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Councilman Booted For His Farmville Obsession 185

Posted by samzenpus from the think-of-the-crops dept.
Bulgarian Dimitar Kerin won't have to decide if he should tend his crops or pay attention to Plovdiv City Council business anymore. The committee voted him off 20-19, saying that he obviously "needs more time for his virtual farm." From the article: "Kerin was not alone in his obsession among council members. Council chairman Ilko Iliev had previously warned several of them that the new wireless network and laptops provided to all 51 council members were not to be used for playing games on social media sites during budget meetings. Kerin was singled out for continuing to manage his farm and milk his cows despite Iliev's warnings. "
Social Networks

Facebook Kills Dataset of Crawled Public Profiles 158

Posted by CmdrTaco from the creepy-crawlies dept.
holy_calamity writes "Internet entrepreneur Pete Warden wrote a crawler that collated the public profiles of 210 million Facebook profiles and was set to release an anonymised version to researchers. The pages crawled can be read by any web user, and the robots.txt did not forbid crawling. However, Facebook claimed he had violated its terms of service and threatened legal action. Fearing costs, Warden has now destroyed his dataset. For a snapshot of the insights that data could have allowed, see Warden's post on how the friend networks of the 120 million US users in his data segregated into seven clusters." Of course, if he had it, this means anyone who wants it made their own version of this.
Google

Lawmakers Ask For FTC Investigation of Google Buzz 131

Posted by CmdrTaco from the always-with-the-investigating dept.
angry tapir writes "Eleven US lawmakers have asked the FTC to investigate Google's launch of its Buzz social-networking product for breaches of consumer privacy. The representatives — six Democrats and five Republicans from the House Energy and Commerce Committee — noted in their letter that Google's roll-out of Buzz exposed private information of users to Google's Gmail service to outsiders. In one case, a 9-year-old girl accidentally shared her contact list in Gmail with a person who has a 'sexually charged' username, the lawmakers said in the letter."

Comment Re:What's With the Windows icon??! (Score 1) 355

by Annorax (#31533762) Attached to: Microsoft Announces Windows 7 SP1

I too hate Windows 7, but for me it is the deplorable "HomeGroup" networking feature that appears to be the 2009 version of "DOS aint done until 1-2-3 won't run". Specifically, non-Microsoft operating systems (and some older Microsoft operating systems) are no longer able to automatically detect Windows 7 shares on a LAN like has been available in Windows XP. From what I've read, this was a "feature" of Vista, but I never touched that Vista to know if that is the case or not. "HomeGroup" is just another cat and mouse game by Microsoft.

Comment I don't know about you... (Score 1) 503

by Annorax (#31144370) Attached to: Bill Gates Responds To Apple iPad

.. but when I see someone in a coffee shop hunched over their little netbook I kind of feel bad for them.

I find myself thinking, "Awww.... poor guy. His back, eyes, and fingers must be killing him right now"

It looks really uncomfortable.

From the admittedly limited exposure to the iPad that I've had so far, it seems to be a much more comfortable experience.

Comment Re:Loose the (almost) dead weight (Score 1) 440

by Annorax (#31062820) Attached to: Mozilla Puts Tiger Out To Pasture

2.5 years is less than the maximum length of the Applecare warranty. So you're not going to support the major OS release that came with a computer that's still under warranty?

You missed the point.

He said that Leopard came out 2.5 years ago. Leopard still supports G3 Macs and is still suported.

Tiger users have had 2.5 years to migrate from Tiger to Leopard.

It's Snow Leopard that doesn't run on G3 Macs. Leopard does.
Social Networks

Facebook App Exposes Abject Insecurity 205

Posted by CmdrTaco from the pay-no-attention-to-the-hole-in-my-pants dept.
ewhac writes "Back in June, the American Civil Liberties Union published an article describing Facebook's complete lack of meaningful security on your and your friends' information. The article went virtually unnoticed. Now, a developer has written a Facebook 'Quiz' based on the original article that graphically illustrates all the information a Facebook app can get its grubby little hands on by recursively sweeping through your friends list, pulling all their info and posts, and showing it to you. What's more, apps can get at your information even if you never run the app yourself. Facebook apps run with the access privileges of the user running it, so anything your friend can see, the app they're running can see, too. It is unclear whether the developer of the Facebook app did so 'officially' for the ACLU."
IBM

IBM Scientists Build Computer Chips From DNA 97

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the some-chips-are-longer-than-others dept.
snydeq writes "Scientists at IBM are experimenting with using DNA molecules as a way to create tiny circuits that could form the basis of smaller, more powerful computer chips. The technique builds on work done by Cal Tech's Paul Rothemund, who found that DNA molecules can be made to 'self-assemble' into tiny forms [PDF] such as triangles, squares and stars. 'To make a chip, the scientists first create lithographic templates using traditional chip making techniques. After, they pour a DNA solution over the surface of the silicon and the tiny triangles and squares — what the scientists call DNA origami — line themselves up to the patterns etched out using lithography.' DNA-based chips may sound like crackpot tech, but those involved believe the methodology could lead to a new way of fabricating features on the surface of chips that allows semiconductors to be made even smaller, faster and more power-efficient than they are today."

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