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Submission + - When a Company Gets Sold, Your Data May Be Sold, Too (nytimes.com)

An anonymous reader writes: A new report points out that many of the top internet sites have language in their privacy policies saying that your private data might be transferred in the event of an acquisition, bankruptcy sale, or other transaction. They effectively say, "We won't ever sell your information, unless things go bad for us." 85 of the top 100 websites in the U.S. (ranked by Alexa), had this sort of language, including Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Hulu, and LinkedIn. (RadioShack did this recently.) "The potential ramifications of the fire sale provisions became clear two years ago when True.com, a dating site based in Plano, Tex., that was going through a bankruptcy proceeding, tried to sell its customer database on 43 million members to a dating site based in Canada. The profiles included consumers’ names, birth dates, sexual orientation, race, religion, criminal convictions, photos, videos, contact information and more. Because the site’s privacy policy had promised never to sell or share members’ personal details without their permission, Texas was able to intervene to stop the sale of customer data, including intimate details on about two million Texans." But with this new language, users no longer enjoy that sort of protection. Only 17 of the top 100 sites even say they will notify customers of the data transfer. Only a handful allow users to opt out.

Submission + - Study Suggests That HUD Tech May Actually Reduce Driving Safety (gizmag.com)

Zothecula writes: Cruising at speed down the highway with a heads-up display (HUD) constantly feeding data into your line of sight can make anyone feel like a jet pilot on the road; totally in control of your vehicle and primed to avert any potential danger that comes your way. However, recent studies by the University of Toronto show that the HUD multi-tasking method of vehicle piloting may well not provide the extra margin of safety that we think it does. In fact, according to the researchers, it could be downright dangerous.

Submission + - Has Microsoft made a mistake with the new default Windows 10 wallpaper? (windows10update.com) 1

Ammalgam writes: A few days ago, software giant Microsoft shared a video of their new Windows 10 default wallpaper. The Windows 10 “hero” image as it’s called “blasts lasers, pumping smoke machines, colored filters and falling crystal dust,” Microsoft says. According to a video (over) explaining the new design, a huge team of people built a Windows logo “out of light”. On Windows10Update.com, Onuora Amobi offers 5 reasons why this was probably the wrong image for Microsoft to use. What do you think of the image?

Comment Re: This will do WONDERS for Yahoo's image! (Score 4, Interesting) 328

If all anti-virus softwares started to list any installer with an "Opt-Out" procedure as "Potentially Unwanted Program Installer" it would put an end to the habit of pushing shit down the throat of users.

The problem is not so much people competent with tech as people that don't know left from right on computers and just clicks "Ok". They suffer from all that crap like a new browser installed as well as changed homepages and search providers and then they scream that they don't understand their computer.

Comment Re:Russia's longer hours... (Score 2) 381

Number of hours working and effective work are two different things. It's what you achieve that matters.

What baffles me is that there's a salary threshold for overtime at all. Only thing that matters shall be hours exceeding normal hours.

In some cases there may be two levels of overtime pay as well - like where I live where overtime is 1.5 or 2.0 times the hour pay for overtime hours. No ceiling on salary for overtime pay, but there's some union agreements on total number of overtime hours that may be worked.

Submission + - How to keep cloud data encrypted without cross-platform pain? 2

bromoseltzer writes: I use cloud storage to hold many gigs of personal files that I'd just as soon were not targets for casual data mining. (Google: I'm thinking of you.) I want to access them from Linux, Windows, and Android devices. I have been using encfs, which does the job for Linux fairly well (despite some well known issues), but Windows and Android don't seem to have working clients. I really want to map a file system of encrypted files and encrypted names to a local unencrypted filesystem — the way encfs works. What solutions do Slashdot readers recommend?

Ideal would be a competitive cloud storage service like Dropbox or Google Drive that provides trustworthy encryption with suitable clients. Is there anything like that?

Submission + - Australia passes site-blocking legislation (smh.com.au)

ausrob writes: Cementing their position as Australia's most backwards and dangerous government in recent memory comes this nasty bit of legislation, riddled with holes (which is nothing new for this decrepit Government): "The legislation allows rights holders to go to a Federal Court judge to get overseas websites, or "online locations", blocked that have the "primary purpose" of facilitating copyright infringement. If a rights holder is successful in their blocking request, Australian internet providers, such as Telstra and Optus, will need to comply with a judge's order by disabling access to the infringing location."

Comment Re:MS profits from a wide adoption (Score 1) 277

I see that this is essentially going back to what they did with MS-DOS. It was essentially overlooked that people upgraded DOS to latest version on their old machines because it at least did mean that they were tied into the Microsoft environment and would therefore purchase other M$ products.

Just tie the users to your platform, then you have them in your hand.

Comment Re:I support PBS (Score 1) 8

I don't see a problem with supporting both.

In an election you have to go for the one you dislike the least overall, not the one you love for one particular question. But in the US elections money and belonging to one of the two big parties is more important than representing the voters.

At least until the voters realizes that it actually matters if they vote on someone else.

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