baboonlogic - Slashdot User

Comment Very Interesting Privacy Policy (Score 5, Interesting) 649

by baboonlogic on Monday July 28, 2008 @07:01AM (#24366255) Attached to: New Search Engine Cuil Takes Aim At Google

Privacy is a hot topic these days, and we want you to feel totally comfortable using our service, so our privacy policy is very simple: when you search with Cuil, we do not collect any personally identifiable information, period. We have no idea who sends queries: not by name, not by IP address, and not by cookies (more on this later). Your search history is your business, not ours.

Way to go!

Submission + - Linux still doesn't make it on the desktop (computerworlduk.com)

Submitted by

Anonymous Coward

on Monday October 01, 2007 @12:44PM

Anonymous Coward writes: "Back in the mid 1990s, my research focused on desktop operating systems. There was a plethora of options for IT organisations, with Mac OS, Windows in the guise of NT and 95 and OS/2 Warp all vying for the attention of IT managers. Even Unix workstation vendors had thoughts of moving beyond scientific and engineering applications to mainstream knowledge worker desktops. http://www.computerworlduk.com/management/it-business/services-sourcing/opinion/index.cfm?articleid=805"

Submission + - Scholastic invokes DMCA for reporting Potter leak

Submitted by ISurfTooMuch on Thursday July 19, 2007 @01:05PM

ISurfTooMuch writes: Looks like DMCA abuse has just been taken to a new extreme. TechCrunch is reporting that it has received a takedown notice for simply reporting that the latest Harry Potter book is available on Bittorrent. The post also says that USA Today is reporting that Scholastic is contacting any sites that have written stories on the leaked copy, demanding that the information be taken down. Note that these sites aren't hosting copies of the book; they're being sent notices simply for reporting that it is available. What's next, sites receiving takedown notices for discussing the fact that piracy is occurring on the Internet?

Submission + - Graduate with bad grades or repeat an year? 16

Submitted by on Friday June 22, 2007 @07:05PM

An anonymous reader writes: I'm a CS Student within one year of graduation.
Because of financial reasons I've been working on a full time basis for the past 2 years + worked on an open source project.
This has brought me from B+ & A in my first two years of college to somewhere in the mists of C and lower.
I now have enough money to sustain myself for two years of schooling.
I've got two choices:

a) repeat one year, repair all my bad grades and graduate with better grades but with a mark that I repeated one school year

b) graduate with lower grades but with no repeated year.

I'd like to know the opinion of recruiters out there: if you had two candidates which ranked similarly during the interviews but one is of type a) the other of type b), which would you favour?

Submission + - Keylogger Hardware Embedded in New Dell Laptop (virus.org.ua)

Submitted by

kendbluze

on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @02:39AM

kendbluze writes: "Here's an EE who was doing a simple repair to a nearly-new Dell 600m laptop when he noticed something a bit curious. Turns out he found a hardware keylogger sitting between the keyboard and ethernet controllers! See what Homeland Security didn't have to say about it."

Submission + - Livejournal Bans 500+ Journals for "Pedophliia

Submitted by

illuminatedwax

on Wednesday May 30, 2007 @08:40AM

illuminatedwax writes: "When online watchdog group Warriors For Innocence began reporting journals and communities whose content involved pedophilia or incest to LiveJournal, they responded that the communities were not breaking any actual Terms of Service and therefore couldn't be deleted. The watchdog group then sent LiveJournal an open letter. LiveJournal then deleted over 500 communities whose listed interests could be related to pedophilia (such as "incest"). Some of the deleted groups include accounts for role-playing characters that were entirely fictional, fandom communities for fictional pedophilia (e.g. Harry Potter slash), support groups for survivors of incest or child abuse, and even a Spanish journal devoted to the discussion of the Russian novel Lolita by Nabokov. There were also a handful of what legitimately appeared to be predatory journals shut down as well. LiveJournal users have responded by warning fellow users, writing the Warriors of Innocence (reply), and moving to other journal hosting sites such as GreatestJournal. The Warriors of Innocence are maintaining that they did not intend for most of these journals to be deleted, and LiveJournal is already replying to some users. What should LiveJournal's responsibility be in keeping their site free from predators?"

Submission + - Bush administration proposes retroactive immunity

Submitted by quanticle on Friday May 04, 2007 @10:24PM

quanticle writes: The government has proposed giving retroactive immunity to telephone companies for giving personal data to the government, even if such requests are later found to be illegal.

Submission + - Matt Boyd Deemed a Terrorist Threat

Submitted by CaptainCarrot on Friday May 04, 2007 @09:43PM

CaptainCarrot writes: Writer/IT contractor Matt Boyd, formerly the man who made up the words for webcomic Mac Hall and who now does the same for his and Ian McConville's new comic Three Panel Soul, was recently fired from his government job. His conversation with a co-worker about a gun he intended to buy for target shooting was overheard by someone in a nearby cubicle. As it was unfortunately the day of the Virginia Tech shootings, the eavesdropper panicked and reported him to management.

That was bad enough. But when he used the comic to document the meeting where the reason for his firing was explained, he was visited by representatives of local law enforcement investigating him on suspicion of making a "terroristic threat" using the Internet. No charges have been filed. Yet.

Matt's interview at FLEEN about the incident is online.

Submission + - Harvard Law Prof Urges University to Fight RIAA

Submitted by

NewYorkCountryLawyer

on Thursday May 03, 2007 @09:04PM

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "Distinguished Harvard University Law School Professor Charles Nesson has called upon Harvard University to fight back against the RIAA and stand up for its students: "Students and faculty use the Internet to gather and share knowledge now more than ever....Yet "new deterrence and education initiatives" from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) threaten access to this vibrant resource. The RIAA has already requested that universities serve as conduits for more than 1,200 "pre-litigation letters." Seeking to outsource its enforcement costs, the RIAA asks universities to point fingers at their students, to filter their Internet access, and to pass along notices of claimed copyright infringement. But these responses distort the University's educational mission....... One can easily understand why the RIAA wants help from universities in facilitating its enforcement actions against students who download copyrighted music without paying for it. It is easier to litigate against change than to change with it. If the RIAA saw a better way to protect its existing business, it would not be threatening our students, forcing our librarians and administrators to be copyright police, and flooding our courts with lawsuits against relatively defenseless families without lawyers or ready means to pay. We can even understand the attraction of using lawsuits to shore up an aging business model rather than engaging with disruptive technologies and the risks that new business models entail...... But mere understanding is no reason for a university to voluntarily assist the RIAA with its threatening and abusive tactics. Instead, we should be assisting our students both by explaining the law and by resisting the subpoenas that the RIAA serves upon us. We should be deploying our clinical legal student training programs to defend our targeted students......""

Submission + - Wikipedia Bans HD-DVD Encryption Key

Submitted by on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @11:46PM

An anonymous reader writes: Much like Digg, Wikipedia is deleting edits to pages that include the key. They've even locked down the HD-DVD so that users can't edit it. How many more web sites will be brainwashed into believing that a number can be copyrighted?

Submission + - Indian project shows solar power affordable - U.N

Submitted by sas-dot on Sunday April 29, 2007 @10:07PM

sas-dot writes: A solar power project in India supplying electricity to 100,000 people will be widened to other developing nations after showing that clean energy can be cheaper than fossil fuels, a U.N. report said on Sunday. BBC News says that the $1.5m project, led by the UN Environment Programme (Unep), supports Indian bankers who offer finance to people who want to purchase a unit. The sunlight-powered systems are used to light homes and shops instead of expensive and polluting kerosene lamps. Officials hope to expand the scheme to Tunisia, China, Ghana and Indonesia. Before the UN project was set up, purchases were predominately cash only — making the devices too expensive for most people. The Indian Loan Programme helps its bank partners offer lower interest rates, longer payback periods and smaller deposits. "This project removes one of the main barriers to the shift to solar power — lack of financing," said Jyoti Painuly, a UN senior energy planner. "Asking customers... to pay cash for solar systems meant asking them to pay upfront an amount equal to 20 years of electricity bills." In terms of greenhouse gas emissions, the UN says a single wick lamp each year burns about 80 litres of kerosene, which produces more than 250kg of carbon dioxide. An estimated 100 million families in India use kerosene lamps.

Submission + - Woman Denied Teaching Degree Over MySpace Photo

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 29, 2007 @12:19AM

An anonymous reader writes: A woman was denied a teaching degree by Pennsylvania based Millersville University at the last minute, due to a "Drunken Pirate" photo of her on her own MySpace page. According to the story, even though Ms. Snyder received "competent" or "superior" ratings in her final student-teacher evaluation, she was ultimately denied the teaching degree. Conestoga Valley High School threatened to no longer accept student-teachers from Millersville University if Ms. Snyder went unpunished for her "Drunken Pirate" photo.

Submission + - Google censors user-generated content in Brazil

Submitted by

airshowfan

on Wednesday March 14, 2007 @01:27AM

airshowfan writes: "Imagine that every time you wrote something on Blogger that the Chinese government disagreed with, China's courts could fine Google China and Google had to delete your post and give your IP address to the Chinese police. This is basically how Google runs Orkut, a social-networking site it owns, and by far the most widely-used social-networking site in Brazil, with over twice as many users as Facebook. Not only does Google get rid of any user-generated content on Orkut that Brazil's courts dislike, they have given the Brazilian police admin access, including the ability to censor content and to find your IP address. And this is despite the fact that all of Orkut's data is hosted in the US!"

Submission + - What Constitutes OpenID 'support'?

Submitted by

new-black-hand

on Tuesday March 13, 2007 @12:55PM

new-black-hand writes: "Recently some companies, including the likes of AOL and Microsoft, amongst others, have come out with support for OpenID. Supporters of OpenID were all happy to hear about these announcements, and generally these companies were praised for their adoption of the open identity format. It turns out though, that most of these recent announcements and updates have been about applications becoming providers of OpenID identities, rather than consumers of OpenID. There haven't been any significant updates recently to the list of applications that support OpenID. This story talks about how we are now stuck with millions of OpenID accounts that have nowhere new to go, and attempts to outline the criteria for what an application that supports OpenID should look like."

Submission + - Microsoft attacks Google on Copyright

Submitted by on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @04:43AM

An anonymous reader writes: The Financial Times reports that Microsoft is attacking Google on copyright. It appears that in an attempt to differentiate itself from Google, Microsoft is portraying itself as more sympathetic to copyright holders. Microsoft stated that Google's decision to take copies of books unless publishers tell it not to "systematically violates copyright, deprives authors and publishers of an important avenue for monetising their works and, in doing so, undermines incentives to create".

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