Stern Advice: Apple is bigger than my brain

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - By various accounts, Apple Inc. is now bigger than Spain, Portugal and Greece (combined), or the entire retail sector of the U.S. economy, or 13 Warren Buffetts. What are we to...

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Lindsay Lohan Late to Glee?! Or Practicing Elizabeth Taylor's Trademark Tardiness?

Leave it to Lindsay Lohan to give a whole new meaning to Method acting. Gal doesn't start filming the Elizabeth Taylor biopic until June 4, but it seems like LiLo's trying to get...

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Kim Kardashian Is Going Where Right Now?! And Why?

As Kim Kardashian files for divorce today from Kris Humphries, it's a good thing she can keep busy with work! And Kim's not just headed out of town, she's leaving the...

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U.S. money market assets fall for six weeks: iMoneyNet

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. money market fund assets fell for a sixth consecutive week by $2.15 billion to $2.564 trillion in the week ended April 10, the Money Fund Report said on Wednesday.

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2012 Jerez Moto3 Warm Up Result: Oliveira Beats Antonelli In The Wet

Results:

Race Details

2012

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A Winning Economic Agenda for Obama

Robert Reich, SF Chronicle
Dear Mr. President:So far your election strategy can best be summed up as: "We're on the right track, my economic policies are working, we still have a long way to go, but stick with me and you'll be fine."I'm afraid this won't be enough to win you the election. The recovery is too anemic, and the chance of an economic stall between now and election day far too high.

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First Listen: Alanis Morissette, ?Magical Child?

Last week we learned the exciting news that Alanis Morissette is planning the release of a new album this year (it was originally reported that the as-yet untitled album would be out in June but now I’m are hearing that it may not come out until September) but today we get to hear a NEW [...]

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Cloud Storage Privacy - What's Really At Stake

The launch of Google Drive this week brings to the forefront the issue of privacy and the use of cloud storage services.

It?s not that Google?s privacy policies are significantly better or worse than competing services, such as Microsoft SkyDrive, Apple iCloud, Dropbox, SugarSync and SpiderOak. It?s more that big-name vendors are making it so darn easy and cheap to store personal photos, documents and audio files that these issues now threaten to affect a huge number of users.

For example, Google offers 5GB of free storage and Microsoft 7GB, so why not take advantage of the convenience of having content in the cloud and being able to share it with anyone? Well, there is no reason, as long as you know the risks.

In general, the privacy policies for all the service providers are similar, as The Washington Post points out. Vendors acknowledge they don?t own the data and promise they won?t access it, other than to operate their services. The latter is important to the companies, because they need to copy and move files and folders around their servers in order to provide backup and file sharing and to develop new services.

The services do have some differences, though:

Google Drive: Google has a single terms of service and privacy policy for all of its services. While this is simpler than having a separate contract for each service, it also means the language in some sections has to be vaguer in order to cover all of the company's products.

Microsoft SkyDrive: Microsoft's terms of service have gotten kudos for favoring plain language over legalese. In general, the terms of service give Microsoft the same rights and have the same limitations as Google's.

Apple iCloud: Apple goes a step further than the rest in censorship. The company has the right to delete - without prior notification - any content stored that it finds "objectionable." Apple doesn't say how it decides whether content is fit for iCloud.

Dropbox: Unlike Google, Microsoft and Apple, Dropbox's business lies only in cloud storage and file sharing. Nevertheless, its terms of service tend to use language that is more vague, which could be interpreted as being more expansive in terms of its rights.

The truly slippery issue, though, isn't the services' own policies, but how they deal law enforcement, government agencies and lawyers in civil cases. All the storage providers say they will hand over files if required to by law, but they don?t commit to telling affected customers. This makes it possible for vendors to follow law enforcement requests to keep their actions secret, but is a red flag for privacy advocates.

?We advocate for these hosts to have a really transparent policy and to notify people when their information is requested,? said Rebecca Jeschke, spokeswoman for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a San Francisco-based advocacy group for digital rights.

Encryption is the Key

SpiderOak gets around this dilemma by encrypting data and handing the key to customers. Because SpiderOak can?t decrypt the data, the customer has to be notified by default. The other vendors listed above also encrypt data, but retain the ability to decrypt it.

Another gray area is in copyright protection. As this year?s demise of file-sharing site Megaupload showed, law enforcement can move quickly to take an operation offline and arrest its founders, if there?s strong evidence that the site is being used to share lots of copyrighted material. When that happens, everyone who stores files on that service is affected, whether or not they are even suspected of copyright infringement.

All the cloud storage providers let users share their content with others, so the possibility of copyright violation is ever-present. The question is whether this could become enough of a problem to draw the attention of the entertainment industry or other groups intent on protecting copyright. Storage providers who lack sufficient mechanisms for preventing copyright violations could meet the same fate as Megaupload, leaving innocent users unable to access their own data. And it?s not entirely clear what measures would be considered sufficient.

May I See Your ID?

To avoid such problems, cloud storage providers could one day implement some kind of identification system to look for copyrighted material, similar to what Google already does on YouTube. The EFF hopes vendors tackle this problem on their own to avoid government requirements that could prove too onerous for startups.

?If YouTube had to have something in place like that [a content ID system] right away, it might never have existed,? Jeschke said. ?Requiring all this overhead before companies can innovate would be problematic.?

The bottom line is trust. Whatever the written policies, when selecting a cloud storage provider, consumers and companies should first decide whether they believe the vendor can be trusted to do everything possible to protect customers' privacy.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

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Geithner Goes Over the Edge

Larry Kudlow, RealClearMarkets
Is Tim Geithner the most politically partisan treasury secretary in history? Certainly sounds like it these days. As the government's chief financial officer, he's spending a lot of time firing campaign barbs at various Republicans and their policies.Geithner has blasted Mitt Romney by name on several occasions. He frequently attacks Rep. Paul Ryan and the GOP budget. And he recently fired a broadside at top Romney economist Glenn Hubbard, who is presently dean of the Columbia Business School.

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Five Myths About Conservative Voters

Frank Luntz, Washington Post
We may be six months away from Election Day, but I’ve already racked up nearly 100,000 miles this year crisscrossing the country and listening to voters in more than 20 states. Both President Obama and Mitt Romney are already in full campaign mode, and opinions and analysis of their chances to win are flowing fast and thick. I study what Americans think and how they communicate. And I can tell you firsthand that there are widespread misconceptions about conservative voters — what they believe in and what they are looking for from their leaders. Let’s look closer...

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New iPad Battery Life

The new iPad has the same battery life as the iPad 2. This may strike some as peculiar because the iPad 3 has a new more highly-powered battery. However, although the battery does carry more juice, this is offset by the new features of the iPad 3 which require more power, for example the high-definition Retina display and the 4G connectivity. That said, the new iPad battery life is still perfectly reasonable and is suitable both for casual at-home use [...]

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Fed's George-must build appropriate bank safety net

NEW YORK (Reuters) - One of the first steps that must be taken to build a stronger financial system in the wake of the crisis is to correct the incentives and "improper expansion" of federal safety...

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Ashton Kutcher Has a Boys' Night Out With His '70s Show Castmates

After his somber night out in NYC last week, Ashton Kutcher was apparently ready for a little fun with his boys in L.A. last night. He hosted a party for Warby Parker eyewear, where his...

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