Calgary man racks up $8k bill while visiting France Mobiles Syrup
These kind of stories will never get old. Another mobile user who has racked up a bill while ravelling overseas. This time it’s Calgary resident Jason Boutang who went to France between June 1-7th to see some of the local attractions. He pulled out his Virgin iPhone and started to use a translator app to help him out. In addition for some reason he also decided to stream a Calgary rock radio station and send a number of text messages. This is all good and very handy but the downside is that Boutang didn’t get himself a roaming data plan before he left… so he get’s home to find his bill totaling a whopping $7,763.70. Ouch! Even though he was there for 7 days Virgin saw his bill increase and shut it down after 3 days. Boutang says ‘I opened my e-bill and fell over. I had to get three other people to look at the screen to make sure I read it right. It’s criminal… They (Virgin) said, ‘pay up, every penny … you went outside your neighbourhood, you pay the price’. Virgin’s spokeswoman Erica Faltous said ‘We do our best to have warnings in place but we are looking into it to see if there’s some way we can help out’. Over the 3-day period Faltous said Boutang used about 130 megabytes. [Also see EU data-roaming limit for mobiles]

Cuba to release 52 political prisoners Los Angeles Times
The Cuban government has agreed to release the largest group of political prisoners in a decade, following months of talks and the intervention this week of Spain, the Roman Catholic Church in Cuba said Wednesday. In a statement posted on its website, the Archdiocese of Havana said 52 prisoners would be freed — five “in the next hours” and an additional 47 in the next three to four months. All will be allowed to leave the country, the church said. It was not clear, however, whether the Cuban government would require them to do so. Human rights activists in Cuba have insisted that freedom be granted unconditionally. There was conflicting information on the identities of the prisoners. The church indicated that most were among the group arrested in spring 2003 during a harsh government crackdown on dissent.

Inside the Fake PC Recycling Market Slashdot
OSNews’ Howard Fosdick reports on the fake recycling market — one in which companies exploit cheap shipping, inexpensive labor, and a lack of safety and environmental law to export computers and other e-waste to China and Africa where it is ‘recycled’ with a complete lack of environmental and safety rules. ‘This trade has become a thriving business. Companies called “fake recyclers” approach well-meaning organizations — charities, churches, and community organizations — and offer to hold a Recycling Day. The charity provides publicity, legitimacy, and a parking lot for the event. On the designated day, well-meaning residents drop off their old electronics for recycling. The fake recycler picks it up in their trucks, hauls it away for shipping, and makes money by exporting it to Chinese or African “recycling” centers. Nobody’s the wiser,’ Fosdick writes. Of course, the international community has, in fact, devised a set of rules to control e-waste disposal under the Basel Conventions, but the US — ‘the international ‘bad boy’ of computer recycling — is one of four countries that have not ratified and do not adhere to these international agreements.

iPhone 4 freezes during camera test news.com.au
Apple’s newest magical device continues to rack up some worrying bugs, this time freezing while taking photos during a video review. And this time it had nothing to do with the now-infamous reception problems. In her first hands-on test of the new phone in Australia, news.com.au’s national technology editor Jennifer Dudley-Nicholson put it through some simple paces for a video review. As reported, the “death grip” killed off as many as four of the five bars of signal strength showing on the iPhone, aproblem Apple says is just a software glitch, but which some industry experts are now saying is more likely to be a hardware problem.

Lindsay Lohan: My F-Word Manicure Was Only a Joke People
Lindsay Lohan says her explicit fingernail message was not directed at the judge who sentenced her to 90 days in jail. “Didn’t we do our nails as a joke with our friend?” Lohan Tweeted to a pal on Wednesday. “It had nothing to do w/court.. it’s an airbrush design from a stencil.”

Conroy mocks IT portfolio ‘campaign’ Delimiter
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy today stated that he wanted to keep the Communications portfolio after the election if possible, and pilloried what he referred to as ‘a campaign’ to champion an independent IT portfolio. Various sections of Australia’s technology sector have speculated over the past few weeks that new Prime Minister Julia Gillard could split Conroy’s portfolio up — giving the IT part to Labor Senator Kate Lundy, who has demonstrated an enduring interest in the sector, and leaving Conroy with the National Broadband Network ball and regulation of the telco sector. And technology publication Gizmodo launched an outright campaign after Gillard won the Labor leadership, to replace Conroy with Lundy. Yesterday Conroy stipulated that IT was not part of his portfolio, noting that area belonged to Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research Kim Carr.

Filter cops criticism in cyber-safety commitee Computerworld
[Australian] Telecommunications providers and Internet advocate groups have called for more funding to educate Australian Federal Police (AFP) and state law enforcement on lawful data interception and cyber-safety. Representatives from Telstra, Internode and the Internet Industry Association spoke at a joint select committee on Cyber Safety today of deficiencies in police knowledge of technology including when and how to sequester user data, the fallibility of mandatory Internet content filtering and the need to overhaul school curriculum to include classes in online cyber safety. Telstra director of corporate security and investigations, Darren Kane, said the AFP should receive additional government funding for education.

UK Internet Copyright Crackdown Triggers Mass Move to FREE Encrypted P2P VPN ISP Review
Unlawful copyright broadband ISP file sharers (P2P – BitTorrent etc.) in the UK and around the world, fearful of new government laws and the crackdown by Rights Holders, are shifting in their hundreds of thousands to using FREE and PAID encrypted Virtual Private Networks (VPN) to help protect their identity online (i.e. they are going underground). The UK 2010 Digital Economy Act (DEA) is one such example. It threatens to identify those “suspected” of unlawful copyright file sharing to Rights Holders for legal action and could lead to the blocking of legitimate websites, service speed restrictions, limit open Wi-Fi usage or even account disconnection from your ISP.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 8th, 2010 at 3:23 pm and is filed under P2P. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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