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Submission Summary: 0 pending, 34 declined, 12 accepted (46 total, 26.09% accepted)

Cloud

Submission + - Privacy advocates slam Google Drive's privacy policies (macworld.com)

Submitted by DJRumpy
DJRumpy writes: Privacy advocates voiced strong concerns this week over how data stored on Google Drive may be used during and after customers are actively engaged in using the cloud service. While the TOS for Dropbox and Microsoft both state they will use your data only as far as is necessary to provide the service you have requested, Google goes a bit farther:

Google’s terms of use say: “You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours. When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license 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.”


Google

Submission + - Google bypassing Safari's default 'Block 3rd Party Cookies' setting (appleinsider.com)

Submitted by DJRumpy
DJRumpy writes: Google has joined other online advertisers in intentionally circumventing the privacy settings of desktop and iOS Safari users in an effort to better track their web browsing activity.

According to an investigation by Wall Street Journal, Google and at least three other smaller web ad networks (Vibrant Media, Media Innovation Group and Gannett PointRoll), have purposely overridden Safari's browser privacy settings using code that misrepresents its ads as being a user-initiated form submission.

The default settings of Safari block cookies "from third parties and advertisers," a setting that is supposed to only allow sites that the user is directly interacting with to save a cookie (client side data that remote web servers can later access in subsequent visits).

Advertisers like Google save cookies on users' browsers so they can track their browsing habits across the various websites they place their ads on, and these "third party" cookies are expressly what the setting is designed to block.

The report notes that "Google added coding to some of its ads that made Safari think that a person was submitting an invisible form to Google. Safari would then let Google install a cookie on the phone or computer."
The Internet

Submission + - New group paves way for 2012 Online Primary (cnn.com)

Submitted by DJRumpy
DJRumpy writes: Americans Elect, which has raised $22 million so far, is harnessing the power of the Internet to conduct an unprecedented national online primary next spring. If all goes according to plan, the result will be a credible, nonpartisan ticket that pushes alternative centrist solutions to the growing problems America's current political leadership seems unwilling or unable to tackle.

The theory: If you break the stranglehold that more ideologically extreme primary voters and established interests currently have over presidential nominations, you will push Washington to seriously address tough economic and other issues. Even if the group's ticket doesn't win, its impact will force Democrats and Republicans in the nation's capital to start bridging their cavernous ideological divide.

Submission + - U.S. military blocks websites (cnn.com) 2

Submitted by DJRumpy
DJRumpy writes: The U.S. military has blocked access to a range of popular commercial websites in order to free up bandwidth for use in Japan recovery efforts, according to an e-mail obtained by CNN and confirmed by a spokesman for U.S. Strategic Command.
The sites — including YouTube, ESPN, Amazon, eBay and MTV — were chosen not because of the content but because
their popularity among users of military computers account for significant bandwidth, according to Strategic Command spokesman Rodney Ellison.
The block, instituted Monday, is intended "to make sure bandwidth was available in Japan for military operations" as the United States helps in the aftermath of last week's deadly earthquake and tsunami, Ellison explained.
Operating Systems

Submission + - Looking back at OS X's origins (macworld.com)

Submitted by DJRumpy
DJRumpy writes: Macworld Weekly has an interesting look at the history of OS X from it's early origins in 1985 under NEXT and the Mach Kernel to Rhapsody, to it's current iteration as OS X.

An interesting quick read if anyone is curious about the timeline from Apple's shaky 90's to their current position in the market. There's also an interesting link at the bottom talking about the difference between the original beta and the release product that we see today.
Iphone

Submission + - iOS 4.0.1 may tackle iPhone 4's antenna problems (electronista.com) 1

Submitted by DJRumpy
DJRumpy writes: It appears that iOS4 may have changed the signal priority of the iPhone to look at a more reliable connection rather than at signal strength. This would explain why 3G and 3GS are also seeing the same issues being reported about the 4G signal strength:

"A software origin for the hand position bug, nicknamed the "death grip" for its tendency to kill the cellular signal if the antennas are bridged, would explain how some have replicated the problem on the iPhone 3G and the 3GS. As iOS 4 changed the antenna's priority from the strongest possible signal to the most reliable, it may have changed that behavior for all phones, not just the iPhone 4. Owners of the 3G MicroCell also support this through their lack of trouble; since the femtocell is always the most powerful cellular signal when nearby, iPhones always stay connected. The same behavior may likewise explain why some without MicroCells haven't had success replicating the problem, as any attenuation of the signal might not be enough to confuse the phone if the user is close to a good cell site."


Submission + - Top court to rule on state video game regulation (msn.com)

Submitted by DJRumpy
DJRumpy writes: The Supreme Court will decide whether free speech rights are more important than helping parents keep violent material away from children.

The justices agreed Monday to consider reinstating California's ban on the sale or rental of violent video games to minors, a law the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco threw out last year on grounds that it violated minors' constitutional rights.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who signed the law in 2005, said he was pleased the high court would review the appeals court decision. He said, "We have a responsibility to our kids and our communities to protect against the effects of games that depict ultra-violent actions, just as we already do with movies."

Submission + - Debunking a climate-change skeptic (newsweek.com) 1

Submitted by DJRumpy
DJRumpy writes: The Danish political scientist won fame and fans by arguing that many of the alarms sounded by environmental activists and scientists—that species are going extinct at a dangerous rate, that forests are disappearing, that climate change could be catastrophic—are bogus. A big reason Lomborg was taken seriously is that both of his books, The Skeptical Environmentalist (in 2001) and Cool It(in 2007), have extensive references, giving a seemingly authoritative source for every one of his controversial assertions. So in a display of altruistic masochism that we should all be grateful for (just as we're grateful that some people are willing to be dairy farmers), author Howard Friel has checked every single citation in Cool It. The result is The Lomborg Deception, which is being published by Yale University Press next month. It reveals that Lomborg's work is "a mirage," writes biologist Thomas Lovejoy in the foreword. "[I]t is a house of cardsFriel has used real scholarship to reveal the flimsy nature" of Lomborg's work.
Apple

Submission + - Apple's Mini DisplayPort officially adopted by VES (appleinsider.com)

Submitted by DJRumpy
DJRumpy writes: The Video Electronics Standard Association officially issued its Mini DisplayPort standard Tuesday, based on the technology licensed from Apple.

VESA said that all devices using the Mini DisplayPort connector must meet the specifications required by the DisplayPort 1.1a standard, and cables that support the standard must also meet specific electrical specifications. It's a formal confirmation of the news from earlier this year, when VESA announced the Mini DisplayPort connector would be included in the forthcoming DisplayPort 1.2 specification.
Government

Submission + - Antitrust probe for Wireless provider texting (eweek.com)

Submitted by DJRumpy
DJRumpy writes: The chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights urges the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission to examine whether dominant wireless carriers such as AT&T and Verizon are stifling competition with practices that include exclusive arrangements between carriers and cell phone makers, possible text messaging price fixing, and questionable roaming arrangements.

Apparently the new Antitrust chief is doing just that, but hitting resistance from within the administration.
Operating Systems

Submission + - Apple freezes Snow Leopard APIs as software nears (appleinsider.com)

Submitted by DJRumpy
DJRumpy writes:

Apple this past weekend distributed a new beta of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard that altered the programming methods used to optimize code for multi-core Macs, telling developers they were the last programming-oriented changes planned ahead of the software's release.

More specifically, Apple is said to have informed recipients of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard build 10A354 that it has simplified the application programming interfaces (APIs) for working with Grand Central, a new architecture that makes it easier for developers to take advantage of Macs with multiple processing cores.

This technology works by breaking complex tasks into smaller blocks, which are then routed — or dispatched — efficiently to a Mac's available cores for faster processing. This allows third-party developers to leverage more of a Mac's hardware resources without having to be well-versed in multithreaded programming.

I had a conversation in a thread earlier about the fact that Linux wasn't scaling well and I asked why the OS wasn't doing exactly what is stated above. I was told it wasn't feasable due to overhead. Seems that may not be the case. I'm psyched about this release. Rumor has it that it will also include read/write access to HFS+ partitions via boot camp.

Television

Submission + - Senate Approves 4 Month Delay in Digital Switch (cbs11tv.com)

Submitted by DJRumpy
DJRumpy writes: People who have not gotten their TV sets ready for the changeover to digital signals could earn a four-month reprieve under a bill making its way through Congress.

The Senate voted Monday to delay until June 12 the deadline for the changeover from analog to digital television broadcasting. People still getting their pictures through old-fashioned antennas otherwise would face a Feb. 17 cutoff.

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