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Submission Summary: 0 pending, 88 declined, 28 accepted (116 total, 24.14% accepted)

Privacy

Submission + - Only Way to Stop Phonebook Deliveries in Seattle is to Give Up Your Privacy (seattleweekly.com)

Submitted by
newscloud
newscloud writes: "Seattle will soon shut down its popular phonebook opt-out website as a result of a costly settlement with Yellow Pages publishers. Going forward, the only way to stop unwanted phonebook deliveries will be to visit the industry's opt out site and provide them with your personal information. They will share it with their clients, most of whom are direct marketing agencies, who in turn commit not to use it improperly. The Federal Court of Appeals ruled in October that The Yellow Pages represent protected free speech of corporations (including Canada's Yellow Media Inc.); defending and settling the lawsuit cost Seattle taxpayers $781,503. The city said the program's popularity led to a reduction of 2 million pounds of paper waste annually."
The Internet

Submission + - Seattle Posts Model Ordinance for Net Neutrality (envisionseattle.org)

Submitted by
newscloud
newscloud writes: "Envision Seattle has posted a model legal ordinance (pdf) for communities wishing to enshrine status quo net neutrality as law. The ordinance is co-authored by the legal group that helped Pittsburgh's city council ban fracking and corporate personhood last November. The concept of local municipalities defying FCC authority is troubling to some but the group counters that FCC authority actually violates certain rights that we hold as people, and the right to govern our own communities as an element of the right to community and local self-government. If we have a 'right to internet access' or a 'right to communicate' via these pathways, there are certain actions that can be taken by government which infringe on those rights. In our view, it's up to us to create these rights frameworks, and then enforce them at higher levels."
The Internet

Submission + - Broadband Rights & The Killer App of 1900 (publicola.net)

Submitted by newscloud
newscloud writes: Tech writer Glenn Fleishman compares the arguments against affordable, high speed, broadband Internet access in each home to arguments made against providing for common access to electricity in 1900 e.g. "...electric light is not a necessity for every member of the community. It Is not the business of any one to see that I use electricity, or gas, or oil in my house, or even that I use any form of artificial light at all." Says Fleishman, "Electricity should go to people who had money, not hooked up willy-nilly to everyone...Like electricity, the notion of whether broadband is an inherent right and necessity of every citizen is up for grabs in the US. Sweden and Finland have already answered the question: It’s a birthright" In the meantime, DIY: cut your cable bill.
Privacy

Submission + - Shedding Your Identity in the Digital Age (wired.com)

Submitted by newscloud
newscloud writes: Writer Evan Ratliff tells how he managed to hide from Wired readers for 27 days. The first person to find him and photograph him would claim a $5,000 prize. In addition to hiding out as a roadie with indy band, the Hermit Thrushes, for a week, Ratliff donned a variety of increasingly impressive disguises. It's an interesting read on how to disappear in the digital age:

August 13, 6:40 PM: Im driving East out of San Francisco on I-80, fleeing my life under the cover of dusk. Having come to the interstate by a circuitous route, full of quick turns and double backs, I’m reasonably sure that no one is following me. I keep checking the rearview mirror anyway. From this point on, there’s no such thing as sure. Being too sure will get me caught. About 25 minutes later, as the California Department of Transportation database will record, my green 1999 Honda Civic, California plates 4MUN509, passes through the tollbooth on the far side of the Carquinez Bridge, setting off the FasTrak toll device, and continues east toward Lake Tahoe. What the digital trail will not reflect is that a few miles past the bridge I pull off the road, detach the FasTrak, and stuff it into the duffle bag in my trunk, where its signal can’t be detected. There will be no digital record that at 4 am I hit Primm, Nevada, a sad little gambling town about 40 minutes from Vegas, where $15 cash gets me a room with a view of a gravel pile...

Spoiler alert: Slashdot previously reported on the final days of the contest.

Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Tax Dodge Again at Issue in Washington S (reifman.org) 2

Submitted by
newscloud
newscloud writes: "With Washington State facing a billion dollar biennial budget deficit, the spotlight again shifts to Microsoft's software licensing office in Reno, Nevada. 'Although the majority of its software development is performed in Washington State, Microsoft records its estimated $18 billion in licensing revenue per year through a corporate office in Reno, Nevada where there is no licensing tax. Just by enforcing the state's existing tax law from 2008 onwards, we could reduce Washington's revenue shortfall by more than 70 percent. Alternately, we could pursue the entire $707 million from Microsoft's thirteen years of tax dodging and cover most of the expected deficit going forward.' Slashdot has previously reported on Microsoft's creative capitalism here and here."
The Media

Submission + - Micropayments for news: Holy grail or dangerous de (niemanlab.org)

Submitted by
newscloud
newscloud writes: "Harvard's Nieman Journalism Lab sounds off today on micropayments — on the side of dangerous delusions: 'What does it mean for journalism? It could mean charging for different platforms, for early alerts, for special members-only access to certain premium or value-added content. But I'm pretty sure of one thing: It doesn't mean charging people fractions of a cent to read a news story, no matter how sophisticated the process.' The article provides good context on the debate over micropayments from a 2003 piece by Clay Shirky, to recent pieces by Masnick, Outing and Reifman. Google's micropayment plans were recently covered by Slashdot."
The Matrix

Submission + - How We Caught Missing Wired Writer Evan Ratliff (newscloud.com)

Submitted by
newscloud
newscloud writes: "A twitter savvy gluten-free pizza shop nabbed missing Wired magazine writer Evan Ratliff in New Orleans earlier Tuesday to win the $5,000 Vanish contest. Ratliff was ensnared in part by repeated non-TOR visits to our Facebook application, launched to support the contest's tracker community and his secret travel journal on twitter. Ratliff's side of the story will be published in the December issue."
Technology (Apple)

Submission + - What to expect from Apple's rumored MacPad (idealog.us)

Submitted by
Jeff
Jeff writes: "I decided to review the specifications of recent e-readers and mobile devices as well as the ongoing Apple rumor mill to chart out the most likely features, innovations and configuration we can expect from Apple's long awaited Newton successor/Mac Tablet which I'll call the MacPad. The MacPad will arrive in fall '09 or Jan '10, with a 10" diagonal color display, a $599 price point with a Verizon data plan, a stylus, note taking application and handwriting recognition and an e-bookstore for iTunes. Apple's biggest challenge will be convincing its huge installed base of iPhone owners that they need a MacPad too. Past failed Newtonian predictions by others are available on Slashdot here and the likelihood that any of this is right can be gauged by earlier Confucian gems such as Haskin warns that Apple may be setting itself up for a failure with the iPhone."
OS X

Submission + - Apple OS X 10.5.6 Update Breaks Some MacBook Pros (idealog.us)

Submitted by
Newscloud
Newscloud writes: "As PC Mag reported last week, Apple OS X 10.5.6 can break some MacBook Pros leaving users (like me) with a dead backlit black screen after the Apple logo appears. While I initially thought I had a hardware failure, it turns out that there is a fix as long as you have an external display, keyboard and mouse. The problem only appears on the second restart, so if you sleep your MacBook a lot as I do, you might not realize the problem is related to the OS update you did the week before. The problem was related to older, incompatible firmware that Software Update wasn't flagging before the upgrade. Definitely, the worst Apple Software Update I've ever seen. This definitely gives weight to the argument for waiting a bit to run software upgrades."
Transportation

Submission + - Consumer Ethanol Appliance Promised By Year End (newscloud.com)

Submitted by
Newscloud
Newscloud writes: "The New York Times today reports on the $9,995 Microfueler, a home-based appliance for brewing ethanol for your car. The MicroFueler will use sugar as its main fuel source, or feedstock, along with a specially packaged time-release yeast the company has developed. The company says it plans to develop a NAFTA-enabled distribution network for inedible sugar from Mexico 1/8th the cost of trade-protected sugar. Depending on the cost of sugar, plus water and electricity, the company says it could cost as little as a dollar a gallon to make ethanol. In general, he says, burning a gallon of ethanol made by his system will produce one-eighth the carbon of the same amount of gasoline."
Privacy

Submission + - Nuclear scanning catches radioactive cat on I5 (newscloud.com)

Submitted by
Jeff
Jeff writes: "In Watch Out You're Being Watched, Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat relates a story from a community meeting with Northwest border control agents:

It turns out the feds have been monitoring Interstate 5 for nuclear 'dirty bombs.' They do it with radiation detectors so sensitive it led to the following incident. 'Vehicle goes by at 70 miles per hour...Agent is in the median, a good 80 feet away from the traffic. Signal went off and identified an isotope [in the passing car]. The agent raced after the car, pulling it over not far from the monitoring spot.' Did he find a nuke? 'Turned out to be a cat with cancer that had undergone a radiological treatment three days earlier.'
"
Microsoft

Submission + - Creative Capitalism Gets Microsoft $528M Tax Break (crosscut.com) 5

Submitted by
NewsCloud
NewsCloud writes: "Microsoft makes products in Washington but records software sales to PC makers and high-volume customers through an operation in Nevada, where there is no corporate tax. So Washington has missed out on more than half a billion in taxes; revenue it could use for badly needed infrastructure needs — such as the needed replacement of the 520 bridge which connects Seattle ... to Microsoft. Reported by Slashdot in 2004, the numbers have increased with the company's growth to approx. $76M in savings last year alone. The author questions the legality of the practice given Microsoft's 35,500+ employees and 11.2 million square feet of real estate in Washington state."
Privacy

Submission + - E.U. Regulator Says IP Addresses Are Personal Data (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by
NewsCloud
NewsCloud writes: ""Scharr told a European Parliament hearing on online data protection that when someone is identified by an IP, or Internet protocol, address, 'then it has to be regarded as personal data.' Scharr acknowledged that IP addresses for a computer may not always be personal or linked to an individual. If the E.U. rules that IP addresses are personal, then it could regulate the way search engines record this data. According to the article, Google does an incomplete job of anonymizing this data while Microsoft does not record IP addresses for anonymous search."
Social Networks

Submission + - Facebook Removes Firewall from Applications (idealog.us)

Submitted by
NewsCloud
NewsCloud writes: "Last week, Facebook quietly removed sign in restrictions that previously hid third party applications from the public Web. In other words, Facebook now allows its third party applications to be viewable on the Web by anonymous visitors and indexable by search engines. Web developers can now build an application using Facebook's platform usable by anyone on the Internet — not just Facebook members e.g. the Lending Library. In doing so, developers can leverage Facebook's login and registration as well its other platform services, which are becoming increasingly substantial. Facebook may be trying to gain advantage as a universal authentication gateway for public Web applications. If successful, it could further hamper efforts to establish OpenID. This will also help the company break out of its earlier AOL-like walled-garden strategy."
Google

Submission + - Google to Launch OpenSocial Thursday (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by
NewsCloud
NewsCloud writes: "After tonight's Breaking Open Facebook with Free Open Source Software, TechCrunch reports Google plans to announce an open API for social networking tomorrow. "OpenSocial is a set of three common APIs, defined by Google with input from partners, that allow developers to access core functions and information at social networks: 1) Profile Information (user data) 2) Friends Information (social graph) and 3) Activities (things that happen, News Feed type stuff)" Says Om Malik: "OpenSocial attacks Facebook where it is the weakest (and the strongest): its quintessential closed nature...Even if you take Facebook out of the equation, the task of writing and adapting widgets for the every increasing number of social platforms was going to be turn into a colossal mess.""

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