M&M’s World Headlines: Jan 26, 2009
Hi all:
The last little while as been problematical from a connection point of view and I’m having trouble again today. So for now, here’s M&M’s report here, plus several items I might have gotten to at the end.
Sorry!
Cheers! And all the best …
Jon
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Man sues telecoms over rise in text message costs Alabama news
He claims companies agreed to fix price for service nationwide. A Cullman man says the price customers pay for text messaging has increased by 100 percent since 2005 and is suing the four largest wireless telecommunications companies in federal court. Calling for class-action status for his lawsuit, Steven Crutchfield joins a number of disgruntled customers from around the country suing the wireless service companies on similar allegations. He claims the companies violated federal laws against monopolies and have agreed together to fix the price for the pay-per-use services nationwide. According to the lawsuit, during the fourth quarter of 2006 and first quarter of 2007, the four companies increased the charge for sending and receiving text messages from 10 cents to 15 cents. They increased their charges again a year later from 15 cents to 20 cents. The providers increased their charges at the same times, but the cost to these companies to provide the services appears to remain the same, the lawsuit said. Subscribers to text-messaging services have been hurt by paying higher prices than they would have paid in a competitive market, the lawsuit said.
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Global Internet Audience Surpasses 1 billion Visitors comScore
ComScore reported that total global Internet audience (age 15 and older from home and work computers) has surpassed 1 billion visitors in December 2008, based on data from the comScore World Metrix audience measurement service. The Asia-Pacific region accounted for the highest share of global Internet users at 41 percent, followed by Europe (28 percent share), North America (18 percent share), Latin-America (7 percent share), and the Middle East & Africa (5 percent share). China represented the largest online audience in the world in December 2008 with 180 million Internet users, representing nearly 18 percent of the total worldwide Internet audience, followed by the U.S. (16.2 percent share), Japan (6.0 percent share), Germany (3.7 percent share) and the U.K. (3.6 percent share). The most popular property in the world in December was Google Sites, with 777.9 million visitors, followed by Microsoft Sites (647.9 million visitors), Yahoo! Sites (562.6 million visitors). Facebook.com, which has grown a dramatic 127-percent in the past year to 222 million visitors, now ranks as the top social networking site worldwide and the seventh most popular property in the world.
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The Macintosh turns 25 ZDnet
On that fateful day of January 24, 1984, Apple released a little toaster of a machine that went on to become the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a graphical user interface.
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Scientist Teleport Matter More Than Three Feet Fox
Scientists have come a bit closer to achieving the “Star Trek” feat of teleportation. No one is galaxy-hopping, or even beaming people around, but for the first time, information has been teleported between two separate atoms across a distance of a meter — about a yard. In the Jan. 23 issue of the journal Science, the scientists report that, by using their protocol, atom-to-atom teleported information can be recovered with perfect accuracy about 90 percent of the time — and that figure can be improved. “Our system has the potential to form the basis for a large-scale ‘quantum repeater’ that can network quantum memories over vast distances,” Monroe said. “Moreover, our methods can be used in conjunction with quantum bit operations to create a key component needed for quantum computation.” A quantum computer could perform certain tasks, such as encryption-related calculations and searches of giant databases, considerably faster than conventional machines. The effort to devise a working model is a matter of intense interest worldwide.
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NDP, Liberal leaders chastise PM over deficit leak Ottawa Sun
NDP Leader Jack Layton says it was “absolutely inappropriate” for Prime Minister Stephen Harper to allow details to be released on the federal budget deficit. Layton says it’s a move that seems to suggest Harper is trying to build a political case because he’s worried about losing his job. The NDP has already stated it won’t support Tuesday’s budget.
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As U.S. emerges from dark age, Canada’s scientific edge fades Globe & Mail
Scientists across America are celebrating the passing of the Bush administration as the end of a dark age, a bleak stretch in which research budgets shrank and everything — stem cells, sex education, climate change, and the very origins of the Grand Canyon — became a point of conflict. President Barack Obama has ignited a new optimism among the white coats. In his inaugural speech, he promised to “restore science to its rightful place,” hinting at nothing short of a renaissance in the fields of health, energy, the environment and America’s schools.
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Monster.com Reports Theft of User Data PCworld
Monster.com is advising its users to change their passwords after data including e-mail addresses, names and phone numbers were stolen from its database. Monster.com posted the warning ( http://help.monster.com/besafe/jobseeker/index.asp ) about the breach on Friday morning and does not plan to send e-mails to users about the issue, said Nikki Richardson, a Monster.com spokeswoman. The SANS Internet Storm Center also posted a note about the break-in on Friday. USAJobs.com, the U.S. government Web site for federal jobs, is hosted by Monster.com and was also subject to the data theft. USAJobs.com also posted a warning about the breach http://www.usajobs.gov/securityNotice.asp
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Comcast Charges Hurricane Victim $24.95 For Calling Customer Service Consumerist
Comcast charged Robert a $24.95 “Customertroublecall” fee after he called to ask why they were taking over a month to restore his service after Hurricane Ike swooped in and caused over $3,000 worth of damage. Robert wanted to know why Comcast was continually missing their scheduled service appointments and why they insisted on billing him for a service he couldn’t use.
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New Business Plan: France to give free newspaper subscriptions to teens Associated Press
The French state will help provide free newspaper subscriptions to teenagers for their 18th birthdays, President Nicolas Sarkozy announced Friday. But the bigger gift is for France’s ailing print media. “None of the proposed measures … will be useful in the end if the profession doesn’t meet its challenges,” he said. “The industry has a future to reinvent. … Time is running out.” [Hmmmm, sound familiar?]
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Australian family caged, detained, starved and deported by US customs BoingBoing
Over the next 24 hours, officers questioned the Thornleigh taxi driver and his aged-care worker wife, patted them down and searched their luggage before sending them to a detention centre in a caged van. They were then taken to a hotel with other detainees at 2.30am to sleep with armed guards by their bedside before being woken at 4.30am and put on a flight back to Sydney… “They treated us like terrorists,” Mr Rabbi said. “We are Australian citizens. Why did they have to keep us in a detention centre? Why did they have to lock up my kids?”
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Comcast and FCC square off (again) over VoIP treatment – Telecommunications Online
It’s a good bet Comcast didn’t see this one coming: as one of the last acts under outgoing Chairman Kevin Martin, the FCC has issued an inquiry to Comcast, seeking clarification on a recently posted Comcast FAQ about Network Management that states high-bandwidth subscribers to third-party players like Vonage or Skype using Comcast’s infrastructure could receive lower-quality VoIP service. The same text lists no such caveats about its own VoIP service. “We seek clarification with respect to an apparent discrepancy between Comcast’s [September 19] filing and its actual or advertised practices,” Dana Shaffer, chief of the FCC’s wireline competition bureau, and Matthew Berry, FCC general counsel, wrote in a letter to Comcast. “Comcast states that [a bandwidth hog] may find that his ‘VoIP call sounds choppy’ [but] draws no distinctio
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Internet users in Jiangsu face up to $731 fine for online privacy breach INTERFAX-CHINA
Internet users in Jiangsu Province that reveal personal information of other individuals online will face fines of up to RMB 5,000 ($731) and a six-month block on their IP address, according to a provincial regulation released on Jan. 18. The newest online privacy regulation, released by the Jiangsu provincial government at the 11th People’s Congress of Xuzhou City, covers the release of sensitive information online such as addresses, occupations, salaries and women’s ages. This marks the first detailed online privacy regulation in China.
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Worm Infects Millions of Computers Worldwide New York Times
A new digital plague has hit the Internet, infecting millions of personal and business computers in what seems to be the first step of a multistage attack. The world’s leading computer security experts do not yet know who programmed the infection, or what the next stage will be. In recent weeks a worm, a malicious software program, has swept through corporate, educational and public computer networks around the world. Known as Conficker or Downadup, it is spread by a recently discovered Microsoft Windows vulnerability, by guessing network passwords and by hand-carried consumer gadgets like USB keys. Experts say it is the worst infection since the Slammer worm exploded through the Internet in January 2003, and it may have infected as many as nine million personal computers around the world.
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Wikipedia considers limiting user edits CNet News
Just as Encyclopedia Britannica is moving in the direction of user-based entries, Wikipedia might soon be clamping down on theirs. Wikipedia is apparently considering instituting a new editorial process that would put better safeguards in place and require all updates to be approved by a “reliable” user. The so-called Flagged Revisions process would allow registered, trusted editors to publish changes to the site immediately. All other edits would be sent to a queue and would not be published until they get approved by one of Wikipedia’s trusted team of editors. The proposal comes in the aftermath of a false entry that was posted by a user, saying Senators Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd had died after an inaugural luncheon last week.
January , 2009
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January 26th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
Can you please correct the ‘Internet Audience passes 1 billion’ link
No vaild press release matches your selection.
January 26th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
^^ Fixed.
Cheers!