THE AUSTRALIAN Competition and Consumer Commission has told the Federal Government the structural separation of Telstra is essential to its planned $43 billion national broadband network.Locus Online Features: Cory Doctorow: Writing in the Age of Distraction
But Telstra in its submission to the Government's review of telecommunications regulation argues that no further separation of its operations is necessary as the new network, which will be wholesale only, would deliver structural separation.
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy yesterday published more than 120 submissions, which he said supported the Government's conviction that regulatory reform was "urgently required" in the sector.
Telstra's submission is conciliatory in tone, restating its commitment to "engaging constructively" with the Government on the broadband project, which it described as a "vital investment for the nation, the telecommunications industry and Telstra".
We know that our readers are distracted and sometimes even overwhelmed by the myriad distractions that lie one click away on the Internet, but of course writers face the same glorious problem: the delirious world of information and communication and community that lurks behind your screen, one alt-tab away from your word-processor.
PC Pro: News: BT wants BBC to pay-up for iPlayer
BT is tired of the BBC and other video sites getting a "free ride" on its networks.
Last week a row erupted between BT and the BBC, after it emerged that BT was choking iPlayer streams on some of its broadband packages, which the broadcaster said was hurting viewers' ability to watch television online.
John Petter, managing director of BT Retail's consumer business, has now accused the BBC of getting a "free ride".
"We can't give the content providers a completely free ride and continue to give customers the [service] they want at the price they expect," he told the Financial Times, adding it wasn't only the BBC that was the burden, but any sites offering streaming video.
The iiNet twenty: AFACT go after individual downloaders in court - News - PC Authority
According to a story at ITnews, iiNet has been called upon by the court to give up the account details of twenty unlucky downloaders. Perhaps twenty of the unluckiest downloaders you're likely to hear about in the next few weeks. The iiNet twenty are going to be made an example of; originally AFACT (Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft) sought the records of 300-400 account holders.Top French Court Declares Internet Access 'Basic Human Right' - Science News | Science & Technology | Technology News - FOXNews.com
Considering AFACT has half succeeded in their battle to order the names and details of any number of iiNet customers, let alone twenty - is still a very scary thought for privacy activists.
However, those twenty symbolic iiNet users shouldn't feel alone. A recent Torrentfreak report suggested that Aussies downloaded as many as 6 million files in April across the auspicious P2P/Bittorent network, with most of those being directed through Bittorrent site, Mininova.
France's highest court has inflicted an embarrassing blow to President Sarkozy by cutting the heart out of a law that was supposed to put France in the forefront of the fight against piracy on the internet.AACS license finalized; managed copy coming to Blu-ray - Ars Technica
The Constitutional Council declared access to the internet to be a basic human right, directly opposing the key points of Mr Sarkozy's law, passed in April, which created the first internet police agency in the democratic world.
The strongly-worded decision means that Mr Sarkozy's scheme has backfired and inadvertently boosted those who defend the free-for-all culture of the web.
Mr Sarkozy and Christine Albanel, his Culture Minister, forced the law through parliament despite misgivings from many of the President's centre-right MPs. It was rejected in its first passage through Parliament.
The law innovated by creating an agency, known by its initials HADOPI, which would track abusers and cut off net access automatically to those who continued to download illicitly after two warnings.
The law was supported by the industry and many artists. They saw it as a model for the USA and Europe in the fight to keep earning a living from their music and film. Net libertarians saw it as the creation of a sinister Big Brother. Many called it technically unworkable. Some artists saw it as hostile to the young consumers who are their main customers.
The managed copy feature is designed to allow an owner to make at least one full-resolution backup copy of AACS-protected content. It has been a mandatory part of the Blu-ray specification since 2005, and we were told that support was coming by the end of 2007. Of course, that was contingent on the finalized AACS licensing agreement, which was just published earlier this month. AACS licensees have until the end of this year to sign the agreement, and due to a number of factors support won't likely be available until sometime early next year.Virgin and Universal to roll out music service - News - PC Authority
Among those issues is the fact that current Blu-ray hardware doesn't support managed copy, and most likely can't be enabled by a firmware upgrade, so it will mean at a minimum a hardware upgrade for users to take advantage of the feature. Also, capable Blu-ray devices will have to be able to connect to an authorization server to track whether a managed copy has been made, or if the number of copies made has reached the allowable limit. Those servers aren't expected to be online until sometime in the first quarter of 2010. And finally, content providers have to encode a URL to the necessary authorization server when mastering the disc.
Virgin and Universal Music have signed a new deal overseas to launch an unlimited music download service.Adobe challenges Google Docs with launch of Acrobat.com - Ars Technica
The new service will be offered as part of Virgin's UK broadband service will allow unlimited downloads of Universal artists for a monthly fee as well as a second option for limited downloads at a lower price.
The companies vowed that the service will not use any DRM protection software and users will be able to keep the downloaded tracks for as long as they wish. However, Universal also said that it would work with Virgin to keep the downloaded songs from being redistributed to other users.
The move is a first between a major label and an ISP.
Adobe has finally (well, sort of) taken the beta tag off of Acrobat.com, shedding more light on Adobe's software as a service strategy first revealed with Photoshop Express. Along with online PDF creation tools, file sharing, online meeting and collaboration, Acrobat.com also includes Adobe's Buzzword word processor for online and collaborative document creation. Adobe is also giving a first peek at the less-cleverly-named Tables spreadsheet app and Presentation... presentation app. The move seems like a shot across Google's bow.Google adding microblog indexing to its search results - Ars Technica
The collection of tools is aimed at replicating many of the functions for which most office workers use Microsoft Office. It also offers some services similar to Google Docs. Adobe describes the design focus behind Acrobat.com as being on ubiquity, collaboration, and user experience. Ubiquity is powered by (of course) the Internet, and collaboration comes from group document creation, editing, and sharing. Collaboration is also facilitated by ConnectNow, which includes and online meeting space as well as screen sharing facilities. The user experience is naturally fueled by Flash and AIR.
Though Adobe is launching Acrobat.com today, taking the beta tag off of the service itself, Buzzword still appears to be in beta status. And, while the previews for Tables and Presentation available from Adobe Labs are quite functional, and offer all the basic features one would expect from such apps, Adobe doesn't seem ready to even label them as betas.
Though Twitter has its own search capabilities, Google will be soon offering a way to search it as well as and other microblogging services. A reference to "MicroBlogsearch" turned up recently in the Google In Your Language localization service, suggesting that Google plans to launch the feature soon.Opera Unite
Twitter's own search system merely shows recent results containing the search terms, with the most recent first. Older results can be viewed by clicking on "Older," and a small sidebar shows the top ten "trending topics," but that's about the extent of it. And of course it doesn't have results from other micro-blogging platforms, such as Indenti.ca, Tumblr, or BrightKite.
Google's system, on the other hand, would work more like its current Blog Search, sorting results by relevance using its constantly evolving algorithms. If a particular string of search terms has relevance to keywords in tweets or other micro-blogging messages, then Google will show them along with other results under the heading "Recent updates about...."
Share your stuff with your friends over the Web without handing it over to anyone else — total privacy and complete control. We are changing the game. Explore Opera Unite services.Microsoft's Browser Unbundling Puzzles Europe - PC World
Opera Unite
Opera Unite gives developers access to powerful APIs to develop amazing Opera Unite services. We have detailed documentation to get your started at http://dev.opera.com/articles/unite/.
Opera Unite: a Web server on the Web browser
With Opera 10, we are introducing a new technology called Opera Unite, radically extending what you are able to do online. Opera Unite harnesses the power of today's fast connections and hardware, allowing all of us to help define the future landscape of the Web, one computer at a time. Read about how Opera Unite is going to change the way we interact on the Web on labs.opera.com.
Take control of what you share online
Opera Unite allows you to easily share your data: photos, music, notes and other files. You can even run chat rooms and host entire Web sites with Opera Unite. It puts the power of a Web server in your browser, giving you greater privacy and flexibility than other online services.
Microsoft's plan to dump Internet Explorer (IE) from Windows 7 for the European market is a move to discredit antitrust regulators by tying its proposal to a failed enforcement effort from 2005, a noted antitrust expert said today.Opera and Mozilla unimpressed by IE unbundling plans - Software - iTnews Australia
microsoft windows internet explorer legal"It's sort of a puckish thing to do, when you think about it," said William Page, co-author of The Microsoft Case: Antitrust, High Technology, and Consumer Welfare (University of Chicago Press, 2009). "Their solution is a little bit like Windows XP [and Vista] 'N,' which dramatizes that the EU essentially wants the same thing this time. But everyone knows that 'N' was a total flop."
Windows XP N, and later, Windows Vista N, were special editions that omitted Windows Media Player, which Microsoft was forced to create for Europeans after losing an earlier antitrust case. By all accounts, Windows XP and Vista N have been major busts, with few copies sold and no computer makers installing them on new PCs.
Microsoft's obvious attempt to tie its solution to the failed "N" editions of 2005 -- it went so far as to say it will slap the letter "E" on the Windows 7 editions that omit IE -- is probably one reason why the EU has turned a cold shoulder to the company's plan, said Page.
"The Commission had suggested to Microsoft that consumers be provided with a choice of Web browsers," EU regulators said today in a statement. "Instead Microsoft has apparently decided to supply retail consumers with a version of Windows without a Web browser at all. Rather than more choice, Microsoft seems to have chosen to provide less."
Browser makers have spoken out against Microsoft's latest proposal to open up competition in the market by shipping copies of Windows 7 without Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) bundled in.Linux News from Linux Loop » Blog Archive » Firefox 3.5 Preview Shows New Hope For Open Media Standards
Opera's chief technology officer, Hakon Wium Lie, said that he was "not impressed at all" by the latest proposal from Microsoft, which would let computer manufacturers choose which browser or browsers to include on new Windows 7 PCs.
"If this had happened in 1997 when the competition case was first being heard in the US, maybe it would have helped in creating a level playing field," Lie said.
"But this is too little, too late. It won't restore competition in the browser market."
Lie added that, although IE8 would not be bundled into Windows 7 as standard by Microsoft, computer makers would choose the Microsoft browser anyway as this was the easy option.
"[Microsoft is] putting all the pieces into place for OEMs to put in IE8 anyway," he said.
Instead of the Microsoft proposal to ship browser-free copies of Windows 7 in Europe, Lie supported the European Commission's (EC's) recommendation of a 'ballot screen'.
This would present users with a choice of browsers when first starting up their new PC, along with an explanation of what each one offers.
The preview release of Firefox 3.5 is showing some neat tricks relating to online video, but not the kind that comes in a little proprietary bubble of Flash.Google's Rich Snippets Starts the Semantic Snowball Effect | Digital Media Buzz
For example, the new Firefox 3.5 will be able to smoothly resize videos on the fly within the page. The interesting part, though, is that these videos are in OGG format – in other words, entirely open. With such a mainstream browser showing off what can be done with open video formats, there is a good chance that flash will lose its dominant position, or at least have to share a little. I’m not one to say “death to Flash” just because it happens to be proprietary, but an open video standard would allow for so much innovation. Already numerous projects are attempting to unify our media-watching experience. Just imagine the sudden freedom to create an even better experience if all that media was available in open formats.
Flash has been essential to the rise of sites like YouTube, but it might be time for something more flexible to replace it.
some things that were seen as being enabled by the Semantic Web in 2001 are already here without it. For many Americans, persistent mobile connection is a reality — e-mail and SMS-capable phones are ubiquitous, and Web-enabled phones are common. But the full power of machine-understood data, linked across the entire body of information in one global Web, with “agents” focused on personal service to humans, is only in its infancy. The Semantic Web vision is the other part of Web 3.0, which vertically integrates data from a diverse set of sources, according to the W3C’s Semantic Web group.
The challenges to the Semantic Web
The Web, as of July 2008, included one trillion distinct URLs, by Google’s count. The search giant is estimated to actually index less than 5 percent of those, still a matter of tens of billions of Web pages. The overwhelming majority of these pages are meant to be read and understood by humans. The content of the pages isn’t meant to be understood by computers. Search engines can index keywords, but without context.
Semantic Web experts have collected the toolkit of languages and metadata markup systems that will allow machines to understand key words and the relationships between them. Such metadata is already being used in many places. A microformat called hResume, for example, allows LinkedIn.com to tag appropriate resume fields of its public profiles so that the resume data can be understood and reused elsewhere.
Persuading websites to recode Web pages to Semantic Web specifications — or even to do so going forward — will take a powerful motivator.Ars toasts English language as Web 2.0 named millionth word - Ars Technica
Google may have provided such a motivator with its May 12 announcement of Rich Snippets. “Snippet” is the name Google uses for the short block of text appearing below a search result, giving more information about the Web page. Google announced in its Webmasters Central Blog (a bookmark for anyone interested in making his or her website more visible to the leading search engine) that it is now applying Google’s algorithms to “highlight structured data embedded in web pages.” Translation, content marked for the Semantic Web. The “rich snippets” will be based on the structured data.
This is a major event for a couple of reasons. First, Google is the poster child for machine learning, which in Web terms means teaching machines to scan plain-language Web pages and cull meaning from them. This is the other end of the spectrum from the Semantic Web vision of coding pages in a special way so they have meaning to machines. Google’s announcement, which explicitly discussed plans to extend support for structured data in new ways as well as to recognize metadata coding developed elsewhere on the Web, puts the company on a course for a synergy between machine learning and Semantic Web practices.
Yahoo searchmonkeyGoogle isn’t the first major search company to focus on structured data. Yahoo’s Search Monkey platform for Web developers supports a robust package of metadata formats, and urges developers to have at it. But the reality is that Google is the one people are paying attention to where it counts.
This brings us to the second reason this is a major step: self-interest. It’s important to harness the force that created those tens of billions of indexed Web pages in the first place. And Google’s announcement means money.
The Global Language Monitor says that the one millionth word entered the English language today at 10:22am GMT. Setting aside the preposterous nature of the claim, let's celebrate the language that brought us everything from "cloud computing" to "nincompoop."Ars Reviews the Palm Pre, part 1: the BlackBerry killer - Ars Technica
Most of the gadget press is obsessing over whether the Palm Pre is an iPhone killer, but they're asking the wrong question. We've been testing one for the past few days, and it's clear to us that the real target of Palm's new phone is the BlackBerry. Here's how Palm will use the webOS to tackle the enterprise market.Cisco report: the exaflood will be televised - Ars Technica
More and more technology companies are adopting an Internet-scale variant on the "give away the razors, sell the blades" model to stimulate demand for their products, and they're doing so in order to ride the one demand curve that's set to keep going up despite any global slowdown: the demand for bandwidth. Cisco's acquisition of video gadget maker PureDigital is a case in point, though the idea there is really more like "invest in razor development to stimulate global blade demand." The networking infrastructure giant made it known at the time of the acquisition that this purchase was about one thing: boosting the amount of video traffic flowing over everyone's pipes, so that it can sell newer, larger pipes to bandwidth providers.Ultimate BIOS Guide: Every Setting Decrypted and Explained!
Power users routinely punch into the BIOS in order to fine tune their system, but it can be an intimidating place to go exploring if you've never before burrowed beneath the surface. Here is your go-to guide for everything you've ever wanted to know about the BIOS.E3 2009: Who won? Who lost? Who wins a golden Ars? - Ars Technica
This was a big show filled with games, parties, lines, headaches, and, of course, celebrities. What rates as a Golden Ars? Here are our picks.IGN: IGN's Overall Best of E3 2009 Awards
These are the games that got the IGN editors talking last week and haven't been able to shut up about sincePrototype review: One thing you can't destroy is yourself - Ars Technica
It's an interesting question to ask while playing: why did Prototype fail? Yes, it did fail, although for hours while playing I couldn't quite put my finger on what exactly missed the mark. It's a fun failure, in places, with a sense of power that feels almost unearned. The game begins with the worst cliche of this sort of game: you have all your powers straight up, and get to tear-ass around the city for a few minutes before the game shoves you back in time to explain how you got there. The problem—and this is a big problem for a superhero game—is that this approach makes you feel powerful, and then weak. Since you've already lost most of your humanity, what's the point of feeling like a weak monster?
Sydney Morning Herald | Technology | Iran | Twitter | Tehran | Mahmoud Ahmadinejad | Mir Hossein Mousavi | protests | riots
An opposition activist spreads word of an upcoming protest in the streets of Tehran. Another posts pictures of clashes between demonstrators and police.Cyberwar guide for Iran elections - Boing Boing
As Iran's government cracks down on traditional media after the country's disputed presidential election, tech-savvy Iranians have turned to the micro-blogging site Twitter.
Its use to organise and send pictures and messages to the outside world - in real time as events unfolded - was a powerful example of how such tools can overcome government attempts at censorship.
The purpose of this guide is to help you participate constructively in the Iranian election protests through Twitter.Twitter reschedules maintenance to avoid clobbering Iranian dissidents - Boing Boing
1. Do NOT publicise proxy IP's over twitter, and especially not using the #iranelection hashtag. Security forces are monitoring this hashtag, and the moment they identify a proxy IP they will block it in Iran. If you are creating new proxies for the Iranian bloggers, DM them to @stopAhmadi or @iran09 and they will distributed them discretely to bloggers in Iran.
2. Hashtags, the only two legitimate hashtags being used by bloggers in Iran are #iranelection and #gr88, other hashtag ideas run the risk of diluting the conversation.
3. Keep you bull$hit filter up! Security forces are now setting up twitter accounts to spread disinformation by posing as Iranian protesters. Please don't retweet impetuosly, try to confirm information with reliable sources before retweeting. The legitimate sources are not hard to find and follow.
4. Help cover the bloggers: change your twitter settings so that your location is TEHRAN and your time zone is GMT +3.30. Security forces are hunting for bloggers using location and timezone searches. If we all become 'Iranians' it becomes much harder to find them.
5. Don't blow their cover! If you discover a genuine source, please don't publicise their name or location on a website. These bloggers are in REAL danger. Spread the word discretely through your own networks but don't signpost them to the security forces. People are dying there, for real, please keep that in mind...
A critical network upgrade must be performed to ensure continued operation of Twitter. In coordination with Twitter, our network host had planned this upgrade for tonight. However, our network partners at NTT America recognize the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran. Tonight's planned maintenance has been rescheduled to tomorrow between 2-3p PST (1:30a in Iran).
No comments:
Post a Comment