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Education

Submission + - linux is not a crime

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A colleague of mine submitted a personal laptop (macbook) to IT of a department of a major university in the University of California to be checked prior to access being granted to the network. The response was:
"Hi,
I am currently setting up your laptop for xxxxxxxxx department. I noticed you have Ubuntu and Windows running on Virtual Box. We cannot have linux computers on the network , and cannot have any copies of Windows running that aren't joined to the xxxxxxxxx Network. Also, there is Bittorrent software on the computer which isn't allowed.
I can remote the bittorrent and the Virtual machiens and then the computer will be able to be added. Would you like me to do this? Any files or programs that you have installed on them will be lost.
Thanks,
xxxxxxxxx"

I am surprised at the policy against linux, especially given the amount of research that gets done in the University of California using linux and other open source projects. Is this a trend? Do they have a basis for security concerns regarding linux?
The other sad thing is the banning of bittorrent, which is simply a file-downloading program.
Government

Submission + - Internet Access is a Human Right, UN Report Says (discovermagazine.com)

Submitted by purkinje
purkinje writes: Disconnecting people from the internet is a violation of human rights and is against international law, says a UN report released yesterday. The report comes just after several governments in the Middle East restricted internet access during unrest there, and a year after France and the UK passed three-strikes laws to disconnect users illegally sharing files. People have a right to both dimensions of internet access, the report says: unfettered access to content and the technology and infrastructure needed to get online in the first place.

Submission + - Most Websites Exclude 'Home' from Navi (promediacorp.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Mechanical Turks were asked to visit the Alexa top 500 and report back whether there was a home button in the site's navigation. Study found that 63% of sites do not contain a link to the homepage in the nav bar.
DRM

Submission + - DRM is counterproductive (techrepublic.com)

Submitted by dwreid
dwreid writes: It's interesting to see a mainstream technical site such as TechRepublic call out that DRM provides no benefit but does increase costs and punish legitimate customers.

Submission + - The War On Photography: Legal Analysis (ssrn.com)

Submitted by YIAAL
YIAAL writes: We've seen increasing numbers of stories about photographers facing arrest or assault by police and security officers simply for taking pictures — often pictures of law enforcement misconduct. Although photographers have a legal right to take pictures in pretty much any public place, this article by Morgan Manning concludes that the legal remedies for violations of that right are inadequate and often entirely unworkable. Is law-enforcement education the solution, or do we need new civil rights laws — maybe with attorney fees and heavy damages — to protect photographers from being hassled?
Nintendo

Submission + - Nintendo Announces New Console: Wii U (reuters.com)

Submitted by _xeno_
_xeno_ writes: Nintendo has announced the official name for what had been known as "Project Cafe:" the Wii U. It is an HD console, it remains backwards compatibility with the Wii (it's unclear if this includes GameCube software), and the controller does, in fact, have a touch screen on it. Nintendo demoed moving a game off the TV and play it solely on the Wii U controller.

Comment Website reads like an infomercial (Score 1) 172

by Kuukai (#36362804) Attached to: Man Creates Open Source Flashlight
For just one low payment of $35 (Canadians add $10 S&H) you can get this SPECIAL flashlight (retail value 54.95!!) that can, uh... "run up and down mathematical equations". If you program a chip. Which you could probably do with any flashlight if you know how to do that. I kinda feel bad for all the exploited nerds funding this...

Oblig. Penny Arcade on Kickstarter
Image

Chinese iPad Factory Staff Forced To Sign 'No Suicide' Pledge Screenshot-sm 537

Posted by samzenpus from the and-you-thought-your-job-was-tedious dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Employees at Foxconn facilities in China, used to manufacture the iPhone and iPad, were forced to sign a pledge not to commit suicide after over a dozen staff killed themselves over the last 16 months. The revelation is the latest in a series of findings about the treatment of workers at Foxconn plants, where staff often work six 12-hour shifts a week, 98 hours of overtime in a month, and live in dormitories that look and feel like prison blocks."

Comment Reuters neutrality (Score 1) 575

by Kuukai (#36027454) Attached to: Sony Officially Blames Anonymous For PSN Hack

Sony said on Wednesday that Anonymous targeted it several weeks ago using a denial of service attack in protest of Sony defending itself against a hacker in federal court in San Francisco.

Since when does taking a hardhacker to court constitute "defending yourself"? They might be defending their DRM or EULA or something but the article makes it sound objectively unreasonable for anyone to be upset with them...

Comment *Your* Location? (Score 1) 164

by Kuukai (#36000562) Attached to: Your Location 'Extremely Valuable' To Google
Bad article, worse summary. Google isn't, like, quantizing your habits or anything. Or, maybe they do, but at the very least that isn't what the emails say.

"I cannot stress enough how important Google's wifi location database is to our Android and mobile product strategy," Google location manager Steve Lee told founder Page in the memo. "We absolutely do care about this because we need wifi data collection in order to maintain and improve our wifi location service."

It's not a database of your location, it's a crowd-sourced database of positioning information used to help users determine their location. When you encounter a previously unrecorded wifi network or somesuch and you're using this feature (it has a disclaimer about this), you anonymously add it to Google's database so other users using the feature can triangulate their position that much faster. There's a concern in the article that someone could hijack this process on Google's end and record personal information, but as far as we know from these emails and what they've said publicly, this information isn't being kept, in fact there's an encryption scheme to protect it. It's different from the Apple issue where the information was a) unencrypted b) identifiable (because it's on your phone) c) timestamped (and therefore more useful than "here's everywhere I've been in my life!") There's certainly the issue of privacy for the wifi network owners, but my point is the summary's misrepresenting the story here.

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