Skip to main content

Home/ Future of the Web/ Group items tagged offers

Rss Feed Group items tagged

4More

Press corner | European Commission - 0 views

  • The European Commission has informed Amazon of its preliminary view that it has breached EU antitrust rules by distorting competition in online retail markets. The Commission takes issue with Amazon systematically relying on non-public business data of independent sellers who sell on its marketplace, to the benefit of Amazon's own retail business, which directly competes with those third party sellers. The Commission also opened a second formal antitrust investigation into the possible preferential treatment of Amazon's own retail offers and those of marketplace sellers that use Amazon's logistics and delivery services. Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager, in charge of competition policy, said: “We must ensure that dual role platforms with market power, such as Amazon, do not distort competition.  Data on the activity of third party sellers should not be used to the benefit of Amazon when it acts as a competitor to these sellers. The conditions of competition on the Amazon platform must also be fair.  Its rules should not artificially favour Amazon's own retail offers or advantage the offers of retailers using Amazon's logistics and delivery services. With e-commerce booming, and Amazon being the leading e-commerce platform, a fair and undistorted access to consumers online is important for all sellers.”
  • Amazon has a dual role as a platform: (i) it provides a marketplace where independent sellers can sell products directly to consumers; and (ii) it sells products as a retailer on the same marketplace, in competition with those sellers. As a marketplace service provider, Amazon has access to non-public business data of third party sellers such as the number of ordered and shipped units of products, the sellers' revenues on the marketplace, the number of visits to sellers' offers, data relating to shipping, to sellers' past performance, and other consumer claims on products, including the activated guarantees. The Commission's preliminary findings show that very large quantities of non-public seller data are available to employees of Amazon's retail business and flow directly into the automated systems of that business, which aggregate these data and use them to calibrate Amazon's retail offers and strategic business decisions to the detriment of the other marketplace sellers. For example, it allows Amazon to focus its offers in the best-selling products across product categories and to adjust its offers in view of non-public data of competing sellers. The Commission's preliminary view, outlined in its Statement of Objections, is that the use of non-public marketplace seller data allows Amazon to avoid the normal risks of retail competition and to leverage its dominance in the market for the provision of marketplace services in France and Germany- the biggest markets for Amazon in the EU. If confirmed, this would infringe Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) that prohibits the abuse of a dominant market position.
  •  
    "In addition, the Commission opened a second antitrust investigation into Amazon's business practices that might artificially favour its own retail offers and offers of marketplace sellers that use Amazon's logistics and delivery services (the so-called "fulfilment by Amazon or FBA sellers"). In particular, the Commission will investigate whether the criteria that Amazon sets to select the winner of the "Buy Box" and to enable sellers to offer products to Prime users, under Amazon's Prime loyalty programme, lead to preferential treatment of Amazon's retail business or of the sellers that use Amazon's logistics and delivery services. The "Buy Box" is displayed prominently on Amazon's websites and allows customers to add items from a specific retailer directly into their shopping carts. Winning the "Buy Box" (i.e. being chosen as the offer that features in this box) is crucial to marketplace sellers as the Buy Box prominently shows the offer of one single seller for a chosen product on Amazon's marketplaces, and generates the vast majority of all sales. The other aspect of the investigation focusses on the possibility for marketplace sellers to effectively reach Prime users. Reaching these consumers is important to sellers because the number of Prime users is continuously growing and because they tend to generate more sales on Amazon's marketplaces than non-Prime users. If proven, the practice under investigation may breach Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) that prohibits the abuse of a dominant market position. The Commission will now carry out its in-depth investigation as a matter of priority"
  •  
    On the filed charges, the violation seems to be fairly clear-cut and straightforward to prove. (DG Competition has really outstanding lawyers.) I suspect the real fight here will be over the remedy.
9More

Is Linux dead for the desktop? - 1 views

  • Linux never had the apps
  • Charles King, an IT analyst who follows enterprise trends, says the big change is in IT. At one time, executives in charge of computing services were mostly concerned with operating systems and applications for massive throng of traditional business users. Those users have now flocked to mobile computing devices, but they still have a Windows PC sitting on their desk.
  • Today, Microsoft's lock (on the desktop, anyway) remains secure, even in the face of Apple's surge," King says. "Ironically enough, though, the open source model remains alive and well but mostly in the development of new standards and development platforms."
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • David Johnson
  • What corporate end users really need is familiarity, consistency and compatibility - something Apple, Microsoft and Google seem more adept at offering."
  • Can desktop Linux OS be saved? Johnson says the best example of how to save Linux OS is the Chrome OS, an all-in-one laptop and desktop offering available through major consumer electronics companies such as LG (with their Chromebase all-in-one) and the Samsung Chromebook 2
  • The problem is that Chrome OS and Android aren't the same as Linux OS on the desktop. It's a complete reinvention. There are few Windows-like productivity apps and no knowledge worker apps designed for keyboard and mouse.
  • All of experts agree - Windows won every battle for the business user.
  •  
    "For executives in charge of desktop deployments in a large company, Linux OS was once hailed as a saviour for corporate end users. With incredibly low pricing - free, with fee-based support plans, for example - distributions such as Ubuntu Desktop and SUSE Linux Enterprise offered a "good enough" user interface, along with plenty of powerful apps and a rich browser. A few years ago, both Dell and HP jumped on the bandwagon; today, they still offer "developer" and "workstation" models that come pre-loaded with a Linux install. Plus, anyone who follows the Linux market knows that Google has reimagined Linux as a user-friendly tablet interface (the wildly popular Android OS) and a browser-only desktop variant (Chrome OS). Linux also shows up on countless connected home gadgets, fitness trackers, watches and other low-cost devices, mostly because OS costs are so low. The desktop computing OS for end users has failed to capture any attention lately, though. Al Gillen, the programme vice president for servers and system software at IDC, says the Linux OS as a computing platform for end users is at least comatose - and probably dead. Yes, it has reemerged on Android and other devices, but it has gone almost completely silent as a competitor to Windows for mass deployment. As they say, you can hear the crickets chirping."
6More

Microsoft to host data in Germany to evade US spying | Naked Security - 0 views

  • Microsoft's new plan to keep the US government's hands off its customers' data: Germany will be a safe harbor in the digital privacy storm. Microsoft on Wednesday announced that beginning in the second half of 2016, it will give foreign customers the option of keeping data in new European facilities that, at least in theory, should shield customers from US government surveillance. It will cost more, according to the Financial Times, though pricing details weren't forthcoming. Microsoft Cloud - including Azure, Office 365 and Dynamics CRM Online - will be hosted from new datacenters in the German regions of Magdeburg and Frankfurt am Main. Access to data will be controlled by what the company called a German data trustee: T-Systems, a subsidiary of the independent German company Deutsche Telekom. Without the permission of Deutsche Telekom or customers, Microsoft won't be able to get its hands on the data. If it does get permission, the trustee will still control and oversee Microsoft's access.
  • Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella dropped the word "trust" into the company's statement: Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every individual on the planet to achieve more. Our new datacenter regions in Germany, operated in partnership with Deutsche Telekom, will not only spur local innovation and growth, but offer customers choice and trust in how their data is handled and where it is stored.
  • On Tuesday, at the Future Decoded conference in London, Nadella also announced that Microsoft would, for the first time, be opening two UK datacenters next year. The company's also expanding its existing operations in Ireland and the Netherlands. Officially, none of this has anything to do with the long-drawn-out squabbling over the transatlantic Safe Harbor agreement, which the EU's highest court struck down last month, calling the agreement "invalid" because it didn't protect data from US surveillance. No, Nadella said, the new datacenters and expansions are all about giving local businesses and organizations "transformative technology they need to seize new global growth." But as Diginomica reports, Microsoft EVP of Cloud and Enterprise Scott Guthrie followed up his boss’s comments by saying that yes, the driver behind the new datacenters is to let customers keep data close: We can guarantee customers that their data will always stay in the UK. Being able to very concretely tell that story is something that I think will accelerate cloud adoption further in the UK.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Microsoft and T-Systems' lawyers may well think that storing customer data in a German trustee data center will protect it from the reach of US law, but for all we know, that could be wishful thinking. Forrester cloud computing analyst Paul Miller: To be sure, we must wait for the first legal challenge. And the appeal. And the counter-appeal. As with all new legal approaches, we don’t know it is watertight until it is challenged in court. Microsoft and T-Systems’ lawyers are very good and say it's watertight. But we can be sure opposition lawyers will look for all the holes. By keeping data offshore - particularly in Germany, which has strong data privacy laws - Microsoft could avoid the situation it's now facing with the US demanding access to customer emails stored on a Microsoft server in Dublin. The US has argued that Microsoft, as a US company, comes under US jurisdiction, regardless of where it keeps its data.
  • Running away to Germany isn't a groundbreaking move; other US cloud services providers have already pledged expansion of their EU presences, including Amazon's plan to open a UK datacenter in late 2016 that will offer what CTO Werner Vogels calls "strong data sovereignty to local users." Other big data operators that have followed suit: Salesforce, which has already opened datacenters in the UK and Germany and plans to open one in France next year, as well as new EU operations pledged for the new year by NetSuite and Box. Can Germany keep the US out of its datacenters? Can Ireland? Time, and court cases, will tell.
  •  
    The European Community's Court of Justice decision in the Safe Harbor case --- and Edward Snowden --- are now officially downgrading the U.S. as a cloud data center location. NSA is good business for Europeans looking to displace American cloud service providers, as evidenced by Microsoft's decision. The legal test is whether Microsoft has "possession, custody, or control" of the data. From the info given in the article, it seems that Microsoft has done its best to dodge that bullet by moving data centers to Germany and placing their data under the control of a European company. Do ownership of the hardware and profits from their rent mean that Microsoft still has "possession, custody, or control" of the data? The fine print of the agreement with Deutsche Telekom and the customer EULAs will get a thorough going over by the Dept. of Justice for evidence of Microsoft "control" of the data. That will be the crucial legal issue. The data centers in Germany may pass the test. But the notion that data centers in the UK can offer privacy is laughable; the UK's legal authority for GCHQ makes it even easier to get the data than the NSA can in the U.S.  It doesn't even require a court order. 
5More

Rightscorp Offered Internet Provider a Cut of Piracy Settlements | TorrentFreak [# Note] - 0 views

    • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.
       
      # Hollywood 1 - 0 Silicon Valley (# ! ...and What about 47 U.S. Code § 551 - Protection of subscriber privacy...?)
    • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.
       
      [... Despite the strong language and extortion accusations used by Cox, the revelations didn't prevent the Court from granting copyright holders access to the personal details of 250 accused copyright infringers. ...]
    • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.
       
      # ! Rightscorp abetting Cox in a case of conspiracy to commit extortion...
  •  
    Ernesto on May 25, 2015 C: 0 Breaking Rightscorp, the piracy monetization company that works with Warner Bros. and other prominent copyright holders, goes to great lengths to reach allegedly pirating subscribers. The company offered Cox Communications a cut of the piracy settlements if they agreed to forward their notices, the ISP revealed in court. (# see Hobbs Act Note...)
  •  
    Ernesto on May 25, 2015 C: 0 Breaking Rightscorp, the piracy monetization company that works with Warner Bros. and other prominent copyright holders, goes to great lengths to reach allegedly pirating subscribers. The company offered Cox Communications a cut of the piracy settlements if they agreed to forward their notices, the ISP revealed in court. (# see Hobbs Act Note...)
2More

InternetNews Realtime IT News - The Next Wave in Collaborative Software - 0 views

  •  
    There were three must see demonstrations at Office 2.0; Adobe Genesis, Joblogs and GE. Genesis and Joblogs are stunning examples of what RiA will mean int he future. GE offered a rather extraordinary example of how collaborative computing changes everything in the workplace. GE' Suk made an interesting statement, "Collaboration is simply a digital version of how a workgroup "works" a business process." Done right, collaboration becomes the business process.
  •  
    RiA is making the leap from web design to web application by first reinventing the end users "workspace-workgroup" experience. "... The winds of change are blowing through collaborative software, and they're blowing pretty hard. Here at the Office 2.0 conference, Adobe Systems and Joblogs previewed their approaches, which are strikingly similar. They both offer real time collaboration. Both use mash-ups and provide ease of use well beyond today's collaborative systems, which Joblogs founder Steve Ireland described as "workspace 1.0." Both are aimed at the enterprise and seek to provide context around the user's workspace, doing mash-ups (define) of contact databases, e-mail, calendars, photos, and task lists, although Joblogs' application also offers blogs.
2More

EurActiv.com - EU to oblige Microsoft to offer competitors' browsers | EU - European In... - 0 views

  • "If the Commission's preliminary conclusions as outlined in the recent statement of objections were confirmed, the Commission would intend to impose remedies that enabled users and manufacturers to make an unbiased choice between Internet Explorer and competing third party web browsers," Jonathan Todd, spokesperson for EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes, told EurActiv.
  • This line stems from the mistakes the Commission recognised it had made by imposing remedies on Microsoft in the Media Player case (see background). Indeed, although Microsoft is now obliged to offer a version of Windows without Media Player, for the most part, users are opting for the readily available bundled offer, which provides extra software at the same price. "That remedy was rubbish," acknowledged an official in the Commission's competition department. 
2More

Safe Plurality: Can it be done using OOXML's Markup Compatibility and Extensions mechan... - 0 views

  • During the OOXML standardization proceedings, the ISO particpants felt that there was one particular sub-technology, Markup Compatibility and Extensibility (MCE), that was potentially of such usefulness by other standards, that it was brought out into its own part. It is now IS29500:2009 Part 3: you can download it in its ECMA form here, it only has about 15 pages of substantive text. The particular issue that MCE address is this: what is an application supposed to do when it finds some markup it wasn't programmed to accept? This could be extension elements in some foreign namespace, but it could also be some elements from a known namespace: the case when a document was made against a newer version of the standard than the application.
  •  
    Rick Jelliffe posts a frank view of the OOXML compatibility framework, a document I've studied myself in the past. There is much that is laudable about the framework, but there are also aspects that are troublesome. Jelliffe identifies one red flag item, the freedom for a vendor to "proprietize" OOXML using the MustUnderstand attribute and offers some suggestions for lessening that danger through redrafting of the spec. One issue he does not touch, however, is the Microsoft Open Specification Promise covenant not to sue, a deeply flawed document in terms of anyone implementing OOXML other than Microsoft. Still, there is so much prior art for the OOXML compatibility framework that I doubt any patent reading on it would survive judicial review. E.g., a highly similar framework has been implemented in WordPerfect since version 6.0. and the OOXML framework is remarkably similar to the compatibility framework specified by OASIS OpenDocument 1.0 but subsequently gutted at ISO. The Jelliffe article offers a good overview of factors that must be considered in designing a standard's compatibility framework. For those that go on to read the compatibility framework's specification, keep in mind that in several places the document falsely claims that it is an interoperability framework. It is not. It is a framework designed for one-way transfer of data, not interoperability which involves round-trip 2-way of exchange of data without data loss.
4More

The Grand Convergence: Web + RIA + Widgets + Client/Server - 0 views

  • he architecture of the Widget engine divides the client technology into two parts, the engine and the widgets. The widget engine is usually a pretty large download.
  • The widget engine is really a wonderful architecture that gives you the power of the desktop (via the widget engine) and the management of the Web (via widget downloads).  Widget engines can out-perform RIA solutions and they can store larger data sets. 
  • Fit Client applications can be centrally managed, yet remain resident on the desktop. They can offer access to standard web content (e.g. HTML) without the need of a browser. Fit Clients can leverage the processing power and disc space of the client machine, but they can also offer more restrictive and secure environments than client/server platforms.
  •  
    Excellent overview of where applications are going. Richard Monson-Haefel, (whom i met at the 2008 Web 2.0 Conference) explains the convergence of four emerging application models: Web Clients (Browsers), RiA Clients, Client/Server, and Widget Engines. He comes up with a convergence point called "Fit Client", offering Adobe Air as the leading example. Richard walks through each application model, discussing limitations and advantages. Good stuff, especially this comment: "The widget engine is really a wonderful architecture that gives you the power of the desktop (via the widget engine) and the management of the Web (via widget downloads).  Widget engines can out-perform RIA solutions and they can store larger data sets.    The limitation of Widget engines is not in their architecture, it is that they have been designed for applications with fairly weak capabilities compared to client/server. Widgets tend to be single-purpose applications with limited access to the native operating system. That said, the widget architecture itself - the separation of the platform from the applications - is important. It makes it possible to create applications (widgets) that are portable across operating systems and are packaged for easy download and installation. "
1More

Microsoft's Quest for Interoperability and Open Standards - 0 views

  •  
    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...."

2More

Pro-Privacy Senator Wyden on Fighting the NSA From Inside the System | WIRED - 1 views

  •  
    "Senator Ron Wyden thought he knew what was going on. The Democrat from Oregon, who has served on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence since 2001, thought he knew the nature of the National Security Agency's surveillance activities. As a committee member with a classified clearance, he received regular briefings to conduct oversight."
  •  
    I'm a retired lawyer in Oregon and a devout civil libertarian. Wyden is one of my senators. I have been closely following this government digital surveillance stuff since the original articles in 1988 that first broke the story on the Five Eyes' Echelon surveillance system. E.g., http://goo.gl/mCxs6Y While I will grant that Wyden has bucked the system gently (he's far more a drag anchor than a propeller), he has shown no political courage on the NSA stuff whatsoever. In the linked article, he admits keeping his job as a Senator was more important to him than doing anything *effective* to stop the surveillance in its tracks. His "working from the inside" line notwithstanding, he allowed creation of a truly Orwellian state to develop without more than a few ineffective yelps that were never listened to because he lacked the courage to take a stand and bring down the house that NSA built with documentary evidence. It took a series of whistleblowers culminating in Edward Snowden's courageous willingness to spend the rest of his life in prison to bring the public to its currently educated state. Wyden on the other hand, didn't even have the courage to lay it all out in the public Congressional record when he could have done so at any time without risking more than his political career because of the Constitution's Speech and Debate Clause that absolutely protects Wyden from criminal prosecution had he done so. I don't buy arguments that fear of NSA blackmail can excuse politicians from doing their duty. That did not stop the Supreme Court from unanimously laying down an opinion, in Riley v. California, that brings to an end the line of case decisions based on Smith v. Maryland that is the underpinning of the NSA/DoJ position on access to phone metadata without a warrant. http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=9647156672357738355 Elected and appointed government officials owe a duty to the citizens of this land to protect and defend the Constitution that legallh
1More

10 important tips for living a multi-platform life | CITEworld - 0 views

  •  
    "With the rise of different mobile platforms and content ecosystems over the past decade, the technology world is becoming increasingly fragmented. Fifteen years ago, there were only a handful of platforms that mattered -- Windows PCs, Macs, and perhaps Linux on the desktop, and primarily BlackBerry in the mobile space. Today, the number is far greater -- Windows (further divided into the pre- and post-Windows 8 offerings), OS X, Linux, Chrome OS, Android (in many varying incarnations), iOS, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, Amazon's Kindle and Fire products, to name the most common. Each of these platforms has become increasingly insular, making lock-in to a specific vendor, device, or OS much more common.  Featured Resource Presented by Citrix Systems 10 essential elements for a secure enterprise mobility strategy Best practices for protecting sensitive business information while making people productive from LEARN MORE Although it is possible to switch from an iPhone to Android, or from Windows to Mac, there is often a trade-off in making the switch. Apps, music, ebooks, and other content may need to be re-purchased. There will likely be some learning curve. The offerings in the new ecosystem -- apps or content -- may not match the experience to which we've become accustomed, and some may not be available at all.  Here's some guidance on how to switch platforms."
1More

Media Companies Track Pirated Downloads For Marketing Purposes | TorrentFreak [# ! note... - 0 views

  •  
    [ Ernesto on February 18, 2015 C: 0 Breaking A new report released by Tru Optik shows that there are hundreds of millions of active BitTorrent users who together shared 18 billion files last year. The data is being used to show media companies the scale of the "unmonetized" demand for their products while offering a tool to target pirates with the right offerings. ...] [# ! yes, sharers must be respected and rewarded as industry # ! advanced advisors, instead of being persecuted...]
1More

Introduction to OpenCalais | OpenCalais - 0 views

  •  
    "The free OpenCalais service and open API is the fastest way to tag the people, places, facts and events in your content.  It can help you improve your SEO, increase your reader engagement, create search-engine-friendly 'topic hubs' and streamline content operations - saving you time and money. OpenCalais is free to use in both commercial and non-commercial settings, but can only be used on public content (don't run your confidential or competitive company information through it!). OpenCalais does not keep a copy of your content, but it does keep a copy of the metadata it extracts there from. To repeat, OpenCalais is not a private service, and there is no secure, enterprise version that you can buy to operate behind a firewall. It is your responsibility to police the content that you submit, so make sure you are comfortable with our Terms of Service (TOS) before you jump in. You can process up to 50,000 documents per day (blog posts, news stories, Web pages, etc.) free of charge.  If you need to process more than that - say you are an aggregator or a media monitoring service - then see this page to learn about Calais Professional. We offer a very affordable license. OpenCalais' early adopters include CBS Interactive / CNET, Huffington Post, Slate, Al Jazeera, The New Republic, The White House and more. Already more than 30,000 developers have signed up, and more than 50 publishers and 75 entrepreneurs are using the free service to help build their businesses. You can read about the pioneering work of these publishers, entrepreneurs and developers here. To get started, scroll to the bottom section of this page. To build OpenCalais into an existing site or publishing platform (CMS), you will need to work with your developers.  Why OpenCalais Matters The reason OpenCalais - and so-called "Web 3.0" in general (concepts like the Semantic Web, Linked Data, etc.) - are important is that these technologies make it easy to automatically conne
2More

How to Open DjVu Files on your PC - Icecream Tech Digest - 1 views

  •  
    DjVu is a file format that is primarily used for storing scanned documents. It's popular thanks to the high level of compression it offers - the same files in PDF format will take up much more space than one in … Continue reading →
  •  
    DjVu is a file format that is primarily used for storing scanned documents. It's popular thanks to the high level of compression it offers - the same files in PDF format will take up much more space than one in … Continue reading →
2More

Software Should Be Free: The FSF's first Annual Report - Free Software Foundation - wor... - 1 views

  •  
    "by Georgia Young - Published on Aug 11, 2016 03:58 PM The Free Software Foundation has been fighting for user freedom for more than thirty years with your support. FY2015 Annual Report cover - Software should be free as in freedom Now we are publishing our first Annual Report, which covers the 2015 fiscal year of October 1, 2014 through September 30, 2015. The report offers a look at the Foundation's activities, accomplishments, and financial picture. You will also read about the impact of our programs and FY2015's major events, including LibrePlanet and our thirtieth anniversary. A high resolution version is also available."
  •  
    "by Georgia Young - Published on Aug 11, 2016 03:58 PM The Free Software Foundation has been fighting for user freedom for more than thirty years with your support. FY2015 Annual Report cover - Software should be free as in freedom Now we are publishing our first Annual Report, which covers the 2015 fiscal year of October 1, 2014 through September 30, 2015. The report offers a look at the Foundation's activities, accomplishments, and financial picture. You will also read about the impact of our programs and FY2015's major events, including LibrePlanet and our thirtieth anniversary. A high resolution version is also available."
2More

HandyLinux Is a Great Toolbox for Linux Newbies | Reviews | LinuxInsider - 0 views

  •  
    " HandyLinux is a distro that offers a simplified approach to using the Linux desktop operating system. HandyLinux first appeared about three years ago. The latest version, 2.5, was released in early June."
  •  
    " HandyLinux is a distro that offers a simplified approach to using the Linux desktop operating system. HandyLinux first appeared about three years ago. The latest version, 2.5, was released in early June."
2More

Best Parental Control Software - Icecream Tech Digest - 0 views

  •  
    The Internet can be a dark place at times, and there can be content that is not safe for kids. Of course, the Internet offers plenty of educational and entertaining resources that are suitable for kids; however there’s a huge … Continue reading →
  •  
    The Internet can be a dark place at times, and there can be content that is not safe for kids. Of course, the Internet offers plenty of educational and entertaining resources that are suitable for kids; however there’s a huge … Continue reading →
2More

EU Committee Votes to Make All Smartphone Vendors Utilize a Standard Charger - HotHardware - 0 views

  • The EU has been known to make a lot of odd decisions when it comes to tech, such as forcing Microsoft's hand at including a "browser wheel" with its Windows OS, but this latest decision is one I think most people will agree with. One thing that's frustrating about different smartphones is the occasional requirement to use a different charger. More frustrating is actually losing one of these chargers, and being unable to charge your phone even though you might have 8 of another charger readily available.
  • While this decision would cut down on this happening, the focus is to cut down on waste. On Thursday, the EU's internal market and consumer protection committee voted on forcing smartphone vendors to adopt a standard charger, which common sense would imply means micro USB, given it's already featured on the majority of smartphones out there. The major exception is Apple, which deploys a Lightning connector with its latest iPhones. Apple already offers Lightning to micro USB cables, but again, those are only useful if you happen to own one, making a sudden loss of a charger all-the-more frustrating. While Lightning might offer some slight benefits, Apple implementing a micro USB connector instead would make situations like those a lot easier to deal with (I am sure a lot of us have multiple micro USB cables lying around). Even though this law was a success in the initial voting, the government group must still bring the proposal to the Council which will then lead to another vote being made in the Parliament. If it does end up passing, I have a gut feeling that Apple will modify only its European models to adhere to the law, while its worldwide models will remain with the Lightning connector. Or, Apple might be able to circumvent the law if it offers to include the micro USB cable in the box, essentially shipping the phone with that connector.
2More

GNU's Framework for Secure Peer-to-Peer Networking GNU's Framework for Secure Peer-to-P... - 0 views

  •  
    "Philosophy The foremost goal of the GNUnet project is to become a widely used, reliable, open, non-discriminating, egalitarian, unfettered and censorship-resistant system of free information exchange. We value free speech above state secrets, law-enforcement or intellectual property. GNUnet is supposed to be an anarchistic network, where the only limitation for peers is that they must contribute enough back to the network such that their resource consumption does not have a significant impact on other users. GNUnet should be more than just another file-sharing network. The plan is to offer many other services and in particular to serve as a development platform for the next generation of decentralized Internet protocols."
  •  
    "Philosophy The foremost goal of the GNUnet project is to become a widely used, reliable, open, non-discriminating, egalitarian, unfettered and censorship-resistant system of free information exchange. We value free speech above state secrets, law-enforcement or intellectual property. GNUnet is supposed to be an anarchistic network, where the only limitation for peers is that they must contribute enough back to the network such that their resource consumption does not have a significant impact on other users. GNUnet should be more than just another file-sharing network. The plan is to offer many other services and in particular to serve as a development platform for the next generation of decentralized Internet protocols."
2More

FCC Head to Revise Broadband Rules Plan - WSJ.com - 0 views

  •  
    "By Gautham Nagesh connect May 11, 2014 7:43 p.m. ET The head of the Federal Communications Commission is revising proposed rules for regulating broadband Internet, including offering assurances that the agency won't allow companies to segregate Web traffic into fast and slow lanes."
  •  
    "By Gautham Nagesh connect May 11, 2014 7:43 p.m. ET The head of the Federal Communications Commission is revising proposed rules for regulating broadband Internet, including offering assurances that the agency won't allow companies to segregate Web traffic into fast and slow lanes."
1 - 20 of 232 Next › Last »
Showing 20 items per page