Week 24

New Facebook privacy settings

Aw slam...

"Microsoft today unleashed a flood of news, detailing the specifics of how the machine handles things like internet connectivity and used game sales.

The news was almost all bad.

Here's a recap:

The console must connect to the internet once every 24 hours in order for you to play games. For many people, from military personnel to students, that's an inconvenience, maybe even an impossibility. Never mind what happens to everybody's console if Microsoft's servers ever come down.

The Xbox One will allow the sale of used games, at "participating retailers", but only if the publisher allows it. Publishers being the very people opposed most fiercely to used video game sales.

There are restrictions on how you can "give" and "loan" your games away. What's more, lending won't be available at launch, with Microsoft still "exploring the possibilities with our partners".

In response Sony records this video"

What is it with today? Lott of hillarious stuff going around..

Excellent picture, great job by HuffPost. Seriously, if these two characters had a child (if that was possible) IMO this is exactly how he would look like. Scary good.

George W Obama

Nice

BTW metadata does not mean transactional. Meta in this context means "descriptive", meaning "data that describes data". For instance you could have a file with thousand lines with one column that says "temparature". The name of that column, temparature which is its decription, would be metadata. It is usually expected metadata is smaller than data itself, and changes less often, and perhaps.. less important. The story makes much more sense this way because they are almost trying to say "hey it's just some descriptive stuff on the side you know, it's not thaaat important". By some word shuffling, they managed to label the more important data as "supportive", and get regular updates of it. Sneaky.

"The unlimited nature of the records being handed over to the NSA is extremely unusual [..] The order directs Verizon to "continue production on an ongoing daily basis thereafter for the duration of this order". It specifies that the records to be produced include "session identifying information", such as "originating and terminating number", the duration of each call, telephone calling card numbers, trunk identifiers, International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) number, and "comprehensive communication routing information".

The information is classed as "metadata", or transactional information, rather than communications, and so does not require individual warrants to access."

It is

"Al Gore

Is it just me, or is secret blanket surveillance obscenely outrageous?"