Group items tagged

Google "Rich Snippets" is a new presentation of HTML snippets that applies Google's algorithms to highlight structured data embedded in web pages. Rich Snippets give end-users convenient summary information about their search results at a glance. Google is currently supporting a very limited subset of data about reviews and people. When searching for a product or service, users can easily see reviews and ratings, and when searching for a person, they'll get help distinguishing between people with the same name. It's a simple change to the display of search results, yet our experiments have shown that users find the new data valuable. For this to work though, both Web-masters and Web-workers have to annotate thier pages with structured data in a standard format. Google snippets supports microformats and RDFa. Existing Web data can be wrapped with some additional tags to accomplish this. Notice that Google avoids mention of RDF and the W3C's vision of a "Semantic Web" where Web objects are fully described in machine readable semantics. Over at the WHATWG group, where work on HTML5 continues, Google's Ian Hickson has been fighting RDFa and the Semantic Web in what looks to be an effort to protect the infamous Google algorithms. RDFa provides a means for Web-workers, knowledge-workers, line-of-business managers and document generating end-users to enrich their HTML+ with machine semantics. The idea being that the document experts creating Web content can best describe to search engine and content management machines the objects-of-information used. The google algorithms provide a proprietary semantics of this same content. The best solution to the tsunami of conten the Web has wrought would be to combine end-user semantic expertise with Google algorithms. Let's hope Google stays the RDFa course and comes around to recognize the full potential of organizing the world's information with the input of content providers. One thing the world desperatel

Microsoft to the world: Outlook's not broken and we aren't 'fixing' it! Mary Jo has an interesting article over at ZDNet. She points out that Microsoft is refusing to restore support for HTML editing in Outlook. Instead, Microsoft intends on using the MSWord editor. I think that means a Microsoft desktop future based on Office OpenXML (OOXML). We shall see. But if this is the case, then i also think we are looking at how Microsoft will break the Web. I've left an extensive comment to Mary Jo's article in the Talkback section, linked to above. ".... This is for all the marbles. The future of the Open Web is at stake. If Microsoft is successful at carving out and encoding an MS Web based on a document format specific to their platforms, applications and services, the Web will break. "
"Looks like a plan to me."
continued here

Interesting article discussing the many ways Microsoft is using to improve the public perception that they are serious about interoperability and open formats, protocols and interfaces. Rocketman attended the recent ISO SC34 meeting in Prague and agrees that Microsoft has indeed put on a new public face filled with cooperation, compliance and unheard of sincerity.

He also says, "Don't be fooled!!!"

There is a big difference between participation in vendor consortia and government sponsored public standards efforts, and, actual implementation at the product level. Looking at how Microsoft products implement open standards, my take is that they have decided on a policy of end user choice. Their applications offer on the one hand the choice of aging, near irrelevant and often crippled open standards. And on the other, the option of very rich and feature filled but proprietary formats, protocols and interfaces that integrate across the entire Microsoft platform of desktop, devices and servers. For instance; IE8 supports 1998 HTML-CSS, but not the advanced ACiD-3 "HTML+" used by WebKit, Firefox, Opera and near every device or smartphone operating at the edge of the Web. (HTML+ = HTML5, CSS4, SVG/Canvas, JS, JS Libs).

But they do offer advanced .NET-WPF proprietary alternative to Open Web HTML+. These include XAML, Silverlight, XPS, LINQ, Smart Tags, and OOXML. Very nice.

"When an open source advocate, open standards advocate, or, well, pretty much anyone that competes with Microsoft (news, site) sees an extended hand from the software giant toward better interoperability, they tend to look and see if the other hand's holding a spiked club.

Even so, the Redmond, WA company continues to push the message that it has seen the light regarding open standards and interoperability...."

"The Internet has been a blessing for the music industry. Although the RIAA and IFPI frequently complain about piracy, their own research shows that only 10% of all illegal downloads are considered to be a loss in sales. Meanwhile, piracy has shown them how to monetize music online, and turn it into profit. Every year, RIAA's global partner IFPI publishes a digital music report, which can be best described as a one sided view of the state of digital music consumption. For several years in a row the report has shown that the sales figures of digital music have gone up, but still, the industry continues to blame piracy for a loss in overall revenue. One of the key statistics that is hyped every year, is the piracy ratio of downloaded music. Just as last year, IFPI estimates that 95% of all downloads are illegal, without giving a proper source for this figure. Interestingly, those who take a closer look at the full report (pdf), will see that only 10% of the claimed illegal downloads are seen as a loss in sales."

" Andy on March 29, 2014 C: 6 Breaking It was supposed to be the world's toughest anti-piracy regime but Russia's site blocking legislation just isn't working. That's not just the opinion of irate movie and music companies either, but comments from Vladimir Putin himself." [* #Time for a #New #Approach... as #continuously #suggested]

"from the and-let-us-never-speak-of-it-again dept Earlier this week, we wrote about widespread demonstrations against a monumentally stupid plan by the Hungarian government to tax internet usage on a per-gigabyte-downloaded plan. " [# ! #Taxing... # ! ... #knowledge #sharing: Another # ! #delirium of the -so-called- #democracy... # ! #will be #eliminated... W@rlwide]

"from the and-let-us-never-speak-of-it-again dept Earlier this week, we wrote about widespread demonstrations against a monumentally stupid plan by the Hungarian government to tax internet usage on a per-gigabyte-downloaded plan. "

I'm informed that Comey will also call for legislation outlawing communication by whispering because of technical difficulties in law enforcement monitoring of such communications. 

"Contents 1 2013 1.1 Neoliberal vs. P2P Culture 1.2 How to Change the World 1.3 The New Politics 1.4 Protecting and Sustaining the Commons 1.5 Reforming Education 1.6 Reforming Money 1.7 Open Science 1.8 The New Media 1.9 The New Public Sphere 1.10 New Subjectivities 1.11 New cultures of work and leadership 1.12 Sound and other Urban Commons 1.13 The continuing copyright culture wars"

Title II is for "common carriers." See http://transition.fcc.gov/Reports/1934new.pdf pg. 35. Under Section 202: "(a) It shall be unlawful for any common carrier to make any unjust or unreasonable discrimination in charges, practices, classifications, regulations, facilities, or services for or in connection with like communication service, directly or indirectly, by any means or device, or to make or give any undue or unreasonable preference or advantage to any particular person, class of persons, or locality, or to subject any particular person, class of persons, or locality to any undue or unreasonable prejudice or disadvantage. (b) Charges or services, whenever referred to in this Act, include charges for, or services in connection with, the use of common carrier lines of communication, whether derived from wire or radio facilities, in chain broadcasting or incidental to radio communication of any kind. (c) Any carrier who knowingly violates the provisions of this section shall forfeit to the United States the sum of $6,000 for each such offense and $300 for each and every day of the continuance of such offense. 

The Internet continues to harden in the wake of the NSA revelations. This is a nice nudge by Google.

"The web forum 4chan is known mostly as a place to share juvenile and, to put it mildly, politically incorrect images. But it's also the birthplace of one of the latest attempts to subvert the NSA's mass surveillance program. When whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that full extent of the NSA's activities last year, members of the site's tech forum started talking about the need for a more secure alternative to Skype. Soon, they'd opened a chat room to discuss the project and created an account on the code hosting and collaboration site GitHub and began uploading code. Eventually, they settled on the name Tox, and you can already download prototypes of the surprisingly easy-to-use tool. The tool is part of a widespread effort to create secure online communication tools that are controlled not only by any one company, but by the world at large-a continued reaction to the Snowden revelations. This includes everything from instant messaging tools to email services. It's too early to count on Tox to protect you from eavesdroppers and spies. Like so many other new tools, it's still in the early stages of development and has yet to receive the scrutiny that other security tools, such as the instant messaging encryption plugin Off The Record has. But it endeavors to carve a unique niche within the secure communications ecosystem."

"from the streaming-away dept In all of the discussions about cord-cutting, it seems like many times we get lost in the weeds of specific details on certain angles or certain perceptions. Occasionally lost in all of this is the simple fact that the public ditching their cable TV subscriptions is happening and the pace at which it's happening is rising." [# ! … wants to #choose # ! by themselves… # ! …and not another TV # ! Stop #contents #restrictions and #You'll see… # ! #Give The Pe@ple what they want, what they deserve… # ! … and a #new -#fairer- #business #model will #rise.]

Marcy Wheeler's specuiulation that various government databases simply move to another agency when they're brought to light is not without precedent. When Congress shut down DARPA's Total Information Awareness program, most of its software programs and databases were just moved to NSA. 

The article should have mentioned that the decision was on cross-motions for *partial* summary judgment. The Jewel case will proceed on other plaintiff claims. 

"Google has come out with the latest version of its "How Google Fights Piracy" report (pdf link), going to great lengths to show how the company goes above and beyond what is required by law to try to drive people to authorized copies of content while also increasing opportunities for content creators to monetize their own content."

"Google has come out with the latest version of its "How Google Fights Piracy" report (pdf link), going to great lengths to show how the company goes above and beyond what is required by law to try to drive people to authorized copies of content while also increasing opportunities for content creators to monetize their own content."

By Juergen Haas Linux Expert "< Continued from page 1 Linux Advantages"

"In this tutorial we will be covering dynamic malware analysis tools which are being used to determine the behaviour of malware after it has been executed. This tutorial is part 2 of 6 in our Malware Analysis tutorials on www.hackingtutorials.org. If you haven't read part 1 of this series please read it first before continuing on this malware analysis tutorial."