Slashdot Mirror

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."

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.' We have discussed Microsoft's creative capitalism in the past."

newscloud writes "Harvard's Nieman Journalism Lab sounds off on micropayments for news content, on the side of the argument that says they are a dangerous delusion: '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 analysis and opinion by Masnick, Outing, Graham, and Reifman. Google's micropayment plans were recently discussed here."

newscloud writes "Harvard's Nieman Journalism Lab sounds off on micropayments for news content, on the side of the argument that says they are a dangerous delusion: '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 analysis and opinion by Masnick, Outing, Graham, and Reifman. Google's micropayment plans were recently discussed here."

Paul Graham has posted an essay questioning whether we ever really paid for "content," as publishers of news and music are saying while they struggle to stay afloat in the digital age. "If the content was what they were selling, why has the price of books or music or movies always depended mostly on the format? Why didn't better content cost more?" Techdirt's Mike Masnick takes it a step further, suggesting that the content itself should be treated as a resource — one component of many that go into a final product. Masnick also discussed the issue recently with NY Times' columnist David Carr, saying that micropayments won't be the silver bullet the publishers are hoping for because consumers are inundated with free alternatives. "It's putting up a tollbooth on a 50-lane highway where the other 49 lanes have no tollbooth, and there's no specific benefit for paying the toll." Reader newscloud points out that the fall 2009 issue of Harvard's Nieman Reports contains a variety of related essays by journalists, technologists, and researchers.

newscloud writes "A twitter-savvy, gluten-free pizza shop nabbed missing Wired magazine writer Evan Ratliff in New Orleans early on 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. 'The Vanish Team application became part of the game — essentially a trap for Evan — one he stumbled into each day knowingly and willingly. This is something that we would never do with our Facebook technology if Evan hadn't asked us to pursue him - but it's a useful reminder of "relative" anonymity on the Web.'"

newscloud writes "A twitter-savvy, gluten-free pizza shop nabbed missing Wired magazine writer Evan Ratliff in New Orleans early on 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. 'The Vanish Team application became part of the game — essentially a trap for Evan — one he stumbled into each day knowingly and willingly. This is something that we would never do with our Facebook technology if Evan hadn't asked us to pursue him - but it's a useful reminder of "relative" anonymity on the Web.'"

Newscloud writes "As PC Mag reported last week, Apple OS X 10.5.6 can break some MacBook Pros leaving some 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. This definitely gives weight to the argument for waiting a bit to run software upgrades."

Newscloud brings us news of a startup called E-Fuel promising to ship a home-brew ethanol plant, the size of a washer-dryer, for under $10,000 by the end of this year. We've had plenty of discussions about $1/gal. fuel — these guys want to let you make it at home. The company says it plans to develop a NAFTA-enabled distribution network for inedible sugar from Mexico at 1/8th the cost of trade-protected sugar, to use as raw material for making ethanol. A renewable energy expert from UC Berkeley is quoted: "There's a lot of hurdles you have to overcome. It's entirely possible that they've done it, but skepticism is a virtue."

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."

NewsCloud writes "Germany's data-protection commissioner, Peter 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."

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."

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.""

NewsCloud writes "Since last December, Facebook has grown from 12 to 47 million users and third-party developers have launched more than 6,000 applications with its API. While privacy advocates have been concerned about Google for the past several years, most of us are just beginning to comprehend Facebook's growing impact on who, when, what and how we connect with friends. Microsoft's recent $240 million investment in the company gives it all the capital it needs for further growth. Last August, Wired published two unusual stories describing how consumers might link together a variety of third-party services to emulate Facebook, and ultimately calling on the open-source software community to build alternatives to the service. Inspired in part by Wired, I've posted some ideas describing what would be needed for an open source architecture for social networking."

NewsCloud writes "Since last December, Facebook has grown from 12 to 47 million users and third-party developers have launched more than 6,000 applications with its API. While privacy advocates have been concerned about Google for the past several years, most of us are just beginning to comprehend Facebook's growing impact on who, when, what and how we connect with friends. Microsoft's recent $240 million investment in the company gives it all the capital it needs for further growth. Last August, Wired published two unusual stories describing how consumers might link together a variety of third-party services to emulate Facebook, and ultimately calling on the open-source software community to build alternatives to the service. Inspired in part by Wired, I've posted some ideas describing what would be needed for an open source architecture for social networking."

NewsCloud writes "Facebook has announced to developers that they are moving to a 64 bit user ID in November. At 32 bits, the current ID allows nearly 4.3 billion user accounts. Yet, despite having only 47 million users today, Facebook's move to 64 bits will allow it to have more than 18 quintillion (18,446,744,074,000,000,000) user accounts. Of course, there are currently only about 6.5 billion people in the world. Is Facebook setting their sights beyond Earth or just trying to avoid what happened when Slashdot ran out of space for comment IDs last year. Perhaps they are planning to implement personas."

NewsCloud writes "Facebook has announced to developers that they are moving to a 64 bit user ID in November. At 32 bits, the current ID allows nearly 4.3 billion user accounts. Yet, despite having only 47 million users today, Facebook's move to 64 bits will allow it to have more than 18 quintillion (18,446,744,074,000,000,000) user accounts. Of course, there are currently only about 6.5 billion people in the world. Is Facebook setting their sights beyond Earth or just trying to avoid what happened when Slashdot ran out of space for comment IDs last year. Perhaps they are planning to implement personas."

NewsCloud writes "Eight days after Google CEO Eric Schmidt told Zeitgeist conference attendees that social networks account for an 'enormous proportion [of Internet usage]...it's a very real phenomenon,' Google News has launched its own Facebook application. Says Google News: 'This experimental application enables users to create custom sections or select from a set of pre-defined topics, then browse and share stories with their friends on Facebook. We are trying a couple things differently with this application, and it is still in beta, but we think that it adds value to the Facebook experience and to users' overall news experience.' Check out Google News on Facebook (requires registration) — or view screenshots."

NewsCloud writes "Eight days after Google CEO Eric Schmidt told Zeitgeist conference attendees that social networks account for an 'enormous proportion [of Internet usage]...it's a very real phenomenon,' Google News has launched its own Facebook application. Says Google News: 'This experimental application enables users to create custom sections or select from a set of pre-defined topics, then browse and share stories with their friends on Facebook. We are trying a couple things differently with this application, and it is still in beta, but we think that it adds value to the Facebook experience and to users' overall news experience.' Check out Google News on Facebook (requires registration) — or view screenshots."

NewsCloud writes "Google has raised the required minimum traffic limit for publishers who wish to use its AdSense API to 100,000 page views per day. The AdSense API was introduced in March as a way for sites with user generated content to share advertising revenue with their members. Says Google, "This policy change will probably result in fewer developers going live and give us a chance to enhance our support resources and processes to more easily support a greater number of developers in the future...we hope to be able to lower it in the future as we become more efficient at supporting our developers!" Meanwhile, some publishers report waiting a month for their API usage to be approved. I take Google at its word for now but worry that small developers could be increasingly squeezed out of the mashup space if this were to become a trend."

NewsCloud writes "After Slashdot reported Facebook Exposes Advertisers To Hate Speech, the company removed its F**k Islam group for a day (it's back up now). According to the New York Times, 'Facebook declined to comment on Friday on the subject of hate speech or on what steps had been taken.' It turns out that Microsoft is the digital advertising provider for Facebook serving up ads for companies such as NetFlix, T-Mobile, Sprint, Verizon and Coca Cola. But for now, the Microsoft-served ads for all Facebook group home pages (even those complying with Facebook's Terms of Use) appear to have been taken off the site. For its part, NetFlix told me to address any concerns about its own ad placement along obscene speech with Facebook. T-Mobile said they would look into it."

NewsCloud writes "After Slashdot reported Facebook Exposes Advertisers To Hate Speech, the company removed its F**k Islam group for a day (it's back up now). According to the New York Times, 'Facebook declined to comment on Friday on the subject of hate speech or on what steps had been taken.' It turns out that Microsoft is the digital advertising provider for Facebook serving up ads for companies such as NetFlix, T-Mobile, Sprint, Verizon and Coca Cola. But for now, the Microsoft-served ads for all Facebook group home pages (even those complying with Facebook's Terms of Use) appear to have been taken off the site. For its part, NetFlix told me to address any concerns about its own ad placement along obscene speech with Facebook. T-Mobile said they would look into it."

NewsCloud writes "Does Facebook believe that no publicity is bad publicity? Why else would they leave a group called, "F**k Islam" open since July 21, 2007 despite more than 53,482 members joining an opposing group called petition: if "f**k Islam" is not shut down..we r quitting facebook group? Furthermore, advertisers such as Sprint, Verizon, T Mobile, Target, and Qwest wouldn't be too happy to learn that they are paying for ads on the 'F**k Islam' group pages. Shouldn't a startup like Facebook, reportedly worth more than a billion dollars and with over a hundred employees, be expected to enforce its own Terms of Use in less than six weeks?"

NewsCloud writes "Does Facebook believe that no publicity is bad publicity? Why else would they leave a group called, "F**k Islam" open since July 21, 2007 despite more than 53,482 members joining an opposing group called petition: if "f**k Islam" is not shut down..we r quitting facebook group? Furthermore, advertisers such as Sprint, Verizon, T Mobile, Target, and Qwest wouldn't be too happy to learn that they are paying for ads on the 'F**k Islam' group pages. Shouldn't a startup like Facebook, reportedly worth more than a billion dollars and with over a hundred employees, be expected to enforce its own Terms of Use in less than six weeks?"

NewsCloud alerts us to a story a few months old that has been getting a lot of play recently. A Seattle blogger, Dan Twohig, was browsing in Microsoft's Virtual Earth when he accidentally came across a photo of a nuclear sub in dry-dock. Its propeller is clearly visible — this was a major no-no on the part of someone at the Bangor Sub Base. The designs of such stealth propellers have been secret for decades. Twohig blogged about the find and linked to the Virtual Earth photo on July 2. The debate about security vs. Net-accessible aerial photography has been building ever since. The story was picked up on military.china.com on Aug. 17 — poetic justice for the Chinese sub photo that had embarrassed them a month before. On Aug. 20 the Navy Times published the article that most mainstream media have picked up in their more recent coverage. Twohig's blog is the best source to follow the ongoing debate. No one has asked Microsoft, Google, or anyone else to blur the photo in question. Kind of late now.

NewsCloud writes "After reading about the Facebook platform launch, I spent the next week learning the API and building my application. Facebook's platform has been pretty successful despite complaints of poor documentation, instability and outcries over its application approval process. I've been waiting two weeks for my application to be approved for their directory and had my account disabled (temporarily) after I invited a large number of colleagues. While I'm impressed with the potential of the platform, the experience has made me more concerned about the lack of transparency in privately held social networks and the risks we take as developers when we invest time in a company's platform. Facebook's home page advertises itself as "a social utility that connects you with the people around you." My concern with Facebook is that there's no one regulating the utility."

NewsCloud writes "'Thanks to the Google agreement, the Mozilla Foundation went from revenue of nearly $6 million in 2004 to more than $52 million the next year [similar revenue is expected in 2006]...In 2005, the foundation created a subsidiary, the for-profit Mozilla Corporation,...mainly to deal with the tax and other issues related to the Google contract...By creating a corporation to run the Firefox project, Mozilla was committing to be less transparent. In part, that is because Google insists on the secrecy of "its arrangement and agreements," said board member Mitch Kapor.' The NYT article compares this approach to Wikipedia's ongoing fundraisers and raises the issue of transparency in open source projects. i.e. should Firefox's 1,000 to 2,000 developers and 80,000 evangelists have full knowledge of how revenue is spent as well as the extent to which Google is able to influence strategy vs. other stakeholders."

NewsCloud writes "The Seattle PI's Microsoft Blogger Todd Bishop asks "How does Gates shape up as a seer?" None strike me as particularly clairvoyant, but the missed ones are winners: "I believe OS/2 is destined to be the most important operating system, and possibly program, of all time." and "Two years from now, spam will be solved." But in fairness to Gates, for many years Microsoft's tagline was "a PC on every desktop and in every home.""

NewsCloud writes "The Hearst Corporation plans to use the Seattle Post-Intelligencer to test market LG Philipps' recently announced flexible color E-Paper. 'The electronic P-I will carry real-time news, same as the Internet, not yesterday's news like traditional papers. Readers will turn the e-paper's pages by touching the flexible screen. And when those readers head off to work, they will roll up the electronic P-I and stuff it in their pocket, purse, or briefcase.' The announcement comes amidst the recent settlement of bitter co-operating disputes between Seattle's two newspapers and Bill Gates' recent comments on the shifting of the advertising market away from traditional media." Update: 05/18 21:51 GMT by Z : Michelle Nicolosi, Assistant Managing Editor for the PI, emailed this correction: "Someday, Seattle P-I readers may be able to carry around their news in a bendable, electronic paper device -- but not any time soon. Hearst Corp., which owns the Seattle P-I, has no plans to use the Seattle daily newspaper to test a newly announced E-paper gadget." The original site linked apparently got it wrong.

NewsCloud writes "After the LA Times reported that the Gates Foundation often invests in companies hurting the very communities Bill and Melinda want to help, the Seattle Times reported the foundation planned 'a systematic review of its investments to determine whether it should pull its money out of companies that are doing harm to society'. Shortly after that interview, the Gates Foundation took down their public statement on this and replaced it with a significantly altered version which seems to say that investing responsibly would just be too complex for them and that they need to focus on their core mission: 'There are dozens of factors that could be considered, almost all of which are outside the foundation's areas of expertise. The issues involved are quite complex...Which social and political issues should be on the list? ... Many of the companies mentioned in the Los Angeles Times articles, such as Ford, Kraft, Fannie Mae, Nestle, and General Electric, do a lot of work that some people like, as well as work that some people do not like. Some activities might even be viewed positively by some people and negatively by others.'"

NewsCloud writes "What does Firefox have to do with social justice? How will the one laptop per child project discourage genocide? How soon will Microsoft collapse? Watch Eben Moglen's inspiring keynote from the 2006 Plone Conference (Archive.org: mp3 or qt; or YouTube). The video presentation is ordinary, so the mp3 is an equally good format. 'If we know that what we are trying to accomplish is the spread of justice and social equality through the universalization of access to knowledge; If we know that what we are trying to do is build an economy of sharing which will rival the economies of ownership at every point where they directly compete; If we know that we are doing this as an alternative to coercive redistribution, that we have a third way in our hands for dealing with long and deep problems of human injustice; If we are conscious of what we have and know what we are trying to accomplish, when this is the moment for the first time in lifetimes, we can get it done.'"

NewsCloud writes "What does Firefox have to do with social justice? How will the one laptop per child project discourage genocide? How soon will Microsoft collapse? Watch Eben Moglen's inspiring keynote from the 2006 Plone Conference (Archive.org: mp3 or qt; or YouTube). The video presentation is ordinary, so the mp3 is an equally good format. 'If we know that what we are trying to accomplish is the spread of justice and social equality through the universalization of access to knowledge; If we know that what we are trying to do is build an economy of sharing which will rival the economies of ownership at every point where they directly compete; If we know that we are doing this as an alternative to coercive redistribution, that we have a third way in our hands for dealing with long and deep problems of human injustice; If we are conscious of what we have and know what we are trying to accomplish, when this is the moment for the first time in lifetimes, we can get it done.'"

Jeff writes "The New York Times is reporting that the feds have shut down the 'Operation Iraqi Freedom Document Portal' due to concerns from weapons experts that the 'papers give detailed information on how to build nuclear firing circuits and triggering explosives, as well as the radioactive cores of atom bombs.' One diplomat is quoted as saying, 'If you had this, it would short-circuit a lot of things.' Indexes to older (less sensitive) documents (and some html from pdfs) are still cached at Google today. Rep. Pete Hoekstra pushed for the public release of the archive to help determine 'whether Saddam Hussein destroyed Iraq's weapons of mass destruction or hid or transferred them'. Critics have said the archive was created to perpetuate misinformation about WMDs."

Jeff writes "In March, an earlier Slashdot post asked if iTunes sales of the Daily Show would make it harder to share clips online. Well, apparently with the $1.65 billion YouTube acquisition by Google, the answer is now yes. Today, YouTube removed all of its Comedy Central content. Google knew this was coming but you have to wonder if YouTube will be worth that $1.65 billion on Monday. The take down request comes a year after a Wired interview where Daily Show Executive Ben Karlin encouraged viewers to download: 'If people want to take the show in various forms, I'd say go.' Maybe the New York Times Company would have been a better acquisition for Google after all."