p2pnet World Headlines: July 30, 2010
July 30, 2010 (Last Friday Of July)
11th Annual
System Administrator Appreciation Day
[They also look after systems at the likes of the RIAA, MPAA, BPI, various government and police agencies, and so on. Think about it. 
]
Major Corporations Are Downloading Those 100m Facebook Profiles Off BitTorrent Gizmodo
Remember that torrent yesterday that contained the personal information of 100 million scraped Facebook profiles? I thought it was strange that the guy didn’t sell this information, since many companies would be interested. Turns out they are interested. Reader Clint discovered that all you had to do is use something like Peer Block, which grabs the IPs of the other users also downloading the torrent and identifies which company or university or organisation they belong to. You can check this yourself by hopping on the torrent and doing the same thing.
B.C. orders permanent end to sex arousal tests on teens after technician charged Vancouver Sun
The British Columbia government has ordered a permanent end to controversial arousal tests used on youth sex offenders, following news that one of the contracted medical technicians has been charged with a sexual offence. B.C.’s Minister of Children and Family Development Mary Polak said the technician in question was charged early this month. The charges are unrelated to the technician’s work for the ministry or the youth facility. “Nevertheless, that added to our concern about the procedure itself,” she said. “As soon as the charge was brought to our attention, the contract with this individual was terminated.” The “penile plethysmograph” test involves attachin a device to male genitals that allows technicians to measure a subject’s state of arousal. Test subjects are shown photographs of adults, children and even babies in varying states of undress while, at the same time, being read a story that describes coercive or forced sexual activity.
HTC Launches New Mobile Phone Brands In Mainland China ChinaTechNews
Taiwan-based mobile phone maker HTC has brought new smartphone products under a new brand of HTC to the Chinese mainland market, aiming to become a top five smartphone vendor in this marketplace. The company has released four HTC brands, including Tianxi and Tianyi based on China Mobile’s TD-SCDMA network, and Wildfire and Desire based on China Unicom’s WCDMA network. All the four new products adopt the HTC Sense interface. Of these four products, Tianxi is positioned as a flagship TD-SCDMA mobile phone. Based on the Windows phone operating system, it has a 4.3-inch WVGA screen, a TI OMAP3630 800MHz processor, and it supports CMMB mobile TV; while Tianyi targets low-end users, with the Android 2.2 operating system and a 3.2-inch QVGA screen.
Google Search Engine Is Blocked in China New York Times
Google said Thursday that its search engine was ‘fully blocked’ in China, along with Google ads and mobile search. This is the first time that Google has been blocked since March, when it closed its search service in China and began automatically redirecting users to an uncensored search engine in Hong Kong after a standoff over censorship. Although it has been fairly common since then for the search engine to be partially blocked, which Google describes as between 10 percent and 66 percent blocked, it has not been fully blocked, or 67 percent to 100 percent blocked. Updated | 8:00 p.m.: Google said that the search engine was functioning normally in China. ‘It’s possible that our machines could overestimate the level of blockage. That seems to be what happened last night, when there was a relatively small blockage,’ said Jill Hazelbaker, a Google spokeswoman. [ 
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Ballmer says tablets are a ‘job-one urgency’ for Microsoft IDG News Service
Microsoft’s chief executive on Thursday sought to address some common questions raised by analysts, but his answers may not have been exactly what they were looking for. While Microsoft reported its highest-ever quarterly revenue last week, the company was also criticized for lacking a well-developed strategy for tablet PCs, and for continuing to struggle with some of its consumer businesses. CEO Steve Ballmer spoke about those and other topics Thursday during Microsoft’s annual financial analyst meeting at the company’s headquarters in Redmond.
Adult industry sees iPorn potential in iPhone 4 MSNBC
It’s a maxim of technology: Invent the newest gadget and the porn industry will find a way to cash in. So when Apple launched the iPhone 4 and its FaceTime videoconference feature, it didn’t take long for adult-entertainment companies to develop video-sex chat services and start hiring workers through Craigslist. With more than 3 million of the phones already sold, the adult industry stands to make big money on this new way to reach out and touch someone — even if it puts Apple, which has always taken pains to keep its iPhone apps squeaky clean, in an awkward spot.
… and identi.ca
July, 2010
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July 30th, 2010 at 11:44 am
lol @ Jon’s comment.
July 30th, 2010 at 4:46 pm
Website offers anonymous child-care reviews
http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2010/07/30/con-childcare-site.html
A new website that allows parents to post anonymous comments about daycare centres and elementary schools is getting a thumbs down from educators and child-care advocates.
The Shorty List is currently collecting comments from parents in the Vancouver area and will launch a full version in mid-October. Its founder plans to set up similar sites in other major Canadian cities, including Calgary and Toronto.
[...]
The president of the Canadian Childcare Federation, a partnership of provincial and territorial organizations, is not enthused with the idea.
“I always have problems with the word anonymous, realizing that not every family is going to be 100 per cent satisfied with any level of child-care service or education,” Don Giesbrecht told CBC News.
“Really, it’s so important for the issues of quality and for the issues of education and the well-being of children, not just yours but of your neighbours and your friends and your relatives to bring these issues up in an open forum, not an anonymous forum.”
Seems people are afraid of anon. Scary names with even scarier archaic email addresses with numbers in them.
July 30th, 2010 at 5:15 pm
” Seems people are afraid of anon. Scary names with even scarier archaic email addresses with numbers in them. ”
It’s a two edged sword.
It’s very easy to mock companies for fearing anonymous complaints, but it’s just as easy to anonymously
post false information and outright lies just for the purpose of getting someone arrested or shutting down
the COMPETITION. In certain situations, anonymous postings may NOT be the way to go. To suggest that
no one would lie just to get a business closed down is a little naieve and somewhat shortsighted. On the other
hand, anonymous postings are ESSENTIAL for whistleblowers to drag slugs out from their hiding place under
the rock.
This isn’t really as simple an issue as some might want to make it seem.