By timothy from
Slashdot's eavesdropping-a-love-affair department:
Lauren Weinstein writes:
Finally! There's something that apparently virtually all governments around the world can actually agree upon. Unfortunately, it's on par conceptually with handing out hydrogen bombs as lottery prizes. If the drumbeat isn't actually coordinated, it might as well be. Around the world, in testimony before national legislatures and in countless interviews with media, government officials and their surrogates are proclaiming the > immediate need to 'do something' about encryption that law enforcement and other government agencies can't read on demand.Apropos: This
IT World story (and the
New York Times piece it draws from -- also published today) about a newly disclosed NSA program through which the agency is "is reportedly intercepting Internet communications from U.S. residents without getting court-ordered warrants."
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By Roblimo from
Slashdot's human-optimization-is-better-than-search-engine-optimization department:
'Mobilegeddon is here,' said
one article I saw about SEO. Others have been similarly doom and gloom about Google's new emphasis on how well a site functions on mobile devices as a factor in search rankings. Brian Sutter, director of marketing for
Wasp Barcode Technologies, lives and breathes this stuff -- and doesn't consider Google's algorithm change to be any sort of 'geddon.' He thinks you should be making a better mobile website because a growing percentage of your customers (and his) are viewing the WWW on mobile devices, not because of Google.
Brian's not interested in site design and visibility because his company does SEO or designs websites. Rather, it's because he, as Wasp's marketing guy, wants
their site to sit high in Google's rankings if someone is looking for bar code printers or scanners, and he's happy to share what he's learned with Wasp's customers and anybody else who's interested as a goodwill thing. Maybe you aren't directly interested in operating a website or trying to make one popular, but knowing what's going on in the SEO world (for real, as opposed to the flummery often associated with the letters 'SEO') may help you deal with your company's marketing people -- and could be valuable knowledge if you ever decide to start your own business.
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By timothy from
Slashdot's may-fsm-bless-julian-assange department:
schwit1 writes with some
Wikileaks-enabled news at Forbes about the
Trade in Services Agreement, a treaty currently under negotiation between the U.S., the European Union and nearly two dozen other parties.
Wikileaks' release of 17 documents from the negotiating countries puts some bad light on some of the provisions being considered: From the Forbes report:
Under the draft provisions of the latest trade deal to be leaked by Wikileaks, countries could be barred from trying to control where their citizens' personal data is held or whether it's accessible from outside the country. ... These negotiating texts are supposed to remain secret for five years after TISA is finalized and brought into force. Like TTIP and TPP, TISA could be sped through Congress using Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), also known as fast-track authority, which has been passed by the US Senate and may be taken up in the House this month. Under TPA, Congress is barred from making amendments to the trade deals, and most simply give yes-or-no approval.Read Replies (0)