If you work for IBM, you can bring your iPhone to work, but forget about using the phone’s voice-activated digital assistant. Siri isn’t welcome on Big Blue’s networks. The reason? Siri ships everything you say to her to a big data center in Maiden, North Carolina. And the story of what really happens to all of your Siri-launched searches, email messages, and inappropriate jokes is a bit of a black box. IBM CIO Jeanette Horan told MIT Technology review this week that her company has banned Siri outright because, according to the magazine, “The company worries that the spoken queries might be stored somewhere.” It turns out that Horan is right to worry. In fact, Apple’s iPhone Software License Agreement spells this out: “When you ... Continue reading →
Starting today you need Windows Phone 7.5 to use Marketplace — Today's the day. This afternoon we started requiring Windows Phone 7.5 on phones to download, buy, update, or review apps in Marketplace. As I've written previously, this change applies to both the phone and web Marketplace storefronts. Continue reading →
If you work for IBM, you can bring your iPhone to work, but forget about using the phone’s voice-activated digital assistant. Siri isn’t welcome on Big Blue’s networks. The reason? Siri ships everything you say to her to a big data center in Maiden, North Carolina. And the story of what really happens to all of your Siri-launched searches, email messages, and inappropriate jokes is a bit of a black box. IBM CIO Jeanette Horan told MIT Technology review this week that her company has banned Siri outright because, according to the magazine, “The company worries that the spoken queries might be stored somewhere.” It turns out that Horan is right to worry. In fact, Apple’s iPhone Software License Agreement spells this out: “When you ... Continue reading →
Wow, thank you so much for this! Incredible, feel like I'm in my own special video game. mookdelazoot 34 minutes ago Continue reading →
Ninja job postings are up 7,000 percent in the past few years. Photo: Flickr/pasukaru76 Companies are looking for ninjas, Jedi’s, and rock stars, but nobody wants a brogrammer. That’s according to data compiled by Indeed.com, a job listing website, which tracks a 7,000 percent growth in the number of jobs listings that include the term “Ninja” over the past six years. Not so with brogrammer, a recently minted term denoting frat-house coder types who like to do shots and rage the clubs. Indeed.com didn’t find any job postings mentioning brogrammers. And while companies may think they sound hip by putting out the call for ninjas or Jedis, software engineers shouldn’t make the mistake of actually using these terms on their resumes, says Mike Sienkowski, founder ... Continue reading →
By Julia AngwinPaul Ohm, a law professor and privacy expert at the University of Colorado, is expected to join the Federal Trade Commission in August as a senior policy adviser focusing on Internet and mobile markets, according to people familiar with the situation. The appointment signals the agency’s continued commitment to bringing privacy and technology related cases. In the past year, the FTC has forged 20-year privacy agreements with Internet giants Google, Facebook and MySpace. Ohm is a former federal computer crimes prosecutor and an expert in information privacy. His 2010 paper, “Broken Promises: Responding to the Surprising Failure of Anonymization” sparked a global reassessment of privacy standards. Ohm is also a computer programmer and works to bridge connections between the law and computer science. ... Continue reading →
Inside the reverse-engineering lab at Rockstar, Scott Widdowson is looking for products that infringe on the company's 4,000 patents. Photo: Rockstar In many ways, Scott Widdowson is your typical electrical engineer. Most days, when the weather’s good, he bikes the 15 miles along the Ottawa River to his company’s offices in the west end of the Canadian capital. Once there, he settles in for a day of reading technical specifications, poring over computer textbooks, or prying apart consumer electronics — logic probe in one hand and a soldering iron in the other. But Widdowson is a specialist. He’s one of 10 reverse-engineers working full time for a stealthy company funded by some of the biggest names in technology: Apple, Microsoft, Research In Motion, Sony, and ... Continue reading →
