p2pnet World Headlines – Aug 28, 2009
Harper dubbed ‘patronage king’ – Toronto Star
Prime Minister Stephen Harper was labelled Canada’s political “patronage king” and a “hypocrite” yesterday after tossing aside for the second time his promise not to name unelected Canadians to the Senate. Harper named nine new senators, including Doug Finley (Ontario), his campaign chair; Carolyn Stewart-Olsen (New Brunswick), his long-time communications assistant; and Don Plett (Manitoba), president of the Conservative Party of Canada. “He is not only a complete hypocrite, he is the now officially the Senate patronage king,” Liberal MP Ujjal Dosanjh (Vancouver South) said in an interview. “He is unequalled in Canadian history as the only prime minister to have made 27 Senate appointments in a single year and he beat (Conservative prime minister) Robert Borden who made 26 (in 1917),” he said. Harper appointed 18 people in December to the Liberal-dominated Senate. Senators are paid $132,000 a year and are not required to retire until they turn 75. Critics call it cash for life.
Snow Leopard’s malware protection only scans for two Trojans ZDnet
The much hyped built-in malware protection into Apple`s Snow Leopard upgrade appears to be nothing more than a XProtect.plist file containing five signatures for two of the most popular Mac OS X trojans – OSX.RSPlug and OSX.Iservice. Intego, the company that originally reported the new feature, has just released a comparative review of their (commercial) antivirus solution next to Apple`s anti-malware function.
Tighter oversight on border laptop searches Associated Press
The Obama administration on Thursday put new restrictions on searches of laptops at U.S. borders to address concerns that federal agents have been rummaging through travelers’ personal information. The long-criticized practice of searching travelers’ electronic devices will continue, but a supervisor now would need to approve holding a device for more than five days. Any copies of information taken from travelers’ machines would be destroyed within days if there were no legal reason to hold the information.
Microsoft releases open source Bing SDK Heise Online
Microsoft is released a Software Development Kit that allows developers to create applications on Cocoa (Mac OS X) and Cocoa Touch (iPhone) that can use Microsoft’s Bing search engine. The iBing SDK is available under the Microsoft Public License.
Investor Group Makes Play For Skype TechCrunch
A group of well known venture capital and large private equity firms are pooling resources to make a bid to acquire eBay-owned Skype, according to a source close to the deal. Investors in the proposed purchase may include newly-formed Andreesen Horowitz, Index Ventures (who were early investors in Skype before the ebay acquisition), and one or more multi-billion dollar private equity firms. eBay, which announced earlier this year that they would be spinning off the company in an initial public offering in 2010, is said to be looking for $2 billion or more for Skype. Companies quite often talk about IPOs (and even actually file) to generate acquisition buzz.
Apple Says It Has Approved App From Music Service Spotify paidContent
Apple says it has approved an iPhone app from Spotify, a music service that some people believe represents a growing threat to iTunes. The decision has been closely watched in part because Apple has previously disallowed apps it deems to duplicate core functions of its handset. Speculation had centered on whether Apple would regard an unlimited-music app as potentially cannibalizing its own iTunes Store`s a la carte downloads, although there`s no proof that this is how it feels. The FCC is currently looking into Apple`s failure to approve the Google`s Voice app, which has sparked some criticism in tech and media circles, with some alleging that Apple`s is influenced by its desire to protect its network partners` voice call revenue, rather than have it be undercut by Google (NSDQ: GOOG) voice data traffic. Apple says it still has not made a decision whether to accept or reject the app; it also say that it is acting alone in the decision and that its exclusive partner on the iPhone, AT&T (NYSE: T), is not involved.
Virgin Media ‘overwhelmed’ by broadband customers fleeing BT The Register
Hundreds of people who have recently signed up to Virgin Media UK`s ADSL broadband service face lengthy delays getting their accounts activated. The company has blamed a sudden spike in demand for its relaunched ADSL package, which is intended for would-be customers who live outside of the operator`s cable coverage and want to bundle their broadband and phone lines together. At the beginning of August Virgin made lots of noise about its new all-singing-all-dancing ADSL broadband service packages, that boosted faster download speeds of up to 20Mbps and its own telephone line rental. All of which offered an attractive proposition to customers wanting a simple, BT-free life that involved having a single bill with one telecoms supplier. But here`s the rub: A spokesman at the cable giant told us it had been inundated with customers fleeing BT and running headlong into Virgin`s increasingly burdened arms. Since we relaunched our National service with line rental and our Best Speed Promise, we have been overwhelmed with new orders, resulting in a few delays in getting customers on to our superfast ADSL broadband, the spokesman told The Register. He also confessed that the company has been struggling to post out modem kit to its new punters.
Microscopes zoom in on molecules at last New Scientist
Thanks to specialised microscopes, we have long been able to see the beauty of single atoms. But strange though it might seem, imaging larger molecules at the same level of detail has not been possible atoms are robust enough to withstand existing tools, but the structures of molecules are not. Now researchers at IBM have come up with a way to do it. The earliest pictures of individual atoms were captured in the 1970s by blasting a target typically a chunk of metal with a beam of electrons, a technique known as transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Later refinements of this technique, such as the TEAM project at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California achieved resolutions of less than the radius of a single hydrogen atom. But while this method works for atoms in a lattice or thin layer, the electron bombardment destroys the arrangement of atoms in molecules.
Indian Star`S Detention In U.S. Stirs Furor In Bollywood IMDb
Controversy has erupted in Mumbai, India over whether what the U.S. immigration agency has described as a random, routine interrogation of a Bollywood movie star at a Newark, NJ airport was actually a case of racial profiling. The actor, Shahrukh Khan, had complained that immigration officers searched his luggage, asked whether any U.S. citizen could vouch for him, and detained him for more than a half hour before allowing him to leave the airport. He called it an “unfortunate procedure.” His fans, however, were livid. One Indian blogger suggested that “it was an outright case of harassment.
Court Rules No Solo Sailing for Dutch Sailor Girl VOA
A court in the Netherlands has ruled that 13 year old Laura Dekker cannot sail around the world by herself next month as she’d hoped and has put her in the temporary care of Dutch authorities while it makes a final decision. For the moment, Laura Dekker’s dream of becoming the youngest person to sail solo around the globe has been put on hold. She was not in court, but her father was present for the judges’ decision. Citing potential harm to her development, judges ruled that Laura could still live at home but only under court supervision while an independent child psychologist assesses whether she’s able to make the two-year journey.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
August, 2009
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August 28th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
Canadian research aided CIA torture techniques The Spec
http://www.thespec.com/News/BreakingNews/article/625596
A Transport Canada employee says he was “flabbergasted” to see his research into cold water survival referenced by the CIA. Chris Brooks of Kanata, Ont., wrote a manual years ago aimed at improving the odds of sailors and fishermen lost at sea. Newly-declassified CIA documents indicate the Canadian handbook was used to fine-tune the CIA’s cold-water interrogations techniques. [Comment: So the CIA took copyrighted material and improved upon it. Isn't that what many people are being sued for in the US? No DMCA take-down or lawsuit for them?]
August 28th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
Prisoner of war records go online BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8223428.stm
Records of more than 100,000 British prisoners of war captured during World War II are being published online. The ancestry.co.uk lists, accessible for a fee, were compiled by the German military authorities under the 1929 Geneva Convention. They contain details of British and Commonwealth personnel held in Germany, Austria and Poland in WWII.
August 29th, 2009 at 1:11 am
Bell ordered to inform customers about data gathering
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/08/28/privacy-commissioner-bell-dpi.html
The commissioner found that Bell’s DPI, which among other things is used to identify peer-to-peer file-sharing so that it can be slowed down, tracks a person’s IP address â a numeric code that identifies a specific computer on a network. Users’ IP addresses typically change each time they log onto the internet, but as is common practice among service providers, Bell ties the codes to subscribers’ user identifications.
“Given that Bell can link its Sympatico subscribers, by virtue of their subscriber ID, with internet activities (in this case, type of application being used) associated with their assigned IP addresses, in my view, IP addresses in this context are personal information,” she wrote.
The report said the privacy commissioner’s office will follow up with Bell within 30 days to see if the company has complied with its requests.
Telcom industry shill Mark Golburg had this on his blog/Twitter, Goldberg said the commission “approves Bell’s use of DPI.”
A spokesperson for the commissioner, however, said the office was certainly not approving DPI.
“It would not be accurate to suggest, in reading the finding, that we are endorsing DPI,” she said.
August 29th, 2009 at 1:19 am
Interesting comments on Mark Golbergs website in the topic titled: “DPI doesn’t invade privacy”
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=22726140&postID=6976406254472712861
August 29th, 2009 at 6:45 am
RE: Tighter oversight on border laptop searches.
“…and stolen intellectual property.” I wonder how they would know that? Some one must be ‘advising’ them. =/
August 29th, 2009 at 9:57 am
Murdoch attack on ‘dominant’ BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8227915.stm
News Corporation’s James Murdoch has said that a “dominant” BBC threatens independent journalism in the UK.
The chairman of the media giant in Europe, which owns the Times and Sun, also blamed the UK government for regulating the media “with relish”.
“The expansion of state-sponsored journalism is a threat to the plurality and independence of news provision,” he told the Edinburgh Television Festival.
The scope of the BBC’s activities and ambitions was “chilling”, he added.
Organisations like the BBC, funded by the licence fee, as well as Channel 4 and Ofcom, made it harder for other broadcasters to survive, he argued.