halligas - Slashdot User

Submission + - Who owns your files on Google Drive? (cnet.com) 1

Submitted by suraj.sun on Wednesday April 25, 2012 @10:01AM

suraj.sun writes: Within hours of Google launching its new online storage service, the terms and service have come under heavy fire by the wider community for being able to potentially stifle innovation and harm the users' Google seeks to serve. While Dropbox and Microsoft's SkyDrive allow you to retain your copyright and IP rights to the work you upload to the service, but Google Drive takes everything you own. A quick analysis of Google's terms of service shows how the search company owns the files you upload the minute they are submitted, and can in effect do anything it wants to your files — and that's final. But there is a small catch. Here's what the Google Drive terms say:

"Your Content in our Services: When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide licence to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes that we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content.

The rights that you grant in this licence are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This licence continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a business listing that you have added to Google Maps)."

The last sentence makes all the difference. While these rights are limited to essentially making Google Drive better and to develop new services run by Google, the scope is not defined and could extend far further than one would expect. Simply put: there's no definitive boundary that keeps Google from using what it likes from what you upload to its service.

Comment Damn you automatic name resolution! (Score 1) 333

by halligas on Tuesday April 24, 2012 @12:34PM (#39783423) Attached to: Company Accidentally Fires Entire Staff Via Email

The perils of hiring (and needing to fire) a guy named Joe Allusers.

Submission + - Microsoft shows off universal translator (extremetech.com)

Submitted by

MrSeb

on Monday March 12, 2012 @09:54AM

MrSeb writes: "Microsoft Research has shown off software that translates your spoken words into another language while preserving the accent, timbre, and intonation of your actual voice. In a demo of the prototype software, Rick Rashid, Microsoft’s chief research officer, said a long sentence in English, and then had it translated into Spanish, Italian, and Mandarin. You can definitely hear an edge of digitized “Microsoft Sam,” but overall it’s remarkable how the three translations still sound just like Rashid. The translation requires an hour of training, but after that there's no reason why it couldn't be run in real time on a smartphone, or near-real-time with a cloud backend. Imagine this tech in a two-way setup. You speak into your smartphone, and it comes out in their language. Then, the person you’re talking to speaks into your smartphone and their voice comes out in your language."

Journal Journal: Science vs. superstition in Louisiana, again 2

Journal by Daniel Dvorkin on Tuesday March 06, 2012 @05:06PM

You have to read carefully to understand what's really being debated here. Short version: in 2008, Louisiana passed a law which more or less mandated the teaching of creationism, Luddism, and denialism, and now they're trying to repeal it. I don't know enough about the current state of LA politics to know if the repeal effort has a prayer (hah!) of succeeding, but I wish the best of luck to Sen. Peterson, Mr. Ko

Submission + - iPad share of tablet OS market falls below 50% (itworld.com)

Submitted by bdking on Tuesday March 06, 2012 @04:43PM

bdking writes: New data from mobile ad company Jumptap show Apple's iPad generating less than 50% of tablet Internet traffic for the first time. In January the iPad accounted for 48% of tablet traffic, according to Jumptap, down from 52% in December, 65% in November and 75% in October. What happened? Kindle Fire happened.

Submission + - Bacteria-Killing Viruses Wield an Iron Spike (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit on Tuesday February 28, 2012 @06:17PM

sciencehabit writes: Scientists have long known that a group of viruses called bacteriophages have a knack for infiltrating bacteria and that some begin their attack with a protein spike. But the tip of this spike is so small that no one knew what it was made of or exactly how it worked. Now a team of researchers has found a single iron atom at the head of the spike, a discovery that suggests phages enter bacteria in a different way than surmised.

Submission + - How Does LinkedIn Know Who You Know? (itworld.com) 1

Submitted by

jfruh

on Tuesday February 28, 2012 @06:06PM

jfruh writes: "Privacy blogger Dan Tynan rented his vacation home to a woman he met through the Vacation Rental By Owner website. They conducted their business entirely via Gmail and PayPal, have no friends in common, and never met in person. Now LinkedIn is suggesting her as someone Dan knows. How did the site figure it out? Since he never imported any Gmail data into his LinkedIn account, he assumes the trick involves third-party tracking, which would violate LinkedIn's own privacy policies. LinkedIn refuses to reveal its secrets in this case."

Submission + - We Are at Another Inflection Point, Says Microsoft (net-security.org)

Submitted by Orome1 on Tuesday February 28, 2012 @05:50PM

Orome1 writes: At the RSA Conference 2012, Scott Charney, corporate VP of Microsoft Trustworthy Computing, shared his vision for the road ahead as society and computing intersect in an increasingly interconnected world. Charney encouraged industry and governments to develop more effective privacy principles focused on use and accountability, improve end-to-end reliability of cloud services through increased fault modeling and standards efforts, and adopt more holistic security strategies including improved hygiene and greater attention to detection and containment. “We are at another inflection point, with expectations for better security, privacy and reliability growing at an exponential rate,” Charney said. “Now is the time for industry and governments to develop and adopt strategies and policies that balance business and societal needs with individuals’ choices.”

Submission + - Researcher to demo smartphone attack against Webkit at RSA (cnet.com)

Submitted by halligas on Tuesday February 28, 2012 @05:44PM

halligas writes: Hole in Webkit software used in browsers affects mobile and desktops but is more easily exploited on smartphones where security is limited, researcher says.

Most Smartphones use a Webkit based browser with the notable exception of Windows Phone. Patching for this vulnerability will require (in most cases) an update from your OEM or carrier (ie: don't hold your breath).

Submission + - Murdered Neolithic "Iceman" Had Brown Eyes, Type O Blood

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 28, 2012 @05:35PM

An anonymous reader writes: Scientists have published the full DNA sequence of “the world’s most famous frozen corpse” of Ötzi the “Iceman,” who experts believe was killed nearly 5,300 years ago, on Tuesday.

Ötzi had been discovered by Hikers in the Alps near the Italian–Austrian border 21 years ago in 1991, and has become one of the most studied cadavers in science as well as possibly the world’s oldest documented murder case.

Comment grandiose luster? (Score 1) 241

by halligas on Friday February 17, 2012 @02:20PM (#39077003) Attached to: A Look At Microsoft's 'Mini Internet' For Testing IE

Is the editorializing in the lead sentence of the article really necessary? If you have an opinion to share; state the fact and save the editorial for a concluding sentence.

As it is written, my reflex is to discount the entire post as biased crap.

Comment Title says "Less", Article says "Comparable" (Score 1) 225

by halligas on Wednesday June 29, 2011 @03:13PM (#36614294) Attached to: Can Ubuntu Linux Consume Less Power Than Windows?

"On a range of different systems, the power consumption of the Linux OS was comparable to that of Windows except for a few select workloads and systems." That sentence says power consumption was relatively the same, except when Windows consumed less. A little bias by the headline writer?

Pakistan Used Google Earth For Military Targeting 111

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday July 30, 2009 @12:14PM from the bejewel-funded dept.

NeoBeans writes "According to this article in the New York Times about the recent 'improvements' in military strikes by the Pakistani military it is revealed that they have dropped Google Earth as part of their target planning for a more precise technology. From the article, '... the air force has shifted from using Google Earth to more sophisticated images from spy planes and other surveillance aircraft, and has increased its use of laser-guided bombs. And no, you can't really find Osama Bin Laden using Google Maps either."

Submission + - HS Student Isolates Polystyrene-eating Microbe (wired.com)

Submitted by

cmholm

on Thursday July 30, 2009 @11:18AM

cmholm writes: "Although I had for years assumed that plastics eventually biodegrade, my recent reading of Weisman's The World Without Us reminded me that just because garbage has broken down into pieces that I can't see doesn't mean it isn't still polluting the biosphere. Weisman's book suggests that we're pretty much stuck with most plastics until something evolves to eat them. Perhaps we just need to introduce the diner to the dinner. A Waterloo, Ontario teen's 2008 science fair experiment found polystyrene's match in the team of the relatively uncommon Sphingomonas and Pseudomonas bacterias. At 37 degrees and optimal bacterial concentration, with a bit of sodium acetate thrown in, Burd achieved 43 per cent degradation within six weeks, rather than thousands of years."

Comment Re:Put your personal agenda on the shelf (Score 1) 149

by halligas on Monday July 27, 2009 @05:24PM (#28843901) Attached to: How To Help With a University ICT Strategy?

Granted it would be a mistake to elevate this above the task of actually getting the job done, but I see no shame in promoting OSS as a matter of policy provided there are no overriding practical considerations.

My point exactly. Anyone making recommendations with any sort of bias blinders on, whether is be (corruption) getting paid off by a corporate entity or personal agenda (being an OSS zealot), is inherently not to be trusted. Getting the job done is the key. In the best way, for the least money, and serving the public good. The OP suggested that he wanted to convince the powers that be that OSS was the way. The absense of any other reasoning suggests that he may have a personal agenda that is clouding his judgement. It is not and should not be OSS vs. Commercial software. It should be solution A vs solution B. With all the aspects of those solutions taken into consideration. If solution B is OSS, perhaps it gets a +1. But OSS is merely one of the factors, not all of them.

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