your stuff on Facebook

You have not lost all rights to your stuff on Facebook

A message has been spreading like news of a sale on Cyber Monday: Post a few lines to your Facebook page and you’ll protect your copyright and privacy rights against “changes” to the site’s policy.
And it’s completely bogus, experts said Monday.

The message, which you may have seen posted to the billion-strong Facebook user community by one of your friends, advises you to post a few lines of text to your Facebook wall to protect your copyright online:
In response to the new Facebook guidelines I hereby declare that my copyright is attached to all of my personal details, illustrations, paintings, writing, publications, photos and videos, etc. (as a results of the Berner Convention.)
For commercial use of the above my written consent is needed at all times. (Anyone reading this can copy this text and paste it on their Facebook Wall. This will place them under protection of copyright laws.)
There is no "Berner" Convention -- although the "Berne" Convention  does protect literary works -- and Facebook doesn’t own your data, company spokesman Andrew Noyes told FoxNews.com.
'Anyone who uses Facebook owns and controls the content and information they post.'
- Facebook
“There is a rumor circulating that Facebook is making a change related to ownership of users' information or the content they post to the site. This is false,” reads an explanation posted on the company’s website. “Anyone who uses Facebook owns and controls the content and information they post, as stated in our terms . They control how that content and information is shared. That is our policy, and it always has been.”
Sascha Segan from PCMag.com agreed; a few words on a wall won't affect much of anything.
"Posting mystical copyright mantras on Facebook is meaningless. No shibboleth can reverse or alter Facebook's terms of service unilaterally," he wrote on the social network.
Indeed, this latest message isn’t even a new one. The exact same fraudulent bit of information popped up earlier this year. Yet the demand for information about this message is so great that the Snopes.com site, which exposes online scams, has buckled under it, briefly returning error messages rather than information.
The privacy message has probably resurfaced in relation to the real news that Facebook is proposing to end its practice of letting users vote on changes to its privacy policies, though it will continue to let users comment on proposed updates.
The world's biggest social media company said in a blog post last week that its voting mechanism, which is triggered only if enough people comment on proposed changes, has become a system that emphasizes quantity of responses over quality of discussion. Users tend to leave one or two-word comments objecting to changes instead of more in-depth responses.
Facebook said it will continue to inform users of "significant changes" to its privacy policy, called its data use policy, and to its statement of user rights and responsibilities. The company will keep its seven-day comment period and take users' feedback into consideration.
That news is legit. But protecting your privacy by posting a few words online? It’s not quite that simple.
“If you are posting about copyright on Facebook and you haven't done your research you are an idiot,” tech pundit Robert Scoble wrote recently.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2012/11/26/have-not-lost-all-right-to-your-stuff-on-facebook/#ixzz2DOTkayKG

A Black Friday tale of two stores: Apple vs. Microsoft

A Black Friday tale of two stores: Apple vs. Microsoft

Recon revelations from a Minnesota mall: Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster claims Microsoft's store had 47 percent less foot traffic than the nearby Apple store.

The Apple store in the Mall of America in Minneapolis had a better Black Friday than a Microsoft outlet across the hall.
On Black Friday, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster camped outside of the Apple Store in the Mall of America to analyze foot traffic and product purchases. He also stationed a team outside the Microsoft Store across the way to see how things went for the software giant. During the two hours he and his team evaluated the stores, Microsoft's outlet had 47 percent less traffic than Apple's.
Munster provided his findings to Fortune, which was first to report on the discrepancy.
Microsoft's store had an even worse showing when it came to sales, as shoppers bought only 3.5 items per hour. Apple's store, on the other hand, was selling 17.2 products each hour. And although Apple was selling 11 iPads an hour during Munster's observations, Microsoft didn't sell a single Surface slate during the same period.

Microsoft has made it a habit, it seems, to open retail stores near Apple outlets. The stores also share some resemblance to Apple's, featuring places for customers to try out products, as well as self-proclaimed experts who can answer questions. Microsoft's focus is on selling many of the products that run Windows, not just its own products. Although Apple sells other companies' products in its stores, like Adobe'sCreative Suite, its focus is on its own devices and software.
Obviously, Munster's findings come only from a single location. It's possible that Microsoft's stores are doing better in other areas and that the Minneapolis showing is an exception to the rule. Then again, it's possible similar scenarios are playing out all across Microsoft's retail chain.
Munster, of course, wouldn't go so far as to predict Microsoft's success or failure across the country. However, CNET has contacted the software giant for comment on the findings, and will update this story when we have more information.

Phone 5 review

Phone 5 review:
Finally, the iPhone we've always wanted

The good: The iPhone 5 adds everything we wanted in the iPhone 4S: 4G LTE, a longer, larger screen, free turn-by-turn navigation, and a faster A6 processor. Plus, its top-to-bottom redesign is sharp, slim, and feather-light.
The bad: Apple Maps feels unfinished and buggy; Sprint and Verizon models can't use voice and data simultaneously. The smaller connector renders current accessories unusable without an adapter. There's no NFC, and the screen size pales in comparison to jumbo Android models.
The bottom line: The iPhone 5 completely rebuilds the iPhone on a framework of new features and design, addressing its major previous shortcomings. It's absolutely the best iPhone to date, and it easily secures its place in the top tier of the smartphone universe.


Lowest price: The iPhone 5 is the iPhone we've wanted since 2010, adding long-overdue upgrades like a larger screen and faster 4G LTE in a razor-sharp new design. This is the iPhone, rebooted.
The new design is flat-out lovely, both to look at and to hold, and it's hard to find a single part that hasn't been tweaked from the iPhone 4S. The iPhone 5 is at once completely rebuilt and completely familiar.
I've had the chance to use the iPhone 5 for nearly a week, and have been using it for nearly anything I can think of. Is it as futuristic or as exciting as the iPhone 4 or the original iPhone? No. Does this change he smartphone game? No. Other smartphones beat it on features here and there: if you want a larger screen, go with a Samsung Galaxy S3. If you want better battery life, go with a Droid Razr Maxx.
But, if you want a great, all-around, beautifully engineered smartphone that covers all bases, here it is. Just like the MacBook is to the world of laptops, the new iPhone is one of the top three, if not the best-designed, smartphone around. It's better in all the important ways.
Editors' note: We are continuing to update this review with additional observations and test results. Among the latest additions (October 4, 2012) are the inclusion of 4G LTE speed tests (see "4G LTE: Faster, at last" section); detailed comparisons to camera quality between the iPhone and rival smartphones (see "The camera" section); and detailed battery test results for both video playback and talk time (see "Battery" section).

What's different?
Look at our review of last year's iPhone 4S, where we said, "Even without 4G and a giant screen, this phone's smart(ass) voice assistant, Siri, the benefits of iOS 5, and its spectacular camera make it a top choice for anyone ready to upgrade."
Well, guess what? Now it has 4G LTE and...well, maybe not a giant screen, but a larger screen. That's not all, though: the already great camera's been subtly improved, speakerphone and noise-canceling quality has been tweaked, and -- as always -- iOS 6 brings a host of other improvements, including baked-in turn-by-turn navigation, a smarter Siri, and Passbook, a location-aware digital wallet app for storing documents like gift cards, boarding passes, and tickets.
The question is: a full year later, is that enough? For me, it is. I don't want much more in my smartphone. Sure, I'd love a new magical technology to sink my teeth into, but not at the expense of being useful. Right now, I'm not sure what that technology would even be.
Like every year in the iPhone's life cycle, a handful of important new features take the spotlight. This time, 4G, screen size, and redesign step to the top.
You've gotten the full rundown already, most likely, on the various ins and outs of this phone, or if you haven't, I'll tell you about them below in greater detail. Here's what I noticed right away, and what made the biggest impression on me.
First off, you're going to be shocked at how light this phone is. It's the lightest iPhone, even though it's longer and has a bigger screen. After a few days with it, the iPhone 4S will feel as dense as lead.
Secondly, the screen size lengthening is subtle, but, like the Retina Display, you're going to have a hard time going back once you've used it. The extra space adds a lot to document viewing areas above the keyboard, landscape-oriented video playback (larger size and less letterboxing), and home-page organizing (an extra row of icons/folders). Who knows what game developers will dream up, but odds are that extra space on the sides in landscape mode will be handily used by virtual buttons and controls.
Third, this phone will make your home Wi-Fi look bad. Or at least, it did that to mine. Owners of other 4G LTE phones won't be shocked, but iPhone owners making the switch will start noticing that staying on LTE versus Wi-Fi might actually produce faster results...of course, at the expense of expensive data rates. I hopped off my work Wi-Fi and used AT&T LTE in midtown Manhattan to make a FaceTime call to my wife because the former was slowing down. LTE, in my tests, ran anywhere from 10 to 20Mbps, which is up to twice as fast as my wireless router's connection at home.
Using your iPhone 5 as a personal hot spot for a laptop or other device produces some of the same strong results as the third-gen iPad...and it's smaller. Of course, make sure you check on your tethering charges and data usage fees, but my MacBook Air did a fine job running off the LTE data connection at midday.

Review: iPad Mini charms, but screen is a letdown

NEW YORK (AP) — I bet the iPad Mini is going to be on a lot of wish lists this holiday season. I also bet that for a lot of people, it's not going to be the best choice. It's beautiful and light, but Applemade a big compromise in the design, one that means that buyers should look closely at the competition before deciding.

Starting at $329, the iPad Mini is the cheapest iPad. The screen is a third smaller than the regular iPads, and it sits in an exquisitely machined aluminum body. It weighs just 11 ounces — half as much as a full-size iPad — making it easier to hold in one hand. It's just under 8 inches long and less than a third of an inch thick, so it fits easily into a handbag.

The issue is the screen quality. Apple has been on the forefront of a move toward sharper, more colorful screens. It calls them "Retina" displays because the pixels — the little light-emitting squares that make up the screen — are so small that they blend together almost seamlessly in our eyes, removing the impression that we're watching a grid of discrete elements.

The iPad Mini doesn't have a Retina screen. By the standards of last year, it's a good screen, with the same number of pixels as the first iPad and the iPad 2. The latest full-size iPad has four times as many pixels, and it really shows. By comparison, the iPad Mini's screen looks coarse. It looks dull, too, because it doesn't have the same color-boosting technology that the full-size model has.

This is not an entirely fair comparison, as the full-size iPad starts at $499 and weighs twice as much. The real issue is that this year, there are other tablets that are cheaper than the iPad Mini, weigh only slightly more and still have better screens.

Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle Fire HD costs $199 and has about the same overall size as the Mini. While the Kindle's screen is somewhat smaller (leaving a bigger frame around the edges), it is also sharper, with 30 percent more pixels than the Mini. Colors are slightly brighter, too.

Barnes & Noble Inc.'s Nook HD costs $229 and has a screen that's even sharper than the Kindle HD's. It's got 65 percent more pixels than the iPad Mini.

Why do tablets from two companies chiefly known as book stores beat Apple's latest for screen quality?

Sharper screens are darker, requiring a more powerful backlight to appear bright. That, in turn, would have forced an increase in the battery size. That's the reason the first iPad with a Retina display was thicker and heavier than the iPad 2. So to keep the iPad Mini thin while matching the 10-hour battery life of the bigger iPads, Apple had to compromise on the display.

This can't last, though. By next year, it will likely be even more obvious that Apple is seriously behind in screen quality on its small tablet, and it will have to upgrade to a Retina display somehow. That means this first-generation iPad Mini will look old pretty fast.

The display causes a few other problems, too. One is that when you run iPhone apps on the Mini, it uses the coarsest version of the graphics for that app — the version designed for iPhones up to the 2009 model, the 3GS. You can blow the app up to fill more of the screen, but it looks pretty ugly. The full-size iPad uses the higher-quality Retina graphics when running iPhone apps, and it looks much better.

Some apps adapted for the iPad screen don't display that well on the Mini screen, either, because of the smaller size. Buttons can be too small to hit accurately, bringing to mind Steve Jobs' 2010 comments about smaller tablets. The late Apple founder was of the vociferous opinion that the regular iPad was the smallest size that was also friendly to use.

In some apps, text on the Mini is too small to be comfortably read — the section fronts in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal apps are examples of this.

Of course, in some other respects, the iPad Mini outdoes the Fire and the Nook, so it isn't just the tablet for the buyer who needs the prettiest and the thinnest. In particular, the Mini is a $329 entry ticket to the wonderful world of iPad and iPhone apps. For quality and quantity, it beats all the other app stores. (Oddly, there's an inverse relationship between screen quality and app availability in this category — the Nook HD has the best screen and the fewest apps, while the second-best Kindle Fire HD has middling access to apps.)

The Mini also has front- and back-facing cameras, for taking still photos and video and for videoconferencing. The Kindle Fire HD only has a front-facing camera for videoconferencing. The Nook HD doesn't have a camera at all.

In short, the iPad Mini is more versatile than the competition, and I'm sure it will please a lot of people. But take a look at the competition first, and figure that by next year, we'll see something from Apple that looks a lot better.

___

Peter Svensson can be reached at http://twitter.com/petersvensson

___

About the iPad Mini:

The base model of the iPad Mini costs $329 and comes with 16 gigabytes of storage. A 32 GB model goes for $429 and 64 GB for $529. Soon, you'll be able to get versions that can connect through cellular networks, not just Wi-Fi. Add $130 to the price.

Trump’s Twitter rant after Obama win: ‘We should march on Washington and stop this’

Donald Trump, the impossibly coiffed real estate mogul and de facto leader of the "birther" movement, had something of a Twitter meltdown in the wake of President Barack Obama's projected victory in Tuesday's election.

"Well, back to the drawing board!" Trumptweeted shortly after several networks, including Fox News, called Ohio in the president's favor, sealing the win. "We can't let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided!"

Trump—who last month offered $5 million to a charity of Obama's choice in exchange for the release of the commander in chief's college records and passport application—continued his post-election rant in 140-character chunks:

Let's fight like hell and stop this great and disgusting injustice! The world is laughing at us.

This election is a total sham and a travesty. We are not a democracy!

Our nation is a once great nation divided!

Our country is now in serious and unprecedented trouble...like never before.

The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.

"Barack Obama is the least transparent president in the history of this country," Trump said in a widely mocked October video shot from his New York office and uploaded to YouTube. "I'm very honored to have gotten him to release his long-form birth certificate or whatever it may be."

President Obama was unfazed. On "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno," Obama joked to Leno that the bad blood between him and the "Celebrity Apprentice" star "dates back to when we were growing up together in Kenya."

It appears the president saved his best zinger for Trump for Election Day.

Gridlock as usual or new era of compromise? Washington stares down 'fiscal cliff' crisis after election

Mitt Romney promised that on Day One he would bring "real change" to Washington. He lost. For all intents and purposes, today is Day One of President Obama's second term and a crucial lame-duck session of Congress. 

Together, they face the immediate challenge of dealing with the so-called "fiscal cliff" -- a potentially disastrous mix of massive defense cuts and tax hikes set to kick in this January -- 56 days from now. 

So the big question a day after a decisive Obama electoral-vote victory is -- will it be gridlock as usual, or did Tuesday night's results herald a new era of compromise, at least to resolve the policy threat that some economists say could trigger another recession if un-addressed? The balance of power in Washington was unchanged after Tuesday's results. 

Leaders in both chambers came out of election night calling for bipartisanship -- but also reaffirming their parties' dueling positions, which so far have prevented any compromise from being reached. On the expiration of the Bush-era tax rates, Republicans have refused to allow a tax hike on anybody, citing the harm to small business, while Democrats have pushed for an increase on households making more than $250,000. 

While just one piece of the puzzle, bridging this divide is crucial to tackling the entire slate of disagreements, including a looming face-off over the debt ceiling. 

House Speaker John Boehner said Tuesday night there is "no mandate for raising taxes." He told Fox News earlier that Obama "knows we're not going to raise taxes on American small businesses. He knows it." Boehner predicted a "real brawl" if the president doubles down on that. 

In the other chamber, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Wednesday that "we need to start working together, a lot. Gridlock is not the solution." 

Still, he countered Boehner, saying the election was a "mandate ... that the richest of the rich have to help a little bit." 

"I'm going to do everything within my power to be as conciliatory as possible. I want to work together but I want everyone to also understand, you can't push us around," Reid said, adding: "I think we should just roll up our sleeves and get it done." 

Whether the lame-duck will usher in a new era depends on how the parties view the election results. Despite Obama's win, each party has reason to think their side's position was reinforced. Democrats are set to expand their majority in the Senate, while Republicans could expand theirs in the House. 

"It depends on the extent to which congressional leaders worry about the low approval ratings for Congress," said Darrell West, director of the Center for Governance at the Brookings Institution. "If they think that was one of the reasons why Republicans did poorly, then they will be more willing to negotiate. If they think Republicans lost just because Romney was a bad candidate they will be less likely to compromise." 

But he added "each party has an incentive to negotiate because they both have their political problems." On one hand, the Democrats are often seen as weak on defense and defense industry jobs, which would face nearly $500 billion in cuts alone if so-called sequestration were to go into effect. Meanwhile, Republicans have been seen as defending tax cuts, especially for higher-income earners, at all costs. 

Candidates on both sides pointed to the "fiscal cliff" as a massive problem created by the other side during the campaigns. But right now it is clearly a shared problem because in addition to the Pentagon cuts, they face the end of last year's temporary payroll tax cuts, which would raise workers' taxes by an estimated 2 percent; an end to the current tax rates instituted by former President George W. Bush, which would mean higher taxes for all, and shifts in the alternative minimum tax (AMT) that would take a larger bite from a large swath of income earners. 

Obama and the Democrats have shown interest in letting the so-called Bush tax rates expire for the top earners, while Republicans have not shown an inclination yet for budging on it. Time will tell if there is room for negotiation -- a combination of increased revenue and cuts -- though Obama may hold the upper hand. 

Still, the ideological lines are firm and with the addition of two fiscal conservatives to the Republican ranks in the Senate -- Ted Cruz from Texas, and Jeff Flake in Arizona -- there might be more of a hardening than Hill watchers think, said David Boaz, senior politics analyst from the Cato Institute. 

"My gut level instinct would be there are fundamental differences between the Democrats and the Republicans in Congress and the election hasn't moved us any closer to resolving these questions," he said.