saosce - Slashdot User

Submission + - Schneier: The US government has betrayed the internet. We need to take it back. (theguardian.com) 2

Submitted by wabrandsma on Thursday September 05, 2013 @04:40PM

wabrandsma writes: Quoting Bruce Schneier in the Guardian:

The NSA has undermined a fundamental social contract. We engineers built the internet – and now we have to fix it

Government and industry have betrayed the internet, and us. This is not the internet the world needs, or the internet its creators envisioned. We need to take it back. And by we, I mean the engineering community.

Yes, this is primarily a political problem, a policy matter that requires political intervention. But this is also an engineering problem, and there are several things engineers can – and should – do.

Submission + - Motorola releases an "official" bootloader unlocker (custhelp.com)

Submitted by Nertskull on Saturday August 18, 2012 @06:29AM

Nertskull writes: So Motorola claims to have released a tool to allow anyone to unlock the bootloader on their phone. Unfortunately, the only supported device right now is the Photon Q 4G LTE. However, other devices are supposedly on their way.

Submission + - Amazon to Eat Google's Lunch (sfgate.com)

Submitted by wreakyhavoc on Saturday August 18, 2012 @06:20AM

wreakyhavoc writes: Nicholas Carlson at Business Insider maintains that Amazon's reviews and One-Click ordering will undercut Google's shopping ad revenue, and that Google is "terrified". How could Google fight this possible threat? Expose the astroturfing of Amazon reviews. Of course this would likely backfire as it would expose the astroturfing, link farming, and SEO games on Google.

From the article:

Google's real rival, and real competition to watch over the next few years is Amazon.

Google is a search company, but the searches that it actually makes money from are the searches people do before they are about to buy something online. These commercial searches make up about 20 percent of total Google searches. Those searches are where the ads are.

What Googlers worry about in private is a growing trend among consumers to skip Google altogether, and to just go ahead and search for the product they would like to buy on Amazon.com, or, on mobile in an Amazon app.

There's data to prove this trend is real. According to ComScore, Amazon search queries are up 73 percent in the last year.

Submission + - Google Seeks U.S. Ban on iPhones, iPads, Macs 1

Submitted by theodp on Friday August 17, 2012 @10:44PM

theodp writes: Following up on an announcement that it would rid itself of 4,000 employees world-wide and renege on a deal with the State of Illinois, Google’s Motorola Mobility unit said it has filed a new patent-infringement case against Apple, which seeks a ban on U.S. imports of devices including the iPhone, iPad and Mac computers. 'Apple’s unwillingness to work out a license leaves us little choice but to defend ourselves and our engineers' innovations,' Motorola Mobility said in an e-mailed statement. All of this doing-no-evil may have taken its toll on Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who traded in some GOOG stock for a little walking-around-money and reportedly jetted off to Fiji on their very own 767 for a little R&R with friends and family on a superyacht.

Submission + - Genetically Engineering Babies a Moral Obligation says Ethicist

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens writes

on Friday August 17, 2012 @09:56PM

Hugh Pickens writes writes: "The Telegraph reports that Oxford Professor Julian Savulescu, an expert in practical ethics, says that creating so-called designer babies could be considered a "moral obligation" as it makes them grow up into "ethically better children" and that we should actively give parents the choice to screen out personality flaws in their children such as potential alcoholism, psychopathy and disposition to violence as it means they will then be less likely to harm themselves and others. "Surely trying to ensure that your children have the best, or a good enough, opportunity for a great life is responsible parenting?" writes Savulescu, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Medical Ethics. "So where genetic selection aims to bring out a trait that clearly benefits an individual and society, we should allow parents the choice. To do otherwise is to consign those who come after us to the ball and chain of our squeamishness and irrationality." Savulescu says that we already routinely screen embryos and fetuses for conditions such as cystic fibrosis and Down’s syndrome and couples can test embryos for inherited bowel and breast cancer genes. "Whether we like it or not, the future of humanity is in our hands now. Rather than fearing genetics, we should embrace it. We can do better than chance.""

Submission + - Secret UK network hunts GPS jammers (suasnews.com)

Submitted by

garymortimer

on Wednesday February 22, 2012 @06:33AM

garymortimer writes: "A secret network of 20 roadside listening stations across the UK has confirmed that criminals are attempting to jam GPS signals on a regular basis, a conference at the National Physical Laboratory, in London, will hear later today.

The implications for disrupted GPS signal’s to small drones might be a little more serious if the craft are being operated in built up areas."

Stallman Crashes Talk, Fights 'War On Sharing' 309

Posted by kdawson on Thursday September 23, 2010 @09:29AM from the no-problem dept.

schliz writes "Free software activist Richard Stallman has called for the end of the 'war on sharing' at the World Computer Congress in Brisbane, Australia. He criticized surveillance, censorship, restrictive data formats, and software-as-a-service in a keynote presentation, and asserted that digital society had to be 'free' in order to be a benefit, and not an attack. Earlier in the conference, Stallman had briefly interrupted a European Patent Office presentation with a placard that said: 'Don't get caught in software patent thickets.' He told journalists that the Patent Office was 'here to campaign in favor of software patents in Australia,' arguing that 'there's no problem that requires a solution with anything like software patents.'"

Comment But these things ARE cost savings (Score 1) 109

by saosce on Friday January 20, 2006 @06:48PM (#14522872) Attached to: Surveys Show Increase In OSS Popularity

Within the context of any one sourcing decision, the freedoms offered by OSS can be quantified as cost savings.

"Freedom to use software the way you want" = productivity gains = don't have to hire more staff = cost saving.

"The ability to fix things if you need to, the ability to make sure there's nothing hidden in the code that you may not want" - those freedoms are available with much (although by no means all) closed-source software: but only at a ridiculously high price. In a true apples-for-apples comparison, that high price can be expressed either as a cost on the closed-source side, or a cost saving on the open-source side.
On the other hand, in a skewed comparison (i.e. if the closed-source model in the comparison does not include those additional costs), it follows that these freedoms allow for a much lower budget for contingencies under the open-source model. Again, cost savings.

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