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Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

EU high court strikes down metadata collection law | Ars Technica - 1 views

arstechnica.com/...s-down-metadata-collection-law

court strikes down metadata collection law Europe legas precedent set

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 08 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 08 Apr 14
     
    "Citizens made to feel that they "are the subject of constant surveillance." by Cyrus Farivar - Apr 8 2014, 4:25pm CEST"
  • Paul Merrell on 09 Apr 14
     
    Just finished reading the court's opinion. I can only wish that the U.S. government had such fine-tuned respect for civil rights Not quoted in the linked article, but opinion paragraph 68 is very bad news for U.S. service providers: "In the second place, it should be added that that directive does not require the data in question to be retained within the European Union, with the result that it cannot be held that the control, explicitly required by Article 8(3) of the Charter, by an independent authority of compliance with the requirements of protection and security, as referred to in the two previous paragraphs, is fully ensured. Such a control, carried out on the basis of EU law, is an essential component of the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data (see, to that effect, Case C-614/10 Commission v Austria EU:C:2012:631, paragraph 37).". The Court is holding, in other words, that an E.U. network *must* be created that can prevent user's data from being transported outside the E.U., that user's data retained for law enforcement or national defense purposes cannot be transmitted or stored outside the E.U. It will take awhile for this to be transposed into national laws. But this is very good news for folks in the E.U. and for civil libertarians globally.
Paul Merrell

Exclusive: Google mulling Wi-Fi for cities with Google Fiber - Network World - 0 views

www.networkworld.com/...-mulling-wi-fi-for-281024.html

Google ISP google-fiber wireless

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • Google is considering deploying Wi-Fi networks in towns and cities covered by its Google Fiber high-speed Internet service. The disclosure is made in a document Google is circulating to 34 cities that are the next candidates to receive Google Fiber in 2015.
  • Google Fiber is already available in Provo, Utah, and Kansas City, and is promised soon in Austin, Texas. It delivers a "basic speed" service for no charge, a gigabit-per-second service for US$70 per month and a $120 package that includes a bundle of more than 200 TV channels. Installation costs between nothing and $300. Google has sent the 34 cities that are next in line for Google Fiber a detailed request for information and they have until May 1 to reply.
  • Specific details of the Wi-Fi plan are not included in the document, which was seen by IDG News Service, but Google says it will be "discussing our Wi-Fi plans and related requirements with your city as we move forward with your city during this planning process."
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  • Google is also asking cities to identify locations it would be able to install utility huts. Each 12-foot-by-30-foot (3.6-meter-by-9.1-meter) windowless hut needs to allow 24-hour access and be on land Google could lease for about 20 years. The huts, of which there will be between one and a handful in each city, would house the main networking equipment. From the hut, fiber cables would run along utility poles -- or in underground fiber ducts if they exist -- and terminate at neighborhood boxes, each serving up to 288 or 587 homes. The neighborhood boxes are around the same size or smaller than current utility cabinets often found on city streets.
Paul Merrell

New open-source router firmware opens your Wi-Fi network to strangers | Ars Technica - 0 views

arstechnica.com/...our-wi-fi-network-to-strangers

open-wireless routers EFF

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • We’ve often heard security folks explain their belief that one of the best ways to protect Web privacy and security on one's home turf is to lock down one's private Wi-Fi network with a strong password. But a coalition of advocacy organizations is calling such conventional wisdom into question. Members of the “Open Wireless Movement,” including the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Free Press, Mozilla, and Fight for the Future are advocating that we open up our Wi-Fi private networks (or at least a small slice of our available bandwidth) to strangers. They claim that such a random act of kindness can actually make us safer online while simultaneously facilitating a better allocation of finite broadband resources. The OpenWireless.org website explains the group’s initiative. “We are aiming to build technologies that would make it easy for Internet subscribers to portion off their wireless networks for guests and the public while maintaining security, protecting privacy, and preserving quality of access," its mission statement reads. "And we are working to debunk myths (and confront truths) about open wireless while creating technologies and legal precedent to ensure it is safe, private, and legal to open your network.”
  • One such technology, which EFF plans to unveil at the Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE X) conference next month, is open-sourced router firmware called Open Wireless Router. This firmware would enable individuals to share a portion of their Wi-Fi networks with anyone nearby, password-free, as Adi Kamdar, an EFF activist, told Ars on Friday. Home network sharing tools are not new, and the EFF has been touting the benefits of open-sourcing Web connections for years, but Kamdar believes this new tool marks the second phase in the open wireless initiative. Unlike previous tools, he claims, EFF’s software will be free for all, will not require any sort of registration, and will actually make surfing the Web safer and more efficient.
  • Kamdar said that the new firmware utilizes smart technologies that prioritize the network owner's traffic over others', so good samaritans won't have to wait for Netflix to load because of strangers using their home networks. What's more, he said, "every connection is walled off from all other connections," so as to decrease the risk of unwanted snooping. Additionally, EFF hopes that opening one’s Wi-Fi network will, in the long run, make it more difficult to tie an IP address to an individual. “From a legal perspective, we have been trying to tackle this idea that law enforcement and certain bad plaintiffs have been pushing, that your IP address is tied to your identity. Your identity is not your IP address. You shouldn't be targeted by a copyright troll just because they know your IP address," said Kamdar.
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  • While the EFF firmware will initially be compatible with only one specific router, the organization would like to eventually make it compatible with other routers and even, perhaps, develop its own router. “We noticed that router software, in general, is pretty insecure and inefficient," Kamdar said. “There are a few major players in the router space. Even though various flaws have been exposed, there have not been many fixes.”
Paul Merrell

2nd Cir. Affirms That Creation of Full-Text Searchable Database of Works Is Fair Use | ... - 0 views

www.bna.com/2nd-cir-affirms-n17179891214

Google-Books copyright fair-use litigation Authors-Guild

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • The fair use doctrine permits the unauthorized digitization of copyrighted works in order to create a full-text searchable database, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled June 10.Affirming summary judgment in favor of a consortium of university libraries, the court also ruled that the fair use doctrine permits the unauthorized conversion of those works into accessible formats for use by persons with disabilities, such as the blind.
  • The dispute is connected to the long-running conflict between Google Inc. and various authors of books that Google included in a mass digitization program. In 2004, Google began soliciting the participation of publishers in its Google Print for Publishers service, part of what was then called the Google Print project, aimed at making information available for free over the Internet.Subsequently, Google announced a new project, Google Print for Libraries. In 2005, Google Print was renamed Google Book Search and it is now known simply as Google Books. Under this program, Google made arrangements with several of the world's largest libraries to digitize the entire contents of their collections to create an online full-text searchable database.The announcement of this program triggered a copyright infringement action by the Authors Guild that continues to this day.
  • Part of the deal between Google and the libraries included an offer by Google to hand over to the libraries their own copies of the digitized versions of their collections.In 2011, a group of those libraries announced the establishment of a new service, called the HathiTrust digital library, to which the libraries would contribute their digitized collections. This database of copies is to be made available for full-text searching and preservation activities. Additionally, it is intended to offer free access to works to individuals who have “print disabilities.” For works under copyright protection, the search function would return only a list of page numbers that a search term appeared on and the frequency of such appearance.
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  • Turning to the fair use question, the court first concluded that the full-text search function of the Hathitrust Digital Library was a “quintessentially transformative use,” and thus constituted fair use. The court said:the result of a word search is different in purpose, character, expression, meaning, and message from the page (and the book) from which it is drawn. Indeed, we can discern little or no resemblance between the original text and the results of the HDL full-text search.There is no evidence that the Authors write with the purpose of enabling text searches of their books. Consequently, the full-text search function does not “supersede[ ] the objects [or purposes] of the original creation.”Turning to the fourth fair use factor—whether the use functions as a substitute for the original work—the court rejected the argument that such use represents lost sales to the extent that it prevents the future development of a market for licensing copies of works to be used in full-text searches.However, the court emphasized that the search function “does not serve as a substitute for the books that are being searched.”
  • The court also rejected the argument that the database represented a threat of a security breach that could result in the full text of all the books becoming available for anyone to access. The court concluded that Hathitrust's assertions of its security measures were unrebutted.Thus, the full-text search function was found to be protected as fair use.
  • The court also concluded that allowing those with print disabilities access to the full texts of the works collected in the Hathitrust database was protected as fair use. Support for this conclusion came from the legislative history of the Copyright Act's fair use provision, 17 U.S.C. §107.
Paul Merrell

We finally gave Congress email addresses - Sunlight Foundation Blog - 0 views

sunlightfoundation.com/...-gave-congress-email-addresses

U.S. Congress email

shared by Paul Merrell on 18 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • On OpenCongress, you can now email your representatives and senators just as easily as you would a friend or colleague. We've added a new feature to OpenCongress. It's not flashy. It doesn't use D3 or integrate with social media. But we still think it's pretty cool. You might've already heard of it. Email. This may not sound like a big deal, but it's been a long time coming. A lot of people are surprised to learn that Congress doesn't have publicly available email addresses. It's the number one feature request that we hear from users of our APIs. Until recently, we didn't have a good response. That's because members of Congress typically put their feedback mechanisms behind captchas and zip code requirements. Sometimes these forms break; sometimes their requirements improperly lock out actual constituents. And they always make it harder to email your congressional delegation than it should be.
  • This is a real problem. According to the Congressional Management Foundation, 88% of Capitol Hill staffers agree that electronic messages from constituents influence their bosses' decisions. We think that it's inappropriate to erect technical barriers around such an essential democratic mechanism. Congress itself is addressing the problem. That effort has just entered its second decade, and people are feeling optimistic that a launch to a closed set of partners might be coming soon. But we weren't content to wait. So when the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) approached us about this problem, we were excited to really make some progress. Building on groundwork first done by the Participatory Politics Foundation and more recent work within Sunlight, a network of 150 volunteers collected the data we needed from congressional websites in just two days. That information is now on Github, available to all who want to build the next generation of constituent communication tools. The EFF is already working on some exciting things to that end.
  • But we just wanted to be able to email our representatives like normal people. So now, if you visit a legislator's page on OpenCongress, you'll see an email address in the right-hand sidebar that looks like Sen.Reid@opencongress.org or Rep.Boehner@opencongress.org. You can also email myreps@opencongress.org to email both of your senators and your House representatives at once. The first time we get an email from you, we'll send one back asking for some additional details. This is necessary because our code submits your message by navigating those aforementioned congressional webforms, and we don't want to enter incorrect information. But for emails after the first one, all you'll have to do is click a link that says, "Yes, I meant to send that email."
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • One more thing: For now, our system will only let you email your own representatives. A lot of people dislike this. We do, too. In an age of increasing polarization, party discipline means that congressional leaders must be accountable to citizens outside their districts. But the unfortunate truth is that Congress typically won't bother reading messages from non-constituents — that's why those zip code requirements exist in the first place. Until that changes, we don't want our users to waste their time. So that's it. If it seems simple, it's because it is. But we think that unbreaking how Congress connects to the Internet is important. You should be able to send a call to action in a tweet, easily forward a listserv message to your representative and interact with your government using the tools you use to interact with everyone else.
Paul Merrell

How Secret Partners Expand NSA's Surveillance Dragnet - The Intercept - 0 views

firstlook.org/...le-partners-revealed-rampart-a

surveillance state NSA NSA-partners fiber-optic

shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • Huge volumes of private emails, phone calls, and internet chats are being intercepted by the National Security Agency with the secret cooperation of more foreign governments than previously known, according to newly disclosed documents from whistleblower Edward Snowden. The classified files, revealed today by the Danish newspaper Dagbladet Information in a reporting collaboration with The Intercept, shed light on how the NSA’s surveillance of global communications has expanded under a clandestine program, known as RAMPART-A, that depends on the participation of a growing network of intelligence agencies.
  • It has already been widely reported that the NSA works closely with eavesdropping agencies in the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia as part of the so-called Five Eyes surveillance alliance. But the latest Snowden documents show that a number of other countries, described by the NSA as “third-party partners,” are playing an increasingly important role – by secretly allowing the NSA to install surveillance equipment on their fiber-optic cables. The NSA documents state that under RAMPART-A, foreign partners “provide access to cables and host U.S. equipment.” This allows the agency to covertly tap into “congestion points around the world” where it says it can intercept the content of phone calls, faxes, e-mails, internet chats, data from virtual private networks, and calls made using Voice over IP software like Skype.
  • The secret documents reveal that the NSA has set up at least 13 RAMPART-A sites, nine of which were active in 2013. Three of the largest – codenamed AZUREPHOENIX, SPINNERET and MOONLIGHTPATH – mine data from some 70 different cables or networks. The precise geographic locations of the sites and the countries cooperating with the program are among the most carefully guarded of the NSA’s secrets, and these details are not contained in the Snowden files. However, the documents point towards some of the countries involved – Denmark and Germany among them. An NSA memo prepared for a 2012 meeting between the then-NSA director, Gen. Keith Alexander, and his Danish counterpart noted that the NSA had a longstanding partnership with the country’s intelligence service on a special “cable access” program. Another document, dated from 2013 and first published by Der Spiegel on Wednesday, describes a German cable access point under a program that was operated by the NSA, the German intelligence service BND, and an unnamed third partner.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The program, which the secret files show cost U.S. taxpayers about $170 million between 2011 and 2013, sweeps up a vast amount of communications at lightning speed. According to the intelligence community’s classified “Black Budget” for 2013, RAMPART-A enables the NSA to tap into three terabits of data every second as the data flows across the compromised cables – the equivalent of being able to download about 5,400 uncompressed high-definition movies every minute. In an emailed statement, the NSA declined to comment on the RAMPART-A program. “The fact that the U.S. government works with other nations, under specific and regulated conditions, mutually strengthens the security of all,” said NSA spokeswoman Vanee’ Vines. “NSA’s efforts are focused on ensuring the protection of the national security of the United States, its citizens, and our allies through the pursuit of valid foreign intelligence targets only.”
  • The Danish and German operations appear to be associated with RAMPART-A because it is the only NSA cable-access initiative that depends on the cooperation of third-party partners. Other NSA operations tap cables without the consent or knowledge of the countries that host the cables, or are operated from within the United States with the assistance of American telecommunications companies that have international links. One secret NSA document notes that most of the RAMPART-A projects are operated by the partners “under the cover of an overt comsat effort,” suggesting that the tapping of the fiber-optic cables takes place at Cold War-era eavesdropping stations in the host countries, usually identifiable by their large white satellite dishes and radomes. A shortlist of other countries potentially involved in the RAMPART-A operation is contained in the Snowden archive. A classified presentation dated 2013, published recently in Intercept editor Glenn Greenwald’s book No Place To Hide, revealed that the NSA had top-secret spying agreements with 33 third-party countries, including Denmark, Germany, and 15 other European Union member states:
  • Paul Merrell on 20 Jun 14
     
    Don't miss the slide with the names of the NSA-partner nations. Lots of E.U. member nations.
  • emilylerners on 21 Jun 14
     
    Very good info. Lucky me I came across your site by accident (stumbleupon). I have saved it for later. I Hate NSA's Surveilances. http://watchlive.us/movie/watch-Venus-in-Fur-online.html Howdy! I could have sworn I've visited this website before but after looking at many of the articles I realized it's new to me. Nonetheless, I'm certainly pleased I found it and I'll be book-marking it and checking back often. <
Paul Merrell

USA Freedom Act Passes House, Codifying Bulk Collection For First Time, Critics Say - T... - 0 views

firstlook.org/...usa-freedom-act

surveillance state NSA-reform USA-Freedom-Act legislation

shared by Paul Merrell on 14 May 15 - No Cached
  • After only one hour of floor debate, and no allowed amendments, the House of Representatives today passed legislation that opponents believe may give brand new authorization&nbsp;to the U.S. government&nbsp;to conduct domestic dragnets. The USA Freedom Act was approved in a 338-88&nbsp;vote, with approximately equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans voting against. The bill’s supporters say it will disallow&nbsp;bulk collection&nbsp;of domestic telephone metadata, in which the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has regularly&nbsp;ordered phone companies to turn over such data. The Obama administration&nbsp;claims such collection&nbsp;is authorized by Section 215 of the USA Patriot&nbsp;Act, which is set to expire June 1. However, the U.S.&nbsp;Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit recently held that Section 215 does not&nbsp;provide such authorization. Today’s&nbsp;legislation would prevent the government from issuing such orders for bulk collection and instead rely on&nbsp;telephone companies to store all their metadata — some of which&nbsp;the government could then demand using a&nbsp;“specific selection term” related to foreign terrorism. Bill supporters maintain this would&nbsp;prevent indiscriminate collection.
  • However, the legislation may not&nbsp;end bulk&nbsp;surveillance&nbsp;and in fact could codify the ability of the government to conduct dragnet&nbsp;data collection. “We’re taking something that was not permitted under regular section 215 … and now we’re creating a whole apparatus to provide for it,” Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., said on Tuesday night during a House Rules Committee proceeding. “The language does limit the amount of bulk collection, it doesn’t end bulk collection,” Rep. Amash said, arguing that the problematic “specific selection term” allows for “very large data collection, potentially in the hundreds of thousands of people, maybe even millions.” In a statement posted to Facebook ahead of the vote, Rep. Amash said the legislation “falls woefully short of reining in the mass collection of Americans’ data, and it takes us a step in the wrong direction by specifically authorizing such collection in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.”
  • “While I appreciate a number of the reforms in the bill and understand the need for secure counter-espionage and terrorism investigations, I believe our nation is better served by allowing Section 215 to expire completely and replacing it with a measure that finds a better balance between national security interests and protecting the civil liberties of Americans,” Congressman Ted Lieu, D-Calif., said&nbsp;in a statement explaining his vote against the bill.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Not addressed in the bill, however, are a slew of other spying authorities in use by the NSA that either directly or inadvertently target the communications of American citizens. Lawmakers offered several amendments in the days leading up to the vote that would have tackled surveillance activities laid out in Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and Executive Order 12333 — two authorities intended for foreign surveillance&nbsp;that&nbsp;have been used to collect Americans’ internet data, including online address books and buddy lists. The House Rules Committee, however, prohibited consideration of any amendment to the USA Freedom Act, claiming that any changes to the legislation would have weakened its chances of passage.
  • The measure now goes to the Senate where its future is uncertain. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has declined to schedule the bill for consideration, and is instead pushing for a clean reauthorization of expiring Patriot&nbsp;Act provisions that includes no surveillance reforms. Senators Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Rand Paul, R-Ky., have threated to filibuster any bill that extends the Patriot&nbsp;Act without also reforming the NSA.
  • Paul Merrell on 14 May 15
     
    Surprise, surprise. U.S. "progressive" groups are waging an all-out email lobbying effort to sunset the Patriot Act. https://www.sunsetthepatriotact.com/ Same with civil liberties groups. e.g., https://action.aclu.org/secure/Section215 And a coalition of libertarian organizations. http://docs.techfreedom.org/Coalition_Letter_McConnell_215Reauth_4.27.15.pdf
Paul Merrell

Researchers tout electricity storage technology that could recharge devices in minutes - 0 views

www.networkworld.com/...could-recharge-devices-minutes

mobile devices power-source batteries capacitors supercapacitors

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Vanderbilt University researchers say they have come up with a way to store electricity on a silicon-based supercapacitor that would let mobile phones recharge in seconds and let them continue to operate for weeks without recharging.
Paul Merrell

NSA Doesn't Want Court That Found Phone Dragnet Illegal to Actually Do Anything About It - 1 views

firstlook.org/...t-keep-vacuuming-data-180-days

surveillance state NSA metadata litigation ACLUl

shared by Paul Merrell on 04 Aug 15 - No Cached
  • The National Security Agency doesn’t think it’s relevant&nbsp;that its dragnet of American telephone data — information on who’s calling who, when, and for how long — was ruled illegal back in May. An&nbsp;American Civil Liberties Union&nbsp;lawsuit&nbsp;is asking the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which reached that conclusion, to immediately enjoin the program. But the U.S. government responded&nbsp;on Monday evening, saying that Congressional passage of the USA Freedom Act trumped the earlier ruling. The Freedom Act ordered an end to the program&nbsp;— but with a six-month wind-down period.
  • The ACLU still maintains that even temporary revival is a blatant infringement on American’s legal rights.&nbsp;“We strongly disagree with the government’s claim that recent reform legislation was meant to give the NSA’s phone-records dragnet a new lease on life,” said Jameel Jaffer, the ACLU’s deputy legal director in a statement. “The appeals court should order the NSA to end this surveillance now. &nbsp;It’s unlawful and it’s an entirely unnecessary intrusion into the privacy of millions of people.” On Monday, the Obama administration announced that at the same time the National Security Agency ends the dragnet, it will also stop perusing the vast archive of data collected by the program. Read the U.S. government brief responding to the ACLU below:
  • Paul Merrell on 04 Aug 15
     
    Go ACLU!
Paul Merrell

Android phones outsell iPhone 2-to-1, says research firm - Computerworld - 2 views

www.computerworld.com/...hone_2_to_1_says_research_firm

mobile devices android iPhone market penetration statistics

shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • Android-powered smartphones outsold iPhones in the U.S. by almost 2-to-1 in the third quarter, a research firm said today.
  • "We started to see Android take off in 2009 when Verizon added the [Motorola] Droid," said Ross Rubin, the executive director of industry analysis for the NPD Group. "A big part of Android success is its carrier distribution. Once it got to the Verizon and Sprint customer bases, with their mature 3G networks, that's when we started to see it take off." According to NPD's surveys of U.S. retailers, Android phones accounted for 44% of all consumer smartphone sales in the third quarter, an increase of 11 percentage points over 2010's second quarter. Meanwhile, Apple's iOS, which powers the iPhone, was up one point to 23%.
Paul Merrell

Study: IT jobs will drop in 2009 - 0 views

www.computerworld.com/...article.do

cloud computing industry trends

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Jul 08 - Cached
  • A second survey showed that basic PC and network hardware, as well as professional services providers, would bear the largest proportion of spending cuts. It also showed that CIOs planned to emphasize economizing measures over investments in new technologies, with cloud computing emerging as the last item on their priority lists, despite the hype around it.
  • The CIOs indicated that server virtualization and server consolidation are their No. 1 and No. 2 priorities. Following these two are cost-cutting, application integration, and data center consolidation. At the bottom of the list of IT priorities are grid computing, open-source software, content management and cloud computing (called on-demand/utility computing in the survey) -- less than 2% of the respondents said cloud computing was a priority.
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Gary Edwards

Flash Wars: The Many Enemies and Obstacles of Flash [Part 2 of 3] - AppleInsider Comments - 0 views

forums.appleinsider.com/showthread.php

apple flash javascript ria sproutcore webkit

shared by Gary Edwards on 18 Jun 08 - Cached
  • Throughout 2007, Apple stripped nearly every vestige of Flash from its corporate site and other products, and began recommending that developers use open standards instead. As noted in Gone in a Flash: More on Apple’s iPhone Web Plans, last summer Apple published a document titled "Optimizing Web Applications and Content for iPhone," which not only listed Flash as the single bullet point item under a listing of "unsupported technologies," but went on to explicitly encourage developers to "stick with standards," and use CSS, JavaScript, and Ajax instead.
  • Microsoft has already begun leveraging its Windows and Office monopolies to distribute Silverlight as a Flash-killer on both the Windows PC desktop and on the Mac. When Microsoft releases a Mac product, it can only mean one thing: it's working hard to kill a cross platform threat to Windows.
  • the new Cocoa iPhone/iPod Touch SDK not only offers Adobe insufficient means to develop a Flash plugin, but also clearly forbids the development of runtimes designed to advance competing platforms on top of the native Cocoa environment, whether Flash, Silverlight, or Java.
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  • Apple is fighting for control of media distribution with open standards! What is it you do not get about Mpeg4, AAC, MP3 and H.264?
  • Silverlight will just not play H264 content : as usual, microsoft has adopted a look alike, incompatible video format : VC1. About why Quicktime is better that Flash when it comes to serious H264 usage, you may want to have a look at the following note/demonstration of a quicktime+javascript player : http://blog.vrarchitect.net/post/200...ter-than-Flash In short : Quicktime can reach any frame of a video. Flash just reach the I-Frames. So if you have a GOP/keyframing of 250 for instance, you can see only one frame every 10s of video (to be honest, most classical gop implies a frame every one or two seconds)
  • Gary Edwards on 18 Jun 08
     
    Excellent comment focused on the clash between Flash and Apple. Apple promotes JavaScript, CSS and AJAX: the WebKit- SproutCore recipe
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Gary Edwards

WebKit Meta: A new standard for in-game web content | Alp Toker - 0 views

www.atoker.com/...andard-for-in-game-web-content

adobe air apple flex meta ria visualforce webkit wikiword

shared by Gary Edwards on 12 Jun 08 - Cached
  • Meta, a brand new WebKit port suited to embedding in OpenGL and 3D applications. The work is being driven by Linden Lab, who are eagerly investigating WebKit for use in Second Life. While producing Meta we’ve paid great attention to resolving the technical and practical limitations encountered with other web content engines.
  • Gary Edwards on 12 Jun 08
     
    As many know, i've moved all my attention to WebKit and thw webkit "fixed/flow" document model as an alternative to Microsoft's proprietary XAML "fixed/flow". Webkit is the default layout for iPhone, Safari and the Adobe RIA runtime (Flex/Flash/AiR/Acrobat). It's just a short hop from WebKit to VisualForce Pages, the default document model for SalesForce.com developers. The Meta announcement further demonstrates how powerful the WebKit design is. It's will be worthwhile keepign an eye on the Meta JavaScript SDK-Runtime as a nice addition to WebKit. Good stuff!
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Gary Edwards

Is Google Chrome a dud? Or the second coming? | Google Finally Advertising The Dud Kno... - 0 views

www.businessinsider.com/the-dud-known-as-chrome-2009-3

android chrome webkit-chromium google henry-blodget businessinsider

shared by Gary Edwards on 11 Mar 09 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 11 Mar 09
     
    Gary Edwards (URL) said: Mar. 05, 8:17 PM +1 Chrome! It's excellent, but not for the reasons most would insist are important. Neither is Chrome a disruptive technology. It's not. The real revolution is underneath Chrome in the open source WebKit engine. An engine shared with iPhone, Android, Safari, Palm Pre, Nokia, Iris, RiMM 's Blackberry Storm and KDE. Crossplatform WebKit IDE's now include QT, 280Atlas and Eclipse. It is the Apple iPhone that put WebKit on the map, demonstrating a revolutionary document/application model capable of leveraging and pushing the Open Web to be competitive with proprietary initiatives from Adobe and Microsoft. The WebKit engine is driving most of the smart devices at the edge of the Web, providing a consistent document rendering and application runtime layer that is highly visual, multi-dimensionally interactive, and fully competitive with the proprietary rich interactive application engines (RiA) provided by Adobe and Microsoft. Near 80% of these edge of the Web devices are based on WebKit.
Paul Merrell

Standards, or Why Cloud Computing Isn't Ready Yet | eigenmagic.com - 0 views

www.eigenmagic.com/...cloud-computing-isnt-ready-yet

cloud computing complexity standards

shared by Paul Merrell on 25 Oct 08 - Cached
  • How does this relate to cloud computing? Well, there aren’t few enough standard interfaces… yet. We have at least 5 major operating systems, 4+ database types and 3 or so browsers. We have Flash, and JavaScript, and Silverlight. Incompatibilities between them reduce the working combinations slightly, but what about the different versions, and their incompatibilities? Taking just these simple, core technologies, that’s 5 x 4 x 3 x 3 = 180 different technology combinations! That’s a lot of complexity to mask over if you want to provide the same general kind of service to everyone. Look at the number of variables you have to cater for when all you’re supplying is electrons-per-second! But it is possible.
Paul Merrell

ZoooS Previews "OpenOffice.org 3.0 in a Browser" | Software Journal - 0 views

stuff.techwhack.com/4729-zooos

cartel dead end technology ooo zoos

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Sep 08 - Cached
  • ZoooS LLC today previewed ZoooS Office, a web-based office suite that puts OpenOffice.org 3.0 in a browser, targeting enterprise, SMB, and individual users alike with a blend of software-as-a-service (SaaS) and desktop advantages.
  • Other key ZoooS Office implementations will include Mozilla XULRunner; Firefox, Opera, Safari as well as the new Google Chrome web browser; social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Second Life; and Nintendo Wii and Sony PlayStation. Regardless of implementation, ZoooS applications run entirely on the client machine, performing all file operations locally to reduce network traffic, improve application performance, and support offline access.
  • Public availability of ZoooS Office is scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2008. Initially, ZoooS will deliver the Mozilla XULRunner version, a Firefox plug-in, an Opera widget, and an intranet server. ZoooS will follow up with a Vista gadget and Internet Explorer support in the first half of 2009. For more information on ZoooS, please visit www.zooos.com.
  • Paul Merrell on 06 Sep 08
     
    Yet another wrapper around OpenOffice.org, this time the 3.0 version still in beta. $99.90 per seat for 10 users, Lots of Javascript to give a web collaboration capability. Perhaps most notable so far: [i] a sniff that there's a fair amount of money behind this one; and [ii] an article by Eric Lai says they approached the OOo Project but were rebuffed because they compete with desktop OOo. Support for different browsers planned. an XULRunner plug-in the works. Several mashups mentioned. Claims 80 percent of OOo features available, which is another way of saying that 20 per cent of the features are not supported. Claim that oSays code will be released under GPL. Apparently that's just their custom stuff because OOo 3.0 beta is LGPL. Building a business atop a code base controlled by a malevolent branch of Sun Microsystems seems less than wise. More at zooos.com. Preliminary impression: Like OOo itself, dead end technology that sucks mind and market share from software that supports truly open standards. The world needs to figure out that the OpenDocument format is roughly as open as OOXML. Open standards are fully specified so anyone can implement them.
Paul Merrell

Anti link-rot SaaS for web publishers -- WebCite - 0 views

www.webcitation.org

link rot SaaS citation bibliography

shared by Paul Merrell on 08 Jan 09 - Cached
  • The Problem Authors increasingly cite webpages and other digital objects on the Internet, which can "disappear" overnight. In one study published in the journal Science, 13% of Internet references in scholarly articles were inactive after only 27 months. Another problem is that cited webpages may change, so that readers see something different than what the citing author saw. The problem of unstable webcitations and the lack of routine digital preservation of cited digital objects has been referred to as an issue "calling for an immediate response" by publishers and authors [1]. An increasing number of editors and publishers ask that authors, when they cite a webpage, make a local copy of the cited webpage/webmaterial, and archive the cited URL in a system like WebCite®, to enable readers permanent access to the cited material.
  • What is WebCite®? WebCite®, a member of the International Internet Preservation Consortium, is an on-demand archiving system for webreferences (cited webpages and websites, or other kinds of Internet-accessible digital objects), which can be used by authors, editors, and publishers of scholarly papers and books, to ensure that cited webmaterial will remain available to readers in the future. If cited webreferences in journal articles, books etc. are not archived, future readers may encounter a "404 File Not Found" error when clicking on a cited URL. Try it! Archive a URL here. It's free and takes only 30 seconds. A WebCite®-enhanced reference is a reference which contains - in addition to the original live URL (which can and probably will disappear in the future, or its content may change) - a link to an archived copy of the material, exactly as the citing author saw it when he accessed the cited material.
  • Paul Merrell on 08 Jan 09
     
    Free service spun off from the University of Toronto's University Health Network. Automagic archiving of cited internet content, generation of citations that include the url for the archived copy. Now if Google would just make it easier to use its search cache copies for the same purpose ...
Paul Merrell

VoIP-4D Primer - - Building Voice Infrastructure in Developing Regions - 0 views

www.it46.se/voip4d.php

VOIP developing nations VOIP primer internet politics

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Dec 08 - Cached
  • The "VoIP-4D Primer" is a free guide available in four major languages. The work is an effort to disseminate the use of telephony over the Internet in developing regions. The 40-page guide targets both technical and non-technical readers. The first part presents the essentials of telephony over the Internet. For those interested in the more technical details, hands-on guidelines and configuration files are included in the second part. The examples provide essential background to build your own low-cost telephony system.
Paul Merrell

Chrome poised to take No. 2 browser spot from Firefox - Computerworld - 1 views

www.computerworld.com/...o._2_browser_spot_from_Firefox

browser stats market share webkit

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • Google's Chrome is on the brink of replacing Firefox as the second-most-popular browser, according to one Web statistics firm. Data provided by StatCounter, an Irish company that tracks browser usage using the free analytics tools it offers websites, shows that Chrome will pass Firefox to take the No. 2 spot behind Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) no later than December.
Paul Merrell

Rapid - Press Releases - EUROPA - 0 views

europa.eu/...pressReleasesAction.do

Intel antitrust DG Competion

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 May 09 - Cached
  • The Commission found that Intel engaged in two specific forms of illegal practice. First, Intel gave wholly or partially hidden rebates to computer manufacturers on condition that they bought all, or almost all, their x86 CPUs from Intel. Intel also made direct payments to a major retailer on condition it stock only computers with Intel x86 CPUs. Such rebates and payments effectively prevented customers - and ultimately consumers - from choosing alternative products. Second, Intel made direct payments to computer manufacturers to halt or delay the launch of specific products containing competitors’ x86 CPUs and to limit the sales channels available to these products.
  • Intel awarded major computer manufacturers rebates on condition that they purchased all or almost all of their supplies, at least in certain defined segments, from Intel: Intel gave rebates to computer manufacturer A from December 2002 to December 2005 conditional on this manufacturer purchasing exclusively Intel CPUs Intel gave rebates to computer manufacturer B from November 2002 to May 2005 conditional on this manufacturer purchasing no less than 95% of its CPU needs for its business desktop computers from Intel (the remaining 5% that computer manufacturer B could purchase from rival chip maker AMD was then subject to further restrictive conditions set out below) Intel gave rebates to computer manufacturer C from October 2002 to November 2005 conditional on this manufacturer purchasing no less than 80% of its CPU needs for its desktop and notebook computers from Intel Intel gave rebates to computer manufacturer D in 2007 conditional on this manufacturer purchasing its CPU needs for its notebook computers exclusively from Intel.
  • Furthermore, Intel made payments to major retailer Media Saturn Holding from October 2002 to December 2007 on condition that it exclusively sold Intel-based PCs in all countries in which Media Saturn Holding is active.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • In its decision, the Commission does not object to rebates in themselves but to the conditions Intel attached to those rebates.
  • Intel structured its pricing policy to ensure that a computer manufacturer which opted to buy AMD CPUs for that part of its needs that was open to competition would consequently lose the rebate (or a large part of it) that Intel provided for the much greater part of its needs for which the computer manufacturer had no choice but to buy from Intel. The computer manufacturer would therefore have to pay Intel a higher price for each of the units supplied for which the computer manufacturer had no alternative but to buy from Intel. In other words, should a computer manufacturer fail to purchase virtually all its x86 CPU requirements from Intel, it would forego the possibility of obtaining a significant rebate on any of its very high volumes of Intel purchases. Moreover, in order to be able to compete with the Intel rebates, for the part of the computer manufacturers' supplies that was up for grabs, a competitor that was just as efficient as Intel would have had to offer a price for its CPUs lower than its costs of producing those CPUs, even if the average price of its CPUs was lower than that of Intel.
  • For example, rival chip manufacturer AMD offered one million free CPUs to one particular computer manufacturer. If the computer manufacturer had accepted all of these, it would have lost Intel's rebate on its many millions of remaining CPU purchases, and would have been worse off overall simply for having accepted this highly competitive offer. In the end, the computer manufacturer took only 160,000 CPUs for free.
  • Intel also interfered directly in the relations between computer manufacturers and AMD. Intel awarded computer manufacturers payments - unrelated to any particular purchases from Intel - on condition that these computer manufacturers postponed or cancelled the launch of specific AMD-based products and/or put restrictions on the distribution of specific AMD-based products. The Commission found that these payments had the potential effect of preventing products for which there was a consumer demand from coming to the market. The Commission found the following specific cases: For the 5% of computer manufacturer B’s business that was not subject to the conditional rebate outlined above, Intel made further payments to computer manufacturer B provided that this manufacturer : sold AMD-based business desktops only to small and medium enterprises sold AMD-based business desktops only via direct distribution channels (as opposed to through distributors) and postponed the launch of its first AMD-based business desktop in Europe by 6 months. Intel made payments to computer manufacturer E provided that this manufacturer postponed the launch of an AMD-based notebook from September 2003 to January 2004. Before the conditional rebate to computer manufacturer D outlined above, Intel made payments to this manufacturer provided that it postponed the launch of AMD-based notebooks from September 2006 to the end of 2006.
  • The Commission obtained proof of the existence of many of the conditions found to be illegal in the antitrust decision even though they were not made explicit in Intel’s contracts. Such proof is based on a broad range of contemporaneous evidence such as e-mails obtained inter alia from unannounced on-site inspections, in responses to formal requests for information and in a number of formal statements made to the Commission by the other companies concerned. In addition, there is evidence that Intel had sought to conceal the conditions associated with its payments.
  • Paul Merrell on 13 May 09
     
    This is an uncharacteristically strong press release from DG Competition. I still must read the order, but the description of the evidence is incredible, particularly the finding of concealment of its rebate conditions by Intel.
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