http://www.infinityextreme.info/index.php Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:21:17 -0400 90 http://www.infinityextreme.info/index.php?showtopic=17564
A provision of the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 is making schools a reluctant ally in the entertainment industry's campaign to stamp out unauthorized distribution of copyrighted music, movies and TV shows.

Colleges and universities must put in place plans "to effectively combat the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material by users of the institution's network" without hampering legitimate educational and research use, according to regulations that went into effect Thursday.

That means goodbye to peer-to-peer file-sharing on a few campuses — with exceptions for gamers or open-source software junkies — gentle warnings on others and extensive education programs everywhere else.

Despite initial angst about invading students' privacy and doing the entertainment industry's dirty work, college and university officials are largely satisfied with regulations that call for steps many of them put in place years ago.

But whether the investment of time and money will make a dent in digital piracy is uncertain.

"If the university is going to prohibit underage drinking, I think it ought to prohibit anything on the Internet that's illegal, too," said Alicia Richardson, an Illinois State University junior who applauds her school's restrictive policies on file-sharing. "I'm not going to mess with it. I know the consequences."

Among other things, schools must educate their campus communities on the issue and offer legal alternatives to downloading "to the extent practicable."

Colleges and universities that don't comply risk losing their eligibility for federal student aid.

Many colleges worried they would be asked to monitor or block content. But the provision says schools can get a great deal of flexibility, as long as they use at least one "technology-based deterrent."

Their options include taking steps to limit how much bandwidth can be consumed by peer-to-peer networking, monitoring traffic, using a commercial product to reduce or block illegal file sharing or "vigorously" responding to copyright infringement notices from copyright holders.

Almost all campuses already manage bandwidth or vigorously process infringement, or "takedown," notices, said Steven Worona, director of policy and networking programs for Educause, a higher education tech advocacy group.

While the recording industry has backed off its strategy of suing illegal file-sharers, it still sends infringement notices to colleges — a shot across the bow that urges users to delete and disable computer access to unauthorized music to avoid legal action.

"The problem campuses have is that commercial network providers are not doing anything to limit the amount of infringement on their networks or educate their customers about copyright law," Worona said. "Every fall, a new cadre of students arrives on campuses who have been engaging in infringing activity since the third grade."

Since October 2008, the Recording Industry Association of America said it has sent 1.8 million infringement notices to commercial internet service providers — and 269,609 to colleges and universities.

RIAA, which represents the major music labels, stressed that the numbers don't necessarily reflect piracy trends, but rather the group's ability to detect it.

College officials argue notices are a flawed measure of illegal activity because it's up to copyright holders whether to send them and that false positives are possible.

RIAA president Cary Sherman said the group can't say whether campus programs are putting a dent in piracy. But he said the threat of a gradually tougher response to repeat violations is working, pointing to the University of California, Los Angeles, as one example.

"We think we're beginning to get to a scale now where it actually can make a difference," he said.

UCLA has developed a system that notifies users by e-mail when the school receives a copyright infringement notice, setting into motion a process that includes a "quarantine" on the computer's Internet access and the student's attendance at an educational workshop. Repeat offenders typically face one-semester suspensions.

Since the workshops started, repeat offenders have virtually disappeared, said Kenn Heller, assistant dean of students. Earlier this year, UCLA also struck a partnership with Clicker Media Inc. to make both university-produced videos and network TV shows, music videos and movies available through its undergraduate student Internet portal.

The Motion Picture Association of America, which also pressed for the legislation, is encouraged by what campuses are doing but it's too early to tell whether it will curb piracy, spokeswoman Elizabeth Kaltman said.

Few campuses have gone as far as Illinois State, which raised eyebrows by seeking and accepting entertainment industry money to underwrite a now-abandoned research project on digital piracy.

The university also blocked all peer-to-peer activity in residence halls and on wireless access points, said Mark Walbert, Illinois State's chief technology officer. Students who use the technology for legal means — like tapping open-source software Linux or downloading World of Warcraft game updates — can get exceptions.

For students seeking legal download options, the school developed BirdTrax, a Web page with links to the free movie and music streaming websites such as Hulu and Pandora.

In 2007, the University of Michigan took a different approach, launching a campus initiative called "BAYU," which stands for "Be Aware You're Uploading." At little cost, the school developed a software program that automatically notifies users of university networks when they are uploading, or sharing files from their computer with users elsewhere.

The university does not look at what is being shared, and notices go out regardless of whether the activity is legal or illegal, said Jack Bernard, a university lawyer who devised the program, which Michigan offers free to other schools.

As a result, the number of copyright infringement notices the university receives has slowed to a trickle, he said.

"We think scare tactics and most technological means don't realize the ends we want because technological means never seem to keep up with people's ability to thwart them," Bernard said.

New technologies have made it more difficult to assess how much enforcement has affected piracy, said Joe Fleischer, chief marketing officer for tracking firm BigChampagne Media Measurement.

File-hosting services such as RapidShare store infringing content on distant servers, meaning uploaders' identities are difficult to track. Websites that share links to those files are searchable through Google.

"It's a much more complicated battle than it was five years ago because so many new modes of infringement are emerging," Fleischer said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100701/ap_on_en_mu/us_digital_piracy_colleges]]> Fri, 02 Jul 2010 05:13:24 -0400 http://www.infinityextreme.info/index.php?showtopic=17564 http://www.infinityextreme.info/index.php?showtopic=17563
From now on, access to the Times and Sunday Times website will cost £1 per day, or £2 a week if readers sign up to a subscription.

News International, which owns the papers, announced plans to impose charges earlier this year in response to falling advertising income.

Currently the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal are the only major papers to have similar paywalls.

All other national papers offer free access to their sites, but are likely to watch the launch of the Times paywall closely.

Falling readership numbers and advertising revenues have put significant pressure on newspapers in recent years, and devising the best way to make money from content is seen as a major challenge for the industry.

Other papers including the Guardian have vowed to keep content free, pinning their hopes on a recovery in advertising revenues.

Although the Times risks losing readers as a result of the new charges, News International hopes the charge will be low enough to attract sufficient readers.

Robin Goad from Experian Hitwise, which monitors web traffic, told BBC Radio 5 live's Wake Up To Money programme that traffic to the Times website had fallen "significantly".

"Since the registration wall has gone live, we've seen about a 60% drop in traffic over the last couple of weeks," he said.

However, "that is probably a little bit less of a drop than a lot of people expected... so this is quite a positive [figure]," he added.

Under an introductory offer, registered readers will be able to access the site for £1 for the first month.

The site has already been restricted to registered users for the last 30 days.

"We have been very pleased with the response from readers since the launch," said Rebekah Brooks, News International's chief executive.

"We believe the new sites offer real value and we look forward to continuing to invest and innovate for our readers."

Are you a Times website reader? Do you think the business model will be a success?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/10480666.stm]]> Fri, 02 Jul 2010 05:11:48 -0400 http://www.infinityextreme.info/index.php?showtopic=17563 http://www.infinityextreme.info/index.php?showtopic=17562
Marcin de Kaminski, a founder of Piratbyran, which means "piracy bureau" in English, told BBC News "we don't feel we are needed" any more.

But the group also decided to close following the death of a co-founder.

A spokesperson for the Swedish computer games industry said the decision showed "the discussion has moved on".

Piratbyran first emerged in 2003, as a response to the Swedish body Antipiratbyran (anti-piracy bureau), which works to counter the sharing of copyrighted materials on-line.
Different perspectives

Mr de Kaminski claimed that Piratbyran had "normalised" the use of file-sharing networks: "to make sure that people don't feel ashamed about being file-sharers, but that it is a natural and quite common activity online".

Per Stromback, a spokesperson for the Swedish games industry and editor of the discussion forum Netopia, which is supported by several Swedish creative organisations, said Piratbyran "have been very successful in creating excuses for something that can't be justified.

"It's fair to say that most illegal file-sharers feel they really should be paying".

Piratbyran may be best remembered as a group which created the popular file-sharing website The Pirate Bay.

Whilst Pirate Bay servers do not actually store copyright materials, they use a peer-to-peer networking technology called Bittorrent, which enables users to easily connect with other users to share and download legal and illegal films, music and software.

Last year, four men associated with The Pirate Bay were given a hefty fine and sentenced to a year in jail, after they were found guilty in Sweden of having made copyright files available for illegal file-sharing. An appeal in the case is pending.

Mr de Kaminski said that Piratbyran "has not been involved with Pirate Bay for five years or more", but that he expected the site to continue operating.

He also attributed the closure of Piratbyran to the death of one of its co-founders, Ibi Kopimi Botani: "Our group was very small, and when one of our members is no longer alive, it is hard to keep the group alive," he said.
Fun pranks

Mr Stromback added that he would miss some of his exchanges with the Piratbyran group.

"They have an old bus which they drive around to all sorts of places.

"They have a fun anarchistic way of presenting themselves, and whilst we don't share many of the same views, I've enjoyed some of their pranks."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/10433195.stm]]> Fri, 02 Jul 2010 05:09:51 -0400 http://www.infinityextreme.info/index.php?showtopic=17562 http://www.infinityextreme.info/index.php?showtopic=17280
And we’re not just talking about crack dealers. The convenience and anonymity of prepaid plans has reportedly even made them popular with Wall Street types engaging in insider trading activity. Naturally, terrorism is a major concern, too. The FBI says it found that the recent Times Square bomb scare was arranged through the use of a prepaid cell phone, as well.

Frustrated with this loophole, now lawmakers are looking to make prepaid cell phones considerably less anonymous, AFP reports. A bipartisan bill announced this week in the Senate would require prepaid cell phone buyers to provide ID before a purchase.

This is unlikely to sit well with many legitimate users of prepaid phones, who often don’t have the money for a regular, subscription-based, post-paid plan. Anonymity is prized by many prepaid users, whether they are using the phone to evade an abusive partner, to blow the whistle on dangerous working conditions, or simply to avoid telemarketers and political pollsters.

But Ars Technica notes that for many governments, the criminal risks of anonymous phone usage outweigh such concerns: Collecting registration date from prepaid customers is already required by at least nine of the 24 countries that belong to the Organization for Cooperation and Economic Development. And several states have laws requiring papers when you buy a cell phone of any kind.

Will this legislation go federal? With few people stepping up to complain about the proposal, it certainly seems likely.

source:
http://news.yahoo.com]]> Sun, 30 May 2010 19:12:54 -0400 http://www.infinityextreme.info/index.php?showtopic=17280 http://www.infinityextreme.info/index.php?showtopic=17150
Hulu stepped into the Adobe-Apple war Thursday with the announcement that it's sticking to Flash for now.

"We continue to monitor developments on HTML5, but as of now it doesn't yet meet all of our customer needs," Hulu VP of Product Eugene Wei wrote on the company's blog.

Wei also announced updates to Hulu's video player and other features.

Opting for Adobe Is No Flash in the Pan

Hulu's guiding principle for selecting technology is whether or not it best serves the needs of its key customers, its viewers, its content partners, and its advertisers, according to Wei.

"Our player doesn't just simply stream video, it must also secure the content, handle reporting for our advertisers, render the video using a high-performance codec to ensure premium visual quality, communicate back with the server to determine how long to buffer and what bitrate to stream, and dozens of other things that aren't necessarily visible to the end user," Wei explained.

However, he did not close the door on HTML5.

"That's not to say these features won't be added to HTML5 in the future or be easier to implement," Wei wrote. "Technology is a fast-moving space, and we're constantly evaluating which tools will best allow us to fulfill our mission for as many of our customers as possible," he added.

"Hulu is staying with something that works," Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group, told TechNewsWorld. "Their goal is to provide a service, and not to push a particular technology. They can always switch when the standard is ready, and that may not be for years," he said.

"People use whatever technology is optimum for their needs, and everyone else is doing the same thing as Hulu," Al Hilwa, a program director at IDC, pointed out. "They can't wait for standards."
HTML5's Weaknesses

For now, HTML5 lacks DRM and a lot of the other features Wei mentioned. It's also a standard still under development, and for some, its progress is too slow.

One reason for that is the W3C's standards process, which intentionally moves cautiously and deliberately because any decisions the body makes have such a widespread impact. Another reason: typical infighting among vendors. Both Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) are involved in the HTML5 standards process, for example, and in some regards their interests differ widely.

"The problem with standards like this is that the vendors backing the effort are often more interested in assuring their technology is provided an advantage, or a competitor's isn't given one, than in moving the standard forward," Enderle grumped. "This is often why technologies like Flash continue to do well and why sometimes companies get frustrated and exit the process or develop non-complying products."

Parts of HTML5 have already been implemented by various browser makers, but the standard's already fragmenting.

"Every vendor has its own subset of HTML5 that it's implementing," IDC's Hilwa told TechNewsWorld. "It's going to remain partially implemented for the next five years or so."
Open Versus Proprietary

While HTML5 is an open standard, there may also be a place for proprietary technologies such as Flash on the Web,.

"There will always be competitive technologies that are primarily sponsored by a single vendor such as Flash or Silverlight that have more optimization, more features, more capability, and more hardware optimization such as DRM," Hilwa pointed out. "That's always been the nature of technology."

Hulu probably also has business reasons for sticking with Flash.

"I'd summarize Hulu's argument as 'If HTML is open and free, so would be our content, and that's unacceptable to our content partners,'" Carl Howe, director of anywhere consumer research at the Yankee Group, told TechNewsWorld. "A closed Flash platform is much more attractive when you need to prevent copying and want to control distribution."

However, HTML5 is the future of video and the Web, Howe said.
Hulu's Other Announcements

Hulu has brought out a new version of its video player. It now has adaptive bitrate streaming so the company can shift video bitrates and resolution up and down to match the user's bandwidth.

Another feature is ad volume normalization, which will restrict the audio volume of advertisements to the same level as programs. Consumers have frequently complained that television ads seem to blare at a higher volume than normal programming. This is something viewers of traditional television systems -- broadcast, cable and satellite -- have also complained about. The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill in December, H.R. 1084, to address this issue.

Other new features include closed captioning display, seek preview, and a "heat map" that lets viewers home in on segments of a program that attracts their interest.

Hulu also introduced "Ad Tailor," a new ad personalization feature that will increase the relevance of ads for its viewers.]]> Sun, 16 May 2010 13:14:22 -0400 http://www.infinityextreme.info/index.php?showtopic=17150 http://www.infinityextreme.info/index.php?showtopic=17149
In the world of anti-piracy litigation, that number is staggering. Here's how to put it in perspective. As of 2008, after five long years of litigation efforts, the Recording Industry Association of America had threatened legal action against just 30,000 individuals, a drop in the bucket compared to the action Voltage is taking over a single pirated film, all at once.

While "Locker" was a critical success, it remains a commercial bomb, earning less than $13 million theatrically in the United States.

Pirates are to blame for the paltry take ... right? While the reason for the film's commercial flop are undoubtedly far more complicated than a few thousand pirated copies, it seems that little will deter the legal action against those who saw it online (where it was available five months before its theatrical release).

Service providers are playing ball. According to a lawyer with the U.S. Copyright Group, the firm spearheading the lawsuit, ISPs are largely complying with the requests for information about the identities of those who are alleged to have downloaded the film online. One of the few holdouts is Comcast, but even it appears to be caving and will probably release another few thousand names to the prosecution within a week. Settlement offers are being made now (at an undetermined dollar amount), with full-on lawsuits promised if the demands aren't meant.

And this could be a sign of things to come. While the RIAA has slowed its legal campaign against music sharers, this could be merely the first volley for the movie studios, looking to stem massive revenue declines that are mainly occurring on DVD shelves (theatrical revenue, ironically, is higher than ever).

It can be rationally argued that the reason the RIAA's lawsuit campaign didn't work is that it wasn't big enough. If Hollywood increases those lawsuits 100-fold, could the scare tactics finally have a real effect?]]> Sun, 16 May 2010 13:09:39 -0400 http://www.infinityextreme.info/index.php?showtopic=17149 http://www.infinityextreme.info/index.php?showtopic=17148
The company will soon introduce a set-top box that will marry traditional cable content with apps, widgets and access to web-based video, Wired has learned.

“It’s a set-top box on steroids,” Balan Nair, chief technology officer for Liberty Global, told Wired.com. “The interface will be very intuitive and advanced and include features such as search and recommendation that will tie in a seamless way the experience of a using a DVR and a web search engine.”

Think of it as a Boxee or Roku-like service living on the cable digital video recorder. For instance, a search for Batman will show what channel is broadcasting it, if is available through video on demand, where on the web you can find it and even if it is available through some peer-to-peer networks.

The move will be a big step forward for the cable industry, which has so far been wary of internet video content. It could change the idea of a set-top box and usher in a post-TiVo era where consumers watch Jersey Shore with the same ease as an episode of the online show Epic Fu. In addition to delivering a greater variety of content to your living room, it could open up new opportunities for video producers to reach a mass audience, and could help the cable companies sell more broadband accounts.

The only losers? Startups that have bet their futures on making dedicated internet TV boxes, with functions that set-top boxes like Liberty Global’s could soon replace.

The box or the “gateway” as Nair likes to call it will be an IP-based device that can stream video, voice and data over Wi-Fi to devices in the home such as PC, phones and eventually the iPad. Liberty will partner with Samsung and LG to build the box, which will be powered by Intel’s Atom processor.

Liberty’s new set-top box will initially be available in Europe early next year. Although the company hasn’t yet determined prices, it might be free to new customers who sign up for Liberty’s cable service, and available for a small upgrade fee to current customers.

“It makes a lot of sense because it is smart and future-proof,” says Jeff Wlodarczak, an analyst with Pivotal Research Group, a New York-based equity research firm that focuses on the media and communications sector. “All of cable will eventually go in this direction.”

Web-connected TV is growing fast as more people connect to Hulu to watch the latest episode of Lost or hook up Boxee to look for Jon Stewart’s comedy clips. By 2014, about 160 million households worldwide will be watching internet-delivered video on their TVs on a regular basis, estimates The Diffusion Group. In North America alone, 63 million homes, or almost half of the TV watching households, will be viewing internet content on the big screen, Diffusion predicts.

“If you can let people personalize their TV experience by combining widgets and internet content with the 40 channels, that’s going to be very important,” says Wlodarczak.

Cable service providers are intrigued yet wary of web content and offering easy access to it. Liberty Global’s move could help some service providers in the United States find a way to replicate it, says Colin Dixon, an analyst with The Diffusion Group.

“If Liberty does this, it is a step forward for the entire industry,” he says. “If they can provide a set-top box with access to web content, then it becomes a pretty good deal for customers.”

Today, getting internet video content on your TV means having enough tech savvy and patience to jump through a few hoops. First, users have to download services such as Boxee and Roku on their PCs — though the two companies also make their services available through dedicated hardware — and then hook them up to their TVs.

Companies like Apple and Netgear have tried to make the process easy by offering consumers hardware that will stream web content to their TVs more simply. But so far, most consumers have resisted adding yet another device to their living room.

Baking web-streaming features directly on the cable box could change the picture. Liberty’s box will support the DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) standard that will allow different devices, such as DVD players, TVs, set-top boxes and PCs, to share their content with one another.

But all this could come at the expense of some of the smaller, innovative streaming media startups.

“Cable guys are great at delivering content and a pipeline full of channels 24/7,” says Andrew Kippen, vice-president of marketing at Boxee. “What they don’t have expertise in is delivering the interface and that’s why we are a software company.”

Kippen may be just a little too optimistic.

TiVo’s history offers clues on what happens when cable companies move in. Despite its great user interface and innovative service, TiVo’s service was crushed by inexpensive set-top boxes from cable companies that flooded consumer homes and offered similar features. TiVo recovered only when it cut a deal with the cable companies to integrate its software into their boxes, slowly giving up on the idea of having a TiVo-branded box in consumer homes.

Services like Boxee could meet with a similar fate. “If the cable companies move in, Boxee or even Hulu will cease to be quite so important in the web world as they are now,” says Dixon.

Boxee says it hopes to stay one step ahead in the game by partnering with the cable companies and creating an open platform.

“We are not a gatekeeper like the TV company is going to be,” says Kippen.

Boxee and Roku may have found the chink in the cable providers’ armor. Liberty Global’s success, for instance, will largely depend on how open their new set-top box service is, says Dixon, because openness is the key to rapidly adding new features via third-party products.

“Roku has this open API and anyone can get on its box,” he says. “But if Liberty can’t do that then they are never going to be able to keep up with what’s going on the web and they will be left behind by more open players.”

The biggest of those challengers is likely to be Google. At its developer conference next week, Google, in partnership with Sony and Logitech, is expected to announce an open set-top box that will run the Android operating system.

“It’s a business that’s likely to get intensely competitive,” says Wlodarczak.

Despite Liberty Global’s efforts, change in the cable world, especially in the United States is likely to be slow, says Corey Ferengul, Executive Vice President of Marketing for Rovi, a company that works with TV content creators and cable companies.

“Cable operators are absolutely interested in getting into internet content, whether that be shorts or user generated content,” says Ferengul. “What they haven’t figured out is how to pay for the service and that’s holding them back.”

Take that fear into account and Liberty Global’s walled garden approach could be the right first step, says Wlodarczak.

“Keep it simple, that’s what they are going for,” he says. “They can always iterate on it and add more but right now they are taking a big first step.”

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/05/liberty-cable-internet-video/]]> Sun, 16 May 2010 13:07:38 -0400 http://www.infinityextreme.info/index.php?showtopic=17148 http://www.infinityextreme.info/index.php?showtopic=17147
I agree that Facebook is a little too brazenly cavalier in its attitude toward privacy. I am in no way suggesting that Facebook is completely innocent, or that it is some sort of paragon of information privacy practices. However, the opposite extreme is equally false.


Notable online personalities such as Leo Laporte, Cory Doctorow, and Matt Cutts, and Jason Rojas have deleted their Facebook accounts in protest--some in grand public gestures. What is lacking in all of the self-righteous indignation over Facebook privacy policies is the mea culpa factor.

The situation reminds me of the case where the woman spilled McDonald's coffee on her lap, then sued McDonald's because the coffee was hot and McDonald's didn't have the prescience of mind to notify her up front that pouring hot coffee on her lap might be bad. It's like shooting someone and blaming the bullet without stopping to consider who was responsible for pulling the trigger.

Even if there were no Facebook, a vast amount of personal information is already available on the Web just from publicly available documents and records. Just check BeenVerified.com or Whitepages.com to see how much the Internet already knows about you.

When it comes to any additional information that is out there, though, users need to take some responsibility for sharing that data. Privacy and social networking are at opposite ends of the spectrum and it's up to the individual user to exercise discretion in sharing information, and utilize the controls provided to place the fulcrum in the right spot to find a balance between the two that is comfortable.

Admittedly, much of the backlash isn't so much about Facebook having the information, or even in how that information is used or distributed. Many users are simply frustrated that the rules keep changing. Every time Facebook introduces a new feature, or unveils a new service or partnership, suddenly data is exposed in new ways that the user did not overtly consent to.

On that point, I refer back to my Open Letter to Facebook on Privacy. I believe that Facebook should be much more open about its development lifecycle, and allow for more public beta testing and forewarning before springing new features on half a billion members. I also feel that Facebook should disclose the details of any changes, and make new features and services opt-in rather than automatically moving the line in the sand for existing members.

However, my main point in the open letter still stands, and brings me back to the mea culpa focus of this article. Ultimately, the vast majority of users won't read the disclosures, and won't use the security controls provided to them. They will opt-in to take advantage of cool features and they will share information without regard for privacy.

IT administrators need to have clearly-defined policies in place regarding social networking using company computers or network resources. If social networking is allowed, even on a limited basis, user education is a key element of protecting data--informing users what to share and what not to share, and ensuring they are aware of the privacy and data security controls available.

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/196362/facebook_privacy_mea_culpa_reality_check.html
McDonald's can't protect every clumsy customer that drives a car with a scalding hot cup of coffee between their legs, and Facebook can't be expected to be the guardian of every personal detail and sensitive fact shared willingly across its social network.]]> Sun, 16 May 2010 13:00:27 -0400 http://www.infinityextreme.info/index.php?showtopic=17147 http://www.infinityextreme.info/index.php?showtopic=17146
Kirllos was first spotted by researchers at VeriSign's iDefense group a few weeks back after he claimed to have an unusually large number of Facebook accounts for sale at rock-bottom prices. According to VeriSign, Kirllos wanted between US$25 and $45 per 1,000 accounts, depending on the quality of the Facebook user's connections.

Kirllos appeared to have sold close to 700,000 accounts, although nobody knew for sure if his claims were legitimate, according to VeriSign Director of Cyber Intelligence Rick Howard.

Now Facebook says its forensics team, working with other industry contacts, has figured out who Kirllos is. "We have determined Kirllos' identity through IP addresses, online accounts, and other information and believe that he's very likely a low-level actor," said Facebook Spokesman Simon Axten, in an e-mail interview.

Axten wouldn't name Kirllos, but he said that the hacker is based out of Russia.

And while Kirllos does appear to have hacked accounts -- probably through a phishing attack or by placing malicious code on victims' computers -- but he probably obtained only a few thousand credentials, Axten said.

By analyzing a sample of hacked accounts Kirllos had made available to prove that his goods were legitimate, Facebook investigators got a picture of what he'd done. "He did have some Facebook credentials in his possession as we were able to detect suspicious logins on certain accounts," Axten said. " However, the number of accounts found was orders of magnitude less than what was reported. We reset the password on all affected accounts and notified the account owners."

The company also handed over its Kirllos dossier to law enforcement. But if he's based out of Russia, he may never be prosecuted. It's notoriously difficult to arrest Russian hackers, especially if the hacking occurred in another country.

Kirllos disappeared from hacking forums after his offer was made public, and he didn't respond to Facebook investigators when they tried to buy more accounts, Axten said.

Based on what we now know about Kirllos, VeriSign's Howard doubts that the hacker ever really had the 1.5 million accounts. But only Kirllos knows for sure. And he isn't talking.]]> Sun, 16 May 2010 12:58:34 -0400 http://www.infinityextreme.info/index.php?showtopic=17146 http://www.infinityextreme.info/index.php?showtopic=17145
For those of you who still doubt the ability of Wikipedia to get the facts straight, the latest update should be a case in point for exactly how things work when everyone gets a say about what's wrong, what's right and what's somewhere in-between.

Wikipedia announced a number of new changes last March, including a major redesign with the intention of getting even more users to join in on the creation and editing of content.


According to Moka Pantages, spokesperson for the WikiMedia Foundation, the new logo and redesign is part of a broader initiative to increase participation and in turn the quality of the encyclopedia.

"By lowering the barriers of participation and making the site easier to use," Pantages said, "we hope this will also increase the diversity of contributors to all of our projects."

According to a blog post today by the Wikimedia Foundation, the now-familiar globe logo was found in 2003 in a logo design contest and the editing immediately began. As errors in the Wikipedia logo were found by users, it was slowly touched up. A year ago, the effort began "to resolve some minor typographic errors found by our volunteers, and to develop a high-resolution version with gradient qualities (it is a sphere, after all) that could be used in a variety of new settings. It was a perfect opportunity to build a new model that would be completely 3D in its design." This effort would involve determining what would be on those 52 other, yet unseen puzzle pieces.

The new logo incorporates a number of languages, though no longer Klingon, and now uses an open-source Linux Libertine typeface, in order to make the Wikipedia wordmark recreateable in hundreds of localized editions.

And for those of you who are curious about how this all happens, just take a a look at this one page of discussion to get a glimpse of what's going on in the background of what looks to most like a neat and orderly product. This is how the new logo was born, with proposals and votes and more proposals and histories of prior votes and...it could make you dizzy if it weren't all so organized and, well, encyclopedic.

And as the new logo looks to replace the old, the discussion has already begun over what could be done for the next incarnation.]]> Sun, 16 May 2010 12:56:58 -0400 http://www.infinityextreme.info/index.php?showtopic=17145 http://www.infinityextreme.info/index.php?showtopic=16853
Amazon.com: Why?

North Carolina: We're going to send them tax bills for that stuff.

Amazon.com: Hell, no, North Carolina.

And so it has gone between the state of North Carolina and Amazon.com over the issue of sales taxes for goods sold to residents of the state since 2003. North Carolina says it wants back taxes for purchases that were sold tax-free via the online merchant. Amazon says it's not going to give up that information, as it violates the privacy and First Amendment rights of its customers.

Now it's up to a federal judge in Seattle to figure out whether the demand is even legal. The company is hoping North Carolina drops the request altogether, seeing as how Amazon has no "nexus" — a physical presence in the form of an office building or warehouse — in the state. This exempts Amazon, from a federal standpoint, from collecting sales tax there.

It doesn't, however, exempt buyers from having to pay a use tax on goods they purchase from out of state. Most states have use-tax laws. Technically, we're all supposed to declare such purchases on our income tax returns and pay the appropriate tax on them, but in reality, few people ever do this. North Carolina, hurting for revenue like all the other states, probably figures it has hit on a simple solution to such behavior — that is, forcing Amazon to give up its customer data so it can simply bill residents directly.

Few are happy with this move, as it clearly smacks of Big Brother tactics. Never mind the extra tax bill: Who among us wants the government armed with a list of our purchases from the last decade?

The case sits with a judge for now, but I'm not altogether hopeful. The courts have generally been friendly toward states trying to weasel their way into e-commerce taxation, as evidenced by New York's enacting and upholding of a law that allows it to tax residents for all online purchases by considering "affiliate sales program" members — website owners who host links out to merchant sites — to be a nexus. Other states have efforts similar to North Carolina's in the works. All it takes is one domino to fall and the rest of the states are likely to go along with it.

Be afraid.

http://alturl.com/myom]]> Wed, 21 Apr 2010 05:32:28 -0400 http://www.infinityextreme.info/index.php?showtopic=16853 http://www.infinityextreme.info/index.php?showtopic=16852
Saying they've grown increasingly impatient with online companies that pay too little heed to national privacy laws and expectations, data protection commissioners from 10 countries on Tuesday launched what they promised would be an ongoing effort to match worldwide enforcement with the growing global market in social network information.

"We've seen this happening a couple of times now and we want to say, 'No, this can't go on the way it has," said Jennifer Stoddart, Canada's privacy commissioner.

The group fired its first shot at Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), asking the company to explain what is widely considered to be its flawed launch of the social networking tool, Buzz, and answer how it intends to more closely hew to privacy expectations in the future.

The commissioners, representing Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain and the United Kingdom, chided Google for failing to understand the privacy implications of automatically signing up users for Buzz and exposing some of their Gmail contacts to other users without clearly explaining what was happening.

Unacceptable Behavior

"It is unacceptable to roll out a product that unilaterally renders personal information public, with the intention of repairing problems later as they arise," the commissioners wrote. "Privacy cannot be sidelined in the rush to introduce new technologies to online audiences around the world."

In response, Google issued a statement saying the company tries to be upfront about the information it collects and how it is used, and to give users tools to take control of that information, but it had no specific comment on the privacy commissioners' action.

"We have discussed all these issues publicly many times before and have nothing to add to today's letter -- instead we are focused on launching our new transparency tool which we are very excited about," the statement reads.

The transparency tool shows requests by governments around the world to remove information from Google, or to provide information about users.
Lesson Learned

That some of the same governments that have recently enacted strict new laws that will give media companies greater control over the Internet are the same ones complaining about Google violating users' rights is somewhat ironic, said privacy expert Lauren Weinstein of Vortex Technology.

It's clear that Google's Buzz launch was flawed and had serious privacy implications, Weinstein said, but the company almost certainly caused the problem inadvertently -- not to intentionally flout privacy laws, as some commissioners suggested Tuesday.

The company also moved quickly to repair the damage, he said, and it's highly probable it has learned its lesson.

"I'd dare say that in the future, a situation like this is unlikely to recur," remarked Weinstein. "What's troublesome to me about the overall story line here is that there's a lot of people who just don't want to let go of this."
'Last Warning'

Some world governments are anxious about Google's ability to enable unprecedented interaction and access to information, in Weinstein's view, and it's questionable why they would raise privacy issues about services such as Google's Street View program when many of those same governments are making use of widespread closed-circuit surveillance systems.

However, what the commissioners want is what users want -- for companies such as Google and Facebook to give them the ability to control how information they put on the Internet is used, Stoddard said.

The commissioners asked that Google, as a leader in the online community, enact broad standards to enhance privacy controls, including collecting as little information as possible, making it clear how the information will be used, making it easy to adjust privacy settings -- and having them default to privacy.

"In all of our countries, personal information is personal information," she said. "You can't just deem it to be public."

And if Internet companies don't listen?

"This time, we choose to send what you may term a 'last warning' to the online community," said Jacob Kohnstamm, chairman of the Dutch data protection agency, "but we won't hesitate to act."

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/10-Nations-Demand-Online-Privacy---Or-Else-69818.html]]> Wed, 21 Apr 2010 05:29:48 -0400 http://www.infinityextreme.info/index.php?showtopic=16852 http://www.infinityextreme.info/index.php?showtopic=16851
Microsoft 's crown jewel is moving into release. Late last week, the Office 2010 suite of business applications was released to manufacturing (RTM) along with SharePoint 2010, Visio 2010, and Project 2010.

As noted by Microsoft corporate Vice President Takeshi Numoto on the Office 2010 engineering blog, "RTM is the final engineering milestone of a product release." The suite was first released as a public beta last November, and Microsoft said more than 7.5 million people -- three times the number for Office 2007 -- have downloaded the beta version.

Official Launch on May 12

Volume-license customers with active Software Assurance (SA) for these products will be able to download them through the Volume Licensing Service Center, beginning April 27. May 1 is the date that customers without SA can begin purchasing through volume licensing from Microsoft's partners.

The official launch is scheduled for May 12, when there will be product demos, testimonials and interviews with members of the project team. In June, the apps will become available in retail stores in the U.S., although pre-ordering can be done now.

In the feedback received from the millions of beta users, Microsoft said 90 percent found the new suite to be an improvement over the current version.

Among other well-received new features and enhancements, Numoto noted that users felt the Backstage view makes the suite a "better overall experience." Backstage allows a user to organize all the features and capabilities for a given document for easy access to sharing, printing, permission management, and other functions.

'Compelling' Interoperability Features

Another feature popular among beta users is Conversation View, which lets the Outlook in-box and other mail folders be organized by date and conversation. Messages with the same subject, for instance, can appear as expanded or collapsed threads of a conversation.

In Excel, a new graphical representation of data that fits in a cell, called Sparklines, is popular, and about 80 percent of beta users say they have used the web versions of Office.

Laura DiDio, an analyst with industry research firm Information Technology Intelligence Corp., said other notable enhancements in the newest Office include a "refined usability," increased security , "great real-time collaboration ," a background removal tool, the ability to edit video within an app like PowerPoint, a "smart art" template, and a file format that is more widely compatible than the docx format in Office 2007. Overall, she noted, "the interoperability features are the most compelling."

But the "big picture," DiDio said, "is that they are under the gun to respond to Google's web apps," and Microsoft is doing that with the web versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. Users can work on the files online and then, with more functionality, on the desktop version.

To compete with Google's free apps, a free, "starter version" of Office with ads will be available on new PCs.

http://www.toptechnews.com/news/Office-2010-Goes-To-Manufacturing/story.xhtml?story_id=111008O7IVYU]]> Wed, 21 Apr 2010 05:20:13 -0400 http://www.infinityextreme.info/index.php?showtopic=16851 http://www.infinityextreme.info/index.php?showtopic=16664
The next version of Blu-ray, BDXL, will let content companies put up to 128GB on a single disc. Rewriteable discs like those you use on a PC will have room for up to 100GB of data.

The technology works by stacking more optical platters atop one another, now taking the maximum layers in a disc from two to four.

According to InformationWeek, BDXL will be initially targeted at high-end users like broadcasting and medical imaging operations where extremely high-resolution images and video are a daily requirement. Equipment to burn and read BDXL discs will be expensive at the outset, but prices are expected to fall as the equipment becomes available in a consumer format. 3-D technologies are being eyed as a particularly consumer-friendly use for the BDXL format.

No detailed timeline for the equipment release has been announced, but the first BDXL discs and gear should arrive in the next few months, InformationWeek cites the Blu-ray Disc Association as saying.

Of special note: BDXL won't be compatible with existing Blu-ray equipment — it requires a more powerful laser — so the Sony Blu-ray player on your shelf won't be able to play back a BDXL movie. However, new BDXL gear will surely read existing Blu-ray discs, DVDs, and CDs, just as current gear is compatible with older technologies.

So, is BDXL something we really need? With hard drives now storing multiple terabytes of data and flash memory now crawling into the triple digits of gigabytes of storage space, Blu-ray, which once looked so vast, is starting to feel a little small. BDXL is sure to be ungodly expensive on release, so businesses and consumers will have to be certain of their need for the technology before they sign on.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/mobility/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=224201347]]> Thu, 08 Apr 2010 10:30:28 -0400 http://www.infinityextreme.info/index.php?showtopic=16664 http://www.infinityextreme.info/index.php?showtopic=16663
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that the FCC lacks authority to require broadband providers to give equal treatment to all Internet traffic flowing over their networks. That was a big victory for Comcast Corp., the nation's largest cable company, which had challenged the FCC's authority to impose such "network neutrality" obligations on broadband providers.

Supporters of network neutrality, including the FCC chairman, have argued that the policy is necessary to prevent broadband providers from favoring or discriminating against certain Web sites and online services, such as Internet phone programs or software that runs in a Web browser. Advocates contend there is precedent: Nondiscrimination rules have traditionally applied to so-called "common carrier" networks that serve the public, from roads and highways to electrical grids and telephone lines.

But broadband providers such as Comcast, AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. argue that after spending billions of dollars on their networks, they should be able to sell premium services and manage their systems to prevent certain applications from hogging capacity.

Tuesday's unanimous ruling by the three-judge panel was a setback for the FCC because it questioned the agency's authority to regulate broadband. That could cause problems beyond the FCC's effort to adopt official net neutrality regulations. It also has serious implications for the ambitious national broadband-expansion plan released by the FCC last month. The FCC needs the authority to regulate broadband so that it can push ahead with some of the plan's key recommendations. Among other things, the FCC proposes to expand broadband by tapping the federal fund that subsidizes telephone service in poor and rural communities.

In a statement, the FCC said it remains "firmly committed to promoting an open Internet and to policies that will bring the enormous benefits of broadband to all Americans" and "will rest these policies ... on a solid legal foundation."

Comcast welcomed the decision, saying "our primary goal was always to clear our name and reputation."

The case centers on Comcast's actions in 2007 when it interfered with an online file-sharing service called BitTorrent, which lets people swap movies and other big files over the Internet. The next year the FCC banned Comcast from blocking subscribers from using BitTorrent. The commission, at the time headed by Republican Kevin Martin, based its order on a set of net neutrality principles it had adopted in 2005.

But Comcast argued that the FCC order was illegal because the agency was seeking to enforce mere policy principles, which don't have the force of regulations or law. That's one reason that Martin's successor, Democratic FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, is trying to formalize those rules.

The cable company had also argued the FCC lacks authority to mandate net neutrality because it had deregulated broadband under the Bush administration, a decision upheld by the Supreme Court in 2005.

The FCC now defines broadband as a lightly regulated information service. That means it is not subject to the "common carrier" obligations that make traditional telecommunications services share their networks with competitors and treat all traffic equally. But the FCC maintains that existing law gives it authority to set rules for information services.

Tuesday's court decision rejected that reasoning, concluding that Congress has not given the FCC "untrammeled freedom" to regulate without explicit legal authority.

With so much at stake, the FCC now has several options. It could ask Congress to give it explicit authority to regulate broadband. Or it could appeal Tuesday's decision.

But both of those steps could take too long because the agency "has too many important things they have to do right away," said Ben Scott, policy director for the public interest group Free Press. Free Press was among the groups that alerted the FCC after The Associated Press ran tests and reported that Comcast was interfering with attempts by some subscribers to share files online.

Scott believes that the likeliest step by the FCC is that it will simply reclassify broadband as a more heavily regulated telecommunications service. That, ironically, could be the worst-case outcome from the perspective of the phone and cable companies.

"Comcast swung an ax at the FCC to protest the BitTorrent order," Scott said. "And they sliced right through the FCC's arm and plunged the ax into their own back."

The battle over the FCC's legal jurisdiction comes amid a larger policy dispute over the merits of net neutrality. Backed by Internet companies such as Google Inc. and the online calling service Skype, the FCC says rules are needed to prevent phone and cable companies from prioritizing some traffic or degrading or services that compete with their core businesses. Indeed, BitTorrent can be used to transfer large files such as online video, which could threaten Comcast's cable TV business.

But broadband providers point to the fact that applications such as BitTorrent use an outsized amount of network capacity.

For its part, the FCC offered no details on its next step, but stressed that it remains committed to the principle of net neutrality.

"Today's court decision invalidated the prior commission's approach to preserving an open Internet," the agency's statement said. "But the court in no way disagreed with the importance of preserving a free and open Internet; nor did it close the door to other methods for achieving this important end."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100406/ap_on_hi_te/us_tec_internet_rules;]]> Thu, 08 Apr 2010 10:25:45 -0400 http://www.infinityextreme.info/index.php?showtopic=16663 http://www.infinityextreme.info/index.php?showtopic=16662
The devices, known as memristors, or memory resistors, were conceived in 1971 by Leon O. Chua, an electrical engineer at the University of California, Berkeley, but they were not put into effect until 2008 at the H.P. lab here.

They are simpler than today’s semiconducting transistors, can store information even in the absence of an electrical current and, according to a report in Nature, can be used for both data processing and storage applications.

The researchers previously reported in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that they had devised a new method for storing and retrieving information from a vast three-dimensional array of memristors. The scheme could potentially free designers to stack thousands of switches in a high-rise fashion, permitting a new class of ultradense computing devices even after two-dimensional scaling reaches fundamental limits.

Memristor-based systems also hold out the prospect of fashioning analog computing systems that function more like biological brains, Dr. Chua said.

“Our brains are made of memristors,” he said, referring to the function of biological synapses. “We have the right stuff now to build real brains.”

In an interview at the H.P. research lab, Stan Williams, a company physicist, said that in the two years since announcing working devices, his team had increased their switching speed to match today’s conventional silicon transistors. The researchers had tested them in the laboratory, he added, proving they could reliably make hundreds of thousands of reads and writes.

That is a significant hurdle to overcome, indicating that it is now possible to consider memristor-based chips as an alternative to today’s transistor-based flash computer memories, which are widely used in consumer devices like MP3 players, portable computers and digital cameras.

“Not only do we think that in three years we can be better than the competitors,” Dr. Williams said. “The memristor technology really has the capacity to continue scaling for a very long time, and that’s really a big deal.”

As the semiconductor industry has approached fundamental physical limits in shrinking the size of the devices that represent digital 1’s and 0’s as on and off states, it has touched off an international race to find alternatives.

New generations of semiconductor technology typically advance at three-year intervals, and today the industry can see no further than three and possibly four generations into the future.

The most advanced transistor technology today is based on minimum feature sizes of 30 to 40 nanometers — by contrast a biological virus is typically about 100 nanometers — and Dr. Williams said that H.P. now has working 3-nanometer memristors that can switch on and off in about a nanosecond, or a billionth of a second.

He said the company could have a competitor to flash memory in three years that would have a capacity of 20 gigabytes a square centimeter.

“We believe that that is at least a factor of two better storage than flash memory will be able to have in that time frame,” he said.

The H.P. technology is based on the ability to use an electrical current to move atoms within an ultrathin film of titanium dioxide. After the location of an atom has been shifted, even by as little as a nanometer, the result can be read as a change in the resistance of the material. That change persists even after the current is switched off, making it possible to build an extremely low-power device.

The new material offers an approach that is radically different from a promising type of storage called “phase-change memory” being pursued by I.B.M., Intel and other companies.

In a phase-change memory, heat is used to shift a glassy material from an amorphous to a crystalline state and back. The switching speed of these systems is slower and requires more power, the H.P. scientists say.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/08/science/08chips.html]]> Thu, 08 Apr 2010 10:22:37 -0400 http://www.infinityextreme.info/index.php?showtopic=16662 http://www.infinityextreme.info/index.php?showtopic=16378 This means for example that it should be possible to store your downloaded games on Xbox Live and XBLA, like your DLC on a USB key or external hard drive.

]]> Fri, 19 Mar 2010 16:37:44 -0400 http://www.infinityextreme.info/index.php?showtopic=16378 http://www.infinityextreme.info/index.php?showtopic=16377


Share your thought..
What do you think of these screens-shots]]> Fri, 19 Mar 2010 16:35:21 -0400 http://www.infinityextreme.info/index.php?showtopic=16377 http://www.infinityextreme.info/index.php?showtopic=16376 Android in all units! This is happening with the Google OS at the base instead targeted at mobile, but is found everywhere (computers, appliances, auto ...) and soon on your TV.

Google has indeed signed a partnership, the New York Times, Sony (TV), Intel (hardware) and Logitech (accessories) for a project called "Android Internet platform (Google TV). This would be deployed on TV, Blu-ray and other Set-Top Box to have an interface and common applications, all running with an Intel processor and with a remote keyboard Logitech signed.

]]> Fri, 19 Mar 2010 16:26:59 -0400 http://www.infinityextreme.info/index.php?showtopic=16376 http://www.infinityextreme.info/index.php?showtopic=16375
To return to the paramountcy of the HTML 5 video, it must indeed say that IE 9 could well hold its own game by highlighting its compatibility with this format, used for example by YouTube or Vimeo yet, and to enjoy basic h.264.
According to journalists present at the demo of version 9 of the browser, it seems that the HTML 5 video read in of IE 9 are displayed even more fluid than in Google Chrome.

yet, the version of IE 9 presented to the public has managed to achieve a score of 55/100 in the Acid3 test. Both say there is still a lot of work ...

And if you want a glimpse of the thing, you can already download the Internet Explorer Platform Preview right here.

http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/]]> Fri, 19 Mar 2010 09:51:16 -0400 http://www.infinityextreme.info/index.php?showtopic=16375