“THE…DISASTER WAS completely avoidable, as administrators knew the system was not ready, yet decided to launch it anyway… Investigations cannot undo the taxpayer dollars wasted and the disruption of families’ access to health care.”That comment could have been voiced recently by critics of the state’s troubled vaccine finder website – but it wasn’t. It was actually a critique of the state’s disastrous rollout of the Health Connector website in 2014, built under then-Gov. Deval Patrick. The speaker was then-gubernatorial candidate Charlie Baker – now the governor in charge of the Vaxfinder website best known for the four-armed orange octopus that appeared when it crashed.There are significant differences between the debacles. The Health Connector website failure cost hundreds of millions of dollars and, in its initial form, never worked. The state had to give hundreds of thousands of people temporary Medicaid coverage because it couldn’t figure out what insurance they were eligible for. The Vaxfinder website cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and ultimately, it has worked, with tens of thousands of people using it to sign up for vaccine appointments, despite the difficulties."
Providing accurate and timely information about what matters in Franklin, MA since 2007. * Working in collaboration with Franklin TV and Radio (wfpr.fm) since October 2019 *
Friday, March 12, 2021
CommonWealth Magazine: "Why is the state’s technology so bad?
Monday, July 2, 2018
Norfolk County Registry of Deeds: Register O'Donnell Hosts Computer Seminar
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Norfolk County Registry of Deeds: Register O'Donnell Hosts Computer Seminar |
Saturday, March 31, 2018
Tri-County Carpentry Students Build Oak Podiums for the Seekonk Police Department
“The Tri-County School District would like to thank the town of Seekonk for providing our students with such a rich and authentic project, said Jean George, Vocational Director. “Our Carpentry students collaborated with students from Engineering Technology to create a set of plans using the AutoCad software. Once the design was ready, it was time to build the podium. As a finishing touch, the Town of Seekonk Seal was created using the skills of the Advanced Manufacturing students as they created the code to draw an exact replica of the seal. Those students guided Carpentry students in using the CNC router to complete the emblem. That is what we call STEM - Thank you again Town of Seekonk.”
Municipal projects give students in Tri-County’s Career Programs valuable hands-on experience in their industry. To learn more, visit: www.tri-county.us.
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Tri-County Carpentry Students Build Oak Podiums for the Seekonk Police Department |
Tri-County RVTHS, located at 147 Pond Street in Franklin, is a recipient of the High Schools That Work Gold Achievement Award and serves the communities of Franklin, Medfield, Medway, Millis, Norfolk, North Attleboro, Plainville, Seekonk, Sherborn, Walpole, and Wrentham.
Monday, April 10, 2017
Norfolk County Registry of Deeds: Computer Seminar Reminder - May 11
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Wednesday, August 10, 2016
Coding and Robotics Workshop @QI SCHOOL
Date: Wednesday 8/10/16
Time: 5:30pm-6:30pm
Address: QI SCHOOL, 650 Pleasant St, Franklin 02038
It's never too early to learn how to code! Please join us for the second session of our Wondrous Workshop Series!
In this free workshop, children will explore the functions of computers, the basics of computer coding, and robotics through interactive games.
Children under the age of 5 will have the chance to play with Code-a-pillar that can move and turn, and children above 5 will learn to give commands to programmable Ozobots through drawing colored lines and patterns.
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Coding and Robotics Workshop @QI SCHOOL |
Wednesday, July 27, 2016
Norfolk County Registry of Deeds Computer Seminar - Sep 29
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Norfolk County Register of Deeds Computer Seminar |
Sunday, March 27, 2016
Norfolk County Registry of Deeds - Computer Seminar - May 4
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Saturday, March 26, 2016
NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing - Lauren Albee
Tri-County Regional senior Lauren Albee was recently named a 2016 Runner-Up for the National Center for Women and Information Technology Aspirations in Computing Award.
Albee, a Computer Information Systems student from Medway, received several prizes, including a laptop, a glass trophy, and a certificate of recognition. She was also awarded a $10,000 scholarship to the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and a $20,000 scholarship to the University of Massachusetts Lowell.
The NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing honors young women for their computing-related achievements and interests. Recipients are chosen for their technological aspirations, leadership ability, academic history, and plans for post-secondary education.
Lauren says she was encouraged to apply for the award by her teacher, Kim Zogalis. Organizers took particular interest in Lauren's involvement with the school's First Robotics team. Lauren has been a member of Team 3236 for three years.
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Tri-County Regional senior Lauren Albee |
In addition to First Robotics, Lauren was captain of the Varsity Soccer team during her senior year, a member of the Student Council, and a student representative for Tri-County's Administration Council.
"All of us at TC are very proud of Lauren,” said Tri-County Principal Michael J. Procaccini. “She is one of our CIS leaders and has put together a long list of accomplishments this year. CIS is an exceptional program and Lauren is an exceptional young woman.”
Lauren plans to attend Johnson and Wales University in North Miami where she will major in Criminal Justice and continue her studies in the Information Technology field. She believes her background in technology will be valuable in her collegiate studies and her career due to the prevalence of Cybercrime.
Sunday, April 12, 2015
PC Handyman: Encryption malware —"Ransomware"— Is your data protected?
Recently, The Boston Globe and other news media reported that a file server at the Tewksbury Police Department was infected with a strain of malware, which had encrypted all of the files stored on this server. These files were arrest and incident records. When someone tried to access these records, they found that the files could not be opened because they were corrupted. Then they found a document that explained that the files had been encrypted and gave instructions on how they could pay $500 to get the encryption key to recover their files.
PC Handyman
After several days of trying to recover the files, with the aid of federal and state computer experts and 2 outside IT firms, they finally paid the $500, using an electronic form of payment called Bitcoin, and got the data back.
This sort of thing has been happening for a while now to all sorts of businesses and individuals—this got media attention because public money was used to pay the ransom, so it became public information. Payment forms like Bitcoin and MoneyPak are used because the payment is not traceable to the recipient.
Can it happen to you? Yes!
This malware is usually installed through an email attachment, often in an email supposedly from FedEx or UPS about a package being delivered. There is also evidence that it can be installed by a hacker getting into a server through a remote connection. Sometimes the encrypted data is recoverable through Windows, and sometimes with a 3rd party application. Usually, the malware turns off features like System Restore and Volume Shadow Copy so that these recovery methods are no longer available. I'm sure that the Tewksbury people tried everything.
Another scary thing—if the infected PC is connected to mapped network drives, such as on a file server, those files can be encrypted too. And if a backup drive is connected to the PC, doing automatic or periodic backups, the files on the backup drive will be overwritten with the encrypted versions, since the files have been changed to newer versions. Cloud-based backup services may save previous versions of backed up files—you should ask your backup service.
The best strategy against this issue seems to be keeping a periodic manual backup to a drive that is disconnected after the backup is completed. Frequency of the backups determines how much data is at risk. I can set this up for you, including providing the drive. I can come in to your business on a regular basis and run the backups too. Let me know if you need help.
Is your data protected?
The PC Handyman, 508 346-3502 info@pchman.com
Tuesday, September 16, 2014
Online course available through Brown University
Hi Steve,
I am a Franklin resident, a lecturer at Brown University, and an avid reader of Franklin Matters :-)
I was wondering if you might be interested in promoting a course I am teaching online starting at the end of the month. The course, Exploring Neural Data, is offered for free to anyone, on the Coursera platform. Brown University did a write-up about it today: https://news.brown.edu/articles/2014/09/mooc
I thought it might be fun for members of the community to participate in the course, so I was hoping that Franklin Matters might be a way for them to become aware of it. The course has no prerequisites, and would even be appropriate for advanced high schoolers with an interest in neuroscience and/or computer programming. Here is the link to the course: https://www.coursera.org/course/neuraldata
Please let me know what you think and if you need any more info!
Thanks,
Monica
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Monica Linden, Ph.D.
Lecturer
Dept. of Neuroscience
Brown University
Box GL-N
Providence, RI 02912
401-863-5192
Monday, July 9, 2012
In the News: malware, budget, reading
Remember to check computer for malware today
Patrick signs $32.5 billion state budget
Summer Reading: It's not just for kids anymore
Friday, July 6, 2012
FBI recommends check to prevent loss of Internet access on Monday
Sent to you by Steve Sherlock via Google Reader:
Hundreds of thousands of Internet users may lose their online access on July 9, 2012, and Better Business Bureau is urging all consumers and businesses to run a quick and easy diagnostic test to see if their computers are infected.
Things you can do from here:
- Subscribe to The Milford Daily News News RSS using Google Reader
- Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites
Monday, May 14, 2012
“It was an amazing experience’’ to work at 3C
“The best place I ever worked,’’ said Jack Rathmell of Franklin. There was “an esprit de corps that won’t quit, epitomized by the fact that we still have over 70 people show up for a reunion 46 years after the Honeywell acquisition."
Rathmell is among those planning this year’s reunion, to be held Thursday evening at the Elks Lodge on Union Avenue. In past years, even EMC’s Egan would attend, fellow 3C alumni said.
“It is unfortunate that many of the group has passed on,’’ said Harvey J. Bloom, a former Bellingham resident who now lives in New Hampshire. “The group has the most creative and fun people."
Read more: http://www.milforddailynews.com/news/x1310216338/Remembering-Framinghams-Computer-Control-Company#ixzz1uptitTj9
Additional information can be fond at at www.3CReunion.com
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Computer Recycling Event in Warwick, RI
FreeGeekProvidence is holding this event at New England Institute of Technology today. The text of their email provides additional information:
Today we're having the Providence Bruins Mascot "Samboni" come in just for our recycling event, and HOT 106 will be giving away prizes and doing live cut in's all day. We'll have tee-shirts for sale and lots of recycling to do.
The Free for all Recycling Extravaganza is from 9-1 today at New England Tech. See www.freegeekpvd.org for more info.
That's 95 (either direction) to exit 13, the airport connector, to the end to Post Road. Take a Right on Post Road (or head South) and it's half mile on the right.
You can see on our News Room, we have lots of media coverage and that's not including the TV spots either.
So even if you only have an old keyboard, or a half ton-truck of computer waste, or you just want to meet all the geeks responsible for all the great things going on at Free Geek, join us at New England Tech.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
I want to play with these blocks!
Watch, this is delightfully exciting!
Now that is a good use of computer technology for educational purposes!
How would you use these Shiftables?
Thanks to the folks at Free Technology for Teachers for the pointer to this!