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Happy Reading for today.

<Karen>

1)
Google Fights for the Right to Hide Its Privacy Policy
What's one way that Google is different from AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft? It’s the only one of the big Internet companies that doesn't put a link to its privacy policy on its home page.
Indeed, Google believes so strongly that adding the phrase "privacy policy" to its famously Spartan home page would distract users that it has picked a fight with an advertising trade group over the issue.


2)
Science Fair New York City
Brian Greene explains to Stephen what the big deal is about science.

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3)
The Internet and Consumer Choice: Online Americans use different search and purchase strategies for different goods
Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project
Full Report (PDF; 197 KB)
From press release:
The internet plays an important role in how people conduct research for purchases, but it is just one among a variety of sources people use and usually not the key factor in final purchasing decisions.
A new study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project tracks the decision-making processes for buying music, purchasing a cell phone, and buying or renting a home. Here are the top three sources used in product research for each of the three products.
For those who have bought music in the prior year:

        * 83% say they find out about music from the radio, the television, or in a movie.
        * 64% say they find out about music from friends, family members, or co-workers.
        * 56% say they find out about music through various online tools, such as going to a band’s or artist’s website or streaming samples of songs to their computers.

Among those who have purchased a cell phone in the prior year:

        * 59% asked an expert or salesperson for advice.
        * 46% go to one or more cell phone stores.
        * 39% use the internet.

For those who have rented or bought new housing in the prior year:

        * 49% use the internet.
        * 49% look through ads in the newspaper.
        * 47% ask a real estate agent for advice.

Even though many buyers use the internet in product research, relatively few say online information had a major impact on the product choice they eventually made. Only 7% of music buyers, 10% of cell phone buyers, and 11% of those who bought or rented a home in the prior year say that online information had a major impact on their decision.

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Future Trends in Computing

Internet experts looked at the future impact of the
internet and assessed predictions about how technology
and society will unfold.
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4)
"Space Science: 50 Years and Counting," on June 26, 2008, in Washington, D.C.
For more information about the colloquium, including online registration and a detailed schedule of events, visit.
The SSB will be capping its year-long celebration of the 50th anniversaries of the space age, the International Geophysical Year, and the SSB with an all-day colloquium at the National Academy of Sciences.
The colloquium will run from 8:30 a.m. until 5:30 p.m. and will feature two sessions.
The morning session will include retrospective and prospective policy-oriented discussions and will include perspectives from a senior congressional leader, past leaders of the SSB and the Board's incoming chair.
The afternoon session will include forward-looking assessments of successes, short-falls, opportunities and challenges in the sciences. This session will revolve around a series of town-hall-format interactions between the audience and panelists about applying lessons from the first 50 years of space exploration to hopes and aspirations for the next 50 years in four areas of space research. These areas are astrophysics and space physics, microgravity life and physical sciences, planetary exploration and astrobiology, and Earth sciences.
The day will conclude with a special lecture about exploring space with humans and robots.

*************************************
ECP FREE SOFTWARE

OPEN SOURCE EXPLAINED

What about changing over to Linux in Schools?
This is the tricky part.
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5)
Linking to movies leads to $4 million in fines
Hollywood has been granted another victory in its war against piracy,
this time at the expense of two linking sites that the Motion Picture
Association of America believes profited from enabling copyright
infringement. Both ShowStash.net and Cinematube.net have been hit with
multimillion dollar judgments recently for copyright infringement of
various movies and TV shows.
Even though ShowStash and Cinematube didn't host any of these files,
both were found guilty of contributory copyright infringement, according
to the judges' opinions, because they searched for, identified,
collected, and indexed links to illegal copies of movies and TV shows.
Aside from monetary damages, both sites are now prohibited from engaging
in further activity that would infringe upon the studios' work.
The damages totaled $2.7 million for ShowStash and $1.3 million for
Cinematube, neither of which were particularly well-known to the general
Internet community. The MPAA doesn't seem to care much that it gives
free publicity to these tiny sites when it makes announcements of its
litigation plans, however. The organization apparently hopes that others
will merely feel threatened by the prospect of paying out millions of
dollars and shut down voluntarily.
[snip]


6)
Advanced tactic targeted grocer 'Malware' stole Hannaford data
A massive data breach at Hannaford Brothers Cos. was caused by a "new
and sophisticated" method in which software was secretly installed on
servers at every one of its grocery stores, the company told
Massachusetts regulators this week.
The unauthorized intrusion the company disclosed on March 17 stemmed
from software that intercepted card data from customers as they paid
with plastic at store checkout counters, and sent the data overseas,
Hannaford's top lawyer said in a letter sent to Attorney General
Martha Coakley and Governor Deval Patrick's Office of Consumer
Affairs and Business Regulation.
The software was installed on computer servers at each of the roughly
300 stores operated by Hannaford and its partners. Hannaford did not
say how the software might have been placed on so many servers, and
company spokeswoman Carol Eleazer said the company continues to
investigate how the software was installed and other specifics of the
breach. The Secret Service, which pursues currency crimes, is
conducting its own investigation.
In contrast, Hannaford says it did not store customer information.
The hackers who struck Hannaford mined a stream of data that the
merchant and banks were not responsible for protecting under industry
rules, industry specialists said.


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Censorship, Text Book Publishers & The Money
Science Book Errors
Bill Bennett X Secretary of Education cashes in on education reform.
About Online Digital Curriculum
Currently a law going through the legislature that would change the
term for funding from "textbook" to "instructional materials." 
President Bush's brother Neil Bush has a company.

*********************************************************************

7)
Microsoft's Masters: Whose Rules Does Your Media Center Play By?
Posted by Danny O'Brien
While its customers are still puzzling over why Vista Media Center is
suddenly refusing to record over-the-air NBC digital TV, Microsoft
has come out with an astounding admission, courtesy of Greg Sandoval
at CNet News:
"Microsoft included technologies in Windows based on rules set
forth by the (Federal Communications Commission)," a Microsoft
spokeswoman wrote in an e-mail to CNET News.com. "As part of these
regulations, Windows Media Center fully adheres to the flags used by
broadcasters and content owners to determine how their content is
distributed and consumed."
Microsoft's statement shines light on how Microsoft expects Media
Center to behave. If this is the company's explanation for what users
are seeing when attempting to record digital NBC broadcasts
over-the-air, then Microsoft is saying Vista obeys the broadcast
flag: a requirement rejected by courts and Congress.

*********************************************
BEST SELF PUBLISHING RESOURCES
About E-Books, Best Books , Contracts, Discussion Groups
Legal, Copyright, Insurance, Registration
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8_
Today's Quote for the Day is from the designer Stephen Bayley and sums
up exactly how I feel about the glamor of modern travel:

"Apart from going to prison, no other activity in contemporary life
exposes you to such intimidation, ugliness, regimentation, overcrowding
and cruel dehumanisation, as the decision to go to an airport."

[...]

I am perfectly capable of learning from my mistakes.  I will surely
learn a great deal today.

"A democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding on what to have for
lunch.  Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the results of the
decision."

"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they
be properly armed." --Alexander Hamilton


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