Used BlackBerrys sold for $20 at McCain-Palin blowout, contacts and emails included

It's pretty much common sense that when you're ditching your old cell phone you want to erase your personal data, contacts and emails -- or at least try to. Oh sure, there are plenty of examples of failing to do so, but this one's rather... shall we say, "special." Some operatives at Fox 5 in Washington, D.C. booked over to the McCain-Palin campaign headquarters' yard sale yesterday, and they saw some ultra cheap Blackberrys -- just $20 a pop, probably an inventor's discount -- so they picked up a few, undoubtedly thinking they'd make nice holiday gifts. They were kind of surprised to find that, after giving the 'Berrys some juice, one of them had 50 contacts for "campaign leaders, politicians, lobbyists and journalists" as well as hundreds of emails.

And these chuckleheads wanted to be leaders of the free world.  Yikes.

[MyFox, Washington D.C. via Engadget]

Poly Ticks and Micro Chips

You got politics in my technology!
No! YOU put technology in my politics!
* fight *

This article [arstechnica.com] gives an overview of a recent comparison between the McCain technology think tank, and the Obama tech kids.

There's nothing really surprising here, but might be of interest to some readers. You may not be sure what net neutrality, V1-B visas, or retroactive immunity for telecom giants are all about. Then again, perhaps you ought to know?

Complete with white paper linkage goodness. Yum!