p2pnet - rss feed: p2pnet last of the day, April 28, 2008
p2pnet headline roundups | Last of the day
Bloggers offer glimpse of uncensored Cuba - Associated Press
Only a month has passed since ordinary Cubans won the right to own computers, and the government still keeps a rigid grip on Internet access. But that hasn’t stopped thousands from finding their way into cyberspace. And a daring few post candid blogs about life in the communist-run country that have garnered international audiences. Yoani Sanchez writes the “Generacion Y” blog and gets more than a million hits a month, mostly from abroad — though she has begun to strike a chord in Cuba. On her site and others, anonymous Cubans offer stinging criticisms of their government. But it isn’t simple. To post her blog, Sanchez dresses like a tourist and slips into Havana hotels with Web access for foreigners. It costs about $6 an hour and she can’t afford to stay long given the price and the possibility someone might catch her connecting without permission.
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Auction site eBay defies boycott threats - the Guardian
Online auction giant eBay is standing firm against sellers who have scheduled a global boycott of the site on May 1 over policy changes they say hurt their bottom lines as well as protect scamming buyers. The sellers have a long list of complaints, ranging from the fact they can no longer give buyers negative feedback, to eBay putting a 21-day hold on some PayPal payments and increases in the fees that are paid as a percentage of the final sales price. Sellers in Australia are also upset that buyers will soon be able to use only PayPal for purchases. If that switch works well, the move could be duplicated in bigger markets.
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Cybersquatters plague mayoral race - the Guardian
Boris Johnson has been more proactive in protecting his online image than bitter rival Ken Livingstone as cybersquatters take advantage of intense interest in the London mayoral elections. Cybersquatters have been registering dozens of domain names relating to Labour’s London mayoral incumbent Livingstone and his challengers, Conservative candidate Johnson and the Lib Dems’ Brian Paddick. The cybersquatters are either trying to cash in on users looking for official candidate websites by running online ads, or attempting to sabotage campaigns with negative publicity, ahead of the London mayoral election next Thursday, May 1.
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Canada Post, its union and Tim Hortons tangled in libel suit - Associated Press
Three of Canada’s best-known institutions the post office, its militant union and Tim Hortons are at the centre of an unusual libel action that erupted over a controversial posting in the swelling blogosphere. The beloved Tims chain is an innocent bystander, in the picture only because Canada Post president Moya Greene accepted a position on its board of directors. But the main protagonists, Greene and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, appear to have locked horns in determined fashion after the union’s former president posted a blog last month satirizing Greene’s decision to take the Tim Hortons seat.
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Scientists discover exotic quantum state of matter - KurzweilAI.net
Princeton University scientists have found that one of the most intriguing phenomena in condensed-matter physics–known as the quantum Hall effect–can occur in nature in a way that no one has ever before seen. Writing in the April 24 issue of Nature, the scientists report that they have recorded this exotic behavior of electrons in a bulk crystal of bismuth-antimony without any external magnetic field being present. The work, while significant in a fundamental way, could also lead to advances in new kinds of fast quantum or “spintronic” computing devices, of potential use in future electronic technologies, the authors said.
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