Common Paradox Tech Blog

We’ve discussed the Netflix Prize numerous times as the contest ran, including the news two years ago that the anonymity of the dataset had been broken. Now reader azoblue sends in this excerpt from Wired: “An in-the-closet lesbian mother is suing Netflix for privacy invasion, alleging the movie rental company made it possible for her to be outed when it disclosed insufficiently anonymous information about nearly half-a-million customers as part of its $1 million contest to improve its recommendation system. … The lead attorney on the new suit, Joseph Malley, recently reached a multimillion-dollar settlement with Facebook over its failed Beacon program, which drew fire in part for sharing users’ Blockbuster rentals with their friends. … If a data set reveals a person’s ZIP code, birthdate and gender, there’s an 87 percent chance that the person can be uniquely identified.” The suit turns on the question of whether Netflix should have known that their dataset’s anonymity could be broken, two years before researchers demonstrated that.

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An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from an AP report: “Australian scientists have discovered an octopus in Indonesia that collects coconut shells for shelter — unusually sophisticated behavior that the researchers believe is the first evidence of tool use in an invertebrate animal. The scientists filmed the veined octopus, Amphioctopus marginatus, selecting halved coconut shells from the sea floor, emptying them out, carrying them under their bodies up to 65 feet (20 meters), and assembling two shells together to make a spherical hiding spot. … ‘I was gobsmacked,’ said Finn, a research biologist at the museum who specializes in cephalopods. ‘I mean, I’ve seen a lot of octopuses hiding in shells, but I’ve never seen one that grabs it up and jogs across the sea floor. I was trying hard not to laugh.’”

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TaggartAleslayer writes with this excerpt from the NYTimes: “The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to decide whether a police department violated the constitutional privacy rights of an employee when it inspected personal text messages sent and received on a government pager. The case opens ‘a new frontier in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence,’ according to a three-judge panel of an appeals court that ruled in favor of the employee, a police sergeant on the Ontario, Calif., SWAT team. … Members of the department’s SWAT team were given pagers and told they were responsible for charges in excess of 25,000 characters a month. Under an informal policy adopted by a police lieutenant, those who paid the excess charges themselves would not have their messages inspected. The lieutenant eventually changed his mind and ordered transcripts of messages sent and received by Sgt. Jeff Quon. In one month in 2002, only 57 of more than 456 of those messages were related to official business. According to the trial judge, many of the messages ‘were, to say the least, sexually explicit in nature.’”

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As you may recall, Nokia filed suit against Apple in October, claiming the iPhone maker was infringing on Nokia’s patents. Analysts even estimated that if found guilty, Apple could owe up to $1 billion in penalties. Not one to to turn down a fight, Apple noted in its 10-K SEC filing that it would defend the lawsuit “vigorously.”

Today, Apple has officially responded to the suit, countersuing Nokia and claiming that the Finnish mobile device maker is infringing on 13 of Apple’s patents. Engadget has uploaded the 79-page PDF document, which you can read at your leisure.

I haven’t had a chance to read over the entire document, but this excerpt from the second page pretty much sets the tone for the response:

“In dealing with Apple, Nokia has sought to gain an unjust competitive advantage over Apple by charging unwarranted fees to use patents that allegedly cover industry compatibility standards and by seeking to obtain access to Apple’s intellectual property. Nokia needs access to Apple’s intellectual property because Nokia has copied and is now using that patented technology.”

Who doesn’t love a good game of “my lawyer can beat up your lawyer?”

[img credit: Thomas Roche]

Tags: apple, engadget, iphone, lawsuit, Nokia

CWmike contributes this excerpt from Computerworld: “For a technology that’s all about being fast, 802.11n Wi-Fi sure took its sweet time to become a standard, writes Steven J. Vaughan Nichols. In fact, until September 2009, it wasn’t, officially, even a standard. But that didn’t stop vendors from implementing it for several years beforehand, causing confusion and upset when networking gear that used draft standards from different suppliers wouldn’t always work at the fastest possible speed when connected. It wasn’t supposed to be that way. But, for years, the Wi-Fi hardware big dogs fought over the 802.11n protocol like it was a chew toy. The result: it took five drama-packed years for the standard to come to fruition. The delay was never over the technology. In fact, the technical tricks that give 802.11n its steady connection speeds of 100Mbps to 140Mbps have been well-known for years.”

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BoxRec writes with this excerpt from The Daily Mail: “A mother trying to identify a blackmailer who posted ’sensitive’ details about her child on Wikipedia has won the right to find out who edited her entry. In the first case of its kind, a High Court judge has ordered the online encyclopedia’s parent company to disclose the IP address of one of its registered users.”

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Mark.JUK writes with this excerpt from ISP Review: “Solicitors at ACS:Law have been granted approval by the Royal Courts of Justice in London to demand the private personal details of some 30,000 customers suspected of involvement with illegal file sharing from UK broadband ISPs. The customers concerned are ’suspected’ of illegally file sharing (P2P) approximately 291 movie titles, they now face threatening demands for money (settlement) or risk the prospect of court action. It’s noted that 25,000 of the IP addresses that have been collected belong to BT users.”

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Christmas Shopping writes with this excerpt from Kaspersky Labs’ threatpost: “Back in September, when Google launched the Google Chome Frame plug-in for Internet Explorer users, Microsoft immediately warned that the move would increase the attack surface and make IE users less secure. Now comes word that a security researcher in the Microsoft Vulnerability Research (MSVR) has discovered a ‘high risk’ security vulnerability that could allow an attacker to bypass cross-origin protections.” “Google has hurried out a patch,” he adds.

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seven of five writes with this excerpt from an Associated Press report: “A problem with the FAA system that collects airlines’ flight plans caused widespread flight cancellations and delays nationwide Thursday. It was the second time in 15 months that a glitch in the flight plan system caused delays. The FAA said in a statement that it is having a problem processing flight plan information. ‘We are investigating the cause of the problem,’ the agency said. ‘We are processing flight plans manually and expect some delays. We have radar coverage and communications with planes.’”

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The Installer writes with this excerpt from an Associated Press report: “A couple of genetic testing companies are promising to match couples based on DNA testing, touting the benefits of biological compatibility. The companies claim that a better biological match will mean better sex, less cheating, longer-lasting love and perhaps even healthier children. ‘How many dating services can you think of where they can suggest you might have better children?’ said Eric Holzle, founder of ScientificMatch.com, one of the first online dating sites to use DNA. … The idea is that people tend to be attracted to those who have immune system genes that are dissimilar from their own. Biologists say the HLA genes of the immune system — which are responsible for recognizing and marking foreign cells such as viruses so other parts of the immune system can attack them — also determine body odor ‘fingerprints.’ And people tend to be attracted to the natural body odors of those who have different HLA genes from their own.”

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