17155128
submission
azoblue writes:
The three major broadcast networks, uneasy about viewers bypassing cable and satellite providers — and the networks' own websites — to watch their TV shows, have begun blocking a new service from Google designed to make it easy to watch programming online. Can't help but wonder about the legality of this move and how fast the situation would change if Google simply returns the favor and blocks all ABC/CBS/NBC results from its search index.
15351958
submission
azoblue writes:
Even when analysts agree that someone could be a match for a piece of DNA evidence, the statistical weight assigned to that match can vary enormously, even by orders of magnitude. For instance, in one man's trial the DNA evidence statistic ranged from 1/95,000 to 1/13, depending on the different weighing methods used by the defense and the prosecution.
15029874
submission
azoblue writes:
Not even revelations of systematic abuse can retard the growth of the Surveillance State or even bring about some modest accountability.
14856918
submission
azoblue writes:
The US Dept of Justice estimates that more than 25,000 people are victims of of GPS stalking, many of these facilitated by GPS-enabled cell phones.
14701840
submission
azoblue writes:
Why is Slashdot almost irrelevant to the social media community? It used to be the biggest driver of traffic to tech web sites, but now it hardly delivers any traffic at all to them.
12126448
submission
azoblue writes:
NASA's Mars Meteorite Research Team reopened a 14-year-old controversy on extraterrestrial life last week, reaffirming and offering support for its widely challenged assertion that a 4-billion-year-old meteorite that landed thousands of years ago on Antarctica shows evidence of microscopic life on Mars.
12071180
submission
azoblue writes:
Hewlett Packard plans on covering the planet with one trillion wireless "smart dust" sensors over the next few years, creating a "central nervous system" for the Earth. The wireless devices would check to see if ecosystems are healthy, detect earthquakes more rapidly, predict traffic patterns and monitor energy use. The idea is that accidents could be prevented and energy could be saved if people knew more about the world in real time.
11405084
submission
azoblue writes:
Alma Whitten, Privacy Engineering Lead at Google, responds to claims that the company is eroding online privacy. Do you accept her arguments at face value or regard them as corporate propaganda?
10091860
submission
azoblue writes:
Using a mathematical concept called sparsity, the compressed-sensing algorithm takes lo-res files and transforms them into sharp images. Compressed sensing works something like this: You’ve got a picture — of a kidney, of the president, doesn’t matter. The picture is made of 1 million pixels. In traditional imaging, that’s a million measurements you have to make. In compressed sensing, you measure only a small fraction — say, 100,000 pixels randomly selected from various parts of the image. From that starting point there is a gigantic, effectively infinite number of ways the remaining 900,000 pixels could be filled in.
9906798
submission
azoblue writes:
In a study published in Science, researchers examined customer location data culled from cellular service providers. By looking at how customers moved around, the authors of the study found that it may be possible to predict human movement patterns and location up to 93 percent of the time.
9278240
submission
azoblue writes:
The world's largest Internet search company and the world's most powerful electronic surveillance organization are teaming up in the name of cybersecurity.
8657364
submission
azoblue writes:
E-mail, IM, Facebook, phones—what if all of these ways to reach you over a network could be condensed into a single, unique number? The ENUM proposal aims to do just that, by giving everyone a single phone number that maps to all of their identifiers. Here's how it works, and why it isn't already widely used.
8648304
submission
azoblue writes:
You probably don't analyze the chatter or quality of your social media connections, but creditors may be doing just that.
8617584
submission
azoblue writes:
Jaron Lanier argues that the mantras of “open culture” and “information wants to be free” have produced a destructive new social contract.
“The basic idea of this contract,” he writes, “is that authors, journalists, musicians and artists are encouraged to treat the fruits of their intellects and imaginations as fragments to be given without pay to the hive mind. Reciprocity takes the form of self-promotion. Culture is to become precisely nothing but advertising.”
8345230
submission
azoblue writes:
Operators of Web site dedicated to those who seek social-media death with dignity say that Facebook is taking a more Hippocratic approach to the idea of killing one's online identities with a few keystrokes. They say the social-networking giant has killed off their access to Facebook.
Called Web 2.0 Suicide Machine, the site's pitch goes like this: "Tired of your Social Network? Liberate your newbie friends with a Web2.0 suicide! This machine lets you delete all your energy-sucking social-networking profiles, kill your fake virtual friends, and completely do away with your Web2.0 alter ego. The machine is just a metaphor for the Website which moddr_ is hosting; the belly of the beast where the web2.0 suicide scripts are maintained. Our service currently runs with Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and LinkedIn! Commit NOW!"
