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The Internet

Battle Lines Being Drawn Over OpenSocial 63

Posted by kdawson from the very-very-beta dept.
SkiifGeek writes "Microsoft employees have already openly criticized Google's OpenSocial initiative (recently discussed here), and now there's news that one of the first OpenSocial applications, emote by Plaxo, was hacked within 45 minutes of appearing on the Net (it was subsequently pulled while Plaxo looked into fixing the holes). Although coding errors can happen to anyone, leaving evidence of lax programming discipline when all it takes to view your code is 'View Source' is poor form. It seems that the battle lines have been drawn between Microsoft and Google through their social networking proxies, with Facebook getting ready to fire the next salvo in the social networking battle."

Comment Re:How To: Do the Zelda Roll (Score 1) 89

by ThomasTerranova (#21256745) Attached to: Phantom Hourglass Review
i noticed the same thing in phantom hourglass. instead of thinking in terms of doing circles on the edge of the screen (as they tell you to do in the instructions) i just think of it as doing two small, quick taps against any edge of the screen. LKM described it more accurately, though. i guess Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland - like any game - isn't for everyone. but in my own experience, i haven't had any trouble with negotiation and i almost never reset the game. whenever someone asks for a certain amount, i just give it to them rather than trying to haggle and taking a risk. it's not that i'm lazy - it's just that the asking prices always seem fair. and when i offer an amount for something, i just think in terms of being fair rather than in terms of trying to be a miser. and i almost never have a problem. after a while you just get a sense of the right amount to try for different things. it's not just random. there's a consistency to it. and there are also clues at the bottom of the screen when you have the misfortune of making a bid that's too low. a note at the bottom will say "50 more" or "500 more", letting you know that you should beef up your bid by that amount. so theoretically, the most you could EVER have to pay for an item would be twice it's value. and that would only be if you were extremely unlucky. i do sometimes have to make a second attempt, but i haven't had a hard time earning rupees in the game. i've found that i always seem to have exactly the amount that i need. i make a point of going back through all the world's on a quick run-through with a bodyguard in between major dungeons or when i nearly run out of rupees. that way i get to add one more bodyguard to my database and i end up earning a couple thousand rupees and also filling my coffers with diverse ingredients. then i go back to town, do some cooking, sell the results, feed the tower, and hit the next part of the game. occasionally there's been a new item that came up for sale suddenly and i didn't have enough money. so i just spent a play session doing the above an extra time, which meant some extra money went to the tower as well as towards buying the new item. and as a result, after i win a major battle and get a bunch of rupees, the prize money is almost always the exact amount i need to raise the tower. if you don't like earning rupees intermittently and you prefer to be constantly moving the main storyline along as quickly as possible, i could see where you might get irritated by the negotiating and feel stressed about conserving every last rupee. but if you are someone who likes RPG's and you look at the game from that angle (with earning rupees and ingredients being analogous to building up levels and buying new equipment) then the game flows perfectly. :-)
Privacy

The Implications of a Facebook Society 226

Posted by Zonk from the you-could-just-not-put-stuff-on-there dept.
FloatsomNJetsom writes "The site Switched.com is taking a look at the slow death of privacy at the hands of social media sites such as Facebook and MySpace with a link to a report on the creepy practice of Facebook employees monitoring what pages you look at and a thought-provoking video interview with social media expert Clay Shirky — who says that social networks are profoundly changing our ability to keep our private lives private. 'Eventually, Shirky theorizes, society will have to create a space that's implicitly private even though it's technically public, not unlike a personal conversation held on a public street. Otherwise, our ability to keep our lives private will be forever destroyed. Of course, that might already be the case.'"
Media

BBC Backpedals On Linux Audience Figures 330

Posted by kdawson from the couple-orders-of-magnitude-between-friends dept.
6031769 writes "After recently claiming that only 400 to 600 Linux users visit the BBC website, the BBC's Ashley Highfield has now admitted that they got their numbers wrong. The new estimate is between 36,600 and 97,600 according to his blog post. He stops short of describing how Auntie arrives at these two widely different sets of numbers and how their initial estimate is two orders of magnitude out."
America Online

NJ Spammer Gets Two Years Jail for AOL Spam Scam 73

Posted by Zonk from the blind-justice-sometimes-strikes-true dept.
Tech.Luver writes "A man from New Jersey has been sentenced to more than two years in prison for sending more than a million spam messages to AOL users. 'Todd Moeller was sentenced ... after he was caught making a deal with a government informant to send junk e-mails advertising a computer security program in return for 50 percent of the profits ... Moeller told the informant via instant messaging he could conceal the source of the e-mails through his access to 40 different servers and had profited $40,000 a month from other spam e-mail scams that promoted stocks, prosecutors said.'"
The Courts

Database Finds Fugitive After 35 Years 459

Posted by CowboyNeal from the can-run-but-cannot-hide dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "The Guardian has a story on a woman who was claims she is innocent and was apprehended 35 years after escaping prison by a computer database created by the Department of Homeland Security. Linda Darby was convicted of killing her husband in 1970 and sentenced to life at an Indiana prison but escaped two years later by climbing over a barbed-wire fence at the Indiana Women's Prison. She knocked on a stranger's door in Indianapolis, telling the woman who answered that her cuts and scratches were from a fight with her boyfriend. In Indianapolis she met the man who would become her third husband and moved to his hometown of Pulaski, where they raised their two children and watched eight grandchildren grow up. As Linda Jo McElroy, she used a similar date of birth and social security number to her real ones which allowed a computer database created by the Department of Homeland Security to identify her. Darby says she is innocent and fled prison because she did not want to serve time for another person's crime."
The Internet

Wikipedia Wins Defamation Case 153

Posted by Zonk from the wiki-this dept.
Raul654 writes "Yesterday, a French judge dismissed a lawsuit against the Wikimedia Foundation for defamation. The judge found that 'Web site hosts cannot be liable under civil law because of information stored on them if they do not in fact know of their illicit nature.' According to the inquirer: 'Three plaintiffs were each seeking 69,000 euros ($100,000) in damages for invasion of their privacy after their homosexuality was revealed on the website.'"
The Courts

U.of Oregon Says No to RIAA 241

Posted by Zonk from the always-a-good-feeling-right dept.
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The University of Oregon has filed a motion to quash the RIAA's subpoena for information on student identities in what is believed to be the first such motion made by a university with support from the state Attorney General. The motion (pdf) explains that it is impossible to identify the alleged infringers from the information the RIAA has presented: 'Five of the seventeen John Does accessed the content in question from double occupancy dorm rooms at the University. With regard to these Does, the University is able to identify only the room where the content was accessed and whether or not the computer used was a Macintosh or a PC ... The University cannot determine whether the content in question accessed by one occupant as opposed to another, or whether it was accessed instead by a visitor.' The AG's motion further argues (pdf) that "Plaintiffs' subpoena is unduly burdensome and overbroad. It seeks information that the University does not readily possess. In order to attempt to comply with the subpoena, the University would be forced to undertake an investigation to create discovery for Plaintiffs — an obligation not imposed by Rule 45. As the University is unable to identify the alleged infringers with any accuracy, it cannot comply with its federal obligation to notify students potentially affected by the subpoena. One commentator has likened the AG's argument to saying, in effect, that the RIAA's evidence is 'rubbish'."
Media

BBC "Not In Bed With Bill Gates" 335

Posted by kdawson from the nobody-uses-linux-anyway dept.
whoever57 writes "The BBC's head of technology denied rumors that a secret deal with Microsoft was behind the XP-only launch of the BBC's iPlayer. According to Ashley Highfield, the reason that the player only supports Windows XP is that only a small number of Linux visitors have come to the BBC's website. Why he would expect a large number of Linux-based visitors to the site when the media downloads are Windows XP only is not clear. He also thinks that 'Launching a software service to every platform simultaneously would have been launch suicide,' despite the example of many major sites that support Linux (even if this is through the closed-source flash player)."
Patents

Court Blocks Controversial New Patent Rules 119

Posted by Zonk from the walking-a-fine-line dept.
An anonymous reader writes "InformationWeek is reporting that a court in Virginia has issued an injunction against controversial new patent rules that were supposed to go into effect tomorrow. The court granted a motion filed by GlaxoSmithKline, which is suing the US patent office over the issue. Among other things, the new rules would limit the extent to which existing patent applications can be modified. The patent office says the new rules would speed up the patent process, but critics say they hurt inventors."
Privacy

Germany Seeks Expansion of Computer Spying 177

Posted by Zonk from the government-in-your-pocket-on-your-laptop-on-your-hard-drive dept.
gooman writes "The LA Times reports on a proposal to secretly scan suspects' hard drives which is causing unease in a nation with a history of official surveillance. Along with several other European countries, Germany is seeking authority to plant secret Trojan viruses into the computers of suspects that could scan files, photos, diagrams and voice recordings, record every keystroke typed and possibly even turn on webcams and microphones in an attempt to gain knowledge of attacks before they happen."
Education

Call For Halt To Wikipedia Webcomic Deletions 720

Posted by kdawson from the deletionism-rampant dept.
ObsessiveMathsFreak writes "Howard Tayler, the webcomic artist of Schlock Mercenary fame, is calling on people not to donate money during the latest Wikimedia Foundation fund-raiser. This is to protest the 'notability purges' taking place throughout Wikipedia, where articles are being removed en-masse by what many see as overzealous admins. The webcomic community in particular has long felt slighted by the application of Wikipedia's contentious Notability policy. Wikinews reporters have recently begun investigating this issue, but are the admins listening?"

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