Windows 8 - Deeper Impressions

[JorgeA]

LG Admits Its Smart TVs Collected Info, Promises Fix So Customers Can Actually Opt Out

At LG, we are always aiming to improve our Smart TV experience. Recently, it has been brought to our attention that there is an issue related to viewing information allegedly being gathered without consent. Our customers’ privacy is a very important part of the Smart TV experience so we began an immediate investigation into these claims. Here’s what we found:

Information such as channel, TV platform, broadcast source, etc. that is collected by certain LG Smart TVs is not personal but viewing information. This information is collected as part of the Smart TV platform to deliver more relevant advertisements and to offer recommendations to viewers based on what other LG Smart TV owners are watching. We have verified that even when this function is turned off by the viewers, it continues to transmit viewing information although the data is not retained by the server. A firmware update is being prepared for immediate rollout that will correct this problem on all affected LG Smart TVs so when this feature is disabled, no data will be transmitted.

It has also been reported that the names of media files stored on external drives such as USB flash devices are being collected by LG Smart TVs. While the file names are not stored, the transmission of such file names was part of a new feature being readied to search for data from the internet (metadata) related to the program being watched in order to deliver a better viewing experience. This feature, however, was never fully implemented and no personal data was ever collected or retained. This feature will also be removed from affected LG Smart TVs with the firmware update.

LG regrets any concerns these reports may have caused and will continue to strive to meet the expectations of all our customers and the public. We hope this update clears up any confusion

Good to know that customers still have a say in the "features" of the products that manufacturers sell them.

Thanks for keeping us up to date on this story.

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

Just read this article about Wickr. I don't know much about it but I thought this one small paragraph was interesting about Facebook and similar social networks and people leaving.

"Nico Sell, co-founder and chief executive of Wickr, said the year-and-a-half-old company had seen an extreme spike in interest after revelations about the National Security Agency’s surveillance program were published earlier this year. “George Washington would be rolling over in his grave right now,” said Ms Sell, adding many of her friends who used to think she was paranoid about security were now leaving social networks such as Facebook."

It would be interesting to know just how many Facebook and other accounts are being closed because of all these spying revelations ... probably hard to get solid numbers from the companies.

November 24, 2013

US spying fuels popularity of secure messaging app Wickr

By Hannah Kuchler in San Francisco

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/89f19e64-5501-11e3-a321-00144feabdc0.html

Wickr, the secure messaging app that positions itself “halfway between Snapchat and Snowden”, is set to raise more funds and launch a major update on Monday after its popularity soared following revelations of a US mass surveillance programme.

The Silicon Valley start-up enables encrypted peer-to-peer communications from email to instant messaging while keeping no data whatsoever. It plans to rival Skype by rolling out secure and private international video calling next year.

... more at the link.

Wow, this sure sounds like it's worth looking into. With any kind of halfway adequate financing, this could beat the pants off Skype. Probably, though, they should set up house in the Netherlands or Switzerland or some other place with stronger protection against snoops with badges than does the U.S. or U.K.

To address your question -- I doubt that we'll ever see hard figures, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that these shenanigans will end up costing Facebook and other social networks millions of members.

EDIT: Here are a couple of links with more information on Wickr:

Wickr: Can the Snapchat for Grown-Ups Save You From Spies?

The main difference between the two apps, and the reason Wickr is more ambitious than Snapchat, is that it encrypts all messages, striving for perfect privacy and security. Wickr doesn't just want messages to disappear once they are sent. Wickr doesn't want anybody, including the app itself, to know what your digital correspondence contains.

Nico Sell, a long-time organizer of famed hacker conference Def Con and Wickr co-founder, says she wanted her kids to enjoy private communication, but also designed the app for "very high tension situations, where if information gets out ahead of time, people could get hurt." In other words, Wickr is for you and me, for privacy-obsessed people or tinfoil-wearing paranoids, but it is also for journalists and sources, for freedom fighters and activists, people who have something at stake and need to keep their communications under wraps.

[...]

Messages are encrypted on your phone using a private key, and only the receiver can read them once he or she taps on the unlock button that appears when a message arrives. When traveling through Wickr servers, the correspondence is unreadable to anyone who might be snooping. Wickr claims it doesn't store any of the messages, so the service can't even turn correspondence over as scrambled gobbledygook if the feds or police come knocking.

However, the service is controversial because the encryption algorithm is closed-source:

"We have a kind of a maxim in our field, in cryptography, which is that the systems should be open," says Matthew Green, a cryptography researcher and professor at Johns Hopkins University Information Security Institute.

Green echoes what Bruce Schneier, a cryptography and security guru, has been saying for a long time. "The idea is simple," wrote Schneier in a 1999 newsletter. "Cryptography is hard to do right, and the only way to know if something was done right is to be able to examine it."

The company website.

--JorgeA

EDIT 2: typo in the word "EDIT"

Edited November 29, 2013 by JorgeA

[jaclaz]

@Charlotte

You cannot take out some info from an unrelìable source such as Neowin and then start babbling about a few "Civil Servants".

Read the source article:

http://torrentfreak.com/u-s-caught-pirating-military-software-pays-50-million-to-settle-131127/

The DoJ has confirmed the settlement but won't comment it.

http://www.dallasnews.com/business/business-headlines/20131124-irving-software-firm-settles-suit-with-u.s.-army-for-50-million.ece

Essentially the good US G.I.men agreed to pay for a given amount of licenses and then used 18 times (like in 9,000 vs. 500) the amount for which they paid.

It's not a single "civil servant" (or a bunch of them) that can deploy that number of installs and/or authorize their use in critical missions.

And someone (not a "civil servant") must have authorized the signing of the settlement and consequent expenditures, US$ 50 millions are not "peanuts", were not they convinced of the wrongdoing, they could well have gone to Court.

This said, I wonder who (in his/her right mind) would pay US $ 5,000 for single device license for something that sounds a lot like a "ral time tracking" software, let aloneUS $ 1.35 million per license of a software on a single server, I mean how much are the software costs of (say) UPS or DHL?

jaclaz

[Formfiller]

Bloomberg: Alan Mulally still a favorite for Microsoft CEO position; Stephen Elop no longer frontrunner ( NeoWin 2013-11-28 )

I'll bet the Ford guy keeps saying "no" just to get better and better offers. When they finally sign him it will be for a record breaking package ( and will backfire because of the bad press Microsoft will receive ). Either that or this is all to wear down Wall Street and then suddenly keep Ballmer. Aw heck, just bring back Sinofsky, at least that will provide some entertainment value as they circle the drain.

I guess Elop is no longer the golden boy after after the rumors about his plans for the Xbox and Bing. Too bad, I almost started to like him.

[TELVM]

Bloomberg: Alan Mulally still a favorite for Microsoft CEO position; Stephen Elop no longer frontrunner ( NeoWin 2013-11-28 )

Good news. That guy is an aero/astro engineer that used to design revolutionary cockpits for Boeing. I expect he'd just squarely kick the a$$ of any genius proposing ergonomic jokes like Metro, Tiles 8 and such crap.

[JorgeA]

This said, I wonder who (in his/her right mind) would pay US $ 5,000 for single device license for something that sounds a lot like a "ral time tracking" software, let aloneUS $ 1.35 million per license of a software on a single server[...]

Governments. They don't spend their own $$$, they spend yours.

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

The entertainment mafia triumphs in one more country:

Google, Yahoo Must Scrub 16 Video Streamers: Reuters

Search engines Google, Yahoo and others reportedly have been ordered by a French court to scrub all search results that lead users to 16 websites where videos allegedly are being streamed illegally.

A civil court in Paris handed down a Thursday ruling saying that the search engines, along with several Internet providers, should block the sites, according to Reuters.

As a content creator, I understand the desire to stop piracy, but this cure is worse than the disease. Once any website can be [Orwell reference] sent down the memory hole, [/Orwell reference] then every website is subject to the whim of the authorities and remains at the mercy of the political winds.

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

We predicted this a long time ago:

Finger-friendly laptops aren't touching a chord with notebook buyers

If skyrocketing tablet sales and cute videos of babies that confuse magazines for iPads are any indication, touchscreens are the interface of the future. But there's just one problem with that portentous prediction: If it's true, laptop buyers are stuck with one foot in the past. The market analysts at NPD DisplaySearch say touchscreen notebooks just ain't selling.

Touchscreen laptops only accounted for 7 percent of all laptop sales in the first six months of 2013, the firm claims, though that's expected to rise to 11 percent by the end of the year.

The news isn't good for Microsoft, which overhauled its Windows operating system to showcase a new, finger-friendly "Modern" interface in Windows 8. Touchscreen laptops were hard to come by in 2012, and Microsoft pointed to that to at least partially explain the slowing PC sales of the last holiday season.

[..]

The days of touchscreen supply woes are now a distant memory, however, and finger-friendly notebooks still aren't selling well.

The desktop and its keyboard-and-touchpad interface are simply superior on traditional PCs and laptops, and while touchscreens are certainly a welcome addition on notebooks—I love being able to reach out and quickly tap a Live Tile or desktop icon!—they simply don't offer enough value for the money just yet.

They never will. We in this thread observed long ago how awkward it is to reach out and touch a laptop screen, let alone to keep doing it repeatedly. That's not going to change even if touch-screen laptops manage to match the price of non-touch screen laptops -- but in that case the manufacturers would be eating the added expense, which cannot be good for future choice and competition.

--JorgeA

[jaclaz]

As a content creator, I understand the desire to stop piracy, but this cure is worse than the disease. Once any website can be [Orwell reference] sent down the memory hole, [/Orwell reference] then every website is subject to the whim of the authorities and remains at the mercy of the political winds.

Well, decisions violating the First Amendment (or similar Freedom of press or speech) are IMHO a tadbit tough to apply to people not making money (integrally or partially) through merely re-distributing pre-made content (by others).

The real issue here is about "wideness" (or "selectivity") of the blocking ("by address" vs. "by content"):

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/29/france-streaming-idUSL5N0JE2G920131129

In the French case, Google argued that blocking entire websites was not suitable since it could also cut off access to legal content. It also said blocking entire websites was illegal and incompatible with free speech.

Which nicely brings us back to the known Megaupload case.

I have personally no particular sympathy for people that makes money through violating intellectual property rights, so, if these people ONLY did that, I am perfectly fine with that court decision, the point is whether the approach will lead to block websites where this activity is only marginal and when exactly we can call it "marginal".

I have (hypothesys) a site with 100 pages.

99 are my own intellectual property or self generated content or however PD or similar.

1 is something "pirated" that I share publicly.

Till now the holder of the intellectual property would send me a cease and desist letter and possibly, making leverage on the Millenium Act make google remove the result of a search.

The complete opposite case:

1 page is my intellectual property, 99 are "pirated" content.

The court decision seems to say that since (the specific domains) are entirely or almost entirely dedicated to they must be blocked.

The court said the five unions representing film and TV producers had "sufficiently shown that the Allostreaming network of websites is entirely or almost entirely dedicated to the representation of audiovisual works without the permission of their creators" and break French intellectual property laws.

What if the pages are 50/50?

And when they are 20/80?

jaclaz

[Formfiller]

They never will. We in this thread observed long ago how awkward it is to reach out and touch a laptop screen, let alone to keep doing it repeatedly. That's not going to change even if touch-screen laptops manage to match the price of non-touch screen laptops

It's like NuMicrosoft, PC vendors and some "analysts" are living in some weird Tim Burton/Terry Gilliam fantasy movie: Just simply trying it out would cure them immediately of trying to force these painful input methods on the PC/laptop. But no, billions of dollars need to be wasted first to find out what is obvious within ten seconds of using.

[JorgeA]

As a content creator, I understand the desire to stop piracy, but this cure is worse than the disease. Once any website can be [Orwell reference] sent down the memory hole, [/Orwell reference] then every website is subject to the whim of the authorities and remains at the mercy of the political winds.

Well, decisions violating the First Amendment (or similar Freedom of press or speech) are IMHO a tadbit tough to apply to people not making money (integrally or partially) through merely re-distributing pre-made content (by others).

Here's an interesting question (interesting to me, anyway ): suppose that the police find a guy on the streets of New York City (or any other big city) who is GIVING AWAY knockoffs of Gucci handbags. Ergo, he's not making any money off his activities. (Let's say that he became an Internet billionaire and this is his pastime.) Is he less guilty for giving the stuff away than if he were selling the knockoffs?

I don't have a pre-set answer, it's something to ponder...

I have personally no particular sympathy for people that makes money through violating intellectual property rights, so, if these people ONLY did that, I am perfectly fine with that court decision, the point is whether the approach will lead to block websites where this activity is only marginal and when exactly we can call it "marginal".

I have (hypothesys) a site with 100 pages.

99 are my own intellectual property or self generated content or however PD or similar.

1 is something "pirated" that I share publicly.

Till now the holder of the intellectual property would send me a cease and desist letter and possibly, making leverage on the Millenium Act make google remove the result of a search.

The complete opposite case:

1 page is my intellectual property, 99 are "pirated" content.

The court decision seems to say that since (the specific domains) are entirely or almost entirely dedicated to they must be blocked.

The court said the five unions representing film and TV producers had "sufficiently shown that the Allostreaming network of websites is entirely or almost entirely dedicated to the representation of audiovisual works without the permission of their creators" and break French intellectual property laws.

What if the pages are 50/50?

And when they are 20/80?

Great questions. My first reaction would be that (for better or worse) these are matters of judgment and no iron-clad rule can be set, rather you'd have to judge on the particulars of each case.

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

They never will. We in this thread observed long ago how awkward it is to reach out and touch a laptop screen, let alone to keep doing it repeatedly. That's not going to change even if touch-screen laptops manage to match the price of non-touch screen laptops

It's like NuMicrosoft, PC vendors and some "analysts" are living in some weird Tim Burton/Terry Gilliam fantasy movie: Just simply trying it out would cure them immediately of trying to force these painful input methods on the PC/laptop. But no, billions of dollars need to be wasted first to find out what is obvious within ten seconds of using.

Weird is the right word! I guess that to their way of thinking, "data" trumps both logic and experience. Call it Rube Goldberg-style thinking.

--JorgeA

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

@Charlotte

You cannot take out some info from an unrelìable source such as Neowin and then start babbling about a few "Civil Servants".

Read the source article:

http://torrentfreak.com/u-s-caught-pirating-military-software-pays-50-million-to-settle-131127/

The DoJ has confirmed the settlement but won't comment it.

http://www.dallasnews.com/business/business-headlines/20131124-irving-software-firm-settles-suit-with-u.s.-army-for-50-million.ece

Essentially the good US G.I.men agreed to pay for a given amount of licenses and then used 18 times (like in 9,000 vs. 500) the amount for which they paid.

It's not a single "civil servant" (or a bunch of them) that can deploy that number of installs and/or authorize their use in critical missions.

And someone (not a "civil servant") must have authorized the signing of the settlement and consequent expenditures, US$ 50 millions are not "peanuts", were not they convinced of the wrongdoing, they could well have gone to Court.

This said, I wonder who (in h

is/her right mind) would pay US $ 5,000 for single device license for something that sounds a lot like a "ral time tracking" software, let aloneUS $ 1.35 million per license of a software on a single server, I mean how much are the software costs of (say) UPS or DHL?

jaclaz

Not sure what your point is? A few civil servants or tens of them, whatever. Denote the actual quantity of criminals involved as n and process 317,000,000 - n which results in the absolute quantity of non-criminals being charged cash money for the actions of n. ( Yeah, I know that 317 million is high, actual taxpayers is less at around 100+ million or so ).

The point is that these companies are targeting us because we are suckers. They won't target the actual criminals involved because they won't collect anything substantial ( I mean "alleged" criminals, I wouldn't take their word at face value ).

The immunity that all government employees enjoy which shifts any responsibility to the taxpayer is the problem here. And it ultimately leads to this.

It's so lucrative that it would pay for some software copyright holder to enlist some government employee sysadmin to pirate some software and install it on a million client network, just guarantee him a cut of the extortion settlement and a perfect scam is possible. Since taxpayers ( actually future taxpayers since the debt is so enormous ) don't feel the pain directly they have no real victims of their scam.

All I'm saying is to charge the actual perps. Not me and others who are not involved.

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

The entertainment mafia triumphs in one more country:

Google, Yahoo Must Scrub 16 Video Streamers: Reuters

Search engines Google, Yahoo and others reportedly have been ordered by a French court to scrub all search results that lead users to 16 websites where videos allegedly are being streamed illegally.

A civil court in Paris handed down a Thursday ruling saying that the search engines, along with several Internet providers, should block the sites, according to Reuters.

As a content creator, I understand the desire to stop piracy, but this cure is worse than the disease. Once any website can be [Orwell reference] sent down the memory hole, [/Orwell reference] then every website is subject to the whim of the authorities and remains at the mercy of the political winds.

--JorgeA

Couldn't agree more. This is classic camel's nose under the tent. It's the precedents that get ya in the long run.

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

As a content creator, I understand the desire to stop piracy, but this cure is worse than the disease. Once any website can be [Orwell reference] sent down the memory hole, [/Orwell reference] then every website is subject to the whim of the authorities and remains at the mercy of the political winds.

Well, decisions violating the First Amendment (or similar Freedom of press or speech) are IMHO a tadbit tough to apply to people not making money (integrally or partially) through merely re-distributing pre-made content (by others).

Here's an interesting question (interesting to me, anyway ): suppose that the police find a guy on the streets of New York City (or any other big city) who is GIVING AWAY knockoffs of Gucci handbags. Ergo, he's not making any money off his activities. (Let's say that he became an Internet billionaire and this is his pastime.) Is he less guilty for giving the stuff away than if he were selling the knockoffs?

I don't have a pre-set answer, it's something to ponder...

I have personally no particular sympathy for people that makes money through violating intellectual property rights, so, if these people ONLY did that, I am perfectly fine with that court decision, the point is whether the approach will lead to block websites where this activity is only marginal and when exactly we can call it "marginal".

I have (hypothesys) a site with 100 pages.

99 are my own intellectual property or self generated content or however PD or similar.

1 is something "pirated" that I share publicly.

Till now the holder of the intellectual property would send me a cease and desist letter and possibly, making leverage on the Millenium Act make google remove the result of a search.

The complete opposite case:

1 page is my intellectual property, 99 are "pirated" content.

The court decision seems to say that since (the specific domains) are entirely or almost entirely dedicated to they must be blocked.

The court said the five unions representing film and TV producers had "sufficiently shown that the Allostreaming network of websites is entirely or almost entirely dedicated to the representation of audiovisual works without the permission of their creators" and break French intellectual property laws.

What if the pages are 50/50?

And when they are 20/80?

Great questions. My first reaction would be that (for better or worse) these are matters of judgment and no iron-clad rule can be set, rather you'd have to judge on the particulars of each case.

--JorgeA

I'm okay with the guy giving away the Gucci knock-offs for free. I'm also okay with him charging money if they are not called Gucci or passed off as them ( this is NOT the same as copying a DVD and selling it ). Making a better mousetrap, or selling a clone of an existing mousetrap for a better price is an improvement upon the status quo and was once respected.

As you probably know, down in NYC they have declared war on things exactly like this ( knockoff Gucci, Rolex, etc ) and the reason is probably because of deep pocketed lobbying of the powers-that-be to protect their little empire. It's a microcosm ( or macrocosm? ) of the tech world IP battles. IMHO this all leads back to patents with their built-in arbitrary timeframe of an exclusive monopoly protected by law. Take that away, making it maybe one year tops, and many problems will fix themselves. IMHO naturally.