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Submission + - Why the Latest FISA Release by Google et al. Means Squat (slashdot.org)

Nerval's Lobster writes: Google, Yahoo, and other tech firms are offering some updated statistics about government requests for data. There’s just one problem: under revised guidelines issued by the federal government, those companies can still only report a range, rather than a definitive number, for those requests. If that wasn’t fuzzy enough, the range can only be reported after a six-month lag. Between January and June 2013, Google received between 0-999 FISA “non-content” requests on 0-999 user accounts; it also fielded between 0-999 “content” requests for between 9000 and 9999 user accounts.Yahoo actually received a larger number of FISA queries than Google: for the first six months of 2013, the federal government made between 0-999 requests on between 30,000 and 30,999 user accounts hosted by the company. Facebook apparently received fewer requests than either Yahoo or Google for information; Microsoft received less than 1,000 FISA orders for user data, related to between 15,000 and 15,999 accounts—placing it somewhere between Yahoo and Google on the information-request scale. These companies have little choice but to advocate this new information release as a huge step forward for transparency. Unfortunately, restricting government data requests to a broad range isn’t very helpful: for example, a range (rather than a single numerical value) makes it difficult to determine trends, such as whether government requests are gradually increasing over the long term. The new revelations are a start, but privacy advocates would probably argue they don’t go nearly far enough.

Submission + - Is Verizon Already Slowing Netflix Down? (davesblog.com)

hondo77 writes: From Dave's Blog: "I’ve since tested this almost every day for the last couple of weeks. During the day – the bandwidth is normal to AWS. However, after 4pm or so – things get slow. In my personal opinion, this is Verizon waging war against Netflix. Unfortunately, a lot of infrastructure is hosted on AWS. That means a lot of services are going to be impacted by this."

Submission + - Second World War code-cracking computing hero Colossus turns 70 (v3.co.uk)

DW100 writes: The Colossus computer that helped the Allies crack messages sent by the Nazis during the Second World War has celebrated its 70th birthday. The machine was a pioneering feat of engineering, able to read 5,000 characters a second to help the team at Bletchley Park crack the German's Lorenz code in rapid time. This helped the Allies gather vital information on the Nazi's plans, and is credited with helping end the war effort early, saving millions of lives.

Comment Re:Solar Updraft? (Score 1) 259

I think you mean domes (qubaab in Arabic). You find them in a lot of Middle East architecture. Minarets (maazin in Arabic) are the towers attached to mosques which were classically used to call the azaan--the Muslim call to prayer. They largely have no function now as all but the most anachronistic muezzins call the prayer using a microphone and loudspeakers. I suppose the minarets are a good place to hang the loudspeakers.

Comment Re:Ridiculous troll (Score 4, Informative) 259

This is not a troll. Or if he is, he has is head unwittingly in the right place.

There have been protests again in Tahrir for about a week. They ramped up on Friday and haven't really abated since. They also regularly happen on Fridays. The Egyptian army have been hesitant to use force again after a few recent incidents which got entirely out of hand. Here's a link to a local English translation daily on the protests this past weekend: http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/475123.

It is not unreasonable for protesters in Cairo to be concerned about this sort of thing at all. The biggest protests happened in the middle of the winter when cold is a serious issue, particularly at night. Up until the beginning of July the weather has been quite mild, but just this week we have had two 40+C days. Yesterday was still stifling at 38C. Today is a breath of fresh air (sort of) at 32C, but it is always about 4-6 degrees hotter downtown, even with the river right there. It can be terribly dangerous. It's easy to get dehydrated or to develop heat/sun stroke rapidly without realizing it.

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Woman Sues Google Over Street View Shots of Her Underwear 417

Kittenman writes "The Telegraph (and several US locals) are covering a story about a Japanese woman who had her underwear on the line while the Google car went past. She is now suing Google: 'I was overwhelmed with anxiety that I might be the target of a sex crime,' the woman told a district court. 'It caused me to lose my job and I had to change my residence.'"

Comment Nope (Score 1) 835

I am at the American University in Cairo and the IT department here neither uses or supports any Linux. There is a general suspicion in the wider computing community in Egypt that you must pay for something, particularly software, for it to be any good. So, everyone just pirates copies of Windows and then steals closed/proprietary software from each other. Brilliant situation.

Comment Re:Nothing to do with sex... (Score 1) 174

True enough. I sometimes accidentally read comments elsewhere and think "What the #*$% is wrong with these people?" /.ers can at least sort of spell and use complete sentences. This indicates that any /. offspring might have a chance at being a bit better spoken than their peers if not actually more intelligent.
Mozilla

Submission + - Firefox 3.5 Reviewed (slate.com)

johndmartiniii writes: "Farhad Manjoo has a review of Firefox 3.5 at Slate.com this week. From the article:

"Lately I've been worried about Firefox. Ever since its debut in 2004, the open-source Web browser has won acclaim for its speed, stability, and customizability. It eventually captured nearly a quarter of the market, an astonishing achievement for a project run by a nonprofit foundation. But recently Firefox seemed to go soft." The worried tone in the beginning of the review gives way to excitement over the HTML5 features being implemented, saying that thus far Firefox 3.5 "offers the best implementation of the standard--and because it's the second-most-popular Web browser in the world, the new release is sure to prompt Web designers to create pages tailored to the Web's new language.""

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