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Firefox

Mozilla Flips Kill-Switch On Skype Toolbar 284

Posted by Soulskill from the take-a-time-out-until-you-can-play-nice-with-the-other-kids dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Whenever Skype is installed or updated, it automatically installs the Skype Toolbar add-on for Firefox. Unfortunately, the add-on causes serious performance problems, slowing down some operations by a factor of 300 and is one of the top causes for Firefox crashes. As a result, Mozilla has decided to 'soft-block' the add-on, effectively killing it on all Firefox installs unless the user intentionally re-enables it. Given the extreme popularity of Skype, this has ramifications for millions of users."
Google

Google Fires Back About Search Engine Spam 270

Posted by Soulskill from the it's-not-me-it's-you dept.
coondoggie writes "The folks at Google are taking issue over spam and the quality of Google searches, which some claim has gone down in recent months. Today on Google's official blog, Principal Engineer Matt Cutts said, 'January brought a spate of stories about Google’s search quality. Reading through some of these recent articles, you might ask whether our search quality has gotten worse. The short answer is that according to the evaluation metrics that we’ve refined over more than a decade, Google’s search quality is better than it has ever been in terms of relevance, freshness and comprehensiveness. Today, English-language spam in Google’s results is less than half what it was five years ago, and spam in most other languages is even lower than in English.' Cutts also explained that the company has made a few significant changes to their method of indexing."
IBM

IBM Files the Patent Troll Patent 109

Posted by samzenpus from the prior-troll dept.
An anonymous reader writes "It's all or nothing over at IBM as the company goes for the gold and files the patent troll patent. Forget the Hyperlink patent or the POS shutdown patent, IBM wants the patent patent. Its idea is centered around an approach to managing patents from inventor training to filing and protection strategies, including competitive monitoring. At least in theory, IBM could get approval to own the idea of how to manage patents and make a business out of IP. The next time you file a patent, you may want to contact them as you may need a license to file for filing."
The Internet

Bank of America Buying Abusive Domain Names 249

Posted by timothy from the get-out-your-thesaurus dept.
Nite_Hawk writes "Bank of America has snapped up hundreds of abusive domain names for its senior executives and board members in what is being perceived as a defensive strategy against the future publication of damaging insider info from whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. According to Domain Name Wire, the US bank has been aggressively registering domain names including its board of directors' and senior executives' names followed by 'sucks' and 'blows.'"
Medicine

Placebos Work -- Even Without Deception 430

Posted by CmdrTaco from the smoke-and-mirrors dept.
An anonymous reader writes "For most of us, the 'placebo effect' is synonymous with the power of positive thinking; it works because you believe you're taking a real drug. But a new study rattles this assumption. Researchers at Harvard Medical School's Osher Research Center and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center have found that placebos work even when administered without the seemingly requisite deception. The study was published on December 22 in PLoS ONE."
Music

Universal Sends DMCA Takedown On 1980 Report 189

Posted by CmdrTaco from the i-see-what-you-did-there dept.
An anonymous reader writes "For many, many years, every time some new technology has come along, the music industry has insisted that it's going to "kill" the industry. The player piano was supposed to kill live music. So was the radio. And, of course, every time this happens the press is willing to take the industry's word at face value. In 1980, the news program 20/20 posted a report all about how "home taping is killing music," with various recording industry execs insisting the industry was on its last legs unless something was done. Someone posted that 20/20 episode to YouTube a few years back, where it sat in obscurity until people noticed it a couple weeks ago. And suddenly, Universal Music issued a takedown notice for the show. Universal Music does not own 20/20, and there were only brief clips of music in the show. It appears the only reason for Universal to issue the takedown is that it doesn't want you seeing how badly it overreacted in the past."
Privacy

Un-killable 'Evercookie' Killed ... Sometimes 186

Posted by CmdrTaco from the use-silver-bullets dept.
Trailrunner7 writes "The persistent method that security researcher Samy Kamkar introduced last week for storing tracking data on a user's machine, known as the 'Evercookie,' is even more worrisome when used on mobile devices, according to another researcher's analysis. The Evercookie is a simple method for forcing a user's machine to retain browser cookies by storing the data in a number of different locations. The method also has the ability to recreate deleted cookies if it finds that the user has removed them. Created by Kamkar as a demonstration of a way that sites could use to persistently track users even after they clear their browser cookies, the Evercookie has drawn the attention of a number of other researchers who have spent some time looking for methods to defeat it. A researcher in South Africa took a look at the way the the Evercookie works on both Safari on the desktop and on mobile devices, and found that it can be undone in some circumstances. However, he also found that the mobile version of Safari fares far worse in its handling of the Evercookie than the standard version does."
Google

Steve Jobs Lashes Out At Android 864

Posted by CmdrTaco from the battle-of-the-billions dept.
Ponca City writes "Steve Jobs doesn't usually make a guest appearance on Apple's post-earnings conference calls with analysts, but this time he made an exception, attacking Google for marketing its operating system as 'open' versus Apple's 'closed' iOS. 'Google loves to characterize Android as "open" and iOS and iPhone as "closed." We find this a bit disingenuous, and clouding the real difference between our two approaches,' said Jobs. 'Android is very fragmented. Many Android [manufacturers], including the two largest, HTC and Motorola, install proprietary user interfaces to differentiate themselves from the commodity Android experience. The user's left to figure it out. Compare this to iPhone, where every handset works the same.' Jobs stated that the real debate is between 'fragmented versus integrated' and which is better for the consumer. 'When selling to users who want their devices to just work, we believe integrated will trump fragmented every time. And we also think our developers can be more innovative if they can target a singular platform rather than a hundred variants.' Jobs also criticized the Android Marketplace, pointing out that there are at least three other app stores being launched by vendors, causing confusion for users and work for developers. 'This is gonna be a mess for both users and developers,' Jobs said. 'Contrast this with Apple's integrated App Store, which offers users the easiest-to-use, largest app store in the world, preloaded on every iPhone.'"
Open Source

Desktop Linux Is Dead 1348

Posted by CmdrTaco from the oh-no-he-didn't dept.
digitaldc writes with this quote from PCWorld: "It kills me to say this: The dream of Linux as a major desktop OS is now pretty much dead. Despite phenomenal security and stability — and amazing strides in usability, performance, and compatibility — Linux simply isn't catching on with desktop users. And if there ever was a chance for desktop Linux to succeed, that ship has long since sunk. ... Ultimately, Linux is doomed on the desktop because of a critical lack of content. And that lack of content owes its existence to two key factors: the fragmentation of the Linux platform, and the fierce ideology of the open-source community at large."
The Internet

DoD Study Contradicts Charges Against WikiLeaks 228

Posted by samzenpus from the offical-story dept.
Voline writes "Last Summer, after WikiLeaks released 90,000 leaked internal US military documents in their Afghan War Log, Pentagon officials went on a media offensive against WikiLeaks, accusing it of having the 'blood on Its hands' of American soldiers and Afghan collaborators who are named in the documents. The charge has echoed through the mainstream media (and Internet comment threads) ever since. Now, CNN is reporting that after a thorough Pentagon review, 'WikiLeaks did not disclose any sensitive intelligence sources or methods, the Department of Defense concluded.' And, according to an unnamed NATO official, 'there has been no indication' that any Afghans who have collaborated with the NATO occupation have been harmed as a result of the leaks. Will the Pentagon's contradiction of the charges against WikiLeaks get as much play in the media as those original accusations did?"
Canada

Plastic Chemical BPA Declared Toxic In Canada 168

Posted by Soulskill from the good-thing-it's-not-toxic-here dept.
Julie188 writes "The Canadian government has formally declared bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical widely used to create clear, hard plastics, as well as food can liners, to be a toxic substance. Does this mean that you'll be tackled by the Canadian Mounties if you stroll around with some bottled water? Not exactly. Being a toxic chemical doesn't mean you can't get a little love. The government will at first try and set limits on how much BPA can be released into the air or water by factories that use the compound."
Education

How Cornell Plans To Purge Campus Computers of Personal Data 164

Posted by timothy from the very-very-carefully dept.
and so forth writes "Cornell lost a laptop last year with SSNs. Now, they've mandated scanning every computer at the University for the following items: social security numbers; credit card numbers; driver's license numbers; bank account numbers; and protected health information, as defined by HIPAA. The main tools are Identityfinder (commercial software for Windows and Mac), spider (Cornell software for Windows from 2008) and Find_SSN (python script from Virginia Tech). The effort raises both technical questions (false positives, anyone?) and practical issues (should I trust closed source software to do this?). Have other Universities succeeded at removing confidential data? Success, here, should probably be gauged in terms of diminished legal liability after the attempted clean up has been completed." Note: this program affects the computers of university employees and offices, rather than students' personal machines.
Graphics

Erasing Objects From Video In Real Time 175

Posted by timothy from the no-more-wires-visible dept.
Smoothly interpolating away objects in still pictures is impressive enough, but reader geoffbrecker writes with a stunning demonstration from Germany's Technical University of Ilmenau of on-the-fly erasure of selected objects in video. Quoting: "The effect is achieved by an image synthesizer that reduces the image quality, removes the object, and then increases the image quality back up. This all happens within 40 milliseconds, fast enough that the viewer doesn't notice any delay."
Privacy

HTML5 Draws Concern Over Risks To Privacy 163

Posted by CmdrTaco from the are-you-scared-yet dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that in the next few years, HTML5 will provide a powerful new suite of capabilities to Web developers that could give marketers and advertisers access to many more details about computer users' online activities. The new Web language and its additional features present more tracking opportunities because the technology uses a process in which large amounts of data can be collected and stored on the user's hard drive while online. Because of that process, advertisers and others could, experts say, see weeks or even months of personal data that could include a user's location, time zone, photographs, text from blogs, shopping cart contents, e-mails and a history of the Web pages visited. 'HTML5 opens Pandora's box of tracking in the Internet,' says Pam Dixon, the executive director of the World Privacy Forum. Meanwhile Ian Jacobs, head of communications at the World Wide Web consortium, says the development process for HTML5 will include a public review. 'There is accountability,' Jacobs says. 'This is not a secret cabal for global adoption of these core standards.'"

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