Byte Into It - 24 Jun 09

China carries on with censorship plan, as Google capitulates | Technology | guardian.co.uk

China has said it will continue with its plans to force every computer in the country to run a controversial filtering program that will further restrict the activities of web surfers.

Officials at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said they would be going ahead with plans to make the software - known as Green Dam - compulsory.

Despite claims that it had decided to shelve Green Dam - which is intended to prevent access to pornographic material - the government "will not back away" on its plans for the software, an official told China Daily.

The move follows a string of controversies over the plan, and after internet giant Google agreed to filter its search results in China to screen out pornographic or explicit material

Hands-on: Google Voice dialing up for launch - Ars Technica

The Google Voice service launched in March for closed testing with a limited audience that consisted of existing GrandCentral users. Google introduced a number of highly impressive features such as automatic message transcription and free SMS delivery. The transcription feature will convert voicemails to text and make them searchable. The service can also automatically forward voicemail transcripts directly to your preferred e-mail account.

There are signs that Google is preparing to open the service to a broader audience. Reports indicate that Google has recently obtained over one million new phone numbers from backbone operator Level 3. PC World speculates that the number grab could be a prelude to the full public launch of Google Voice, but it was unable to get official confirmation from the search giant. There are also reports that Google will offer number portability, enabling consumers to move their existing phone numbers to Google's infrastructure.

Ars recently began testing Google Voice as part of the closed beta program. The service is remarkably powerful and easy to use. It has a number of killer features, such as support for switching between lines during the middle of a call and recording incoming calls by simply pressing a button. Recorded calls and voicemails can be heard directly in the browser through a streaming playback interface and can also be downloaded as MP3 files.

It also offers a simple scheduling system that can be used to control when calls will be routed to specific numbers

Fight over German filtering law sends MP into Pirate Party - Ars Technica

After seeing Swedish voters send the Pirate Party to the European Parliament, the German branch of the group has now gotten a seat in the lower house of that nation's parliament, the Bundestag. But the seat didn't come about through an electoral triumph; instead a member of the Social Democrats, Jörg Trauss, changed allegiances, claiming his decision was driven by his former party's support for a mandatory Internet filtering scheme. But the situation is complicated by the fact that the filtering would target child porn, and Trauss is under investigation for possession of that material (he claims it was for investigative purposes).

The legislation in question would implement a scheme that's somewhat similar to the one under consideration in Australia.

BBC NEWS | Technology | The rise of Hate 2.0

The number of hate and terrorist websites has increased by a third in the past year, according to the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

The Los Angeles-based Jewish human rights organisation put the figure at more than 8,000 in its 2008 report Hate 2.0. It said the presence of such sites "demeans and threatens African Americans, Jews, immigrants, gays and virtually every religious denomination".

And the number of so-called hate sites is growing fast, while the use of social networks to push controversial messages is also on the rise.

In May this year, Facebook became embroiled in a row after a number of Holocaust denial groups were set up on the site.

Critics said Facebook was propagating anti-Semitism, others said that free speech was a cornerstone of society and Facebook should keep its hands off.

At the time, Barry Schnitt, a spokesman for Facebook, said it should be "a place where controversial ideas can be discussed".

"The bottom line is that, of course, we abhor Nazi ideals and find Holocaust denial repulsive and ignorant," he said.

"However, we believe people have a right to discuss these ideas."
Don Black
The Home Office says Don Black's actions could "lead to inter-community violence in the UK".

A few days later, the site had closed two of the groups, Holocaust is a Holohoax and Based on the facts... there was no Holocaust. It said they had breached the firm's terms of service.

But there are still plenty of other Holocaust denial groups on Facebook

Telstra bumps Next G uplink to 5.8 Mbps - Telco/ISP - Technology - News - iTnews.com.au

Telstra has increased peak network uplink speeds on its Next G network to 5.8 Mbps, meaning customers will achieve at least 300 kbps up to 3 Mbps in real-use terms.

Customers in metropolitan and "selected" regional areas will achieve uplink speeds anywhere within that range.

Other areas will still receive a minimum 300 kbps but the upper limit will be 1 Mbps.

Telstra said existing users of Turbo 21 modems manufactured by Sierra Wireless can download a software upgrade for their devices from the Sierra website to take advantage of the speed increase.

The same software upgrade will be pushed out automatically to users "over the air" this weekend.

In addition, business customers using the Telstra Turbo 21 mobile broadband USBs can upgrade their device.

"Upgrades to selected other Telstra and BigPond devices will be available in coming weeks," said executive director of Telstra product management, Ross Fielding.

Minchin claims there is no need for NBN - Telco/ISP - Technology - News - iTnews.com.au

Shadow Communications Minister Nick Minchin has seized on an ACMA report showing most Australians are satisfied with their ISP to claim the country does not need a National Broadband Network (NBN).

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) report, released today, concludes that most Australian households and businesses are generally satisfied with the level of service they receive from their Internet Service Provider (ISP), "with the great majority expressing reluctance to switch ISPs."

Minchin said the study "raises serious questions about the Minister's sweeping claims of fundamental market failure" in the telecommunications industry.

Questions over survey

The ACMA report is based on a number of sources.

The primary two surveys from which broadband satisfaction was measured was a Roy Morgan survey of 1396 fixed line customers and 241 mobile users that don't use a fixed line services, plus a survey of 1800 small business users conducted by Sensis, a subsidiary of the country's largest ISP, Telstra.

The annual Whirlpool broadband user survey, by contrast, includes the opinions of some 20,000 users.

In both 2007 and 2008, around 75 per cent of Whirlpool respondents said the customer service they get from their ISP is either "good" or "excellent", 62 per cent were "very happy" with the reliability of the connection and 77 (2007) to 79 per cent (2008) would recommend their ISP to others.

But also in 2008, about one in three Whirlpool survey respondents said their ISP plan was too expensive.

The Whirlpool survey also showed that three in four respondents (75 per cent) favour a Fibre-to-the-Home (FttH) National Broadband Network (2008), and 69 per cent would prefer the Federal Government to build it (2007).

Newlyweds Vodafone and 3 to compete on iPhone - Telco/ISP - Technology - News - iTnews.com.au

The newly-merged VHA has signed an agreement with Apple for its '3' brand to sell the new iPhone 3G S.

Hutchison 3, which carries the iPhone in other regional markets such as Hong Kong, had until now avoided the iPhone market, leaving larger competitors Telstra, Optus and Vodafone to fight over the popular mobile device.

But according to a spokesperson for 3, the mobile carrier began conversations with Apple to carry the iPhone just prior to the merger with Vodafone being approved.

These discussions were taken over by VHA, who agreed it in the best interest of the merged entity to offer the iPhone under the 3 brand just as it does under the Vodafone brand.

No pricing or plan details are available as yet, but a spokesperson for 3 confirmed with iTnews that Vodafone and 3 will offer the iPhone under differentiated plans.

FTC to crack down on undisclosed "sponsored" blogging - Ars Technica

Do your favorite mom and pop blogs secretly accept cash or gifts in exchange for product mentions? They might, and the FTC wants to make sure they disclose their conflicts of interest with a new set of guidelines that it hopes to implement later this year.

Meet Melody: Movable Type's open-source sibling | Webware - CNET

Community members of Six Apart's Movable Type platform (MT) are launching a new blogging service on Tuesday. Dubbed "Melody," it's an open-source version of MT that community members are free to build on and change.

Unlike previous open-source efforts though, this one is the first to break off (or "fork") from the main product, allowing for much faster and drastic changes. In many ways it's an answer to WordPress, a competitor of Six Apart that began as an open source project and has benefited from rapid development because of it.

What’s New in Firefox 3.5?

Mike Beltzner gives a quick preview of what’s new and exciting in Firefox 3.5, coming soon from Mozilla

Lifehacker - Top 10 Firefox 3.5 Features - Firefox 3.5

Firefox 3.5 is a pretty substantial update to the popular open-source browser, and it's just around the corner. See what features, fixes, and clever new tools are worth getting excited about in the next big release:
- Firefox 3.5 implements a restore feature for both tabs and windows from the History menu, which would (hopefully) also restore any text you've typed into them.
- Firefox 3.5's history browser offers a convenient "Forget this site" option, erasing your browser's memory of particular domains. It doesn't cover subdomains, and your network traffic and Flash memory would still hold some details, but it's a handy tweak however you cut it.
- Google Chrome and Safari somewhat stole the thunder out from under this feature, but it's still a nice one: Grab a tab and drag it out a bit to create a new browser window from it. Drag windows into tabs again.
- Firefox 3's AwesomeBar/address bar offers a speedy list of suggestions to complete whatever you're typing,that list comes from your page history, bookmarks, and tags, and can be matched by URL or name. Special character filters in the next Firefox allow you to restrict matches to a particular category for instance.
- Firefox's developers took a cue from the users and turned the session restore feature into more of a crash recovery tool, allowing users to select which tabs should come back. If you don't know who's the culprit, here's a hint: It's probably the one with Flash on it.
- Private Browsing mode,already in a number of competing browsers, has uses beyond the prurient. Beyond obvious situations, like gift buying and sensitive research, logging onto a friend's browser for a quick email check or bill pay is made a lot more secure if you can get to the private mode.
-Firefox 3.5 introduces dynamic color profiles for each picture, meaning that whatever the graphic designer or photographer saw when they were doing their work, you'll see it on their web page.
- Even if TraceMonkey (javascript engine) is ultimately outpaced by Chrome and/or Safari, its innovations push the whole browser market forward and give us all a bit less load time to complain about.
- Integrated geo-location, powered by Google's Wi-Fi triangulation and simple IP address information, looks to know roughly where you are and help you when you're looking for something local. You can disable it if you'd like, but, realistically, signing on from any IP address reveals a bit about where you are anyways.
- If you're viewing a page coded in HTML 5 with video in an open-source format like Ogg Vorbis or Theora, Firefox 3.5 treats that video like it's just part of the page, not a separate little island of Flash content. That means instant commenting on videos. It could also mean offering links from inside a tutorial video that offer more details on what's being shown

Lifehacker - Microsoft's Browser Comparison Chart Offends Anyone Who's Ever Used Another Browser - Internet Explorer 8

This browser comparison chart pits IE8 against Firefox and Chrome and puts IE8 on top time after time, but in very dubious categories. Each row comes with its own ridiculous set of comments justifying the seemingly meaningless checkmarks

Web-Based Productivity Suite Zoho Now Integrated With Microsoft SharePoint

Zoho Suite, a web-based software suite comprised of document, project and invoicing management tools, has launched an add-on that allows Zoho Office to integrate with Microsoft SharePoint.

Zoho users can now create new documents and save them to SharePoint in MS Office formats, view existing documents within SharePoint using Zoho apps, and edit existing documents with Zoho Apps and save them back to SharePoint. The new add-on also provides collaborative editing functionality in Zoho with the integration with SharePoint. Zoho says the add-on costs $2/user/month on an yearly subscription or $3/user/month for monthly subscription

EFF kills another stupid internet patent - Boing Boing

EFF's patent-busting project has put another notch in its belt: today they killed a truly outrageous patent on the use of subdomains for navigation and content management, as with jwz.livejournal.com. Can you believe that the patent office granted that patent in 2004, based on a 1999 application? Can you believe that the people who filed the patent claimed (with a straight face) that they didn't know of any other prior art that made this invalid?

It's hard to know whether to be happy for and grateful to the Electronic Frontier Foundation for killing this abomination, or pissed off with the patent office for creating it.

Obama's USPTO choice supports patent reform - Ars Technica

Last Thursday, the Obama administration finally named its choice to head the Patent and Trademark Office: David J. Kappos, who is currently serving as IBM's assistant general counsel. Kappos has a long history in the field of intellectual property law, and has been an advocate of patent reforms, having testified in favor of a reform bill before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Normally, a public record of that sort provides plenty of opportunities for people to identify problems with a candidate, but, so far at least, response to Kappos' nomination has been generally positive.

Researchers conclude piracy not stifling content creation - Ars Technica

File-sharing, to the (very large) extent that it involves copyright infringement, has affected the music business. But, as a pair of academic researchers happily point out in a working paper they've posted online, copyright law was never meant to protect the music business in the first place—instead, it is intended to foster creative production in the arts, which happen to include music. As such, they argue it's worth analyzing the deeper question of whether file sharing is putting a damper on music creation. Their conclusion is that this is a much more complicated question, but the answer seems to be "probably not." The authors construct a bit of a causal chain between file sharing and the intent of copyright law to foster creative works. First, you'd need to know that file sharing was harming music sales, and that the music industry wasn't finding alternative ways of generating income. Then you'd need to show that the loss of income provided a disincentive to musical creativity. They recognize that this calculus might seem a bit heartless, though: "It might seem curious to some of our readers that we do not consider the welfare of artists and entertainment companies in our calculus. Our approach, however, reflects the original intent of copyright protection, which was conceived not as a welfare program for authors but to encourage the creation of new works."...If the first two links in the chain are tenuous, the last one pretty much gets demolished. There's essentially no indication that the more challenging economics are slowing down creative content production. In the five years prior to 2007, film production is up 30 percent, album releases have doubled, and book releases are up by two-thirds.

The authors also cite statistics that suggest that finances aren't (or at least, shouldn't be) the primary motivator for creative musical works. Because of the structure of the music business, even a gold record doesn't guarantee a windfall to artists, and the ratio of gold records to all records suggest that success is distributed by a system that most resembles a lottery. People clearly seem willing to put time into producing music even if it's not paying off, as the authors note, "even among those who spent at least thirty hours a week on music-related activities, only 22 percent derived at least four-fifths of their income from music."

Given that all the links in the causal chain are, at best, tenuous, the authors conclude that, while copyright infringement may be hurting the music business, that shouldn't be taken as an indication that it's affecting the theoretical basis of copyright law, the fostering of creative works.

Anti-Piracy Lawyers Lose License To Chase Pirates | TorrentFreak

Just days after Norway’s data protection department told ISPs they must delete all personal IP address-related data three weeks after collection, it’s now become safer than ever to be a file-sharer in Norway. The only law firm with a license to track pirates has just seen it expire and it won’t be renewed.

DX11 is AMD's weapon - News - PC Authority

t certainly is interesting to see AMD putting most of its energy into DX11 leadership while Nvidia focuses maniacally on GP-GPU with its C for Cuda and Open CL. So even though NV will likely be behind ATI in DX11, ATI lags behind NV in the GP-GPU battle, which is not insignificant in the slightest.

The lines have been drawn and now it is left to the customer to ultimately decide who's approach is right

Does Intel have a deal with Nokia? | Technology | guardian.co.uk

The speculation is that Nokia will use a next-generation Atom chip in some kind of device, possibly even a mobile phone

Flash Player 10 beta coming to most smartphones this fall | Crave - CNET

Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen confirmed that Adobe will release a beta version of Flash Player 10 in October for a number of smartphone browsers, including Windows Mobile, Google Android, Palm WebOS, and Symbian.

Mobile stars of the show

A collection of mobile manufacturers unveiled their latest phones at the glamour-studded CommunicAsia 2009 event held last week in Singapore.

Some mobiles will bring real innovations to the handset market such as Sony Ericsson's new gesture gaming phones that let you box or do yoga in front of them and LG's GD900 Crystal that can recognise symbols and handwriting on its transparent alphanumeric keypad.

Other makers like Nokia and Samsung are ramping up the touch functions, screen resolution and speed of smartphones to ensure people who use their device primarily for work don't miss out on iPhone-like features. Samsung's new Jet is one new model that looks impressive in this category. Its screen resolution is four times higher than previous Samsung models and it has a new user interface that supports motion, customisable widgets, multitasking and simultaneous downloads.

iPhone In-App Purchases Already Leading To The Dreaded Two Words: Bait And Switch

the old practice of luring customers with a shiny price, only to reveal the real cost after (in this case, the download), could find its way to the App Store, thanks to in-app purchases.

Let me be clear: I think in-app purchases are potentially the most exciting thing about the new iPhone 3.0 SDK for developers. I believe it will mean a boatload of money for a great many of them as well as Apple, which takes its 30% cut. But where there is money to be made, there is money to be taken. And we’re likely to see a rise in apps that seem priced way too good to be true — because they are, until you download them.

Hands on review: iPhone OS 3.0 chock full of changes - Ars Technica

Sure, the iPhone 3G S is exciting—who doesn't like new hardware?—but more important than the hardware itself is the software that runs on it. As a bonus for all iPhone users, iPhone OS 3.0 won't just run on the new iPhone 3G S; it will run on iPhone 3Gs and even the original iPhone. There are elements to iPhone OS 3.0 that only run on the iPhone 3G S, however, and we will address those in our iPhone 3G S review. This part of the review, however, will focus on features that are generally available to all iPhone users (but focused mostly on the iPhone 3G, since that's the device with the widest reach at the moment).

Review: iPhone 3GS lives up to its speedy claims - Ars Technica

this review will mostly focus on changes to the device that differentiate it from previous versions.