So the lesson to be
learned is, “complain that your privacy is worth more than the
initial offer?”
Grimsby Telegraph has
an update to a breach previously
noted on this blog:
Barclays
Bank has come under fire after offering just £250 in
compensation to customers whose confidential files were stolen and
sold to rogue City traders.
At
least 2,000 of the bank’s customers were affected by the theft,
which included details of their earnings, savings, health issues and
insurance policies.
Read more on Grimsby
Telegraph.
[From
the article:
Barclays says it has
contacted all customers affected and provided compensation for
“distress and inconvenience.”
However, one customer
described the compensation as “chicken feed”.
According
to national media, a number of customers have been given higher sums
after complaining about the amount initially awarded.
For your IT Managers.
IT
Directors: Keep an eye on those iPads with Office
Office for iPad is a
great solution for those wanting to do real work on the tablet.
Microsoft has done a great job making Word, Excel, and Powerpoint for
the iPad. That's a good thing, but IT directors better think long
and hard about the implications.
The Office apps are
being downloaded in great numbers by iPad owners. They are free so
why not? Some of those downloaders, perhaps a lot of them, are
buying that $99.99 Office 365 subscription to fully unlock the
editing features of the apps. Perhaps they want to allow their kids
to use the apps to do homework, or maybe they want to do home
projects. That's well and good, but if they bring their iPads to
work in a bring your own device (BYOD) program, better make sure it's
not used for work.
The subscription that's
being pitched with Office for iPad to unlock all the features is the
Office
365 Home Premium subscription for $99.99. That's a reasonably
priced option to use Microsoft Office, including the iPad apps. What
corporate managers should remember is the
subscription that workers may be paying for with the iPad apps
prohibits commercial use. Microsoft's warning is quite
clear about such use.
If they vacated the
injunction, was that an admission of error?
If you’re interested
in the issue of the public being able to videotape police officers in
the performance of their duties and to disseminate the video, you
should read this
post by Eugene Volokh about a Missouri case, Klaffer v.
Bledsoe. The ACLU of Missouri is representing Klaffer in the
matter.
[From
the article:
[Jordan] Klaffer is a
gun owner who frequently fires his gun at objects on private
property. On May 1, 2013, Jerry Bledsoe, a police officer,
confronted Klaffer while responding to a noise complaint. Klaffer
videotaped the interaction, where Bledsoe issued an
ultimatum to Klaffer to surrender his guns or be arrested. Klaffer
refused to give up his guns and was arrested for disturbing the
peace.
To express his opinion
that Officer Bledsoe was using his position to harass him for
exercising his Second Amendment rights, Klaffer posted recordings of
the May 1 encounter on YouTube and Facebook. And, on Instagram, he
posted a picture of Bledsoe alongside a photo of Saddam Hussein, with
the caption “Striking Resemblance.”
… You can read the
ACLU
complaint, the protection
order — which was in effect for 12 days before
being vacated — and Officer
Bledsoe’s petition; you can also see the video embedded below.
Interesting that
companies see profit in providing Internet access where governments
are too slow or unable to provide it for their citizens. What will
those governments do if their citizens opt for “government by
corporations?” “Corporate Spring?”
Forget
Google balloons: Facebook says drones are key to global Internet
access
While Google is looking
to use balloons to bring Internet to certain parts of the world, Mark
Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, is placing his faith in drones while
mocking Google in the process.
While Zuckerberg did
not mention Google Loon by name, the Facebook CEO did touch on why
drones are better than balloons in providing Internet for those who
are not fortunate enough to have it.
Is the US concerned
that Bitcoins may replace the US Dollar? Perhaps they don't like the
“anonymous” aspect? Either way, we're way out in front on this.
(More likely, we made a wrong turn somewhere and are completely
lost.)
New
IRS rules make using Bitcoins a fiasco
The
Internal Revenue Service's notice last week will force the
average Bitcoin user to keep a strict record of every purchase made
all year long -- then perform difficult calculations to account for
the changing value of a bitcoin.
It's meant to extract
taxes from any gains in Bitcoin's value, and the rule applies to
everything bought with electronic money, from coffee to cars.
That's problematic for
two reasons. The going rate for a bitcoin fluctuates wildly --
easily by more than $10 a day. And no one diligently records the
price of a bitcoin at every purchase.
… The complicated
rules kick in, because the IRS deemed Bitcoin a
property. If it were labeled a currency, users would be
able to treat purchases like worry-free transactions made in euros or
yen while traveling abroad. That's why the Tax
Foundation says the IRS got it wrong, calling the compliance
requirements "inappropriate."
The United States isn't
alone in this approach. Finland applies capital gains taxes on
Bitcoin gains, and Ireland is considering something similar.
Perspective. Perhaps
companies who live by ad impressions will upgrade your computer for
free?
Facebook
dumped its Newsfeed redesign because its users have old computers.
Dustin Curtis, an
entrepreneur who also writes a very popular blog, says he’s heard
from Facebook employees the reason is that the beautiful, big-picture
design was so popular with users that they weren’t using other
parts of the site, and that this was driving ad impressions down.
In her own blog post,
Facebook product designer Julie Zhuo says Curtis has it wrong.
She says the reason
Facebook went with the older-looking design is that, unlike Facebook
employees, Curtis, and the kinds of people who read blog posts about
design, most Facebook users still have older
computers with crappy monitors.”
How do we stop this?
Void their insurance?
One in four car accidents caused
by cell phone use while driving... but only five per cent blamed on
texting
A
recent study from the National Safety Council found that 26 per cent
of all car accidents were caused by a driver using a cell phone, but
remarkably attributed only five per cent to texting while driving.
…
The number works out to about 1.3million total accidents, a one per
cent rise from last year’s NSC
report,
but continues a growing trend.
…
Experts say that laws prohibiting cell phone use behind the wheel
aren’t providing much of a deterrent.
How
can this not attract disruptive competition?
Commentary
– How Copyright Laws Keep E-Books Locked Up
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on March 30, 2014
“…In many cases, it
is the readers themselves who, through their taxes, pay the
university authors whose studies they are then unable to access.
It is also likely that many professors themselves cannot even afford
a subscription to the journal in which their work is published.
Subscription rates of up to €15,000 ($20,633) per year are hardly a
rarity. The Journal of Comparative Neurology, for example,
comes with a price tag of more than €20,000 annually. Authors
who publish their works in such a journal usually don’t see a
single cent for their labors. Publishing companies such as Reed
Elsevier, by contrast, regularly achieve pre-tax profit margins of
over 25 percent. ”Publishers of scientific journals make so
much money because they collect their product for free from taxpayers
and then sell it back at inflated prices,” says Günter M. Ziegler,
a distinguished mathematician at Berlin’s Free University. Until
two years ago, Ziegler was the co-publisher of two mathematics
journals at Reed Elsevier. Then he joined a boycott that has since
attracted the support of 14,000 others. He is now working for an
academic journal that is available to everyone on the Internet
according to open access principles. Elsevier says that the conflict
has more to do with a misunderstanding than a conflict of interests.”
(Related) For all you
IP lawyers...
IP
in a World Without Scarcity
Mark
A. Lemley
Stanford Law School March 24, 2014
Abstract:
Things
are valuable because they are scarce. The more abundant they become,
they cheaper they become. But a series of technological changes is
underway that promises to end scarcity as we know it for a wide
variety of goods. The Internet is the most obvious example, because
the change there is furthest along. The Internet has reduced the
cost of production and distribution of informational content
effectively to zero. In many cases it has also dramatically reduced
the cost of producing that content. And it has changed the way in
which information is distributed, separating the creators of content
from the distributors.
Great
news for my students who will write the systems that replace these
workers! (And an indication that I have some serious job security!)
The
Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerisation?
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on March 29, 2014
The
Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerisation?
Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne, September 17, 2013
“Nearly half of US
jobs could be susceptible to computerisation over the next two
decades, a study from the Oxford Martin Programme on the Impacts of
Future Technology suggests. The study, a collaboration between Dr
Carl Benedikt Frey (Oxford Martin School) and Dr Michael A. Osborne
(Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford), found that
jobs in transportation, logistics, as well as office
and administrative support, are at “high risk” of automation.
More surprisingly, occupations within the service industry are also
highly susceptible, despite recent job growth in this sector. “We
identified several key bottlenecks currently preventing occupations
being automated,” says Dr. Osborne. “As big data
helps to overcome these obstacles, a great number of jobs will be put
at risk.” The study examined over 700 detailed occupation
types, noting the types of tasks workers perform and the skills
required. By weighting these factors, as well as the engineering
obstacles currently preventing computerisation, the researchers
assessed the degree to which these occupations may be automated in
the coming decades. “Our findings imply that as technology
races ahead, low-skilled workers will move to tasks that are not
susceptible to computerisation — i.e., tasks that required creative
and social intelligence,” the paper states. “For
workers to win the race, however, they
will have to acquire creative and social skills.”
Dr Frey said the United Kingdom is expected to face a similar
challenge to the US. “While our analysis was based on
detailed datasets relating to US occupations, the implications are
likely to extend to employment in the UK and other developed
countries,” he said.”
For
my students.
Four
Sources of Print-on-demand Graph Paper
Every
mathematics teacher I know needs graph paper. If you're a
mathematics teacher and find yourself running short on graph paper or
you need a graph paper that is different from what your school
purchases, try one of these four places for printing graph paper.
Incompetech offers
more than forty different graph and lined paper templates. The
offerings from Incompetech even
includes sheet music ledger.
Print
Free Graph Paper offers eight graph paper formats. Print
Free Graph Paper allows you to customize the size of the
graph before printing.
Math
Drills hosts fourteen
templates for printing your own graph paper. The templates
are in metric and imperial measurements.
Gridzzly
is a free tool for designing lined, grid, and graph paper. Simply
open the site, select the format for your paper (dots, lines,
squares, or hexagons) then choose the spacing for the paper and print
it. A ruler at the top of the page indicates the spacing of the
dots, lines, squares, or hexagons on your page.
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