Brad-X

Much has changed since the beginning of the free software movement: Most people in advanced countries now own computers — sometimes called “phones” — and use the internet with them. Non-free software still makes the users surrender control over their computing to someone else, but now there is another way to lose it: Service as… Continue reading Why Free Software Is More Important Now Than Ever Before | Wired Opinion | Wired.com

“Google has cited no case that stands for the proposition that users who send emails impliedly consent to interceptions and use of their communications by third parties other than the intended recipient of the email,” Koh wrote. Consumer Watchdog, a nonprofit consumer advocate group based in Washington, D.C., called Koh’s ruling a “tremendous victory for… Continue reading Google’s Gmail scanning unclear to users, judge finds | ITworld

“This thinly disguised corporate propaganda is inaccurate and inappropriate,” says Mitch Stoltz, an intellectual property attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who reviewed the material at WIRED’s request. “It suggests, falsely, that ideas are property and that building on others’ ideas always requires permission,” Stoltz says. “The overriding message of this curriculum is that students’… Continue reading Downloading Is Mean! Content Industry Drafts Anti-Piracy Curriculum for Elementary Schools | Electronic Frontier Foundation

The team is now focused on adjusting the system to completely block this unreleased version of the Android app when we go live with the official BBM for Android app. We are also making sure that the system is reinforced to handle this kind of scenario in the future. While this may sound like a… Continue reading BlackBerry says BBM for Android and iOS won’t relaunch this week as blocking leaked app ‘will take some time’ – The Next Web

No it isn’t. I’ve consulted for companies that try to rely on third parties, and their false promises of redundancy and reliability bite them every time. Even those reliant on Amazon EC2 now simply accept that they must pay double or even triple the monthly rate to run copies of their virtual machines in 3… Continue reading Is the Cloud ready for mission critical apps? | The Next Web

As seen in the demo URL, the Canonical severs are anonymizing directly the URL with the probable behavior: typing a word in the Dash, pushes the word against (along with the locally-installed scopes) the Canonical servers, the Canonical servers decide the best results, the results are then anonymized and finally landed in the Dash. This… Continue reading Smart Scopes to anonymize images before landing in the user’s Dash (privacy oriented) | Iloveubuntu: Ubuntu blog

“Passwords are secret and dynamic; fingerprints are public and permanent,” Franken wrote. “If you don’t tell anyone your password, no one will know what it is. If someone hacks your password, you can change it — as many times as you want. You can’t change your fingerprints. You have only ten of them. And you… Continue reading Al Franken questions privacy of iPhone 5S fingerprint scanner | CNET News

https://projectmeshnet.org/

On its first run, Google Chrome silently imports your browser history from Firefox and Internet Explorer. This combined with its incessant prompting to sign into your Google Account guarantees quite a bit of unauthorized data collection on their part, considering this history data will then be synchronized, unencrypted, with them. It is the only piece… Continue reading Google Chrome is Spyware.

I’m quite enjoying GNOME 3.8 so far. Despite my initial objections to the GNOME 3 environment (Linus Torvalds had the same objections), I’ve found that much of the UI decision making involved in the desktop environment has been more than sensible, and lent a natural feel to it (Linus feels the same way!). The latest… Continue reading Great New Features in GNOME 3.8