congress also has the Constitutional right to tax. Just as Congress taxes polluting companies for imposing a burden on other people, it could tax Americans who don't buy health insurance for doing the same. As if to emphasize the point, the fine for not buying insurance is levied by the IRS.

What would it take to repeal health care reform?
Realistically, a Republican majority in the House and Senate, plus a Republican president. Even if the GOP won back a majority in the House and Senate in 2010, President Obama could still veto any legislation that would repeal any part of health care reform. Republicans would then need a two-thirds majority in both chambers to override his veto. That's unlikely.

If the Republicans control the House, Senate, and presidency in 2012, they will still need 60 votes in the Senate to overhaul the bill in its entirety. They could, however, cut off funding for it through the budget reconciliation process, which only requires a 51-vote majority. But they wouldn't be able to tamper with any part of the legislation that doesn't affect the budget, such as the ban on discrimination against pre-existing conditions.

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Epic and immediate

So there I was, hanging out in the second row, when, suddenly, he came up to me and asked, “Hey, do you have a light?”  I told him that I did but that he couldn’t smoke here – we’re in a theater, wouldn’t you know!  He smiled at me.  Somehow, that smile looked insincere, painted on.  He replied, “I know that.  But it’s okay.  I have permission.”  I asked from whom, and he complimented me on my grammar.  Then, he produced three fire crackers and told me that, as part of his act, he was going to light them off.  I told him that he’d better get back into the scene first, pointing to the movie screen.

Technorati Tags: satire,society,movies,film,pastiche

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?Nurse Jackie? ? unapologetically authentic

From its organically revelatory plot to its utterly authentic characters, Nurse Jackie epitomizes that which is great television.  In her first big role since The Sopranos, Edie Falco proves that she’s far more than just another “one hit wonder.”  Falco’s ability to morph completely into her characters is “Streepian.”  And the layers are vast and thick:  we watch her in Nurse Jackie transfixed as she dances that delicate ballet between feelings of guilt (cheating on her husband, taking stimulants, etc.) and her remarkably genuine awareness that life has many facets and that you do, indeed, make your own rules or become the prisoner others’.  I’ve always loved Edie Falco, and I’m so excited that she’s makin’ magic yet again!  I just can’t believe that I waited until now to check out the show.

Technorati Tags: nurse jackie,edie falco,showtime,cable,series

Epic and immediate

So there I was, hanging out in the second row, when, suddenly, he came up to me and asked, “Hey, do you have a light?”  I told him that I did but that he couldn’t smoke here – we’re in a theater, wouldn’t you know!  He smiled at me.  Somehow, that smile looked insincere, painted on.  He replied, “I know that.  But it’s okay.  I have permission.”  I asked from whom, and he complimented me on my grammar.  Then, he produced three fire crackers and told me that, as part of his act, he was going to light them off.  I told him that he’d better get back into the scene first, pointing to the movie screen.

Technorati Tags: satire,society,movies,film,pastiche

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Healthcare FAQ?s

The House of Representatives passed health care reform Sunday night. This new legislation will extend coverage to millions of uninsured Americans, prohibit insurers from discriminating against sick people, and reduce the federal deficit in the coming decades, according to official estimates. Yet many questions remain unanswered. Here's a sampling.

Say I have a pre-existing condition. Can I get affordable insurance now?
Wait three months. The requirement that insurance companies take any and all comers—known as "guaranteed issue"—doesn't kick in until Jan. 1, 2014. But the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act allocates $5 billion for the establishment of "high risk pools" within 90 days across the country. These group insurance plans will provide coverage only for people with pre-existing conditions who can't find insurance through normal avenues. By law, they must take all eligible applicants and can't charge more than the standard rates.

The bill costs nearly $1 trillion in the first 10 years. How exactly does it reduce the deficit?
First, it slows spending on Medicare and Medicaid by reducing the rates those programs pay for services such as hospital visits. (It also reduces the amounts paid out through the Medicare Advantage program.) Second, it introduces new taxes, including a 0.9 percent Medicare payroll tax hike for workers who make more than $200,000 a year (and couples who make more than $250,000 a year) and a 3.8 percent tax on unearned income for the same tax brackets. Both taxes will take effect in 2013. Lastly, the so-called "Cadillac" tax on relatively high-end employer-sponsored insurance plans will target individual plans that cost more than $10,200 every year and family plans that cost more than $27,500. (The "Cadillac" tax won't roll out until 2018.) The Congressional Budget Office estimates that, together, these measures will decrease spending and increase revenue enough to reduce the deficit by $143 billion over the first 10 years and more than $1 trillion in the second decade.

There's a fine for not having insurance. How does the government know whether you have insurance or not?
Through the tax system. The legislation doesn't explicitly say how the individual mandate for health insurance will be enforced, but taxpayers will probably be required to prove that they own insurance when filing their taxes each year. (If you get insurance through your employer, they'll help take care of it. If you're self-employed, your insurer will probably send you a document to submit with your other tax forms.) If a taxpayer doesn't have insurance, the IRS will notify him of his nonenrollment and show him how to sign up through their state's insurance exchange. If he still refuses to enroll, the IRS will levy a fine that shows up on his tax forms. The fee starts small in 2014—$95 or 1 percent of income—but edges up incrementally until 2016, when uninsured individuals will have to pay $695 a year, with a family maximum of $2,085 or 2.5 percent of household income.

What if I have federally subsidized insurance and need an abortion? Who pays for it?
You do. The compromise struck between the House and the Senate says that federal funds cannot be used to pay for abortions. So if the federal government fully subsidizes your plan, you have to pay out of pocket for abortions—except in cases of rape or incest. (This is the same arrangement for women covered by Medicaid.) Even if the government only partly subsidizes your insurance, you still have to pay for the portion of the insurance that covers abortion. Here's how it works: You write two separate checks to your insurance company every month—one to cover possible abortions, one for all other treatments and services. The federal government then contributes a third stream of money, which cannot be used to pay for abortions. Insurers that offer abortion coverage are required to keep those three pots of money separate. So any time someone gets an abortion, it's paid for from the account devoted exclusively to abortion coverage. (Pro-life advocates who claim that the health care bill subsidizes abortion argue that even if you keep the pots of money separate, the government is still contributing to plans that allow abortion.)

The Virginia attorney general has promised to file a lawsuit against the federal government claiming that it can't compel Virginians to buy health insurance. His supporters say health care reform violates the 10^th Amendment. Does it?
Probably not. The 10^th Amendment states that "[t]he powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people." The federal government, however, can claim two Constitutional justifications for mandating health care. One is the right to regulate interstate commerce, which includes any business that operates across state lines. (Even if not all health insurance companies operate in more than one state, Congress can still regulate them as long as that regulation is part of a comprehensive interstate scheme, acc

ording to the Supreme Court.) Congress also has the Constitutional right to tax. Just as Congress taxes polluting companies for imposing a burden on other people, it could tax Americans who don't buy health insurance for doing the same. As if to emphasize the point, the fine for not buying insurance is levied by the IRS.

What would it take to repeal health care reform?
Realistically, a Republican majority in the House and Senate, plus a Republican president. Even if the GOP won back a majority in the House and Senate in 2010, President Obama could still veto any legislation that would repeal any part of health care reform. Republicans would then need a two-thirds majority in both chambers to override his veto. That's unlikely.

If the Republicans control the House, Senate, and presidency in 2012, they will still need 60 votes in the Senate to overhaul the bill in its entirety. They could, however, cut off funding for it through the budget reconciliation process, which only requires a 51-vote majority. But they wouldn't be able to tamper with any part of the legislation that doesn't affect the budget, such as the ban on discrimination against pre-existing conditions.

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Technorati Tags: healthcare,health,obama,congress