Archive for April, 2012

High Court has ruled that several UK ISPs including Sky, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk, O2 and Virgin Media must block The Pirate Bay website

Posted: 2012/04/30 in Blocking, Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Filtering, Illegal File Sharing, Jurisprudence, Litigation, Stats / reports

This means that millions of Internet users will be prevented from accessing the popular BitTorrent site in the weeks to come. The Pirate Bay say they aren’t concerned by yet another court-ordered blockade, and point out that there are plenty of ways to circumvent such censorship

More:
http://torrentfreak.com/uk-isps-must-censor-the-pirates-bay-high-court-rules-120430/

See also:

In November 2011, the BPI asked the group of ISPs to voluntarily block access to the site. The request followed a court order to block Newzbin 2, a site also offering links to download pirated material. The ISPs said they would not block the site unless a court order was made, as is now the case. Virgin Media told the BBC it will now comply with the request, but warned such measures are, in the long term, only part of the solution.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17894176

The PirateBay is currently the 39th most popular website in the United Kingdom:

http://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries;1/GB

Rick Falkvinge: A fat bank account can no longer buy belief in a story

Posted: 2012/04/30 in Copyright, Education / Awareness

But it can buy lots of authors

http://torrentfreak.com/the-net-vs-the-power-of-narratives-120429/

The HDMI cable ripoff and why retail is really dying

Posted: 2012/04/30 in Education / Awareness, Stats / reports

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/diy-it/the-hdmi-cable-ripoff-and-why-retail-is-really-dying/533

Google’s harvesting of emails, passwords and other sensitive personal information from unsuspecting households in Australia and around the world was neither a mistake nor the work of a rogue engineer, as the company long maintained

Posted: 2012/04/30 in Education / Awareness, Google, Privacy / Data Protection, Stats / reports

…but a program that supervisors knew about, according to new details from the full text of a regulatory report.

The full version [PDF/4.5MB] draws a portrait of a company where an engineer can easily embark on a project to gather personal emails and web searches of potentially hundreds of millions of people as part of his or her unscheduled work time, and where privacy concerns are shrugged off.

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/google-aware-of-data-scoop-20120429-1xsxx.html

The European Court of Justice has built up a wine collection of almost 4,000 bottles worth at least €70,000 but denies claims judges are spending public money on their favourite vintages

Posted: 2012/04/30 in Education / Awareness, Stats / reports

After two months of gentle and then less gentle prompting, the court agrees to release further details. There are 3,729 bottles currently in the cellar, of which 2,920 are red and 809 are white. The average red was purchased at a price of €21.82, while the average white was worth almost €12. The entire collection, therefore, has a price tag of around €70,000, though some of the bottles are sure to have increased in value over time. Purchases are made via tender once a year. On one recent occasion, only white wine was required as the cellar was considered too heavy in reds. The court spends, on average, around €15,000 a year on wine.

Can we see the wine list? Unfortunately not. Making the list public, according to the court, is not possible as it would in some way compromise the tender process.

More:
http://www.publicserviceeurope.com/article/1844/the-truth-about-the-eu-courts-70000-wine-cellar

Power really does corrupt as scientists claim it’s as addictive as cocaine

Posted: 2012/04/30 in Education / Awareness, Stats / reports

Power has almost identical effects to cocaine and too much of it can produce too much dopamine leading to more negative effects such as arrogance and impatience.

The claims by Dr Ian Robertson may go some way to explain the outlandish and impulsive behaviour of city fatcats, tycoons and celebrities.

Writing in the Daily Telegraph today, he said: ‘Baboons low down in the dominance hierarchy have lower levels of dopamine in key brain areas, but if they get ‘promoted’ to a higher position, then dopamine rises accordingly.

‘This makes them more aggressive and sexually active, and in humans similar changes happen when people are given power.

‘Conversely, demotion in a hierarchy decreases dopamine levels, increases stress and reduces cognitive function.’

More:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2136547/Power-really-does-corrupt-scientists-claim-addictive-cocaine.html

Consumers around the world want a hassle-free way to record free, over-the-air television and play it back on any Internet-connected device. But every time a company creates such a service, it gets sued by copyright holders

Posted: 2012/04/30 in Education / Awareness, Litigation

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/04/overseas-courts-no-more-friendly-to-tv-streaming-than-us-ones.ars

Why bandwidth caps could be a threat to competition

Posted: 2012/04/30 in Bandwidth Management, Education / Awareness, New Business Models, Stats / reports, Tech Evolution

Next article should address the following question: why are internet users still not allowed to upload at a decent speed?

Network providers insist that they are simply trying to cope with rapidly rising demand for bandwidth. But critics charge that the trend toward bandwidth caps is driven by more sinister motives, especially in the residential broadband market. In this story we’ll examine the economics of metering and try to explain why it has suddenly come back into vogue.

One of the first online services to offer a flat-rate option was AT&T’s WorldNet. Tom Evslin, who was running WorldNet at the time, reports that customers would typically switch to the $19.95 flat-rate option when their monthly charges reached about $12 per month. And surprisingly, “their usage (as measured by time online) did not increase, so they were simply paying extra to satisfy their preference.” The flat-rate plan was a win-win deal for both AT&T and its customers.

More:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/04/why-we-should-worry-about-the-decline-of-the-unmetered-internet.ars

By routing huge amounts of income through low-tax places like Nevada, Ireland, Luxembourg, and the British Virgin Islands, Apple probably avoided paying $2.4 billion dollars in U.S. taxes

Posted: 2012/04/29 in Education / Awareness, Stats / reports

http://gizmodo.com/5906090/sneaky-tax-tactics-save-apple-billions-of-dollars

Megaupload’s Kim Dotcom Gets $750,000 Back. The extradition hearing is scheduled for September

Posted: 2012/04/29 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Illegal File Sharing, Litigation, Stats / reports

The Megaupload founder is allowed to keep his $20,000 a month spending budget and regains use of his Mercedes-Benz G55AMG, a luxury car worth $250,000 that sports “Police” on its license plate. A bank account containing $301,000 was also returned.

Dotcom’s wife Mona will have her expenses covered and can have use of a Toyota Vellfire.

The extradition hearing is scheduled for September. In the meantime Megaupload’s defense team is preparing a response to the US indictment, which is expected to be filed in the coming weeks.

More:
http://torrentfreak.com/megauploads-kim-dotcom-gets-750-000-back-120428/

Previously:

When Facing Online Crimes, Are Proactive “Disruption Of Service” And Immediate “Seizure Of Funds” Better Sanctions In The Internet Age When Compared To “Old School” Civil Litigation Or Criminal Prosecution?
http://vrritti.com/2012/04/26/when-facing-online-crimes-are-proactive-disruption-of-service-and-immediate-seizure-of-funds-better-sanctions-in-the-internet-age-when-compared-to-old-school-civil-litigation-or-criminal/

The Definitive Video On Why the Airplane Cellphone Ban Is Stupid

Posted: 2012/04/29 in Education / Awareness, Stats / reports

http://gizmodo.com/5905961/the-definitive-video-on-why-the-airplane-cellphone-ban-is-stupid

Everything You Need to Know About the Higgs Boson in Under Eight Minutes

Posted: 2012/04/29 in Education / Awareness

http://gizmodo.com/5905912/everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-the-higgs-boson-in-under-eight-minutes

Teaching kids to expect the world to work like a computer game deprives them of learning real-world life skills

Posted: 2012/04/29 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models, Tech Evolution

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57423522-93/a-fathers-lament-the-real-world-is-not-a-game/

Google’s Street View fleet collected personal data from WiFi networks because of a rogue engineer’s evil code, the company claims

Posted: 2012/04/29 in Education / Awareness, Google, Privacy / Data Protection, Stats / reports

http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2012/04/google-releases-full-details-of-fcc-investigation-into-street-view-wifi-snooping.ars

Facebook “likes” aren’t speech protected by the First Amendment, rules judge

Posted: 2012/04/29 in Education / Awareness, Jurisprudence

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/04/facebook-likes-arent-speech-protected-by-the-first-amendment-rules-judge.ars

Russell Brand speaking to the Parliamentary Committee on Addiction (video)

Posted: 2012/04/29 in Education / Awareness

Chair Of Dutch Parliament Only Accepts Formal Proposal (To Be Discussed And Voted On) When It Is Being Read From Paper. Not If It Is Being Read From An iPad

Posted: 2012/04/28 in Education / Awareness, Public Policy, Tech Evolution

May accept such behavior in 2047, when only Dutch parliament members are still using iPads ;-)

Dutch language news article and video:
http://www.geenstijl.nl/mt/archieven/2012/04/tofik_dibi_buigt_voor_dictaat.html

We’re not actually living in an era of great innovation

Posted: 2012/04/28 in Education / Awareness, Future Developments?, Stats / reports, Tech Evolution

More prosaically, the 15 years since the internet became a major part of our lives has been marked here in the U.S. — birthplace of the internet — by mostly disappointing economic growth. The only exception was in the late 1990s, when excitement over how much the internet was going to change everything spurred an investment bubble that briefly drove real growth. (And yes, the story has been different outside the U.S., but the emerging markets boom has generally been more about catching up than exploiting cutting-edge technology.)

Electricity is still electricity, and still generated mostly with fossil fuels; cars are better but not all that much better, and still propelled almost entirely by fossil fuels. Only communication has been truly transformed, but is the transformation really as profound as the advent of telegraphs, radio, and TV? (For much more on this, consult economist Robert J. Gordon’s productivity research.)

We have no colonies on Mars, we still can’t get by without prehistoric fuel, the dishwasher still doesn’t get all the dishes clean, and very few of us have personal jetpacks. You call this progress?

More:
http://www.wired.com/opinion/2012/04/opinion-fox-net-innovation/

US Music Pirates Face New $150,000 Damages Claims

Posted: 2012/04/28 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Illegal File Sharing, Litigation

http://torrentfreak.com/us-music-pirates-face-new-150000-damages-claims-120427/

Now Anyone Can Hack A Website Thanks To Clever, Free Programs

Posted: 2012/04/28 in Cybercrime, Education / Awareness

http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2012/04/25/now-anyone-can-hack-a-website-thanks-to-clever-free-programs/

Dutch court bans pot for foreigners

Posted: 2012/04/28 in Education / Awareness, Legislation, Public Policy

The country known for “coffee shops” where joints and cappuccinos share spots on the menu may see its famed tolerance for drugs go up in smoke. A Dutch judge upheld a government plan to ban foreign tourists from buying marijuana.

If the government gets its way, the pass will roll out in the rest of the country, including Amsterdam, next year. It will turn coffee shops into private clubs with membership open only to Dutch residents and limited to 2,000 per shop.

http://rt.com/news/netherlands-marijuana-drug-ban-182/

http://new-rules.eu/

At 92, a Bandit to Hollywood but a Hero to Soldiers

Posted: 2012/04/28 in Education / Awareness, Illegal File Sharing, Stats / reports

Hyman Strachman, 92, has sent hundreds of thousands of illicitly copied movies to troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

One of the world’s most prolific bootleggers of Hollywood DVDs loves his morning farina. He has spent eight years churning out hundreds of thousands of copies of “The Hangover,” “Gran Torino” and other first-run movies from his small Long Island apartment to ship overseas.

“Big Hy” — his handle among many loyal customers — would almost certainly be cast as Hollywood Enemy No. 1 but for a few details. He is actually Hyman Strachman, a 92-year-old, 5-foot-5 World War II veteran trying to stay busy after the death of his wife. And he has sent every one of his copied DVDs, almost 4,000 boxes of them to date, free to American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

More:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/27/nyregion/at-92-movie-bootlegger-is-soldiers-hero.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1

Microsoft backs away from CISPA support, citing privacy

Posted: 2012/04/28 in Education / Awareness, Legislation, Public Policy

Microsoft is no longer as enthusiastic about a controversial cybersecurity bill that would allow Internet and telecommunications companies to divulge confidential customer information to the National Security Agency.

The U.S. House of Representatives approved CISPA by a 248 to 168 margin yesterday in spite of a presidential veto threat and warnings from some House members that the measure represented “Big Brother writ large.”

http://news.cnet.com/8301-33062_3-57423580/microsoft-backs-away-from-cispa-support-citing-privacy/

Google said today that both South Korea and Argentina have recently opened probes into its activities

Posted: 2012/04/28 in Education / Awareness, Google, Public Policy, Stats / reports

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57423542-93/google-reveals-two-international-probes/

Nokia demos indoor-location tracking with ‘white space’ tech

Posted: 2012/04/28 in Education / Awareness, Stats / reports, Tech Evolution

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57423510-94/nokia-demos-indoor-location-tracking-with-white-space-tech/

But what if buying a ticket were as simple as tweeting?

Posted: 2012/04/28 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models, Online advertising, Tech Evolution

TweetAFlight promises to get you deals in ads you see on Twitter if you just tweet “buy” in response.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57423067-1/tweet-buy-to-purchase-flights-by-twitter/

Mission-critical routers used to control electric substations and other critical infrastructure are being updated to remove a previously undocumented backdoor

Posted: 2012/04/28 in Education / Awareness, Network Security

http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2012/04/backdoor-that-threated-power-stations-to-be-purged-from-control-system.ars

Big Content eyes Google Fiber deployment in Kansas City warily

Posted: 2012/04/28 in Education / Awareness, Google, Stats / reports

The year of the ecosystem

http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2012/04/big-content-eyes-google-fiber-deployment-in-kansas-city-warily.ars

Apple indeed has a TV in the works, claims Reuters

Posted: 2012/04/28 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models, Tech Evolution

The year of the ecosystem

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2012/04/apple-indeed-has-a-tv-in-the-works-claims-reuters.ars

Scuba is helping Facebook gather important data on the health and status of its server infrastructure – and fast

Posted: 2012/04/28 in Education / Awareness, Stats / reports, Tech Evolution

As a result, queries now take less than a second to fulfill, “even traversing hundreds of millions of samples and hundreds of gigabytes of data.” Employees also have the ability to view heat maps of racks and servers based on such factors as CPU consumption and packet throughput, or find data on “sick” machines that are performing the least effectively.

http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2012/04/new-facebook-tool-fills-queries-in-under-a-secondeven-with-terabytes-of-data.ars

The U.S. Air Force is quietly assembling the world’s most powerful air-to-air fighting team at bases near Iran

Posted: 2012/04/27 in Education / Awareness, Stats / reports

Stealthy F-22 Raptors on their first front-line deployment have joined a potent mix of active-duty and Air National Guard F-15 Eagles, including some fitted with the latest advanced radars. The Raptor-Eagle team has been honing special tactics for clearing the air of Iranian fighters in the event of war.

The fighters join a growing naval armada that includes Navy carriers, submarines, cruisers and destroyers plus patrol boats and minesweepers enhanced with the latest close-in weaponry.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/04/armada-masses-near-iran/

The Pirate Party doesn’t want to abolish copyright, they want to reform it. For example, the moral rights of authors would remain unchanged, but all non-commercial copying would be legalized. In addition, DRM woud be banned entirely

Posted: 2012/04/27 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Public Policy

http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-presents-acta-alternative-to-european-parliament-120427/

A new satellite set to fly in 2014 will offer the chance to spot objects just 31 centimetres across

Posted: 2012/04/27 in Education / Awareness, Stats / reports, Tech Evolution

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/27/worldview_3_satellite/

Symantec creates new trust mark for e-commerce to indicate secure websites

Posted: 2012/04/27 in Education / Awareness, Stats / reports, Tech Evolution

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/business/symantec-creates-new-trust-mark-for-e-commerce-to-indicate-secure-websites-148508735.html

Recurring theme? People are very unhappy about the way their political elite are behaving and they feel that the government is not serving the people at all, it’s only serving big financial interests

Posted: 2012/04/27 in Education / Awareness, Public Policy, Stats / reports

http://rt.com/news/canada-student-arrests-protests-088/

Older Entries