Internet

Google Chrome – The evil empire owns your life

Never sign anything that you don’t read. Never agree to an end user license when you don’t know what it says. Watching the google monsters gobble up the internet makes you long for the days when the tech world grew to Bill Gates dreams.

Bill got rich, often with buggy bloated code. But he was a real innovator and the technology he and his guys brought to the world changed the world.

The octopus at Google is based on a whole different philosophy. They are the kings of “Reintermediation”. Their only accomplishment is to get in between searchers and content, between writers and readers. Nothing new is created. Nothing new is contributed. Their only skill is capturing a part of the transaction and information costs for themselves. But this week they outdid themselves. They released a new slick browser. They suggest that it is faster and more efficient than Firefox or Explorer. (we have our doubts, which we’ll discuss on another post) but here’s the catch.

THEY OWN EVERY THING YOU EVER WRITE OR POST OR CREATE USING THEIR BROWSER AND THEY CAN SELL IT TO ANYONE THEY WANT TO AND THEY NEVER OWE YOU A DIME.

amazing. unbelievable.

oh please bring back the old king bill.

Here’s more from Gizmodo:

So, are you enjoying the snappy, clean performance of Google Chrome since downloading yesterday? If so, you might want to take a closer peek at the end user license agreement you didn’t pay any attention to when downloading and installing it. Because according to what you agreed to, Google owns everything you publish and create while using Chrome. Ah-whaaa? Update: It was a copy & paste mistake, apparently, and the offending language is being removed as we speak. Thanks, Googe!

Here are the juicy bits in question:

11. Content license from you

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

11.2 You agree that this license includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.

11.3 You understand that Google, in performing the required technical steps to provide the Services to our users, may (a) transmit or distribute your Content over various public networks and in various media; and (b) make such changes to your Content as are necessary to conform and adapt that Content to the technical requirements of connecting networks, devices, services or media. You agree that this license shall permit Google to take these actions.

11.4 You confirm and warrant to Google that you have all the rights, power and authority necessary to grant the above license.

Well, I guess I shouldn’t have used Chrome to put some posts up yesterday, because I certainly do not have the rights, power or authority to hand over my work from Gawker to the Googe. Oops! You’ll have to pry the rights to my posts from Nick Denton’s cold, dead hands, Google.

In any case, it’s a pretty unnecessary and unreasonable thing to put in the EULA for a browser, of all pieces of software, which makes it pretty questionable. Why in the hell would Google want ownership of every single blog post or email written in its browser? It’s so unreasonable that it borders on the insane. I can’t really imagine Google actually invoking this and suddenly publishing heavily edited entries from your LiveJournal for profit, but I think a lot of people would feel much better about hopping on board with Chrome if this little piece of sketchy legalese was axed.

What say you, Google overlords?

Filed Under: breaking news, Internet, Privacy, Security, Tech Tips Tagged With: EULA, google chrome, license agreement

Hackers Obtain Critical Internet Flaw

By admin Leave a Comment

Internet security researchers on Thursday warned that hackers discovered a “critical” flaw that allows “cache poisoning” attacks that tinker with data stored in computer memory caches that relay Internet traffic to destinations.

Seeking to keep details of the vulnerability hidden at least a month to give people time to protect computers from attacks, computer industry engineers that labored in secret to solve the problem, releasing a software “patch” two weeks ago.

“We are in a lot of trouble,” said IOActive security specialist Dan Kaminsky, who stumbled upon the Domain Name System (DNS) vulnerability about six months ago and reached out to industry giants to collaborate on a solution.

“This attack is very good. This attack is being weaponized out in the field. Everyone needs to patch, please. This is a big deal.”

DNS is used by every computer that links to the Internet and works similar to a telephone system routing calls to proper numbers, in this case the online numerical addresses of websites.

Filed Under: Internet, Security Tagged With: cache poisoning, critical internet flaw, dan kaminsky, dns hack, dns hacked, hackers, internet flaw, IOActive

MSIE8… Will Microsoft’s Browser FINALLY Work?

By Aaron Leave a Comment

moldy turnip - msie I hate using MSIE because it renders CSS so poorly. Is the end near? See the article where this lovely quotation comes from:

Well, slap me with a moldy turnip and color me flabbergasted! I just think it’s a sad thing that Microsoft is receiving praise for doing something that everyone knows they should’ve done five to seven years ago

December 20, 2007 (Computerworld) — A Microsoft Web evangelist hinted yesterday that news of Internet Explorer 8′s development progress was disclosed months earlier than planned because Web developers recently stepped up criticism of the company’s support for standards.

The news of IE8′s ability to pass a widely used Web standards test also came just two weeks after Microsoft Corp. chairman Bill Gates said he didn’t know why the company’s IE development team was keeping a tight lid on information about the next browser.

IE8, the next upgrade to Microsoft’s browser, passes the Web Standards Project’s Acid2 test, according to Dean Hachamovitch, the IE group’s general manager. “On Wednesday, Dec. 12, Internet Explorer correctly rendered the Acid2 page in IE8 standards mode,” Hachamovitch said in a post to Microsoft’s official IE blog yesterday. “While supporting the features tested in Acid2 is important for many reasons, it is just one of several milestones for the interoperability, standards compliance and backwards-compatibility that we’re committed to for this release.”

A week before IE8′s first Acid2 exam, Web standards advocate and blogger Molly Holzschlag had asked Gates about the lack of information coming out of the IE8 group. Gates’ answer: “I’ll have to ask [IE General Manager] Dean [Hachamovitch] what the hell is going on. I mean, we’re not, there’s not like some deep secret about what we’re doing with IE.”

In his blog Wednesday, Hachamovitch seemed to take a shot at those who had criticized his team’s silence. “For IE8, we want to communicate facts, not aspirations,” said Hachamovitch. “We’re listening to the feedback about IE, and at the same time, we are committed to responsible disclosure and setting expectations properly. [But] now that we’ve run the test on multiple machines and seen it work, we’re excited to be able to share definitive information.”

Posts placed on the IE blog last month drew disdain from a large number of users, many of whom identified themselves as Web developers frustrated with the lack of information about IE8′s support for standards and angry at the current IE7′s lack of support for those same standards.

Another Microsoft employee, Joshua Allen, essentially said that the timing of the IE8-Acid2 news was prompted by complaints from users and developers. Allen, an evangelist at Microsoft and one of the hosts for MIX Online, echoed Hachamovitch’s news about IE8′s progress, but said the news was intended for March 2008.

“I had hoped that we could keep the news secret until MIX08, but the masses were demanding information,” said Allen, who linked to an earlier Hachamovitch blog post that had attracted more than 580 comments, the majority of them negative.

MIX08 is the Microsoft-sponsored Web developer conference slated to run in Las Vegas March 5-7, 2008.

The comments attached to Hachamovitch’s Tuesday post, however, were generally supportive, although some users remained cautious. “Well, slap me with a moldy turnip and color me flabbergasted!” said a user going by the name David Lane. “Who would’ve thought. [But] I just think it’s a sad thing that Microsoft is receiving praise for doing something that everyone knows they should’ve done five to seven years ago.”