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AKA 'Newspeak' by George Orwell. Black is white. Hate is love. War is peace. Windows is secure.

It's about time the world got off the MS arsenic. Bravo Google. I wish the US federal government would follow your example so we don't get pwned by the Red Chinese hackers (the Red Hacker Alliance) every other week.

I keep track of Mac security over at:

http://mac-security.blogspot.com/

I actually attended a lecture by Dr. Carl Hart at The Secret Science Club. His lecture was pretty interesting, namely the experiments they preformed where they give moderate to large amounts of orally administered methamphetamine to human research subjects. The majority of them administered it early in the day just like you would a cup of coffee. The expected "Binge" activity was actually pretty uncommon in the majority of the test subjects.

has been doing this with QR codes in the magazine for a while now: http://streetstylz.blogspot.com/2009/08/technology-review-selects-neoreader.html

You mean something likethis?

He learned the wrong lesson. It wasn't "do not get involved", it was "don't stay around for the glamor of being a hero." As soon as the fight was done, walk away. He'd know he did the right thing. The girl would know she was saved from getting her ass kicked. The boyfriend would think twice about doing it next time, since some random stranger kicked his ass for doing the wrong thing.

    There's no reason to stay around. If he didn't get arrested, and she told the truth, he'd still be in court as a material witness to the events. The boyfriend would likely have a grudge against him, now there's a new enemy out there.

    The better thing would be if he learned some good restraining moves. Not a single punch has to be thrown, and he could have secured the boyfriend on the ground. There's nothing like a knee in the back, and your arm twisted in an armbar, to remind someone that they're doing wrong. "I'm going to let you go. Don't ever do that again. Do you understand?" become very powerful words. A bit of pain compliance will get them to agree.

And how. The litany of obnoxious Apple behavior has really gotten long. As a long time Mac user, I have put up with a range of irritating Apple practices for years. It was worth it to me, even paying double for my hardware, to get OS X. But with the iPad, Apple has finally jumped the shark so far as I'm concerned. They have made it abundantly clear that they are hostile to everything I care about in computing. Too bad so many of the options are lackluster, but between lackluster and evil, I think it's time to go with lackluster.

Re Google had originally denied this story and then were forced to "reverse themselves"
Really Google seems to have understood it was illegal in Germany to intercept and store data that was not intended for Google but gave it a go anyway.
They tried to sneak under the fog of emerging digital complexity and get all they could while they could.
They only mentioned the Germany and Ireland early on until the press exposed their non photo activities to more regulators around the world.
Then you had the long list of countries where Google was active with wifi interception and storage and they where forced to 'note' that fact.
When requested to show what they stored to legal gov entities they stonewalled. Google has only been 'been pretty open' been exposed again and again after the admission of a tiny data issue in Ireland that was "over".
Google tried to spin its Irish legal issue as been in the past.
A list of links again to help with the past:
http://googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.com/2010/04/data-collected-by-google-cars.html
"Is it, as the German DPA states, illegal to collect WiFi network information? We do not believe it is illegal"
This is how they told the world about data collection:
http://googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.com/2010/04/data-collected-by-google-cars.html
"but Google does not collect or store payload data."
Then you have the Irish note "confirming deletion".
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/wifi-data-collection-update.html
Google was never "honest about this whole affair", it was just more and more exposed after trying to make an "error" in Ireland look like it was all over.

Re Google had originally denied this story and then were forced to "reverse themselves"
Really Google seems to have understood it was illegal in Germany to intercept and store data that was not intended for Google but gave it a go anyway.
They tried to sneak under the fog of emerging digital complexity and get all they could while they could.
They only mentioned the Germany and Ireland early on until the press exposed their non photo activities to more regulators around the world.
Then you had the long list of countries where Google was active with wifi interception and storage and they where forced to 'note' that fact.
When requested to show what they stored to legal gov entities they stonewalled. Google has only been 'been pretty open' been exposed again and again after the admission of a tiny data issue in Ireland that was "over".
Google tried to spin its Irish legal issue as been in the past.
A list of links again to help with the past:
http://googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.com/2010/04/data-collected-by-google-cars.html
"Is it, as the German DPA states, illegal to collect WiFi network information? We do not believe it is illegal"
This is how they told the world about data collection:
http://googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.com/2010/04/data-collected-by-google-cars.html
"but Google does not collect or store payload data."
Then you have the Irish note "confirming deletion".
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/wifi-data-collection-update.html
Google was never "honest about this whole affair", it was just more and more exposed after trying to make an "error" in Ireland look like it was all over.

Re Google had originally denied this story and then were forced to "reverse themselves"
Really Google seems to have understood it was illegal in Germany to intercept and store data that was not intended for Google but gave it a go anyway.
They tried to sneak under the fog of emerging digital complexity and get all they could while they could.
They only mentioned the Germany and Ireland early on until the press exposed their non photo activities to more regulators around the world.
Then you had the long list of countries where Google was active with wifi interception and storage and they where forced to 'note' that fact.
When requested to show what they stored to legal gov entities they stonewalled. Google has only been 'been pretty open' been exposed again and again after the admission of a tiny data issue in Ireland that was "over".
Google tried to spin its Irish legal issue as been in the past.
A list of links again to help with the past:
http://googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.com/2010/04/data-collected-by-google-cars.html
"Is it, as the German DPA states, illegal to collect WiFi network information? We do not believe it is illegal"
This is how they told the world about data collection:
http://googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.com/2010/04/data-collected-by-google-cars.html
"but Google does not collect or store payload data."
Then you have the Irish note "confirming deletion".
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/wifi-data-collection-update.html
Google was never "honest about this whole affair", it was just more and more exposed after trying to make an "error" in Ireland look like it was all over.

Because it means everything, it actually means nothing, so the term is useless. Stories on “fragmentation” are dramatic and they drive traffic to pundits’ blogs, but they have little to do with reality. “Fragmentation” is a bogeyman, a red herring, a story you tell to frighten junior developers. Yawn.

Apple lets app developers limit availability to the models that support their desired features- something that's only feasible when there are only a handful of models.

Or you could, you know, develop an api that allows the developer to specify which features are necessary, which is then used by the android app store to limit that apps availability. I'm developing for the Android now, and the framework is very nicely thought out, thank you. Fragmentation is a red herring. Dan Morrill at Google on 'fragmentation' http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/05/on-android-compatibility.html

WTF? Maybe you should look up the meaning of the word "hundreds." Here, I'll help you out: 4. hundreds The numbers between 100 and 999: an attendance figure estimated in the hundreds.

You make a usually misinformed but seldom boring MS 'turfbot but, really, with much of a lack of grasp of math, you missed your calling. You should instead work for these guys.

Maybe Windows 7 is running like a dog because ASUS has it running on a CPU it's not approved for.

Wow, if it is too bloated run on a over 1GHz power-efficient Atom, you guys are in worse shape than I thought.

Or maybe Windows 7 is running fine, and the tablet's touch-screen driver is a screwed-up piece of shit. Or maybe the OS and driver are fine, and the hardware is finicky. Or maybe the OS, driver, and hardware are fine and the guy demoing it isn't actually touching the screen on his first try. Maybe you should be a little more creative when coming up with possibilities instead of immediately jumping to blame Microsoft.

Or maybe, your irrational MS zealotry has blinded you to the fact that it is simply a morbidly obese OS that is losing its ability to compete with more modern lean operating systems. It's going to be almost sad watching you guys crack.

No, you didn't.

http://tinisles.blogspot.com/2010/01/should-you-trust-lastpasscom.html

I cannot believe they are so worried about format as their big mistake. They have already made the mistake and that was equating ebooks to hardcover books in order to justify jacking prices to the Moon. Publishers think that since the ebook costs less than a hardcover that it's a deal - sorry it's not. I cannot trade, share, sell, or easily annotate an ebook. Likewise expecting ebook sales to support pulp sales is a huge mistake and they are making that too - they said as much by justifying high prices by talking about how much it costs to PRINT books.

Folks, a single ebook is about 500K to download. If you do not price that thing appropriately it's going to get pirated to hell and back. At the prices Amazon WAS charging I was buying more books than I had in years and loving life. Now books are being held back and prices are near double for many books. People don't upload just one book they upload entire author catalogs and it takes minutes to download a life's work.

After all that the industry is worried about FORMAT being a big issue? Holy shit! What a bunch of clueless fucks. They are doomed to repeat EXACTLY what the music industry has suffered if not worse. http://blog.macmillanspeaks.com/ Read that blog, what a pile of self serving steaming manure. Macmillan lead the charge for higher prices, they can now reap what they have sown as folks find alternative means with little trouble.

There's one bright spot. Authors are waking up to the fact that they can sell on their own. they can sell to Amazon, they can sell to Apple, and they can make MORE money and sell for LESS. Anything $1.99 to $9.99 and the author gets 70% - that's huge. Books rejected by NYC big publishing are finding a welcome home on these services. The ebook market is a mess and the fact that the big publishing houses think they have much pull is a joke. This is getting sorted out without them, they can whine and cry all they want but they are farting in the wind. Get the price issues solved and give more to the author or get run over... http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/ Read the author blogs like that one, especially read the comments from other author's. They see the light, big publishing has their heads up their asses.

My hat's off to Calibre for making format the least of my issues to worry about....

Um, there is no pedestrian walkway that I can see. This appears to be some kind of highway.

The periods don't get stripped out, but you can add them (and probably remove them) wherever you like and they'll still get sent to the correct account. If someone has the account abc@gmail.com, then no one can register another account called a.b.c@gmail.com because gmail views them as the same.

Gmail silently ignores the periods in addresses, this means that these addresses all leads to the same mailbox.
example.person@gmail.com
exampleperson@gmail.com
exam.pl.ep.e.rson@gmail.com

http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/2-hidden-ways-to-get-more-from-your.html/

Thank you, Facebook, for restoring my faith in the utterly amoral nature of American business.

Buisness should be amoral. Anything else would scare the shit out of me. Its the responsibility of citizens to define morality by either voting with their votes, wallet or feet. It's the responsibility of corporations to take these constraints and optimize accordingly. Don't blame the business; blame the people.

What would Milton Friedman say?

Your contrived scenario is utterly and completely full of shit.

Here's the actual scenario:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/wifi-data-collection-update.html

It follows pretty closely with the scenario I put forth. You assert that there was deliberate and intentional storage of data, something which is contrary to the explanation that Google has put forth. Google claims it was a mistake, and their actions following this discovery do not indicate otherwise.

If the situation can adequately be explained by incompetence (or inexperience), you'd have a point. But it cannot be so explained - unless you'd have me believe a bug existed that could not only capture the data, but also define a database field to store it in?

Oh, now you have knowledge of the storage mechanism they used on the laptop and the schema that was used? Do you know a database was used on the laptop and not, say, one big text file? But hey, maybe a they do use a database on the Street View laptops. Here's one possible table definition:

create table data (
    id int not null auto_increment primary key,
    ssid_info text not null
);

You said before you do not possess first hand knowledge so, unless that has changed in the meantime, your attempts to justify an illogical line of reasoning with an ever-increasing amount of bluster on your part indicates that you are unwilling to admit the possibility that you were incorrect.

It's no matter to me. I'm done with this thread.

I blogged about something similar a while ago: 'What's yours probably isn't on the internet'. In my case it was about me losing the password to my Flickr account (or someone else 'reset' it for me), and me trying to convince the Yahoo helpdesk that it really was my Flickr account. In the end it failed because I couldn't remember the security answer, even though the emails from the account kept getting sent to my email account and I know every other piece of information associated with that account. What can I do about it? Absolutely nothing apparently.

Fortunately I don't need the Flickr account as I have my personal site with a gallery I control, but it's still annoying that there's a zombie account on Flickr which will keep sending email to me for now and probably eternity (or until Flickr gets shut down).

I guarantee if you made a website declaring Jesus Christ was homosexual the US government would not block access to the website for the entire country.

And as proof see that this isn't blocked by the government: http://www.jesusinlove.blogspot.com/ and there are not riots in the street.

I know you're trying to teach him to fish, but I'd like to give people the benefit of the doubt and assume they will want to teach themselves to fish. They aren't going to go look something up because you called their question stupid.

Maybe it's about time we broke the stereotype of tech-people being unapproachable and snobbish in their unwillingness to tolerate those that know less than they do, no?

My response to the OP wasn't unapproachable or snobbish -- I would classify it as a "polite but terse RTFA", if you will. If the OP took my advice and looked for more info, he could have replied to my post saying "I looked it up and here is what I found" and maybe also made some other interesting commentary that added value to the discussion.

You asked why I didn't simply supply the answer, and that's where I explained that I thought the question was stupid. The way I see it, we have two choices here:

1. Encourage people to post questions easily answered with a few minutes of research.
2. Encourage people to research their questions first, then post a question if there was something they didn't understand.

The first choice ends up turning Slashdot into a helpdesk for dummies, where stupid questions are encouraged because people know that someone's going to supply the answer to them. The second choice leads to people understanding that they're going to get called out if they ask a 'Let Me Google That For You' question.

However, let's say that I did answer the OP's question. If we reward simple questions, here's how it might look:

Q: "How do you accidently collect wi-fi data through Street View photos?"
A: "You don't. Google also collects SSID information at the same time it snaps Street View photos."
Q: "What is SSID?"
A: "It stands for Service Set ID, a part of wifi."
Q: "What does this have to do with Street View?"
A: "They do this to improve location based services."
Q: "What are location based services?"
A: "They are services which make use of location data to provide additional information."

And so on. Had the OP done some of this research up-front, they might have run across this blog post which explains, in detail, the what and why of everything. Then, they might have asked a different question, such as:

Q: "I understand that the MAC address is being collected as it's guaranteed to be unique to each device, but what value is there in collecting the SSID names along with it since most of them will have the same default name?"

This would have spawned a far richer discussion, with others commenting on the uniqueness of MAC addresses, the possible applications of SSID names, and so on. And hopefully the discussion won't get mired down in people replying with "What is a MAC address?" or "What is the default name?" etc.

Some RSA news: http://censorbugbear-reports.blogspot.com/2010_05_28_archive.html http://censorbugbear-reports.blogspot.com/2010_05_21_archive.html Make up your own mind: http://www.news24.com/Tags/Topics/crime Why waste resources on this bill and not on real issues?

Some RSA news: http://censorbugbear-reports.blogspot.com/2010_05_28_archive.html http://censorbugbear-reports.blogspot.com/2010_05_21_archive.html Make up your own mind: http://www.news24.com/Tags/Topics/crime Why waste resources on this bill and not on real issues?

http://censorbugbear-reports.blogspot.com/
http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica

Whites are on level 5 of 8 on genocide watch list.
Yet the bread winner's money (a 1/3 of the government's income is paid by 4 million whites' income tax, look at income distribution, there are 50 million people we support)and they waste money on things like this, they also go to court to oppose a ban on genocidal hate songs 'Kill the Boer'.

89 deaths a day, every other rape is a HIV infection which is a death sentence yet they waste their time with an anti-porn bill.

I think you're being unduly harsh, he probably gets his power from Verizon, $0.05 = half a cent.

Go read early statements.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/15/business/15google.html
"... But the company explicitly said then that it did not collect or store so-called payload data — the actual information being transmitted by users over unprotected networks."
Or read from :
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/wifi-data-collection-update.html
"we did not collect payload data " changes to "mistakenly collecting samples of payload data" then they tack on 'we never used that data"
Also note how they only talk of Ireland and Germany.
You can also go back and read
http://googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.com/2010/04/data-collected-by-google-cars.html
where they talk of Germany "as the German DPA states, illegal to collect WiFi network information" but just seem to side step the issue with "We do not believe it is illegal"

Go read early statements.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/15/business/15google.html
"... But the company explicitly said then that it did not collect or store so-called payload data — the actual information being transmitted by users over unprotected networks."
Or read from :
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/wifi-data-collection-update.html
"we did not collect payload data " changes to "mistakenly collecting samples of payload data" then they tack on 'we never used that data"
Also note how they only talk of Ireland and Germany.
You can also go back and read
http://googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.com/2010/04/data-collected-by-google-cars.html
where they talk of Germany "as the German DPA states, illegal to collect WiFi network information" but just seem to side step the issue with "We do not believe it is illegal"

What kinds of effects would the dust have...

No problem

A DNS Extension has been proposed that would allow the authoritative DNS server to see the originating IP address for the query in addition to the intermediate DNS server. This was previously discussed here on slashdot as well.

Is it? According to this data, psychology, definitely a soft science, is the least religious field of all. Business-ish fields dominate the most-religious end of the charts (accounting, finance, marketing, economics). Art seems to be the most religious of the humanities, while PoliSci, English, and History are all less religious than Electrical Engineering.

Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved? -- Carl Sagan, 1996

In some respects, science has far surpassed religion in delivering awe. How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, "This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant. God must be even greater than we dreamed"? Instead they say, "No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way." -- Carl Sagan, "Pale Blue Dot", 1994

In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. -- Carl Sagan, 1987

The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by God one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying... it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity. -- Carl Sagan

I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking. The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides. -- Carl Sagan, 1996

Sounds like not just an atheist, but someone hostile to religion, no? Yet Sagan, the guy who wrote the dragon in my garage, considered himself an agostic. So in this survey, he'd come across as "agnostic", and possibly even "spiritual".

I find nothing in this survey surprising. One can be agnostic, spiritual, but a firm disbeliever in a personal god and most organized religion, and the opposition to the scientific process that comes from it. Only people like Dawkins would fit into "Anti-religion atheist" category.

Here is a good technical description from a packet level:
http://erratasec.blogspot.com/2010/05/technical-details-of-street-view-wifi.html

Did you miss the part where everyone already knew they were sniffing packets to determine location, and that was never being denied? The issue has always been whether payload data was being recorded. See here: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/wifi-data-collection-update.html

Im sorry if I come off as a google apologist, defending them all the time, but my goodness people just seem to want to ignore fact and the actual articles, so they can wildly speculate about what awful things google is doing. My understanding was that Slashdot, as a site for geek news, would be some kind of bastion of reason and intellect. Clearly, I must be new here.

Yeah, you get less. But, man-oh-man, this seems like very high value. For comparison, here are some expenditures from groups that "can't afford" to go to the moon:

• Canada will spend half that amount on a meeting of 20 world leaders next month.
• South Africa will spend that much and half again on a soccer tournament.
• ThyssenKrupp will spend four times that amount on a steel mill.

It's such a small amount of money, I can't even believe it's true.

Like everything else in Android, there are 3rd party apps that allow you to do just that. For example, Flyscreen or MyLock, and Executive Assistant and Lockbot...

All allow customizations to the lock screen, lock screen widgets, or other useful information on the lock screen.

All things in moderation you know.

With mayonnaise made from real olive oil and good quality eggs, it's a healthy food. There is no need for moderation when eating healthy foods. It just leaves less room for junk food. If a human limits themselves to healthy food, their mechanisms of hunger won't get all screwed up, like consuming refined sugar does to people. You can be relatively sedentary and never count calories and there is no way that you are going to become obese. Looks at tribal populations around the world, especially those near the equator where food is abundant - one example is the south pacific the kitavans - they don't have any obesity among them and they don't do too much exercise.

True, but you're missing a couple of things. One: Right-wingers already had their confirmation bias fulfilled by the official explanation (brown people around the world are out to destroy America the Beautiful), so they were always extremely unlikely to start asking any questions.

Second, there's lots of conservatives who consider themselves Truthers. I've yet to meet any lefties who are birthers. Or, in other words, not all delusions are the same.

You mean like this? http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2009/06/introducing-android-scripting.html

What is this, a very condescending programmer who specializes in faster factorial functions? ;-)

I found this:

http://nikkistafford.blogspot.com/2010/05/explanation-from-bad-robot.html

An Explanation from Bad Robot? So, this has been circulating the Interwebs since early yesterday evening, and a few people have sent it to me but I'm only getting around to reading it now. The person writing claims to work for Bad Robot and posted this on a Buffalo Bills forum, and it was reposted by DarkUFO. One resourceful Lost fan tracked the person's ID back to other postings on the forum, where apparently he's been referring to working for Bad Robot for a number of years, and people think it may be Greg Ernstrom, a production assistant on Cloverfield and Star Trek. So... it might be authentic. But all I can do is repost it here and you can decide. Some interesting stuff, that's for sure!!

UPDATE: I'm being told this is probably a fake, and Bad Robot is checking into it. I'll keep you posted.

Good stuff on here! I can finally throw in my two cents! I've had to bite my tongue for far too long. Also, hopefully I can answer some of John's questions about Dharma and the "pointless breadcrumbs" that really, weren't so pointless ...

First ... The Island:

It was real. Everything that happened on the island that we saw throughout the 6 seasons was real. Forget the final image of the plane crash, it was put in purposely to f*&k with people's heads and show how far the show had come. They really crashed. They really survived. They really discovered Dharma and the Others. The Island keeps the balance of good and evil in the world. It always has and always will perform that role. And the Island will always need a "Protector". Jacob wasn't the first, Hurley won't be the last. However, Jacob had to deal with a malevolent force (MIB) that his mother, nor Hurley had to deal with. He created the devil and had to find a way to kill him -- even though the rules prevented him from actually doing so.

Thus began Jacob's plan to bring candidates to the Island to do the one thing he couldn't do. Kill the MIB. He had a huge list of candidates that spanned generations. Yet everytime he brought people there, the MIB corrupted them and caused them to kill one another. That was until Richard came along and helped Jacob understand that if he didn't take a more active role, then his plan would never work.

Enter Dharma -- which I'm not sure why John is having such a hard time grasping. Dharma, like the countless scores of people that were brought to the island before, were brought there by Jacob as part of his plan to kill the MIB. However, the MIB was aware of this plan and interferred by "corrupting" Ben. Making Ben believe he was doing the work of Jacob when in reality he was doing the work of the MIB. This carried over into all of Ben's "off-island" activities. He was the leader. He spoke for Jacob as far as they were concerned. So the "Others" killed Dharma and later were actively trying to kill Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Hurley and all the candidates because that's what the MIB wanted. And what he couldn't do for himself.

Dharma was originally brought in to be good. But was turned bad by MIB's corruption and eventually destroyed by his pawn Ben. Now, was Dharma only brought there to help Jack and the other Canditates on their overall quest to kill Smokey? Or did Jacob have another list of Canidates from the Dharma group that we were never aware of? That's a question that is purposley not answered because whatever answer the writers came up with would be worse than the one you come up with for yourself. Still ... Dharma's purpose is not "pointless" or even vague. Hell, it's pretty blantent.

Still, despite his grand plan, Jacob wanted to give his "candidates" (our Lostaways) the one thing he, nor his brother, were ever afforded: free will. Hence him bringing a host of "candidates" through the decades and letting them "cho

http://thefischbowl.blogspot.com/2006/09/what-if.html What the video near bottom or download the Power Point located here... (made by one of the "Shift Happens" guys.)

The "Parents Television Council" represents only their own bizarre agenda and its pretty insulting when they claim to represent all parents.

It's worth mentioning who's behind this phony "Parents Television Council".

The PTC was founded by L. Brent Bozell III (you know the initial for a first name is a bad sign), a nephew of ur-conservative William F. Buckley. He is also the founder of the Conservative News Service (CNS), the Conservative Political Action Conference, and Conservative Communications Center (CCC). Apparently, he is a conservative.

In 2006, Bozell founded the Culture and Media Institute, a branch of his own Media Research Council, whose mission is to reduce what he claims to be a "negative liberal influence on American morality, culture, and religious liberty".

Brent Bozell is a one-man astroturf machine, and is a major conduit of what is knows as "wingnut welfare" whereby money is collected from people thinking they're going to "stop indecency on television" or "fight the negative liberal influence on America" and is used to fund Republican campaigns and spent keeping Far-Right radio "personalities" on the air in markets where they would otherwise lose money due to low ratings. He specializes in creating groups with "Morality" or "Freedom" or "Liberty" or "Parents" or "Family" in the name yet tend to be little more than Bozell himself putting out press releases and raising funds. He is on the board of the Catholic League, that "fights defamation against Catholics and the Catholic faith" and and has served on the board of the American Conservative Union. In 2007, he resigned as president of the Parents Television Council in order to have more time to fuck goats, however he remains on the "advisory council" of the PTC (in other words, he's the only member).

Brent Bozell is also a ginger and I defy you to look at a picture of him and not conclude that he is a major toolpicture of him and not conclude that he is a major tool. As my grandmom used to say, "Evil tends to identify itself in the face, in and around the eyes".

In 2009, with the ascendancy of the Tea Party, L. Brent Bozell III claimed that he is no longer a Republican. Yet, he continues to be a major fundraiser for Republican candidates.

http://thefischbowl.blogspot.com/2006/09/what-if.html Very applicable.

Nope. Jquery isn't magic, it still follows the same rules under the hood, it is still using xmlhttprequest. The exception to the same origin policy for javascript code is you can load .js files from wherever, so the way around it is jsonp. See for example http://ecmanaut.blogspot.com/2006/01/jsonp-why-how.html

Unlike frames, the XMLHttpRequest to get the content into the DIV is restricted by the Same Origin Policy.

This could be bypassed as far back as 2008 using jQuery.

http://frinity.blogspot.com/2008/06/load-remote-content-into-div-element.html

Here are some technical details of precisely what sorts of packets Google captured:
http://erratasec.blogspot.com/2010/05/technical-details-of-street-view-wifi.html

In 2006 an engineer working on an experimental WiFi project wrote a piece of code that sampled all categories of publicly broadcast WiFi data. A year later, when our mobile team started a project to collect basic WiFi network data like SSID information and MAC addresses using Google's Street View cars, they included that code in their software

(cite)
Here they were using a tool developed internally which collected the data by design. They then (by accident or process failure, same thing really) did not adjust the software to not capture the payload data. In any event, if additional work would have been required to protect users privacy (as they have emphasized they really want to do, and take very seriously, and themselves believe they failed to do here) than they should have done it and in this case failed to do so.

Yep. Except instead of putting spare CPU cycles to work like SETI@Home, Boinc, etc., the Zooniverse projects put spare user cycles to useful work.

I many times enjoyed getting a buzz and staring at mind staggeringly distant galaxies for an hour or two, with some freakishly talented electric guitarists providing some recorded accompaniment. While I consider it "down time," my friends the astronomers consider it useful work.

talking about bugs i have documented my experience here http://diagonalslash.blogspot.com/2010/05/google-is-messing-with-my-profile-data.html

While the bug exposed it there is something going on here which i didn;t expect as a user.

What I really want is the successor to the Nexus One to play with side by side.

Get back to me when you've had a _working_ finger-based touch screen phone for 2 years and I'll take a look.

2 years you say?

Announcing the Android 1.0 SDK, release 1 Posted by Dan Morrill on 23 September 2008 at 10:55 AM

Interesting how you don't expect Google/HTC to have had a "_working_ finger-based touch screen phone for 2 years?"

For the record, that date I quoted above is the date that the first Android phone, the G1 (aka HTC Dream), was announced. That was 1 year, 8 months, and 1 day ago. The phone itself wasn't released for another month, on October 22, 2008 in the US... 1 year, 7 months, and 2 days ago. It hit Europe 8 days later.

Guess you'll have to sell your Nexus One, as Google hasn't has a "_working_ finger-based touch screen phone for 2 years."