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Social Networks

Meg Whitman Campaign Shows How Not To Use Twitter 147

Posted by samzenpus
from the type-slower dept.
tsamsoniw writes "California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman's campaign team attempted to share with her Twitter followers an endorsement from a police association. Unfortunately, the campaign press secretary entered an incorrect or incomplete Bit.ly URL in the Tweet, which took clickers to a YouTube video featuring a bespectacled, long-haired Japanese man in a tutu and leggings rocking out on a bass guitar. And for whatever reason, the Tweet, which went out on the 18th, has remained active through today."
Image

Australian Visitors Must Declare Illegal Porn To Customs Officers 361

Posted by samzenpus
from the don't-blunder-down-under dept.
Australian Justice Minister Brendan O'Connor has advised visitors to take a better safe than sorry policy when it comes to their porn stashes, and declare all porn that they think might be illegal with customs officers. From the article: "The government said it changed the wording on passenger arrival cards after becoming aware of confusion among travellers about what pornography to declare. 'People have a right to privacy and while some pornography is legal and does not need to be disclosed, all travellers should be aware that certain types of pornography are illegal and must be declared to customs,' Mr O'Connor said."
Red Hat Software

It’s Not Your Father’s Linux Market An->

Submitted by AlexGr
AlexGr writes "In a recent article by Jeff Gould he talks about the proprietary nature of Linux in the hands of companies like Oracle and Red Hat. What I found most interesting was this:
"A recent Red Hat marketing newsletter (http://partnernews.redhat.com/pop/rh0610/static/25198/html/en_eng.html) sternly instructs Red Hat channel partners that customers who choose not to renew their RHEL subscriptions "must de-install Red Hat Enterprise Linux software from the servers with the expired subscriptions". GPL fans will point out that this injunction is mere table-pounding intimidation that has no legal force, but that's beside the point. As far as Red Hat is concerned, no one is entitled to use RHEL without paying for it, and they're not shy about letting people know where they stand.""

Link to Original Source
Security

Cannot opt-out of unlimited contactless payments

Submitted by |>>?
|>>? writes "On 30 July I contacted the Commonwealth Bank in Australia about a product I'd recently seen advertised on TV, PayPass or Tap 'n Go — a contactless payment system attached to all their Mastercard Credit and Debit Cards.

The idea behind this technology is that you can make a transaction without needing to sign or enter your PIN when making a purchase. You just wave your card in front of a reader and the transaction is complete. There is no physical contact between your card and the reader — in fact you don't even need to take your card out of your wallet.

I learnt the following:

      1. The transaction limit is AUD $100 per transaction.
      2. There is no limit to the number of transactions.
      3. You cannot set a limit.
      4. You cannot opt-out.

I raised several security concerns and was advised that I'd receive a reply to my case. The reply on 6 August did not address any of my concerns and I put them in writing to the bank on 9 August. The second bank reply arrived on 28 September and it did not address my concerns in any substantial way.

I am concerned that I cannot opt-out or limit my exposure to this technology — I didn't ask for it and I don't want it. There is no protection against skimming my card and once it becomes known that there is no limit to the number of transactions, there will be an incentive to physically steal my card for those who may not be so technologically advanced which potentially exposes me to a higher risk of physical violence — since it's like carrying a large amount of cash in your wallet.

I've kept a log of my interaction with the bank. It shows their email responses and my email to them as well as related information as I learn more about this:

        * http://blog.itmaze.com.au/search/label/paypass

What else can I do to get my point across to the bank, since the level of response I'm getting indicates to me that those replying appear to have no idea what I'm talking about."
Businesses

Yahoo Hires Goldman to Handle Takeover Approaches->

Submitted by suraj.sun
suraj.sun writes "Excerpts from Bloomberg: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-14/yahoo-said-to-work-with-goldman-sachs-to-defend-against-possible-takeovers.html

While the company hasn’t received an offer, Yahoo has been working with advisers for about two weeks to help defend against possible takeover approaches, said the people, who asked not to be named because the talks are private. AOL has talked with private-equity funds including Silver Lake about a possible bid, people familiar with the matter said.

Yahoo surged 13 percent in extended trading, headed for the biggest gain since February 2008, when it received an offer from Microsoft.

Excerpts from CNET News: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20019563-93.html

Sources said the key players in the growing soap opera are the execs who run Yahoo-affiliated companies in Japan and China. That would be Masayoshi Son of Yahoo Japan and Jack Ma of the Alibaba Group. Yahoo owns big and lucrative stakes in both companies, assets which make up a big part of the company's current valuation.

The sale of those stakes is what has some investors interested, since--if thorny tax issues can be solved--it would make the purchase of part or all of Yahoo very inexpensive in relative terms."

Link to Original Source
Microsoft

Judge to NetBSD developer: "You are too smart sir!

Submitted by Hymer
Hymer writes "Danish NetBSD and Varnish developer Poul-Henning Kamp (PHK) case against Lenovo on Widows refund has been dismissed because the judge evaluated PHK as being too smart to not understand the EULA.
PHK is however quite happy about it because "the judgenent clearly shows the de facto monopoly on operating systems" he said to Version2's reporter after the judgement. PHK later wrote on his blog that the judgement opens the possibility of a antitrust case against Microsoft in Konkurencestyrelsen (danish government organization for monopoly cases).

PHK's blog
Versions2's coverage of the case"

Comment: Re:Irresponsible headline, summary (Score 4, Insightful) 911

by |>>? (#28261609) Attached to: Computers Key To Air France Crash

A well trained pilot would know when to trust the computers and when not to. They would also know how to maneuver and react in situations. It's like the pilot that landed his plane in the river after losing an engine to birds. I don't think a computer would have taken that option and not only would it have been likely that all the passengers would have been killed, but bystanders as the planes computer attempted to correct and eventually goes down in a populated street.

This comment looks sensible on the face of it, but I have to disagree with you. I have a pilot license and am familiar with the process of flying. I've never flown a fly-by-wire aircraft, but I've automated a radio broadcast desk - which might not look like it's relevant, but it taught me that "knowing when to trust the computer" is not an obvious state, not in a radio station and I seriously doubt in a cockpit.

For me the final "aha moment" came when the computer was attempting to tell me something useful, but because I was concentrating on a completely different aspect of interacting with it, I completely missed the information. In my case it caused a few seconds of dead air on a radio station, nothing life threatening, but not human obvious either.

The challenge is not "when to trust a computer and when not to" - the challenge is "how do you get the information that the computer is using to the human in such a way that they can manage that input stream in a timely fashion. Stick shakers are an example of making use of an extra input channel.

Accidents in planes are rarely just one thing going wrong, they generally are a whole string of things. A computer in the mix just exacerbates the issue.

Nintendo

Nintendo Penalizing Homebrew Users? 95

Posted by Soulskill
from the thanks-so-much dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Bricked your Wii? Not only will Nintendo charge you for the repair, they will now add an additional fee if they detect any homebrew software. 'Should Nintendo have to pay to repair hacked Wiis under warranty? Maybe not, but they have no (moral) right to gouge customers out of spite for having the HBC installed. This actually poses a technical dilemma for us with BootMii. As currently designed, BootMii looks for an SD card when you boot your Wii, and if it finds the card and the right file, it will execute that file. Otherwise, there's no way to tell it's installed.'"
Security

A Vision For a World Free of CAPTCHAs 168

Posted by Soulskill
from the is-that-an-oh-or-a-zero dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Slate argues that we're going about verifying humans on the Web all wrong: 'As Alan Turing laid out in the 1950 paper that postulated his test, the goal is to determine whether a computer can behave like a human, not perform tasks that a human can. The reason CAPTCHAs have a term limit is that they measure ability, not behavior. ... the random, circuitous way that people interact with Web pages — the scrolling and highlighting and typing and retyping — would be very difficult for a bot to mimic. A system that could capture the way humans interact with forms algorithmically could eventually relieve humans of the need to prove anything altogether.' Seems smart, if an algorithm could actually do that."

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works.

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