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It's not limited only to your company - this means employees in other services can snoop all they want too. This is why you should never trust cloud services. Hell, even Google employees are secretly snooping your personal emails, XMPP chat logs, Google Voice calls and search queries. And yet even most Slashdotters think it's perfectly fine to trust everything you have with Google - your search queries, your personal emails, your calls, your contacts, your social network, what you watch on YouTube, what you listen to, where you walk and go (Android) and everything else. Screw the law enforcement requests for info, they can't even keep their own personnel from snooping your personal stuff.

It's why I will never trust my personal files on the likes of Dropbox and other backup services. People misuse their privileges whenever they can, that's human nature.

"No, what you inflict is spin..."

Of course spin exists. But in the UC Davis case we have 8:34 of unedited video corraborated by multiple videos from multiple perspectives that all show police officers freely moving in, among, and over nonviolent, nonthreatening, and seated protestors, then repeatedly (and nonchalantly) using pepper spray at distances ranging from inches to not more than four feet, wildly inappropriate for that kind of device. If it's just spin, then UC Davis Police Chief Annette Spicuzza's version of events where officers were "encircled" and "needed to exit" but were "unable to get out," requiring them to hose down seated students with pepper spray repeatedly should be easy to create. Fox News makes no attempt to hide its view of the protestors, even likening this incident to getting spritzed with a condiment but they still don't spin it for Chief Spicuzza and her officers.

Because this was not a program put in place to increase traveler safety.

This was a program put in place to shove money into the pockets of Michael Chertoff, the former head of the DHS. It is doing remarkably well at that, and the TSA is appropriately doing its damnedest to cover for the fact that they owe their existence to a scumbag with a horrible conflict of interest who is continues to take this country for a ride.

I'd spit in this man's face if I met him in person.

The plan, as I see it, is to devalue the currency so that paying those debts isn't as painful as it could be. Normally, you would do this via inflation. However, if you can keep interest rates pretty much at zero, even small "real" inflation (as opposed to the official inflation numbers) will have the same effect over the course of a decade - especially if you can somehow get real growth started w/o triggering inflation.

The best way to do that would be to stop artificially supporting the bubble-priced housing market. It still has another 20% to drop, and that drop is going to happen no matter what, so might as well take the hit, and the resulting low prices will trigger a recovery (just as low computer prices stimulates the computer market, and high gasoline prices killed the Hummer).

The problem is that the FIRE industries (Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate) currently own the legislators AND the regulators. This distorts the whole economy, because industries that could power a recovery are ignored, or worse, the resources that could be put into them are put elsewhere.

A good example of that is groupon. An insolvent business, a broken business model, huge unacknowledged fiscal liabilities (for example, many states don't allow the vendor - in this case groupon - to "own" unclaimed and unused vouchers for 5 years, and require them to make refunds) and yet the financial nutballs hype it on the basis that there's short-term profit to be made speculating on the stock.

The money that went into groupon is money that could have gone into something better. At the same time, because it went into groupon, it encourages others to continue to develop fraudulent and/or ineffective business models, in the hope of cashing in before the stench of the turd baking in the sun gets strong enough to overwhelm the smell of free money.

Some US states seem to have better prison medical care than others e.g.:
http://gawker.com/5856346/prisoner-given-aspirin-to-treat-tumors-still-has-tumors-surprisingly

No, dieing from a curable disease is the universe's way of punishing hubris. The form of cancer he had isn't usually fatal with proper treatment.

http://gawker.com/5849543/harvard-cancer-expert-steve-jobs-probably-doomed-himself-with-alternative-medicine

no, attacking democratic lawmakers:

http://gawker.com/5501717/tea-party-vigilantes-out-for-liberal-blood

i know: you heard on Faux News that only the occupy wall street crowd is violent, and the tea party is peaceful. what a well behaved propagandized automaton you are, dutifully reporting and believing the lies that are spoonfed to you. you make a good slave

Facebook had custom friend lists way before Google+ came out. You can also do stuff like post/photo visible to "Friends except those in listX". I've been using that feature for ages.

What put me off was stuff like this:
http://courtneyengle.com/2011/07/22/banned-by-google-plus/
http://gawker.com/5824622/names-banned-by-google-plus

Meet the new dictator, even more fascist than the old one? No thanks. Fascist Dictator Google can have the data they already have, if they want more they can talk to Dictator Facebook, with hopefully amusing results.

You forgot the GUI. Apparently (according to some people here: http://gawker.com/5847338/steve-jobs-was-not-god), it seems that Steve also invented the GUI (forget about Xerox PARC).

I think it's awesome :) I always like a good laugh, after reading stuff like: "I am pretty sure he actually created modern computing as we know it."

>Mathematics is not dancing with the stars or what not.

Damn straight. Unlike DWTS participants, mathematicians generally keep their clothes on.

http://gawker.com/5042795/bloomberg-runs-steve-jobs-obituary

How soon they forget. http://gawker.com/5539717/

In many places, it's not that easy. Money for towers is just a part of the problem. I imagine that people screaming, "Oh NOES! Radiaaashun!", are probably the major obstacles these days. For example, as much as people like to whine and moan about AT&T coverage in San Francisco, here is one small example of what AT&T has to deal with (yes, it's a bit old, but likely still 1000% valid): http://cdn.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/07/06/BAT01E8QTQ.DTL

Other examples:
http://www.engadget.com/2011/09/15/west-virginias-quiet-zone-becomes-refuge-for-those-on-the-run/
http://gawker.com/372440/?tag=television (this is for wifi, but I'm sure the sentiment extends to cellular)

Gawker has done a brief analysis of the picture, and seems to indicate that it's a fake:

http://gawker.com/5835016/shocking-steve-jobs-illness-pics-might-be-fake

"You know, it's always the MARK that I have the least respect for in a con."

that you are an idiot. anyone can be conned. I suspect its the victim you have the least respect for in a rape.

Anyways, you should ahve read that link.

Angel said "No one has the ability, that I'm aware of, to do anything supernatural, psychic, talk to the dead. And that was what I said I was going to do with Phenomenon. If somebody goes on that show and claims to have supernatural psychic ability, I'm going to bust them live and on television

A mentalist is a great person to hire for security, because they know how people think and behave. Anyways, you might want to actual read up on the man. Natural, that would involve facts and thinking, so I'm not surprised you didn't do it.

http://gawker.com/5439749/google-security-chief-by-day-tv-magician-eran-raven-by-night

It was when Microsoft launched the Zune. We kept reading articles about how Zune sales were meeting all of Microsoft's expectations, and how it quickly shot up until it was outselling all other non-Apple portable music players. Heck, there was even a time when the Zune supposedly outsold the iPod. Oh, and of course there was the "never count out Microsoft" crowd. Yeah, the Zune did really well... right up until they stopped making them.

More recently, we've heard similar things about Windows Phone 7 devices. Microsoft may have a bit more leverage here moving forward *cough*Nokia*cough*, but so far it hasn't added up to much.

In a lot of ways, Microsoft's past monopolistic behavior has turned around to bite itself in the butt - it's forgotten how to compete, and it still hasn't demonstrated it really understands anything but PCs (the XBox 360 seems to be the exception that proves the rule). So while it might be possible there's an opening in the tablet marketplace, it remains to be seen whether Microsoft is the company that can take advantage of it.

After looking at the pictures of scanners in this ( Consumerist Security Briefing from Gawker) I don't think I could tell even if someone put 4 ATM machines in front of me and told me one of them had a skimmer, pick it out. These things fit so perfectly over the card reader it seems near impossible to tell without pulling out a knife and seeing if you can get anything to pop off, and I don't think that'd make most places happy.

Thanks for the filename; this link actually works.

Shuttle hits Warp 2 Graphics might come out of my butt Definitely not gay Team Name Team Name.

(NSFW) The weather penis is actually an entire category: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djItGln6IxY

Yeah, let's stick with professionals. For the lulz.

> The infrastructure is already spread thin - at least judging by my internet speeds and costs.

Look at this for a minute.

You pay more and get less, than a large part of the world (and check out Finland before you say anything about population density).

The only reason infrastructure is getting spread thin is that, for the most part, the major ISPs have been treating customers like cash cows and not investing any of their revenue in upgrades. This benefits them in the short term because it creates a scarcity that doesn't need to exist and justifies constant price increases. In the long term, however, it's causing the US to fall further and further behind the rest of the world.

> If people want internet, they can work for it just like I have to.

Apparently you think the story was about companies being forced to give free internet access. It's not. It's about offering internet access for $10 a month (which they have to work to get) and it's only available to low-income families with school children.

And, since you're probably an old fart with no clue, it is rapidly becoming a necessity for school children to have access to the internet. Homework assignments, extra study material, grades, announcements and other communications are increasingly being put on websites for the students and parents to access.

The recent riot in Vancouver is an excellent example of this. The police probably caught a good hundred people directly thanks to social media. Maybe they would have found most of those people by other means.. but they basically had the worst offenders all identified within hours thanks to social media.

Watch out for a future crime spree from Casey Anthony...
http://gawker.com/5824690/the-casey-anthony-latex-mask

It's a long article, but is really worth a read. It talks about Ailes and his plans for what would be Fox News. It uses primary sources, and goes into some depth about an interesting bit of history. Murdoch may not have come up with the idea, but he sure has done well with the execution.

Actually former secretary of homeland security, but the point is still valid:

http://www.google.com/search?q=michael+chertoff
http://www.cov.com/mchertoff/
http://gawker.com/5437499/why-is-michael-chertoff-so-excited-about-full+body-scanners
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Michael_Chertoff
http://www.redstate.com/moe_lane/2010/11/19/michael-chertoff-behind-tsa-pornoscanners/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/23/fear_pays_chertoff_n_787711.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/31/AR2009123102821.html
http://www.dhs.gov/xabout/history/biography_0116.shtm
http://www.americablog.com/2010/11/airport-full-body-scanners-are-made-by.html
http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/Chertoff_Michael
etc.

*cough*

What if the abusers staging the abuse were doing so under the command of a company official? Who would be jailed then? Those "just following orders" or the person giving the orders, or all the above? The answer, IMHO, is either D) All the above, or E) Nobody. Depends on their clout or influence in the right circles. Hell, Democrats attacked a Democratic HQ, Hitler may have burned the Reichstag, a small handful of American congressmen decided staging the Gulf of Tonkin was a good way to get us into Vietnam... false flags, man. Even Roman leaders were guilty of it. The history of false flag attacks, doubtless IMO, goes back to the first human civilization.
Get used to it, serf. :)

Like most of us, wikileaks just doesn't consider her to be relevant.. Besides, the ticket fare is tied up in lawyer fees...

Gawker has an article on one of the underground sites called Silk Road, and includes the domain: The Underground Website Where You Can Buy Any Drug Imaginable - Gawker. The domain is for TOR, but I don't know if the server will respond to HTTP requests from outside TOR.

Isn't this more or less the same thing that Firesheep does, and why the EFF is urging everyone to use HTTPS wherever possible?

Yes it is, except that in the case of FireSheep, the user could have simply connected to HTTPS://facebook.com and been protected from attack. Also, the user had to initiate the connection; very few people probably have facebook.com set to load up on any wifi connection available, as soon as their laptop is opened up. Lastly, it's *facebook*. If your account is compromised you might have a few awkward messages sent to your friends on your behalf, but the damage is limited. We have seen time and time again in the past few weeks just how much damage a compromised gmail account can cause.

From TFA: "For the past few days, a mystery has been unfolding in Silicon Valley. Somebody, it seems, hired Burson-Marsteller, a top public-relations firm, to pitch anti-Google stories to newspapers, urging them to investigate claims that Google was invading people’s privacy"

Burson-Marsteller, Burson-Marsteller... Why does that name sound so familiar? Oh yeah. They were slinging anti-Google propaganda for ICOMP (Initiative for a Competitive Online Marketplace), which (scroll down to the very bottom) is a lobbying arm of Microsoft.

BM has claimed that the smear job for Facebook "was not at all standard operating procedure and is against our policies", but it seems to me that it's just business as usual for them. The last time they did this, pitching to business executives that time, they also didn't disclose who hired them ("Others suggested that by not disclosing who Burson-Marsteller was representing, the firm was breaking the spirit of political lobby firms' code of conduct.").

Not only that, but BM also hired Eric Schmidt's ex mistress/fiancée, presumably connected with their ongoing anti-Google efforts. And they were behind the National Smokers Alliance campaign back in the mid '90s. Plus, if this post is to be believed, they were also involved with a number of other very dubious organizations (I didn't have time to run them all down, but the ones I did check into seem true).


The whole "Facebook and Google are having a spat" thing isn't really news, but I find it interesting how such a scummy company can be considered "one of the top international PR firms out there". Also, I regret that I didn't find this Slate article until after typing this post. It backs up the list of clients in the forum post above (but in case you don't want to follow either link: the Argentine junta, the Nigerian junta, Union Carbide, Blackwater, and Nicolae Ceausescu are among the undeniably bad/evil ones).

Of course, if you read that you'll notice it's not the first time Tumblr have done this. Probably not the last time either.

Would you really want MPAA to get limitless power to track your every movement? What next, install tracking equipment and video cameras in your home so can MPAA can make sure you aren't making backups own your movies? After all, that would be really good for MPAA and barring such would "unnecessarily burden MPAA and movie studios business".

It's actually an interesting thing among slashthink. This is one thing Microsoft is doing right. You don't see Microsoft among the privacy invasive companies like MPAA, Time-Warner, Google, Facebook, ESA etc.. That's because they don't want to track your every movement. Microsoft sells you software. You buy it, they're happy, and you don't lose your privacy. Still most here think MS is evil and Google is some kind of white knight. Well, a few quotes.. Eric Schmidt: "We try very hard to look like we're out of control. But in fact the company is very measured. And that's part of our secret.". And Schmidt: "If I look at enough of your messaging and your location, and use artificial intelligence, we can predict where you are going to go ... show us 14 photos of yourself and we can identify who you are.", and again, "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."

Didn't this happen a year ago?: http://gawker.com/#!5548195/heres-the-apple+factory-suicide-pledge

I think NOT.
http://community.dice.com/t5/Current-Events/US-CIO-Vivek-Kundra-at-best-a-lightweight-at-worst-a-fraud/td-p/216786

he's also not to be trusted.
http://gawker.com/#!5174642/obamas-thieving-geek-guilty-of-bad-taste

"Our goal is to facilitate the transfer of people and cargo to other planets, and then it will be up to people if they want to go,"

Although the moral implications are ones I would personally agree with, I'm not so sure the public at large would continue to view a mission to Mars as an entirely noble venture if they knew.

It worked for me once I removed the #! from the url.

try this: http://gawker.com/5795002/the-art-of-the-animated-gif

You get the non-javascript fallback by using _escaped_fragment_. Unfortunately half of the page is hidden behind a floating window that doesn't have a close button. :/

Try to uninstall Adobe Flash for a week. I did and I can't say that I miss anything.

YouTube:
- The HTML5 beta works rather well with modern browsers like Firefox 4.0 and nearly every video is available. You don't need a Google account. The setting is stored in a cookie.
- If you're on Linux, try Minitube. It's a standalone player for YouTube that uses hardware acceleration.

Thanks to the iPad, more and more web sites offer alternatives to Flash. My preferred news TV station is now streaming both with Ogg/Theora and H.264.

Yes, I can't view the occasional funny cat video because it's only available in Flash format but guess what: I'm still alive.

I think the same intoxicant caught up with Mark Zuckerberg. At one time he probably would have been thrilled to have enough to by a modest house and a sports car.

Actually Zuckerberg has a modest (for a gazillionaire) house & he drives a "couple years old" Acura..

http://gawker.com/#!5725833/this-is-mark-zuckerbergs-new-home

I'd be very doubtful unless he has good proof he was working for the government.

Uhm.. the government ALREADY ADMITTED that they were using him as an undercover informant.

One of those things about the word "undercover" is that unless you are participating in what is going on, chances are the people you are trying to inform on will peg you real quick. "Hey, don't talk to that guy, everyone he talks to gets busted by the feds."

The Secret Service is no different than any other law enforcement agency. The dirtiest, most corrupt wing is always "Vice", simply because in order to find the guys they're trying to bust the cops have to get very, very, very dirty themselves. Sometimes they go native, sometimes they really go native, sometimes they get really freaking insane (more here. Sometimes it's even worse. Undercover cops on major mafia infiltration cases have had almost carte blanche to participate in anything that went on, so long as they testified later.

Am I completely convinced he's telling the truth? No. Is it reasonably plausible that someone in the Secret Service gave him verbal instructions to do certain things in order to keep his credibility up so as to set up future busts, but then decided he wasn't worth it and used him as a scapegoat? Absolutely.

Even worse, this image looks like it has been first brought to 256 colors, then back to RGB..

"You should have chosen a law school."

You're really joking right? more and more

Lawyer's have is worse than IT!

While I agree with the idea of paying for quality news (journalists have to eat, after all) and think NYT's paywall is well implemented (uncounted twit redirects, 20 free views, etc.), the "ultimate" edition price is quite high.

Here's an image showing their prices in relation to some other paywalls: http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2011/03/subvisual.jpg
All Digital Access:* $8.75 per week (billed every 4 weeks at $35.00) Unlimited access to NYTimes.com, plus smartphone apps and tablet apps Unlimited access to NYTimes.com from any computer or device Unlimited access to the NYTimes app for BlackBerry, iPhone and Android-powered phones Unlimited access to the NYTimes app for iPad, plus Times Reader 2.0 and the NYTimes app for the Chrome Web Store

They do have a cheaper rate ($195 for a year), but it only includes access to the website, I believe.

It's an even smarter gambit if your intent is to support gay culture.

I'm not entirely certain Apple intends to support gay culture. I thought I recalled a previous /. story about Apple banning homosexuality in apps, but this non-/. article is all I could find.

http://gawker.com/#!5563119/apples-gay-culture-bans-dont-make-it-moral-or--pure

It's obvious PayPal doesn't give a shit about PR.

Yes:

http://gawker.com/#!5777531/inside-an-egyptian-torture-center/gallery/9

Yes, it is possible.

Quite right. Gawker has some

If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.

http://gawker.com/#!5419271/google-ceo-secrets-are-for-filthy-people

anchorman rapist?

http://cache.gawker.com/assets/resources/2006/10/anchorman-rapist2.jpg

I know /.ers hate discoursing in stereotypes, but are all Russian men brilliant chess players and mathematicians and all Russian women gorgeous femme fatales?