E-reader maker Hanvon is trying to break intellectual property, financial barriers in what could become the world’s largest e-book market
http://www.informationweek.com/news/smb/mobile/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225702892&subSection=News
Archive for 2010/07/13
China Copyright Disputes Threaten E-Book Industry
Posted: 2010/07/13 in Education / Awareness, LitigationChinese Company Bows DVD to iPad Converter
Posted: 2010/07/13 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models, Tech EvolutionAimersoft Studio, a Shenzhen, China-based software manufacturer, July 13 said it has bowed technology that allows users to watch and edit both encrypted and non-encrypted DVD movies on the Apple iPad
http://www.homemediamagazine.com/ipad/chinese-company-bows-dvd-ipad-converter-19975
Comcast Settlement Final, Up to $16 Per User
Posted: 2010/07/13 in Bandwidth Management, Education / AwarenessJudge Legrome Davis of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania gave his final approval to the settlement with the ISP agreeing to pay a total of $16 million dollars, less Settlement costs, to those affected by its BitTorrent throttling. Each will receive a share of this amount, “not to exceed $16.00.”
http://www.zeropaid.com/news/89869/comcast-settlement-final-up-to-16-per-user/
The rise of the rogue AV testers
Posted: 2010/07/13 in Cybercrime, Education / Awareness, Network SecurityCostin Raiu: Just as Rogue AV (scareware) products exploded, we are seeing the birth of rogue AV testers. Beware, they will provide a strong, negative value to the entire IT security industry
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/the-rise-of-the-rogue-av-testers/6822
IBM employee sparks massive bank outage
Posted: 2010/07/13 in Education / Awareness, Network SecurityLast Monday, one of Singapore’s largest banks suffered a seven-hour IT outage that took down everything from back-office services to ATMs. This Tuesday, the flawed component was identified: an IBM employee
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/07/13/ibm_cops_to_massive_bank_failure/
Apple’s nuking of iPhone 4 discussions is business as usual
Posted: 2010/07/13 in Education / AwarenessApple has begun deleting threads about the iPhone 4′s antenna problems in the wake of Consumer Reports backtracking on its recommendation
AMR Corporation Sends Letters to Certain Retirees and Employees Regarding Data Compromise and Offer of One Year Free Credit Monitoring
Posted: 2010/07/13 in Education / Awareness, Privacy / Data ProtectionToday, AMR Corporation (NYSE: AMR), the parent company of American Airlines, Inc., sent letters to potentially affected retirees, former employees, and a limited number of current employees about a compromise of certain personal information. The data, which had been kept by AMR’s pension department, spans a time period from 1960 through 1995, and consists of images of historical microfilm files for approximately 79,000 retirees, former employees, and a limited number of current employees. No customer data was compromised.
AMR officials discovered and reported the theft of a hard drive at AMR headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas, on June 4, 2010. The drive contained images of historical microfilm files, which included names, addresses, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, and possibly other personal information, as well as a limited amount of bank account information. For some affected individuals, health insurance information (primarily enrollment forms, but also some coverage-related care, treatment, and other administrative materials) may also have been included.
‘World’s No. 1 hacker’ tome rocks security world
Posted: 2010/07/13 in Cybercrime, Education / Awareness, LitigationA recently published e-book penned by the self-proclaimed “world’s No. 1 hacker” is rocking the security community with back-and-forth allegations of plagiarism, racism, and even threats against a security podcaster and his family.
Chris Gates and Donald Donzal, the author and editor respectively of the articles on the Ethical Hacker site, are also steadfast that Evans never had permission to use their content, which was first published published in 2007. Donzal said he’s in the process of filing a take-down demand under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Servers overheated: Online banking system down
Posted: 2010/07/13 in Education / Awareness, UncategorizedDutch Bank Van Lanschot is experiencing problems because of its servers overheating. During the last couple of days customers have been unable to access Van Lanschot’s online banking system.
This has also resulted in the situation that the only alternative option, money transfers by phone, has become unavailable as that system could not handle the large amount of additional requests: the employees of the bank have to use the same computersystem to process those financial transactions.
The bank was unable to determine the entity responsible for the current situation.
Dutch language article: http://webwereld.nl/nieuws/66553/hitte-nekt-internetbankieren-van-lanschot.html
LG electronics mulls developing TVs using google software
Posted: 2010/07/13 in Education / Awareness, Google, Tech Evolution“Google TV could spark strong interest in the market, but the reason we are deliberating is because Google may one day dominate the software space and we don’t want to end up as just a hardware provider”
The truth about government and open source
Posted: 2010/07/13 in Education / Awareness, Tech EvolutionI love open source, but a wholesale, immediate switch for an enterprise will always be a fiasco. You’re going to dump people who have knowledge, just because that knowledge involves proprietary products. And you’re going to have to gear up to hire people who have different types of knowledge
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/the-truth-about-government-and-open-source/6835
74% of work PCs still run XP, and they’re 4.4 years old
Posted: 2010/07/13 in Education / Awareness, Stats / reportsBallmer to WashPost: “The inevitability of the cloud is absolutely clear”
Posted: 2010/07/13 in Tech Evolution, The CloudPaid search is the Web’s latest sector bouncing back from the recession.
Spending on paid search in the U.S. grew 14 percent in the second quarter and 11 percent in the first quarter, compared with the same periods in 2009, according to a report released Tuesday by SearchIgnite. The company, which offers search optimization and online media services, found that the latest numbers for pay-per-click (PPC) and other types of paid search signaled the strongest growth for the sector since the fourth quarter of 2008.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-20010370-2.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0
The Amazon Web Services’ new Compute Cluster option for high-performance computing is 8.5 times faster than the company’s ordinary cloud computing service
Windows Phone Live to Offer Remote Wipe for Free
Posted: 2010/07/13 in Education / Awareness, Mobile tech, Privacy / Data ProtectionEvery Windows Phone 7 user will get access to a free site called Windows Phone Live. It’ll be a portal to your phone in the cloud, a place to do everything from viewing uploaded media to remote wiping your phone
http://gizmodo.com/5585677/windows-phone-live-offers-remote-wipe-for-free
The Ex-Blocker is a plugin for Firefox and Chrome that literally filters your ex out of the internet for you. Simply feed it their first and last names, their Twitter username, their Facebook profile info and their blog URL, and it takes care of the rest
Australians openly admit to illegal downloads
Posted: 2010/07/13 in Education / Awareness, Illegal File Sharing, Stats / reportsA recent on-line survey showed that over one third of the respondents openly admitted to the illegal download of copyrighted materials
http://www.itwire.com/your-it-news/home-it/40368-australians-openly-admit-to-illegal-downloads
EU Commission plans ‘umbrella’ data protection deal with US
Posted: 2010/07/13 in Education / Awareness, Privacy / Data Protection, Public Policy‘Piecemeal approach’ doesn’t sit right with Reding
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/07/13/eu_data_protection_deal_us/
Phorm man tipped to head Project Cartel
Posted: 2010/07/13 in Education / Awareness, Online advertisingThe Guardian reckons former Ofcom chief policy officer Kip Meek is due to be announced as chief executive of the BBC-led Project Cartel Canvas. But should he get the job, the former McKinsey man has a bit of baggage he may want to sling overboard
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/07/13/kip_meek_project_canvas/
Sony the latest company to warn about its own 3D tech
Posted: 2010/07/13 in Education / Awareness, Tech EvolutionUK: Publishers Association Annual Report – 2009
Posted: 2010/07/13 in Education / Awareness, Stats / reportsThe PA’s Copyright Infringement Portal targets websites offering infringing copies for free download and peer-to-peer sharing via torrents. Launched at that start of March 2009, the portal is growing from strength to strength. By the end of the year it had:
- become a core tool in the fight against online piracy for 50 publishing companies
- issued 3,491 takedown notices covering 6,147 infringing URLs.
The top 10 recipients of takedown notices in 2009 were:
Name, Notices issued, % of URLs taken down
- Rapidshare — 1,138 — 41.8
- Scribd — 1,089 — 98.9
- Webazilla — 521 — 84.5
- DE-Keyweb-III — 321 – 74.1
- LeaseWeb — 284 – 51.1
- FDC servers — 211 — 19.4
- Advanced Hosters — 198 — 86.9
- LeaseWeb BV — 149 – 12.1
- Google Blogger — 148 – 79.1
- Fast Internet Web & Server Hosting — 116 – 37.1
http://www.publishers.org.uk/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_download&gid=174
End of gay teen Web site sparks privacy concerns
Posted: 2010/07/13 in Education / Awareness, Privacy / Data ProtectionA now-defunct Web site that catered to gay youth is now ensnared in a federal bankruptcy proceeding that the founder says could result in as many as 1 million profiles being sold to creditors, putting its former subscribers’ privacy at risk
5 arrests as cybercrime forum cracked
Nintendo 3DS packs extra weapons against piracy
Posted: 2010/07/13 in Enforcement, Illegal File Sharing, Tech EvolutionGroups magnify chances of Google hits
Posted: 2010/07/13 in Google, New Business Models, Online advertisingDemand Media is a company created specifically for the Google Age. It tracks the queries entered into search engines to find out what users are interested in, then hires freelance writers at rock-bottom rates to rush out articles to meet the need. To make sure these articles appear high up in the results when similar searches are done in future, it uses the techniques of search engine optimisation – the term given to the art of designing a web page so that it is accorded a higher ranking by Google’s algorithm. It also makes money by displaying adverts alongside its articles from Google’s advertising system
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ec7cb18c-8dda-11df-9153-00144feab49a.html
Australia: Net provider refuses to apply child pornography filter
Posted: 2010/07/13 in Filtering, Public PolicyTelstra, Optus and Primus say YES, Internode says NO, iiNet undecided
