Our digital world ……
“Microsoft plans to modify the way Windows 10 handles the operation of disconnecting a USB or Thunderbolt storage device. This includes USB thumb drives, external hard drives, flash drives, and even USB data transfer connections established between PCs and smartphones.”
“If you’ve ever built a computer and purchased a Windows license, you probably don’t want to buy another license for your next one. With the slmgr command, it’s possible to deactivate your old PC and then activate a new one. Windows licenses are expensive.”
“Some SSDs advertise support for “hardware encryption.” If you enable BitLocker on Windows, Microsoft trusts your SSD and doesn’t do anything. But researchers have found that many SSDs are doing a terrible job, which means BitLocker isn’t providing secure encryption.”
Facebook recently sent a legal notice to users that may appear daunting at first glance, but before you relegate it to the trash bin you ought to take a look at it – it could mean cash in your pocket.
The notice is meant to notify some of its U.S. members that their names, profile pictures, photographs, likenesses, and identities were unlawfully used to advertise or sell products and services through Sponsored Stories without obtaining those members’ consent.
“Sponsored Stories” is targeted advertising that uses information about your friends to sell stuff to you.
To settle a class action lawsuit (Angel Fraley v. Facebook) resulting from those allegations of unlawful use of its members’ content, the social network is proposing to pay $20 million into a fund to be used to pay members who appeared in the sponsored stories.
If you received the legal notice from Facebook, you may be paid up to $10 as part of the settlement.
There’s no guarantee you will get the money, however.
As the notice points out: “The amount, if any, paid to each claimant depends upon the number of claims made and other factors detailed in the settlement. No one knows in advance how much each claimant will receive, or whether any money will be paid directly to claimants.”
Since as many as 100 million Facebook members may be affected by the settlement, and the fund would be exhausted after paying $10 to 2 million members, there’s a good possibility that the alternative distribution scheme outlined in the settlement will be implemented.
That alternative would divvy up the money among a number of non-profit organizations involved in educational outreach that teaches adults and children how to use social media technologies safely, or are involved in research of social media.
According to the long form of the legal notice [PDF], those organizations include the Center for Democracy and Technology, Electronic Frontier Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Joan Ganz Cooney Center, Berkman Center for Internet and Society (Harvard Law School), Information Law Institute (NYU Law School), Berkeley Center for Law and Technology (Berkeley Law School), Center for Internet and Society (Stanford Law School), High Tech Law Institute, (Santa Clara University School of Law), Campaign for Commercial-Free Childhood, Consumers Federation of America, Consumer Privacy Rights Fund, ConnectSafely.org, and WiredSafety.org.
You can fill out a claim form and see what happens.
The Fraley case began winding its way through the courts in March 2011, when five Facebook members, including two minors, maintained they claimed to represent a class of people injured by the Sponsored Stories.
In June 2012, Facebook and its opponents in the litigation announced a $10 million settlement in the case in which all the money would go to social service organizations and advocacy groups involved in the protection of children in the context of social media.
About a month later, the federal judge presiding over the case — Judge Lucy Koh, who also presided over Apple’s successful intellectual property case against Samsung in the U.S. — recused herself from the case without an explanation.
Judge Richard Seeborg, who took over the case from Koh, subsequently rejected the $10 million settlement . In denying the proposed settlement, the judge maintained that Facebook did not adequately justify the size of the final deal.
A deal with a new settlement amount was hammered out in October and received preliminary approval from Seeborg in December.
Android Market, the official, Google-sanctioned app marketplace for Android, is announcing a major milestone December 6th 2011: 10 billion total downloads. More important, the rate of growth is surging. Google says that it’s now seeing 1 billion app installs every 30 days.
To give some context to that, it took 20 months for Android to hit its first billion downloads, and another five months to reach its second billion. Asked what’s driving the growth, Google didn’t share any specifics, but pointed to the 550k Android devices being activated each day as the major contributor. The increase in international support and a revamped Android Market have been factors as well.
Android still has a long way to go to catch up to its iOS rival in terms of total downloads — Apple’s App Store has roughly 20 billion cumulative downloads at this point (the most recent stat I can find is 18 billion downloads as of October 4). But the number of new downloads per month is probably more important to developers figuring out which platforms to build for, and the race is much closer there — during the same event, Apple also announced it was seeing one billion monthly downloads.
The story is less clear for developers building premium apps, though. During its October event Apple also announced that it’s paid developers on iOS $3 billion to date. Google isn’t breaking that number out for Android, which likely means it doesn’t have anything to boast about on that front.
To mark the occasion, Google has teamed up with a number of Android developers to offer a special promotion. For each of the next ten days, it’ll be offering a new set of top applications for 10 cents each (the apps are all normally priced between 99 centers and $6.99). Google isn’t eating the cost of the discount, but instead asked the developers if they’d be willing to participate in the sale.
Also worth noting: while Android Market is far and away the most popular way to download Android apps at this point, the open nature of Android means that users can install third-party marketplaces, and device manufacturers can pre-install competitive markets as well. Amazon is the most prominent company to this with its Amazon App Store (which you can download to any Android device, and comes pre-installed on the Kindle Fire). In other words, while the iOS App Store is the only place for users to download apps, Android Market doesn’t account for all app installs across Android devices.
I spoke with Jeremy Statz, the founder of Android developer Kittehface Software, which makes several popular live wallpaper apps including Snowfall. Statz has been developing popular apps for Android Market for years now, so he has an unusually good perspective on the state of the marketplace.
Asked what the biggest inflection points were in Market’s growth, Statz says that the launch of support in South Korea was big, and that the company typically sees a surge in downloads around the holidays (which isn’t surprising — other developers on both Android and iOS often see the same). But aside from that, it doesn’t sound like there were any specific launches or events that resulted in more downloads. Rather, it’s been the steady (and fast) rise in Android’s install base, as well as the gradual improvements in international support.
I also asked Statz about Android users’ willingness to actually pay for apps. Google didn’t break out any data around the number of paid downloads, and Android has gotten a reputation for having users who will gladly download free apps but aren’t nearly as willing to cough over any actual money, at least not to the extent iOS users are. But Statz says he hasn’t witnessed this trend — even since the early days of Market, he says the number of users converting from the free version of his Live Wallpapers to the 99 cent premium versions has been around 2% (he says 1% is generally considered “good”).
via TechCrunch.
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