One should never laugh at another's
misfortune. Nor should one base their Superbowl ad on such
misfortune. (But feel free to laugh anyway)
Report:
Thieves steal iPads from Microsoft, leave everything else
Strange, only one mention of
unencrypted laptops being stolen.
Erica Gann Kitaev of BakerHostetler has
a recap of some privacy lawsuits in 2012:
During 2012,
privacy class actions continued to trend toward two major categories:
1) actions that arose out of a data breach event and 2) actions
brought to prosecute an alleged consumer privacy right.
Read her recap here.
Tweeking Facebook?
January 05, 2013
EFF
- Extension Gives You More Control Over Your Facebook Privacy
"Facebook Messages has a feature
that tells you when a chat recipient has seen a message. This "read
receipt" is, in true Facebook fashion, both nifty and
unsettling. And it brings with it tons of potential
for abuse. Unfortunately, there's no built-in
method to opt out. Facebook's privacy interface has
undergone change upon change, yet some needed controls simply don't
exist—and these days consumer privacy depends
heavily on control. Luckily, the developers over at Crossrider
have an extension, Chat
Undetected, that disables the read receipt feature. The
extension is available for Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and
Safari. By nature of its popularity, Facebook is inviting developers
to customize users' experiences and create useful tools. We're
hoping Facebook adopts a policy that allows its users to innovate,
create, and—in the spirit of Facebook—hack. Currently, an overly
vague Terms of Service has led Facebook to shut
down helpful add-ons like Fluff-Busting Purity, which let users
configure what news items were shown to them. As FB Purity's
developer notes, many of his users stuck around
Facebook only because their experience was tailored to their liking."
[Probably an overstatement, but it would be nice if... Bob]
Was there a specific threat they failed
to tell us about? Is it wise for the government to “secure” some
NFL games but not others? Yes. The first time there is an incident
at an unsecured game they can respond to the “public outcry” by
increasing their scope (and budget) to cover everything. Worry more
if the start showing up at schools.
"Travel writer Christopher
Elliott touches down with the news that the U.S. Transportation
Security Administration was spotted standing
around outside a recent American football game between the
Minnesota Vikings and the Green Bay Packers (picture).
According to Mr. Elliott, the 'TSA goes to NFL games and political
conventions and all kinds of places that have
little or nothing to do with ... travel. It even
has a special division called VIPR — an unfortunate acronym for
Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response team — that conducts
these searches.' He continues, 'As far as I can tell, TSA is just
asking questions at this point. "Data and results collected
through the Highway BASE program will inform TSA's policy and program
initiatives and allow TSA to provide focused resources and tools to
enhance the overall security posture within the surface
transportation community," it says in the
filing. But they wouldn't be wasting our money asking such
questions unless they planned to aggressively expand VIPR at some
point in the near future. And that means TSA agents at NFL games, in
subways and at the port won't be the exception anymore — they will
be the rule.'"
What? No conspiracy theories? That
must mean the government suppressed them!
"The NY Times reports that Al
Jazeera plans to start an
English-language channel available in more than 40 million U.S.
homes, with newscasts emanating from both New York and Doha,
Qatar. They announced a deal to take over Current TV, the low-rated
cable channel that was founded by Al Gore seven years ago. But the
challenge will be persuading Americans to watch the award
winning network with 71 bureaus around the world — an extremely
tough proposition given the crowded television marketplace and the
stereotypes about the channel that persist to this day. 'There are
still people who will not watch it, who will say that it's a
"terrorist network,"' says Philip Seib. 'Al Jazeera has to
override that by providing quality news.' With a handful of
exceptions, American
cable and satellite distributors have mostly refused to carry Al
Jazeera English since its inception in 2006. While the
television sets of White House officials and lawmakers were tuned to
the channel during the Arab Spring in 2011, ordinary
Americans who wanted to watch had to find a live stream on the
Internet. Al Jazeera's Robert Wheelock said, We
offer an alternative. It's a broader coverage of news. It's a
broader spectrum into countries that aren't traditionally covered.'"
I offer as proof the fact that one of
the most popular Science Fiction series of recent years, the Honor
Harrington series, is now available in a leather bound edition. “If
it's in leather, it must be a classic!” There, I said it on the
Internet, so it must be true.
"Although just 16% of Americans
have purchased an e-book to date, the growth rate in sales of digital
books is already dropping sharply. At the same time, sales of
dedicated e-readers actually shrank in 2012, as people bought tablets
instead. Meanwhile, printed books continue to be preferred over
e-books by a wide majority of U.S. book readers. In his blog post
Will Gutenberg Laugh
Last?, writer Nicholas Carr draws on these statistics and others
to argue that, contrary to predictions, printed books may continue to
be the book's dominant form. 'We may be discovering,' he writes,
'that e-books are well suited to some types of books (like genre
fiction) but not well suited to other types (like nonfiction and
literary fiction) and are well suited to certain reading situations
(plane trips) but less well suited to others (lying on the couch at
home). The e-book may turn out to be more a complement to the
printed book, as audiobooks have long been, rather than an outright
substitute.'"
Not yet a Star Trek tricorder, but
clearly the platform it will be developed for.
(Related) The Doogie Howser toolkit.
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