Friday, July 29, 2011
House panel approves bill forcing ISPs to log users’ web history | The Raw Story:
The House Judiciary Committee approved legislation on Thursday that would require Internet service providers (ISPs) to collect and retain records about Internet users' activity.
CNET reported the bill would require ISPs to retain customers' names, addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and temporarily-assigned IP addresses for 12 months.
The bill passed by a vote of 19 to 10, and is aimed at helping law enforcement track down pedophiles.
"The bill is mislabeled," Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), a senior member of the panel told CNET. "This is not protecting children from Internet pornography. It's creating a database for everybody in this country for a lot of other purposes."
The House Judiciary Committee approved legislation on Thursday that would require Internet service providers (ISPs) to collect and retain records about Internet users' activity.
CNET reported the bill would require ISPs to retain customers' names, addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and temporarily-assigned IP addresses for 12 months.
The bill passed by a vote of 19 to 10, and is aimed at helping law enforcement track down pedophiles.
"The bill is mislabeled," Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), a senior member of the panel told CNET. "This is not protecting children from Internet pornography. It's creating a database for everybody in this country for a lot of other purposes."
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
TidBITS Macs & Mac OS X: Our Favorite Hidden Features in Mac OS X Lion:
The top-level Applications folder has new permissions that make it hard to remove anything; if you try to drag something out of the Applications folder, it may stay there, and you’ll get an alias instead. The solution is to hold Command as you drag. (If even that doesn’t work, it’s because the application belongs to Apple, not to you, and you’re no longer allowed to move it.)
I love that it belongs to Apple, not to you...on your machine. It's accelerating.
The top-level Applications folder has new permissions that make it hard to remove anything; if you try to drag something out of the Applications folder, it may stay there, and you’ll get an alias instead. The solution is to hold Command as you drag. (If even that doesn’t work, it’s because the application belongs to Apple, not to you, and you’re no longer allowed to move it.)
I love that it belongs to Apple, not to you...on your machine. It's accelerating.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Review:
Also gone is "Rosetta", the brilliant little code translator that allowed existing Mac applications to keep running when Apple switched its Mac products from PowerPC to Intel processors just five years ago. Considering that many widely-used applications, such as Quicken 2007, still haven't been ported to Intel, this is a serious problem. If you depend on PowerPC-based software of any kind — from older versions of mainstream applications sold by companies like Microsoft, FileMaker and Adobe, to Apple's own USB modem, to PowerPC-based drivers for scanners and printers, Lion is not an option.
Worse, Apple hasn't breathed a word about any of this to customers other than developers. Not on the marketing website, not in its support pages, not even buried in a tiny footnote somewhere. Any Mac user with older applications who upgrades to Lion may be in for a nasty shock when their tools suddenly stop working.
There are many thousands of older, specialized applications which are still critically useful to Mac owners today, even though they have not been converted by their developers to Intel-based code. Similarly, there are untold numbers of Mac documents that are readable only by software incompatible with Lion. While Apple may recognize no duty to support these older Mac technologies, it absolutely has the duty to tell its customers that its removal of an existing Mac technology will suddenly disable their software and documents. Apple's silence on this change is unconscionable.
Also gone is "Rosetta", the brilliant little code translator that allowed existing Mac applications to keep running when Apple switched its Mac products from PowerPC to Intel processors just five years ago. Considering that many widely-used applications, such as Quicken 2007, still haven't been ported to Intel, this is a serious problem. If you depend on PowerPC-based software of any kind — from older versions of mainstream applications sold by companies like Microsoft, FileMaker and Adobe, to Apple's own USB modem, to PowerPC-based drivers for scanners and printers, Lion is not an option.
Worse, Apple hasn't breathed a word about any of this to customers other than developers. Not on the marketing website, not in its support pages, not even buried in a tiny footnote somewhere. Any Mac user with older applications who upgrades to Lion may be in for a nasty shock when their tools suddenly stop working.
There are many thousands of older, specialized applications which are still critically useful to Mac owners today, even though they have not been converted by their developers to Intel-based code. Similarly, there are untold numbers of Mac documents that are readable only by software incompatible with Lion. While Apple may recognize no duty to support these older Mac technologies, it absolutely has the duty to tell its customers that its removal of an existing Mac technology will suddenly disable their software and documents. Apple's silence on this change is unconscionable.
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