Stories by: Paul McNamara

A literal reading of this survey question leads inevitably to a pair of correct answers: absolutely yes and absolutely not.

Three congressional aides recently lost their jobs in part because they are worthless layabouts who drink on the job, but also because they are but the latest to forget that Twitter lives on the Internet and tweets - especially those badmouthing your boss -- are visible to one and all.

Wrapped in the MajorGeeks seal of the season

If the results of a recent telephone survey are to be taken at face value - a reasonably big if, in my opinion - roughly half of American adults believe that Facebook, Twitter and their ilk are harmful to the social development of today's young people.

A recent online posting of Richard Stallman's astonishingly long set of instructions for those who would hire him as an event speaker has spawned a parody website -- The Stallman Dialogues -- as well as some debate over the propriety of people constantly poking fun at the enigmatic and controversial founder of the Free Software Foundation.

Let's cut to the chase: This one is really about whether Facebook and the new kid on the block, Google+, should get to throw their considerable weight around by requiring that users post to their social-networking sites using real names.

When Google, Apple, Microsoft and the like bash each other about the corporate head and shoulders with their ever-expanding patent portfolios, no one worries that the legal-department combat will kill the companies' respective research and development operations.

According to a media report out of San Antonio, the man recently accused of planning to assassinate a Saudi diplomat in Washington, D.C., was not the sharpest tool in the box. However, if neighbor accounts are to be taken at face value, the same could be said of the FBI agents tasked with foiling his alleged plot.

Seemingly endless coverage of his passing last week offered the public an opportunity to learn everything it could ever want to know about Steve Jobs, including what would appear to be his favorite photograph ... of himself.

Google says it is "very sorry" for a Gmail software bug that reset some 150,000 accounts and left their owners contemplating the prospect of having lost years worth of data. The outage affected only a fraction of one per cent of Gmail users, but its severity was particularly noteworthy.