Thursday, September 2, 2010



Consumer Watchdog took its crusade against Google to new heights Thursday, running ads in New York's Times Square blasting CEO Eric Schmidt on privacy issues.
The group's Inside Google site produced two videos (hosted on YouTube, of course) depicting Schmidt as a creepy maniacal ice-cream truck driver handing out free ice cream to children while conducting full body scans in order to absorb private information through "Google Analytics." They sort of have to be seen to be believed.



Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-20015495-265.html#ixzz0yRfVe0bs

Trade groups: policing our digital copyrights is just too hard

Eagles drummer and singer Don Henley has a world of trouble on his mind, and he hopes that Congress will lighten his load... by gutting the best part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Defending his copyrights in the digital age is just too hard for Henley and his labels, because it requires constant vigilance of both mainstream user-upload sites like YouTube and dodgier destinations like BitTorrent trackers.
In comments to Rolling Stone last week, Henley admitted that the "the onus of legally pursuing infringement has always been on copyright owners,"

Old Digg Crushes New Digg in Reader Vote

By  Ben Parr 
In the debate between the old version of Digg and the new Digg, the readers have spoken.
Last week, Digg launched version 4.0 of the popular social news website. It’s been a rocky road pre-launch, so why would it be any different post-launch?
Since the launch of the New Digg, which introduced the ability to follow friends, a faster architecture and personalized news,users have been in revolt, mostly over the types of stories reaching the front page. Digg  has since addressed some of these issues, but the debate rages on.

The Micro Compact Home

By Jon King

 Some 20 years ago I worked briefly for an architect in the UK called Richard Horden. He had been the project architect for London’s Stansted Airport and had a fascination for the technology of aircraft and sailing boats. His studio in London’s Golden Square was full of wonderful models of buildings boats and airplanes. In fact he had come to my attention as the designer and manufacturer of the “yacht house”, which as the name suggests was a house built entirely of masts spars and rigging. It was quite a wonderful looking house that alluded to a world of lightweight responsive houses. The world of mass housing has gone on pretty much as always and the yacht house remains something of a 1980’s enigma.
From www.huffingtonpost.com
The fight over net neutrality is red hot right now. Since news broke that Google and Verizon were hatching a plan to carve up the Internet, millions have woken up to the fact that the Internet is in jeopardy and the would-be watchdogs at the Federal Communications Commission aren't doing much about it.

Those of us who've been in the trenches the past few years defending the free and open Internet from a corporate takeover understand that -- like in any high-stakes political debate -- things can get a little ugly. When you're challenging the interests of giant corporations like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon, you have to expect they're going to spread misinformation, call you names, hire astroturf front groups to attack you, and spend gobs and gobs of money to co-opt Congress and confuse the public. That's politics.

Facebook Testing a “Stalker Button”

Facebook is apparently testing a new subscription feature that would allow users to receive alerts any time a specific friend takes certain actions on the social network.
AllFacebook reports that it has noticed the new feature popping up on friends’ profiles. Facebook told the blog, “This feature is being tested with a small percent of users. It lets people subscribe to friends and pages to receive notifications whenever the person they’ve subscribed to updates their status or posts new content (photos, videos, links or notes).”

Microbloggy thing tracks all links clicked
By Cade Metz

Posted in Music and Media, 2nd September 2010 19:18 GMT
Twitter is on a mission to regain control of its own firehose.

On Wednesday evening, the ballyhooed microblogging operation struck not one but two blows against third parties hoping to feed off its endless stream of self-serving mini-messages: The company said it's moving all users to its own url shortening service, and it took the wraps off its own iPad application.




Microsoft Patents Operating System Shutdown

By Wolfgang Gruener

Microsoft just received confirmation of a patent that hands the company the intellectual property of shutting an operating system down.
I can’t quite recall how often Microsoft has talked about a faster way to shut down its operating system. It is part of the pitch of virtually every new operating system and it has remained an annoyance that it can take quite some time until the software in fact closes running applications and the operating system itself.

Scam Artists Use HADOPI to Steal Users Money

Written by Drew Wilson

News has surfaced that warning letters, allegedly from HADOPI, are being sent to an untold number of French citizens who are accused of copyright infringement. The problem? Neither HADOPI nor rights holders actually sent those e-mails.

It seems that HADOPI can’t catch a break. After a series of revelations ranging from questions over where the money is going to come from to being unable to wrestle with security questions to questions about the HADOPI trademark to name a few.

By Eliot Van Buskirk

We know — the new Apple TV is really small, and it finally focuses on renting rather than purchasing television shows, integrates iOS devices as remote controls, has an optical audio output for surround sound, and costs just a hundred bones.

But it has 

1. Paltry Selection of TV Shows

2. No iOS

3. No HD Antenna

4. No 1080p

5. No replacement for BitTorrent


Adam Philbin, in a widely echoed tweet offering speculation about this device’s target market, put it like this: “Apple TV … it’s like a shit, single-purpose Mac Mini for people who don’t know what BitTorrent is.”


String Theory Finally Does Something Useful

    String theory has finally made a prediction that can be tested with experiments — but in a completely unexpected realm of physics.
    The theory has long been touted as the best hope for a unified “theory of everything,” bringing together the physics of the vanishingly small and the mindbendingly large. But it has also been criticized and even ridiculed for failing to make any predictions that could be checked experimentally. It’s not just that we don’t have big enough particle accelerators or powerful enough computers; string theory’s most vocal critics charge that no experiment could even be imagined that would prove it right or wrong, making the whole theory effectively useless.
    Now, physicists at Imperial College London and Stanford University have found a way to make string theory useful, not for a theory of everything, but for quantum entanglement.


    Read More http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/09/stringy-quantum/#ixzz0yPZtd2iv

New iPod crew: 'Phoney, futuristic, retro, doomed'

Apple admits error shock
Apple has revamped three quarters of its iPod line. Or, more accurately, it upgraded one quarter, redesigned another, took a step back in time with a third, and left the final, not-even-mentioned quarter alone.

iPod touch

The flagship of the iPod line, the iPod touch, is often derided as being merely an iPhone without the phone — a dig Steve Jobs turned into a plus in Wednesday's unveiling ceremony when he noted that "it's also an iPhone without the contract."

Samsung: Galaxy Tab has leg up on Apple iPad



BERLIN--When Samsung debuted its Galaxy Tab on Thursday, it made a bold claim: the device is at least as good as today's dominant tablet, Apple's iPad.
"Honestly, I don't see anything [about the Galaxy Tab] that is weaker than the iPad," W.P. Wong, head of Samsung Mobile's product planning team, said at a press conference here at the IFA electronics show.
And in several ways, he said, the Galaxy Tab is stronger. It permits both picture-taking and video chat with front- and back-mounted cameras. Its weight of 380 grams (0.8 pounds) is considerably less than the iPad, which weighs 680 grams (1.5 pounds) without 3G and 730g (1.6 pounds) with it.

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20015400-264.html?tag=topStories3#ixzz0yPTpjs7S

Samsung fires first Android-powered salvo at iPad with Galaxy Tab

Acer banks on Android for smartphone debut

Asher Moses
Computer maker Acer is entering the Australian smartphone market for the first time with a range of five phones based on the Google Android platform.
Android has exploded in the past year and analysts are predicting it will be the leading mobile phone platform globally by 2012.
The new Acer range joins a slew of other recent Android