The New York Times has published an interesting article on gender differences in e-mail communications. Not surprisingly, males and females tend to show pretty much the same communication patterns in e-mails as they do normally: men tend to be more taciturn, instrumental, and transactional. Women tend to be more voluble, open, and relational. This dovetails interestingly with other findings that corporate CEOs, the quintessential alpha males, are are very terse in their e-mails whereas lower-ranking workers tend to be more formal. I suspect that this has more to do with tersity being a male behavior, and therefore valued, than tersity being valued, and therefore becoming a male behavior. In either case, though, there may be some hope yet: some researchers have also found that the disinhibiting effects of e-mail actually help some men communicate intimacies and feelings that they’d never communicate face-to-face.

Microsoft has unveilled the latest update to M$ Office, Office XP, with lots of new features, the vague beginning of .NET integration, and, most mercifully of all, THE DEATH OF CLIPPY! [NY Times]

Freedom of expression online is again under assault, as the FBI and Secret Service have begun to target the Seattle IMC in intimidating fishing expeditions, demanding that they turn over server logs despite the fact that federal agents have admitted that the IMC itself was not suspected of any criminal activity and there was no violation of US law. Thankfully, a sane judge has lifted the gag order that was imposed on Seattle IMC, so they have been able to publish their side of the story; federal sources leaked information about the story with impunity before the gag order was rescinded, showing that apparently the FBI’s only concern was to be able to spin the story as it pleased without backtalk.

In other good news, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is standing up for the IMC on this one, and the FBI’s fishing expedition is so blatant and poorly constructed that it will hopefully be laughed out of court. But this sets a very troubling precedent for the revival — or continuance, really; it never much stopped — of the FBI’s repressive surveillance against activist organizations. As the left / anarchist activist coalition grows in power, power brokers are getting scared. You could see this already in the Summit of the Americas, World Economic Forum, etc. buckling down into cities temporarily turned into militarized police states. The growing willingness of the free world’s states to use these kind of repressive tactics is something that we really have to keep a watch on, and fight back against.

Today I was delighted to find the www.ourbodiesourselves.org, the online home of the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, women’s liberation pioneers and the force behind the classic Our Bodies, Ourselves (including multiple new editions since the original publication in 1970).

It behooves you to check out http://security.tao.ca if you are an activist or otherwise concerned about online privacy. Tons and tons and tons of great resources.