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As many of us may or may not know, Apple filed a lawsuit against Samsung for apparently copying Apple's iPad when Samsung released the Galaxy Tab. However, the UK court ordered Apple to repay Samsung after proving that the information Apple provided in the lawsuit was false and misleading leading to proof that Samsung didn't copy Apple. Apple made two apologies to Samsung and will now have to repay Samsung all the money they sued them for.  This has to do with the legal tag because the lawsuit from Apple and Apple's compensation to Samsung are both legal actions. These actions also have to do with following the law since Apple wrongfully accused Samsung of copying which is against the law. I think that the UK court's decision is just because a company cannot sue another company just because they are remotely similar. If they could then we would have very little options when it comes to technology. For example,the first company to release a first person shooter game would be the only FPS game since the company could sue other game companies for copying their game genre. I just think Apple's lawsuit against Samsung was really just unreasonable in general.

The smartphone wars are taking a turn for the worse. Last week both apple and Samsung companies made patent infringement lawsuits against each other. Apples lawsuit of 2 billion dollars against Samsung is for use of the slide-to-unlock feature, auto word correction, universal search of the phone, and Internet and background syncing of data. While Samsung's 7 million dollar lawsuit against Apple is for the use of remote video transmission and on digital imaging. I believe that apples case is a little childish compared to Samsung's especially with the part about the slide to unlock future. Samsung's case seems to be about more important matters like using its camera and the remote control patents. I personally would like Samsung to win because I prefer their products and customer service over Apple's.

This post is on cracking Wi-Fi WPA passwords with "Reaver." Many people know that cracking a WEP password is fairly easy, so they use the more bulletproof WPA security protocol. Reaver is a program that exploits a security hole in wireless routers and can crack most routers' passwords with relative ease. First off, you will need the BackTrack 5 Live DVD. Download the Live DVD from BackTrack's download page and burn it to a DVD. Next, you need a computer with Wi-Fi and a DVD drive. Lastly, you need a nearby WPA-secured Wi-Fi Network. Using four steps you can hack into a WPA Wi-Fi Network. Step 1: Boot into BackTrack, Step 2: Install Reaver, Step 3: Gather the Router's information, and Step 4: Crack the WPA password to the Wi-Fi Network. Now I will explain how you can protect against Reaver attacks. Since the vulnerability lies in the implementation of WPS, your network should be safe if you can simply turn off WPS (or, even better, if your router doesn't support it in the first place), however Reaver may still be able to crack your password, even with WPS manually turned off. You could also set up MAC address filtering on your router (which only allows specifically whitelisted devices to connect to your network), but a sufficiently savvy hacker could detect the MAC address of a whitelisted device and use MAC address spoofing to imitate that computer. The good news is that there is a way to surely protect against Reaver. You can get the open-source router firmware DD-WRT installed on your router. Reaver has been tested on routers with this firmware and it was not able to crack the password. As it turns out, DD-WRT does not support WPS, so there's yet another reason to love the free router-booster.

Social media has slowly become part of everyone's daily lives. Whether twitter or facebook, social media has shaped our society and has formed a strong bond between people from all over the world. Social media is so powerful that it has also affected politics in nations. The public has a new way of sharing their voice and opinion to the world in political processes. Thanks to social media, Wendy Davis was able to hold a filibuster for 12 hours voting against abortion clinics. Online viewers of the live stream were able to see when the session ended and when the vote was cast. Clay Shirky, a social media theorist, explained that the idea of the live stream played a role in the legislative process and that this phenomenon is not restricted to just the USA. Other political movements, such as the Arab Spring, and the protests in Turkey have also been influenced by social media. I personally think that social media playing a role in politics is a great idea. It allows people who believe they don't have a voice speak their mind and be heard by other supporters of the cause. Social media is everywhere so it was bound at one point to have an influence on things such as politics.

This article is about how just recently, companies Apple and HTC have signed a 10-year licensing deal meaning that every single one of Apple's and HTC's lawsuits filed against each other has now been settled. Both have been sued by each other for infringing on each other's patents. This new licencing deal means that the companies can use each other's patents to a certain extent- giving their phones an edge over the rest of the smartphone market. HTC says they signed the deal to focus on making better products instead of spending so much time dealing with court. Some analysts say that Apple settled the lawsuits quickly to deal with Samsung and their lawsuits towards them. Apple has signed agreements previously with Nokia and Microsoft allowing them to use certain patents. I chose the tag of portable computing because both Apple and HTC produce many successful smartphone portable computing. Hopefully this deal will help improve both of their smartphone operations benefiting us consumers. In my opinion I think that this whole suing fest (lack of a better word) that has been going on recently is pretty silly as many cases don't seem as if they are worthy to be being sued about. I am glad to see that Apple has settled their disputes with HTC to cut down on this smartphone lawsuit drama.

The smartphone market has been dominated by Apple's iPhone and Google's Android devices, but with this dominance many people think they do not have any other options when it comes to smartphones other than Apple and Android. Yes, there have been other companies that have tried to combat the powerful hold of Apple and Android but they have faltered and ultimately could not dethrone these smartphone giants. Now the Finnish company Jolla plans on competing against Apple and Android with its new OS, Sailfish which they claim is an alternative to Apple and Android. Jolla also partnered itself with Chinese phone retailer D.Phone so Jolla would have phones that will run Sailfish. For many of us, we are stuck with the decision of buying either an Android or an iPhone since any other phone trying to appear differently was simply forgotten. But the release of Sailfish phones would completely change the smartphone market by giving consumers another option when considering buying a new phone and releasing some of the control that Apple and Android have. It could also be possible that Sailfish phones will be more revolutionary and better looking than Androids and iPhones but still cost less which would attract many consumers who want an innovative but low-cost phone. I think Sailfish will have a large impact on the smartphone market since it uses many gestures that makes the OS unique. Whereas Apple's iPhone and Google's Android will eventually lose their popularity due to Apple and Android's lack of innovation, the Sailfish phones could possibly have the same effect the first iPhone had on the world and become the new dominant smartphone. 

Many countries recently blocked access to The Pirate Bay, a torrenting website, in order to prevent the illegal downloading of films, music, programs, and more. However, these efforts were futile, as many users are simply turning to proxy servers to allow them to bypass their countries censorship. Torrenting sites have always been risky territory for users, and as of late, more and more sites have been taking down in order to prevent pirating. The Pirate Bay has an insanely high volume of traffic, and it hasn't slowed down in recent times. It is noted in this article that the only way to rid of TPB is to physically shut down the servers, but even if that were to happen, users are simply going to move to the next site. Whether or not piracy negatively affects the income of the producers of the material being distributed is debatable, however the fact remains true that this process is completely illegal.  As a frequent torrenter, I hope that TPB will continue to thrive at it's current level. My hope is that all these pushes against torrenting will make the industries behind said files realize that users refuse to pay the ridiculous prices and taxes on content. This realization will hopefully lead to cheaper costs on retail products in the media industry, thus removing the need for pirating and torrenting. It will take awhile, but as long as the high price industry standards are in place, torrenting will continue to occur, and no legal matter will be able to stop it. If the internet is to truly be 'free', than laws and limitations should not be placed on content provided. #BarbieJXoXo

This is the greatest article of all time.

I am not the same guy as this poster, but I think he is beautiful

This article discusses the relationship between Apple and Samsung, who are fierce competitors in mobile device market. In very simple terms, Apple's handheld designs were at the least partially copied by Samsung, but suing them is difficult since they supply many of the hardware components, primarily processor chips, for Apple products themselves. Should Apple sue and win a lawsuit against the sale of Samsung products anywhere, Samsung would cut off their shipments, leaving room for other competitors to take the scene. This touches on the legal aspect of things because Apple has a right to the products they made and clearly copying them should not be allowed. The problem is that it would be lost money for both businesses because Samsung would cut off parts being supplied to Apple. This brings the need for cooperation between the two companies because if they both take a serious loss in the mobile device market other companies like LG, Nokia and Microsoft would take the lead and dominate the market.

       Last year american congress introduced CISPA (Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act). Although this act  speaks of protection it does quite the opposite. With this act almost all privacy on the internet will disappear. Despite many people opposing this bill last year a new version of this bill has been released this year. This CISPA 2.0 would grant immunity to private companies who can share your data with other companies, private agencies, and the government. This means that your private information and cybersecurity is virtually non-existent and can be shared with anyone. At the end of the article it tells people how they can fight against this bill. Although this bill is for the united states, Canada has attempted to pass a bill like it in the past and I personally do not want any bills of this sort to pass legislature.

With people becoming more tech savvy, the security and firewalls of major websites and servers are becoming just obstacles to hackers looking for valuable information these websites contain.  Michael Tchong suggests that we need a new internet, one built from the ground up. He says that China is far more advanced with technology and internet security than that of the United States and Canada. Some suggestions that Michael Tchong has made for this new internet is making the internet so secure that to hack it, you will need to be a genius with alot of time on your hands. He proposes that there should be a next-generation eye-recognition technology using a computer or mobile camera. This will help sites like Facebook and LinkedIn in their endless battle against identity fraud. Also he thinks that it should only be accessed by Americans for obvious reasons that the Chinese and other known hacking countries would try and destroy the new internet.  

Everyone knows about the election coming up this fall. It is down too Obama and Romney. Everyone knows that Romney and Obama are competing very heavily against each other. However, study shows that Obama is actually the more influential on Twitter than Mitt Romney. Obama has 20.3 million followers and has 8,000 times more than the average Twitter user. However, Romney with 1.2 million followers, has a pull of about 800 times the average user.What else do we know about Obama and Romney's Twitter followers? By matching the candidates' followers to over 60 public online and offline data sources, Peek you was shocked with the interesting statistics. A higher share of Obama's followers are female - 49% of Obama's followers compared to 35% of Romney's. Obama's followers also skew much younger than Romney's, with 24% of the president's followers under age 25 to 16% of Romney's.Interestingly, only 55% of Obama's followers self-identify as living in the United States, compared to 89% of Romney's followers. That's perhaps an effect of being a sitting president as opposed to a candidate and former governor. Obama's got a higher percentage of Floridian followers than the average Twitter user, while more than typical numbers of Ohioans follow Romney. To me I think the reason they both use twitter is so that they can get more votes for the elections and become president.

This article mentions the fact that Twitter now plans to update its mobile applications to introduce filters for photos allowing people to share altered images without having to use another source such as Instagram. Since most phones come with high-resolution cameras and many of the Twitter users use their phones this will be an easy way for people to edit and upload their photos. Especially with people or famous celebrities that use Instagram then share them on Twitter where more people follow them it will be easier and faster to just use Twitter for it all. This new idea has been hastened when Facebook bought Instagram. Twitter was thinking of buying a different photo service or application but when weighing out the cost they decided to just build their own filters. Twitter is also exploring the ability to upload and edit videos without using a third-party application like YouTube. This article has a lot to do with economics and the battle between two companies trying to get people to use their site and apps and not the other. In this case Twitter is really trying to become the most popular and important social networking site where people will be able to do anything on and it will be instant. They are changing what they once were to try to morph into Facebook because of the increasing popularity of Instagram and the fact that Facebook bought it.  I think personally that Twitter is making a good decision about the filter but i don't think twitter should add their own video player because it would change twitter and its purpose of being instant statements and pictures. YouTube is good at what they do and twitter should stay out of it. However with the whole idea of adding filters to Twitter you get the benefits of Instagram with the benefits of Twitter which might just keep them on top of Instagram.

Following Facebook's purchase of Instagram for almost $1 Billion in April 2012, it seems appropriate that Twitter would integrate something similar into their users' experience. 'Inside sources' say that Twitter is working on a photo-filter system that will be integrated directly in the site and mobile apps that hopes to bypass third-party services (such as Instagram.) While Instagram is a social network that focuses on social images with limited text, Twitter is renowned for its 140 character text-based updates with occasional images. An advantage of Twitter's supposed photo filtering system would be that there would most likely be a website equivalent to the mobile app, a problem that has plagued Instagram users who want a PC experience. As of now, there have been no official confirmations by Twitter, but the idea of a Twitter-exclusive photo sharing system seems interesting; although the market is currently saturated by Instagram, which can export images to other social networks, including Twitter. Legally, Facebook and Instagram may be able to take action against Twitter, depending on how similar their filtering system will be. This relates to eLifestyle and ICS20 because as social network users, we are always searching for ways to monetize our networks to one cohesive experience; another photo-sharing application seems arbitrary when there is already a capable system (Instagram.)

This article talks about new program in Facebook called time line. Timeline is becoming famous among many people. However, some people are against this changes. this caused some marketers to wonder if migrating their brand to Facebook Timeline was worth the effort. there is a report that brands are getting an average of 46% more engagement with Timeline. Average Engagement per post and Fan Engagement Rate increased about 60% in total.   Most of the brands and their engagement post changed a lot after the timeline therefore it was worth for them to market their brands. This relates to our course because it talks about how our culture, store and even their marketing strategies are affected by the internet. 

This video describes how the constitution of America opposes those warning labels on cigarette packaging. Although many believe the warning should stay, judges oppose by arguing that preventing companies to properly advertise a legal drug is against freedom of speech. 1/7 people smoke and I can emphasis with the judge in his decision.

In order to prove that the Windows Phone 7 flagships phone are faster than any other phone, Microsoft has a new marketing campaign where they invite you to bring your own phone in and pit it's speed against one of Microsoft's phones. Someone has actually managed to win this challenge but was not awarded her prizes because the employees at the store gave her a sudden excuse about needing to have widgets open that tells the weather in two different cities in two different states. She was later issued an apology and challenged to a rematch.

This article talks about zombie apocalypse in an empty mall in Readings, U.K. The mall got an idea from the movie called Walking Dead. This mall has brought internet game into real life where people can fight against zombies for 4 hours for $189. this relates to our course because this shows the internet impact on culture that they are making internet game into real life game. Before, they didn't even care about games and they just played at home on their computer but now internet game became part of our culture. This relates to one of our lessons in our courses that talks about internet impact on culture. 

This article notifies the world that the CIA wants to spy on you through your TV and has the means just to do so. Anytime you download a movie from Netflix to your television or turn on a Internet-based radio, you could be alerting people who you don't want or need watching you. The CIA organization will not need to plant bugs in homes or other places to spy on individuals because of coming advances in computer and Internet technology. Just by people purchasing and using new apps and various "connected" devices, people will essentially be bugging their own homes. The CIA agency and others will be able to "read" these and other gadgets from outside places to monitor via the Internet and perhaps even with radio waves outside your home. This is astonishing information and what makes it even more surprising is it can get worse, it the sense that everything, not just electronics, will be controlled by an app or chip, and will ultimately be viewed and seen by outside sources. This is a scary idea that can be put to action and that fact that we won't even be secure and safe in our homes because there may always be someone watching us and viewing what we are doing. I understand technology is helping us in our everyday lives, but I feel this is too far and the government is now using there means of advancing technology against society. They have the power and resources to possibly monitor and maybe to control what we go on the Internet or what we watch on TV and this will alter our once safe and comfortable environment to have the freedom to use technology how we like in our home.

This article is all about the new released Chrome version 17.  In this article it talks about the changes of the improved Chrome and found it better. The new version of Chrome has more protection against malicious downloads and it is faster that will help the users to use it quickly. This new version of Chrome will stop the users to download malicious things that will be a good idea to stop all the download sessions of malicious things that are spreading throughout the internet. 

Apple, with a potential injunction shutting down the company's iCloud service there over infringement of a Motorola Mobility patent being pegged as a $2.7 billion risk to Apple.

Who is the internet run by? The answer to that would be 193 U.N. members. Surprisingly, countries are sort of blocked off when it deals with internet affairs. To gain more power, certain countries like China and Russia have lobbied an agency called the ITU (International Telecommunications Union). The ITU's goal right now is internet censorship. They feel they need to have more control, and are threatening it's open, 'free to do whatever you want', nature. Next week, the ITU holds a negotiating conference in Dubai. They have already a proposed a 200 page treaty which makes some internet users worrisome. The ITU is trying to propose a tax on visiting popular websites like google, facebook, etc.. Google is against the idea already, and putting up petitions that show the need for net neutrality. Online users are counting on their own countries governments that they will not control the internet at the users will

thoughts/opinions?