Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Cell Phones Watch Your Every Move

Be fair, attentive, and customers
will return.

Malte Spitz, German Green party
politician, found out that we
are always being tracked even
if we don't volunteer to be.

Cell phone companies don't
usually tell how much
information they collect,
so Spitz went to court to
find out exactly what his
cell phone company,
Deutsche Telekom, knew
about his location.

Aug 31, 2009, to Feb. 28,
2010, Deutsche Telekom
recorded and saved his
longitude and latitude
coordinates more than
35,000 times. It traced
him from a train to
Erlangen from the start
until his last night,
at home in Berlin.

Spitz gave a look at of
what is being collected
as we walk around with
our phones, per privacy
experts. Unlike many online
services and web sites that
must send "cookies" to a
user's computer to link its
traffic to a specific person,
cell phone companies just
sit back and hit "record."

"We are all walking around
with little tags, and our
tag has a phone number
associated with it, who we
called and what we do with
the phone," Sarah E. Williams,
expert on graphic information
at Columbia University's
architecture school. "We don't
even know we are giving up
that data."

"At any given instant, a cell
phone company has to know where
you are. It's constantly
registering with the tower,
strongest signal," Matthew Blaze,
a professor of computer and
information science at the
University of Pennsylvania who
has testified before Congress
on the issue.

Source: http://newsblaze.com/story/20110330120057writ.nb/topstory.html

Monday, March 28, 2011

Supreme Court Case Could Effect Most Businesses With Employees

Be fair, attentive, and customers
will return.

It's an issue involving whether
the justices should permit
certification of the largest
class action employment lawsuit
in United States history. The
dispute is against Wal-Mart
Stores Inc. over alleged gender
bias in pay and promotions.
Arguments in the case are
scheduled Tuesday morning and
ruling can be expected by late
June.

If the class action passes,
hundreds of thousands of women
could join in the largest
discrimination claim of its
kind. Tens of billions of
dollars or more in damages.

The court case is among the
biggest of the current term,
and could establish binding
standards over liability
involving companies large
and small.
It started with six women
from California, unknown
to each other, initially.

"I'm a fighter if nothing
else, and so are all the
other women that are
involved," Christine
Kwapnoski, one of the
original plaintiffs.

Kwapnoski, 46, started at
Sam's Club retail warehouse,
part of the Wal-Mart brand,
in 1986, relocated to a store
in Concord, California.
When 2000 rolled-around, she
was the longest tenured hourly
employee at the store, but
claims she was being paid
"virtually the same" as male
associates with half her
experience. She was promoted
in 2001, two weeks after the
lawsuit was filed, and is
still at the company.

The plaintiff's lawyer, Joseph
Sellers, explains that there's
a "corporate culture" at Wal-Mart,
where female associates are
treated as second class
employees, and that the company's
"strong, centralized structure
fosters or facilitates gender
stereotyping and discrimination,"
which flows down to individual stores.

Source: http://newsblaze.com/story/20110328091100writ.nb/topstory.html

Monday, December 13, 2010

Openleaks To Rival WikiLeaks

Be fair, attentive, and customers
will return.

Former WikiLeaks deputy, Daniel
Domscheit-Bergto, plans to start
a rival web site, Openleaks. The
web site has no content on it except
a logo and the message "Coming soon!"

In an interview with the OWNI technology
web site, Domscheit-Berg didn't go into
reasons for his disagreement with WikiLeaks
but suggested it strayed from its mission.

"In these last months, the organization has
not been open any more, it lost its open-source
promise," he explained, adding that Openleaks
plans to provide the means for leaked
information to be published, without itself
being a publisher.

Domscheit-Berg, had been involved with
German hacker group the Chaos Computer Club.

Openleaks would begin trials in early 2011 and
turn to bigger media later, Domscheit-Berg
confirmed. It currently has 10 members.

Monday, December 6, 2010

Hackers And Activists Gear-Up For War on "Wikileaks Phenomena"

Be fair, attentive, and customers
will return.

Fighting lines between supporters
of the whistle blowing web site
WikiLeaks and its critics began
to form on Sunday. Supporters
raised numerous copies of the
site on the Internet. The United
States put pressure on Switzerland
not to offer a haven to the site's
founder, Julian Assange.

Major Internet companies stopped
services to WikiLeaks. Activists
created hundreds of like sites that
host exact copies of another site's
content, making censorship difficult.

An informal group of hackers and
activists declared war on Sunday
against enemies of Mr. Assange. They
called on supporters to attack
sites/companies that don't support
WikiLeaks and to spread the leaked
material online.

The American ambassador to Switzerland,
Donald S. Beyer Jr., responded in the
weekly magazine NZZ am Sonntag that the
Swiss should carefully consider whether
to provide shelter to someone who is on
the run from the law.

On Friday, WikiLeaks looked for refuge in
a diffuse web of financial and Internet
infrastructure spread across Europe
especially in Switzerland.

Source: http://newsblaze.com/story/20101206100112writ.nb/topstory.html

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Google's $6 Billion Bid

Be fair, attentive, and customers
will return.

Google is willing to pay around $6
billion for e-commerce coupon web
site Groupon per media sources. The
first payment will be 5.3 billion,
and 700 million will be used as
incentive to keep current employees
according to AllThingsD.

This offer comes as it's rumored that
Yahoo would offer $3 billion to $4
billion to purchase the company. It
turned out that the two companies
paired up as partners for Yahoo Local,
details have not been specified.

The social shopping network is two years
old, revenue is about $600 million.
Industry experts feel that figure will
grow.

Groupon's revenue is from offering members
big discounts from retailers. Retailers get
lots of traffic for their inventory.

Groupon is located at Groupon.com that is
localized to many major markets in both the
United States and Canada. Originally, it
launched in November 2008. Groupon first
arrived in Chicago, Illinois. It was off
to Boston, New York City and Toronto. As
of October 2010, Groupon now serves more
than 150 markets in North America as well
as 100 markets in Europe, Asia and South
America.

Groupon is reportedly thinking about Google's
offer.

http://newsblaze.com/story/20101130110155writ.nb/topstory.html

Monday, November 22, 2010

Parcel Bombs Designed To Get Pass Detection Devices

Be fair, attentive, and customers
will return.

Parcel bombs on UPS and FedEx flights
cost $4,200, per a report in Inspire
magazine that analysts say is published
by al Qaeda's branch in Yemen.

The latest issue is committed to the plot,
which it calls "Operation Hemorrhage."

"The operation has succeeded in achieving
its objectives. We thank Allah for His
blessings," the magazine, released late
Saturday.

On October 29, authorities in the United
Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates
intercepted parcel bombs sent from Yemen,
addressed to U.S. synagogues.

Al Qaeda bomb-makers designed the parcel
bombs to get pass detection devices and
elude sniffer dogs, stated the article.
It lists making the explosive mimic
printer toner and integrating the bombs'
circuits into printer cartridge circuits
as methods to get pass security detection.

Inspire gave adoration for the 2001
September 11 attacks on the United States
for their destruction, and for the high
number of lives they took.

"It is more feasible to stage smaller
attacks that involve less players and
less time to launch and thus we may
circumvent the security barriers America
worked so hard to erect," Inspire.

Source: http://newsblaze.com/story/20101122084406writ.nb/topstory.html

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Google's Fashion Shopping Web Site

Be fair, attentive, and customers
will return.

Google created a new e-commerce web
site that improves how fashion is
presented and sold online.

Boutiques.com is a collection of
hundreds of virtual boutiques
merchandised by designers, retailers,
bloggers, celebrities and just people.

Shop for the style of the actress Carey
Mulligan or Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen
to name a few celebrities who signed up
for the launch.

You can build your own boutique and amass
followers who can comment on your style.

For every boutique on the web site, there
are dozens of additional choices inspired
by a designer's or celebrity's style;
generated by algorithms with product
photos that are much larger/sharper than
on other shopping web sites.

The inspiration panel automatically adjusts
for your style.

The technology was developed by Like.com, a
Silicon Valley company co-founded by Munjal
Shah, which Google acquired last summer for
a reported $100 million.

Mr. Shah leads the team for Boutiques.com.