orwell

Teen sues Amazon: The Kindle ate my homework

A 17-year-old from Michigan has filed a lawsuit against e-commerce powerhouse Amazon after it deleted a book he had purchased for his Kindle device.

The high school student, Justin D. Gawronski, filed suit in a Seattle court along with California resident Antoine J. Bruguier, and they are seeking class action status.

Amazon forcibly (and ironically) recalled copies of George Orwell's "1984" and "Animal Farm" earlier this month after it was revealed that they were unauthorized. Justin Gawronski's complaint alleges that he was reading "1984" as summer reading for an advanced-placement class and … Read more

BOL 1022: Load balancing in space

On the 40th anniversary of the moon landing, we sadly report on the state of the broken toilet in the International Space Station. It means astronauts have to split up which toilets they use in order to load balance. No. Seriously. Plus we touch on the Amazon 1984 ironic mistake of the year.

Subscribe now: iTunes (audio) | iTunes (video) | RSS (audio) | RSS (video) EPISODE 1022

Amazon remotely deletes all copies of George Orwell books

Amazon says it won't repeat Kindle book recall

Kazaa to return as subscription service

Meanwhile RIAA notices DRM is dead

Toshiba will sell Blu-ray player this year… Read more

Amazon recalls (and embodies) Orwell's '1984'

Much is being made this Friday over Amazon's move to essentially forcibly recall two e-books that some customers had purchased.

According to multiple reports, Amazon removed the books from users' accounts after the publisher decided to pull its e-book. (My favorite headline, by the way, was Seattlest's "Amazon's Kindle: Now with new take-backsies feature".)

The publisher is certainly within its rights to stop selling the e-book and certainly Amazon needs to honor those wishes. But its hard to understand by what rights the retailer can remove the book from those who have already purchased one … Read more

Your papers please: TSA bans ID-less flight

In a major change of policy, the Transportation Security Administration has announced that passengers refusing to show ID will no longer be able to fly. The policy change, announced on Thursday afternoon, will go into force on June 21, and will only affect passengers who refuse to produce ID. Passengers who claim to have lost or forgotten their proof of identity will still be able to fly.

As long as TSA has existed, passengers have been able to fly without showing ID to government agents. Doing so would result in a secondary search (a pat down and hand search of … Read more

Big Brother tech from Big Blue

The Smart Surveillance System (S3) from IBM integrates video search with real-time analysis.

Previously used in testing by governments, law enforcement and businesses, IBM announced Tuesday that the S3 is now available to the public. The S3 can be used to search through hours of stored surveillance video for a specific object or action, or be set to notice when that item appears on the screen.

"One of the coolest things is that it allows you to describe what's interesting. One of the biggest problems with surveillance is that 99 percent of it is boring," said Charles … Read more

A different kind of palm reader at school

Cyberbullying may still be a problem, but at least your kids won't get their lunch money stolen if this technology has anything to do with it. Working with Fujitsu, a Scottish company called Yarg Biometrics is testing its PalmReader security device at a primary school in Glasgow, according to Gizmag. The technology reads palm vein patters to authenticate accounts for cashless catering, but that could be just a prelude to other security uses that some might find more Orwellian: Among the possibilities, Yarg says, the PalmReader could be used "to monitor truancy levels, to facilitate accurate attendance at … Read more