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Submission + - Users Sue Google, Facebook, Zynga Over Privacy (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: A raft of class action lawsuits filed in Federal court charge the globe's biggest social networking firms with violating federal communications privacy laws, allowing advertisers to profit from personal information harvested from users.

Weeks after the Wall Street Journal blew the whistle on lax data privacy standards on Facebook, a string of class action suits attempt to hold the social networking giant, as well as game company Zynga and Google liable for what the suits contend are lax practices that allow advertisers to harvest personal information on Web users.

The suits are seeking monetary damages on behalf of potentially millions of users of Facebook, Google and game company Zynga. The suits allege that the users' personal information has been leaked to advertisers and other unauthorized individuals, in violation of the companies' privacy policies and a number of state and federal statues protecting the confidentiality of electronic communications.
Patents

Submission + - Who invented the Linux based wireless router? (blogspot.com)

Submitted by mtaht
mtaht writes: I've just had the interesting experience of being deposed to talk about one of the first embedded Linux based wireless routers. Our (free!) 1998 publication of howto to make one predates patent #7035281, filed September 13, 2000, (by someone else!). Their patent was recently granted and is now being disputed in court, in part, using our howto as an example of prior art (yea!). The lawsuit continues on... the case goes before a judge shortly, and a jury trial is tentatively scheduled for the spring. I find myself plagued with the question:

So... who invented the embedded Linux based wireless router? What relevance does "who" have, when there is such an enormous confluence of ideas from thousands of people? What constitutes invention, anyway?

Submission + - Smartphones, Open Source, and the Small Office

Submitted by Thunderstruck
Thunderstruck writes: I work in a small office with just two computers. Both machines run long-term-service releases of Ubuntu, with Gnome, and Evolution for scheduling, contact management and electronic mail. We plan to stick with Linux long-term. For telephone service, we're using smartphones. In order to keep everything straight, we need phones that can synchronize easily with the calendars and contact data on each owner's desktop machine. We cannot use cloud based services for this function due to ethics rules, and for security reasons. Right now, we do all of this with older PALM phones, but these are a dying breed. What options are out there right now for phones that will sync with Evolution (or another good Linux PIM suite) which do not require data to go through the cloud first?

Comment Internet killed the radio star (Score 1) 240

by bigato (#33920478) Attached to: Why the Web Mustn't Become the New TV
TV didn't kill radio, only made it less important. Now that internet has come, it didn't kill tv yet. But internet now has a share of the people's time. So, tv share is smaller. In Brazil we heard this year that this is the first time in history that internet audience is bigger than tv's. But people's time is limited, and I wonder how many of you still listen to radio. Not so many as ten years ago. Here at my home we don't have a tv anymore. Internet didn't kill tv, as tv didn't kill radio. But maybe the next step in evolution of information exchange WILL kill TV, as radio is now almost dead because of internet. I think TORRENTS are going to kill TV.
Math

Submission + - Grad student looking to contribute to Open Source

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I am an Applied Math grad student who knows a bit of Mathematics and a bit of programming. C++ being my first programming language, I am decent at it. I wish to start contributing to a numerical library with two purposes — contribute to open source and develop my C++ skills at the same time. I looked at the Boost libraries and joined the developer list. However, I have no idea on how to start contributing. I'm not an expert in template programming, having written only toy programs to understand that concept. I've used some of the OOP constructs like inheritance, but that too only for very small projects.

Could slashdotters please give me tips on how to get started on the contribution? Are there any other emerging numerical libraries to which I can contribute? Are there any other avenues where I can contribute to open source and improve programming skills?
Censorship

Submission + - Chinese Nobel prize winner's wife detained (cnn.com)

Submitted by suraj.sun
suraj.sun writes: The wife of 2010 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo has been detained in her apartment in Beijing, China, and is not allowed to see people or use her telephone, a human rights group citing her attorney said Sunday. The woman, Liu Xia, has not been charged with a crime, said Freedom Now, a U.S.-based group.

"Liu Xia is under enormous pressure," said Dr. Yang Jianli, a member of Liu Xiaobo's defense team and a human rights specialist with Freedom Now. "We hope that world leaders will immediately condemn this shameful act by the Chinese government and urge Liu Xia's immediate and unconditional release."

Liu Xiaobo won the prize Friday, but news of the win has been blacked out in China, with no mention of it on Chinese media.

CNN: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/10/10/china.nobel.wife/index.html
Hardware

Submission + - Squeezing More Bandwidth out of Fiber (nytimes.com)

Submitted by EigenHombre
EigenHombre writes: The New York Times reports on efforts underway to squeeze more bandwidth out of the fiber optic connections which form the backbone of the Internet. With traffic doubling every two years, the limits of current networks are getting close to saturating. The new technology from Lucent-Alcatel uses the polarization and phase of light (in addition to intensity) to double or quadruple current speeds. Which begs the question, What are we going to do in just a few more years when the backbone connections upgraded by this new technology saturate?
Social Networks

Submission + - 71% of 1.2 billion Twitter "tweets" are ignored (sysomos.com) 1

Submitted by destinyland
destinyland writes: 1.2 billion Twitter "tweets" were analyzed over two months by analytics company Sysomos, who concluded that a whopping 71% of them got no reaction whatsover — no online responses, and no Twitter "retweets". "Only a small number of users actually have the ability to engage on Twitter in a significant way," the researchers conclude, noting that just 6% of Twitter's status updates ever get retweeted (while 23% get a reply). And among those status updates, 85% have exactly one response, while only 1.53% of Twitter conversations are more than three levels deep — where a reply receives a response which then generates a second reply. "If a tweet is not retweeted in the first hour, it is very likely that it will not be retweeted," the researchers conclude, noting that 92% of all retweets only happen within the first hour (versus just 1.63% during the second hour). But one technology reporter suggests flaws in their sample of 1.2 billion public Twitter messages. "Presumably these don't include those made by people who only allow their tweets to be seen by selected users," the reporter argues, adding that the study overlooks the possibility of conversations continuing via Twitter's private "direct messages", or that follow-up conversation may occur privately via e-mail.
Businesses

Submission + - Water is The New Oil

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Newsweek reports on a company called True Alaska Bottling that has purchased the rights to transfer 3 billion gallons of water a year from Sitka, Alaska’s bountiful reserves. If all goes according to plan, 80 million gallons of Blue Lake water will soon be siphoned into the kind of tankers normally reserved for oil and shipped to a bulk bottling facility near Mumbai. From there it will be dispersed among several drought-plagued cities throughout the Middle East. Think of it as a proof of concept for turning life's most essential molecule into a global commodity. By definition, a commodity is sold to the highest bidder, not the customer with the most compelling moral claim, so it's little surprise that the transfer of so much water from public hands to private ones troubles some. 'Water has been a public resource under public domain for more than 2,000 years,' says attorney James Olson. 'Ceding it to private entities feels both morally wrong and dangerous.'

Comment Less is more - my bike too (Score 2, Interesting) 1

by bigato (#33844874) Attached to: Word Processors: One Writer's Further Retreat

I had a bike with 24 speeds. Then I realized that I used one specific speed most of the time. Then I built a new bike with only that speed. Single-speed bikes are cheaper, stronger, lighter and easier to fix. What about that steeeep streets? Well, you will go quicker and will be less tired if you just get off the bike and walk. I don't even want a car.

Someone told that leverage is to get the maximum results with the minimum effort. But inteligence is to get the maximum result with minimum leverage! Less is more.

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