Based on many subtle and not so subtle
reasons, I suspect this is much more that we have seen so far. No
clear smoking gun so far, but “capability” has been established.
Strategically, a common software tool is superior to many proprietary
tools by each manufacturer...
Mobile
Carriers Claim Consumer Consent to Carrier IQ Spying
December 17, 2011 by Dissent
David Kravets reports:
Americans
consented to secretly installed software on 150 million mobile phones
that logs what apps they use and what websites they visit and who
they communicate with, according to mobile-phone makers and carriers.
Sprint, AT&T,
HTC and Samsung told Sen. Al Franken (D-Minnesota) Thursday that
their end-user licensing agreements — those pages of fine print you
sign when you get a new cell phone — authorize them to use Carrier
IQ software to monitor app deployment, battery life, phone CPU output
and data and cell-site connectivity. The companies’ statements,
released by Franken, are a good roadmap to how the companies will
fight federal privacy lawsuits already brought by consumers over the
secret software.
Read more on Threat
Level.
...but you get a free T-shirt with a
target on the back!
China
tightens screws on microbloggers
Beijing's city government has announced
new rules that require users of local Twitter-like sites to register
their real names with the services for verification by government
authorities--a move apparently meant to quash anonymous posts
critical of China's leaders and rob dissidents of a tool for
organizing protests.
A better way to say “it's free?”
"Use of the GPL, LGPL, and AGPL
set of licenses is declining
at an accelerating rate, according to new analysis
by the 451 Group's Matthew Aslett. In fact, the 451 Group
projects that GPL usage will hit 50% by September 2012. Instead,
developers are licensing projects under permissive licenses such as
the MIT, Apache (ASL), BSD, and Ms-PL. The shift started in 2007 and
has been gathering momentum ever since. Blogger Brian Proffitt
posits that 'the creation of the GPLv3 and the sometimes contentious
discussion that led up to it' may be partly responsible for the move
away from the GPL."
Maybe they are just too used to getting
their own way?
Mystery
surrounds Universal's takedown of Megaupload YouTube video
To summarize: Megaupload
posted a promo video on YouTube a week ago featuring a raft of
hip-hop stars. It was quickly removed after Universal Music Group
(UMG) complained. Megaupload sued UMG on Monday and asked the court
to bar UMG from blocking the distribution or display of the video.
The video was back up on YouTube last night, but Megaupload vowed to
continue the court case. (For the longer replay read "In
SOPA's shadow, Megaupload strikes back against Universal.")
… So, UMG implied it has the right
to demand the video takedown under an agreement with YouTube. But it
won't reveal the specifics on the agreement or say why it wants the
video removed.
Based on YouTube's response, it would
appear that the mystery agreement covers artists under contract with
UMG who have a live performance that appears in a video on YouTube.
Regardless, YouTube apparently doesn't think UMG's takedown request
was valid even under that criterion.
Japanese speakers will frequently
sketch Kanji characters in the air as they are chatting. I was never
sure if the listener could read them as fast as the speaker was
writing... Apparently that no longer matters...
… Shapecatcher.com
eases your pain by allowing you to find that special character by
using your visual memory.
We’ve gone over several solutions to
finding
special symbols before, but this one is really unique. Using
Shapecatcher.com, you only have to draw the character that you’re
looking for and you are then presented with a list of possible
results.
Just in case you missed Google's Geeky
Christmas gifts...
Google
Has Eggs for Everyone This Holiday Season
… To get some of your own virtual
snow, just use Chrome or Firefox on your desktop to go to Google.com
and type in "let it snow" without the quotation marks.
First, you'll see snowflakes falling
from the top of your screen. Next, it will appear to frost over. You
can either hit a "Defrost" button to better see the snow
falling, or click and hold your mouse while drawing on your frosted
screen just like a kid drawing on a window with a finger.
If Hanukkah is your thing, Google's got
some love especially for you. Enter "Hanukkah" (again,
without quotes) at Google's main page and you'll see a string of
yellow lights across the top of your screen.
… And just last month, PCWorld
tipped readers to a wacky Easter Egg that actually makes your Google
Search results page do a barrel roll. Try
it yourself, it still works!
There's much more fun where this came
from. Check out PCWorld's Best
of Google 2011: Gags, Easter Eggs, Pranks, and Games.
No comments:
Post a Comment