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Privacy

Submission + - The Privacy Illusion

Submitted by LoLobey
LoLobey writes: Scott Adams has an entertaining entry on his Dilbert Blog about perceptions of privacy-
“It has come to my attention that many of my readers in the United States believe they have the right to privacy because of something in the Constitution. That is an unsupportable view. A more accurate view is that the government divides the details of your life into two categories:
1. Stuff they don't care about.
2. Stuff they can find out if they have a reason.
”
Written in response to some reader comments on another entry about privacy guardians and how swell life would be if we voluntarily gave up certain personal info.
Do slashdotters need privacy given that they don’t have it now?
Books

Submission + - In Soviet Russia, e-Books Read You!

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: 'Perhaps nothing will have as large an impact on advanced analytics in the coming year as the ongoing explosion of new and powerful data sources,' writes Bill Franks in Taming The Big Data Tidal Wave . And one of the hottest new sources of Big Data, reports the WSJ's Alexandra Alter in Your E-Book Is Reading You, is the estimated 40 million e-readers and 65 million tablets in use in the U.S. that are ripe for the picking by data scientists working for Amazon, Apple, Google, and Barnes & Noble. Some privacy watchdogs argue that e-book users should be protected from having their digital reading habits recorded. 'There's a societal ideal that what you read is nobody else's business,' says the EFF's Cindy Cohn.

Comment Re:The BBC isn't state sponsored media? I must be (Score 1) 250

by pipy (#40458673) Attached to: State Media Rushing Into Coverage Void Left By Dying Newspapers

I have no idea if they behave similarly with respect to the government that has power over them.

Yes, they do behave similarly. I prefer not to watch what RT is reporting about Russia and, respectively, what Al Jazeera is reporting about Quatar's interest spots, such as Syria and Libya.

Submission + - Wikileaks' Assange seeks asylum in Ecuador Embassy (usatoday.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who is battling extradition to Sweden to face sexual misconduct charges,
is seeking asylum at the Ecuador Embassy in London.

Update at 3:07 p.m. ET: Ecuador's foreign minister, Ricardo Patino,
confirms that Assange has taken refuge in the South American nation's embassy in London and is seeking political asylum,
the Associated Press reports from Quito. He says Ecuador is weighing the request.
Businesses

Submission + - The True Reason Of Unemployment (thinktankmag.com)

Submitted by
jmmorton123
jmmorton123 writes: "Slow improvements of the economy have allowed businesses to get back on its feet, even opening its doors for prospective applicants. Despite this progression, the unemployment rate is at a constant high. It is no longer true companies are not hiring. They are simply being selective of the people they hire.

The criteria companies subject applicants to will always be their prerogative but a trend is emerging. Companies specify the experience they require on job descriptions, effectively eliminating most fresh graduates who have minimal to non-existent skill sets.

Companies are more likely to hire an experienced applicant compared to taking a chance on fresh graduates. They would rather keep a position free rather than hire and train an employee to get them up to speed. Another trend resulting from the recent economic turmoil is padding on job descriptions, essentially getting multiple employees for the price of one."
Music

Submission + - Letter to Emily White at NPR All Songs Considered (wordpress.com)

Submitted by Slashfart
Slashfart writes: Recently Emily White, an intern at NPR All Songs Considered and GM of what appears to be her college radio station, wrote a post on the NPR blog in which she acknowledged that while she had 11,000 songs in her music library, she’s only paid for 15 CDs in her life. Cracker founder David Lowery presents a fascinating countervailing viewpoint.
Android

Submission + - Google's Nexus tablet to be unveiled next week (bgr.com)

Submitted by zacharye
zacharye writes: Google chairman Eric Schmidt revealed in December that the company was working on its first own-brand tablet, and the “Nexus 7” slate will finally be unveiled next week during the Google I/O developer conference, according to multiple reports. The last reaffirmation comes from DigiTimes, which has reported a number of details surrounding Google’s upcoming tablet that will seemingly prove accurate...
Graphics

Submission + - NVIDIA Public Relations has provided a response to Linus Torvald's inflammatory (nvnews.net)

Submitted by pipy
pipy writes: Nvidia has stated that:
"Supporting Linux is important to NVIDIA, and we understand that there are people who are as passionate about Linux as an open source platform as we are passionate about delivering an awesome GPU experience."

Hovever, Linus had made it very clear that he was referring to the tegra/tegra2 chips. The reason why you don't see a lot of Android devices based on these chips is that quality of driver updates from Nvidia is really bad. A lot of Andriod phones are stuck at 2.2/2.3 because the old drivers won't run on the new kernel. Nvidia isn't really interested in releasing updated drivers for these old chips. If you want ICS drivers, get tegra3. If you want to run GNU/Linux on ARM, don't buy Nvidia-based devises.
Bitcoin

Submission + - Are Bitcoins Becoming Europe's New Safe Haven Currency? (dailyfinance.com)

Submitted by kommakazi
kommakazi writes: It's not so surprising that a growing number of Europeans whose countries are in dire fiscal straits are moving their money from banks to Bitcoins. The eurozone is in end-of-times pandemonium over its debt crises; Greece is starring in its own economic tragicomedy; and Spain is scrambling for a major bailout. And just last week, the euro overtook the British pound as the second-most common currency that bitcoins are traded against (after the U.S. dollar, which has 72% of the market thanks to its large community of early adopters)."

While I find it hard to believe Bitcoin would become a truly widespread safe haven throughout Europe, it remains interesting people are considering Bitcoin as opposed to more traditional havens such as gold or silver.
Security

Submission + - ClamAV team leaves the project (markmail.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Ten years after the first release (and five years after the acquisition by Sourcefire) the ClamAV team has left the project and the company.
Is this the end of the only open source anti virus?

Comment Re:Yes, this is what we need (Score 1) 170

by pipy (#39613933) Attached to: Will Kickstarter Launch a Gaming Renaissance?

Oil running out, rampant corruption and government abuse in so-called "first world" countries, corporations buying the best laws they can, lobbyists, but what we really need is a *game* renaissance. No wonder the powers that be are not afraid, you're a bunch of children.

Don't forget, that before the *game* renaissance, we've seen a *documentary* renaissance on Kickstarter. Hopefully, some of the people who got attracted to games on Kickstarter, will allso donate money to serious documentary movies about what's really going on in the world.

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