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Submission + - Google+ launches opt-in "Find my face" feature (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by asto21
asto21 writes: From the beginning, Google has taken pains to build in privacy at the basic levels of Google+, likely learning from the missteps that competitor Facebook has made along the way.

So when Google launched a new photo-tagging feature, Find My Face, on its social network Thursday, it was a pleasant but not entirely unexpected surprise to find that Google has made the feature an opt-in.

Functionally, Find My Face is nearly identical to Facebook’s facial-recognition “Tag Suggestions” program that automatically scans pictures posted to the network and offers suggestions about who may be in the photo.

Comment Re:ROFL (Score 1) 356

by asto21 (#38121088) Attached to: Pakistan Bans 1600 Words and Phrases For Texting
No, it's not. People often confuse India as some sort of homogenous territory as far as culture is concerned. Traditions can vary greatly between different areas of the country. Personally, I have yet to meet someone here who is offended by my feet. o_0

Comment Re:ROFL (Score 1) 356

by asto21 (#38121072) Attached to: Pakistan Bans 1600 Words and Phrases For Texting
Not really. Regardless of how stupid they are, Pakistanis don't really want to die. India could wipe out Pakistan in a nuclear war significantly faster than they can take us out. What is worrying though is that China is giving them a hand with their military arsenal. Without their help, I wouldn't be surprised if Pakistan blows itself up with its weapons. It is what they're usually good at, no? :-D But all speculation apart, I really hope it doesn't come down to a nuclear (or any) war.
Microsoft

Submission + - Barnes and Noble wants DOJ probe into Microsoft pa (cnet.com)

Submitted by asto21
asto21 writes: Barnes & Noble is asking the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate Microsoft's patent-licensing tactics, accusing the software giant of trying to thwart competition with flimsy infringement claims.

"Microsoft is attempting to raise its rivals' costs in order to drive out competition and deter innovation in mobile devices," Barnes & Noble lawyer Peter T. Barbur wrote in an October 17 letter to Gene I. Kimmelman, the chief counsel for competition policy in the Justice Department's antitrust division. "Microsoft's conduct poses serious antitrust concerns and warrants further exploration by the Department of Justice."
Education

Submission + - What's the Best Programming Language for Kids?

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Peter Wayner writes in the NY Times that new and more sophisticated tools are changing the way that the next generation learns to program computers as children can now create elaborate scenes and games without the cryptic commands that were once the only way to tell computers what to do. Mitchel Resnick, a professor of learning research at M.I.T.’s Media Lab who helps run the Scratch project, says that Scratch is effective with children because it fosters collaboration with about 2,000 new Scratch projects created every day, many based on the work of other students. “A third of the projects, more than 600,000, are what we call remixes. The kids are building on someone else’s work.” A similar tool from Carnegie Mellon called Alice gives children command over three-dimensional characters like the ones found in video games focusing children’s attention by giving them tiles with instructions that advance the plot of a story. With tiles like “jump” or “turn,” a student can tell a skater what to do. “We shouldn’t think of programming narrowly as a tool for a professional activity but as a means of expression,” says Resnick. “Our goal is not just for kids to grow up and get jobs as programmers. We feel that everyone should be able to express themselves with online media.”"
Ubuntu

Submission + - Gifting my cousin an Oneiric Ocelot for his birthd (arunbalan.in)

Submitted by asto21
asto21 writes: Anyway, to cut a now lengthening story short, we (my brother and I) decided to gift him Linux. That’s right, we took all the risk of trying out Linux for him.

A few days before we were to go to his house, we went over to Binary World and purchased a 500GB Western Digital Passport hard drive. I then cleared 50GB of space on it aside the NTFS partition occupying the remainder of the disk using GParted and installed Ubuntu 11.10 onto it. Why Ubuntu? – because it’s easy on n00bs and looks so pretty! Anyway, now all he would have to do is setup his BIOS so that it would boot into his portable hard drive whenever it’s plugged in to his laptop and he could use it for whatever he wanted. Neat!
Censorship

Submission + - Theologian attempts censorship after losing public (wordpress.com) 3

Submitted by RockDoctor
RockDoctor writes: Theologian John Haught publicly debated prominent evolutionary scientist and atheist Jerry Coyne at the University of Kentucky back in October. Before the debate, both parties agreed to the debate being video-taped. Coyne is of the opinion that he convincingly won the debate over Haught. But we'll never know, because Haught, with the assistance of staff at University of Kentucky who sponsored the debate, is banning publication of the video of the event. They are even refusing to release the half of the debate containing Coyne's comments and questions, which is his intellectual property. And that latter is theft, plain and simple, in addition to Haught's cowardice.
Google

Submission + - Is Google Plus deliberately crippling Opera? (arunbalan.in) 2

Submitted by asto21
asto21 writes: I then wondered how it could be that a page that worked well on Firefox didn’t work the same on Opera. They both comply with the same standards don’t they? So just to make sure that there was nothing fishy going on, I got Opera to identify itself as Firefox.

And hey Presto! Opera’s got the notification/share button just like Firefox does.

What this usually means is that the server is checking the “user agent” header to serve a slightly different page to different browsers but why would they do that? As a long time fan of Google’s “do no evil” ways, I’m sure there’s a more plausible explanation than they-did-this-on-purpose-to-boost-chrome-market-share. Can anyone give me that explanation?
Spam

Submission + - Beating SMS spam with intelligent pricing rather t (arunbalan.in)

Submitted by asto21
asto21 writes: So the situation as it stands now in India – in order to reduce spam, normal consumers are allowed to send only 100 SMSes per day but certain businesses are allowed to send as many as they want! How ridiculous!

How about we start pricing SMSes incrementally? Each SMS will have a price xn where n is the nth SMS of the day, and x is a modifier of TRAI’s choosing. For example, if the modifier is 1, the first SMS of the day will cost Rs 1, the second Rs 2 and the third Rs 3 and so on. The total cost for the 3 messages will be 6.

A modifier of 1 is of course a pricey proposition, but we could use a smaller modifier. My suggestion is 0.0001. 100 SMSes a day will cost Rs 0.5 approx. 200 SMSes will cost Rs 2 approx. Sending 1,00,000 SMSes though, like you would expect a marketer to do, will cost Rs 5,00,000 approx.

Submission + - Beating SMS spam with intelligent pricing rather t (arunbalan.in) 3

Submitted by asto21
asto21 writes: So the situation as it stands now – in order to reduce spam, normal consumers are allowed to send only 100 SMSes per day but certain businesses are allowed to send as many as they want!

How about we start pricing SMSes incrementally? Each SMS will have a price xn where n is the nth SMS of the day, and x is a modifier of TRAI's choosing. For example, if the modifier is 1, the first SMS of the day will cost Rs 1, the second Rs 2 and the third Rs 3 and so on. The total cost for the 3 messages will be 6.

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