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Gabrijela Vrbnjak

Brain-to-brain interface lets rats share information via internet | Science | The Guardian - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...ts-connected-share-information

internet rats information brain organic computer code encode

shared by Gabrijela Vrbnjak on 04 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • News Science Neuroscience Brain-to-brain interface lets rats share information via internet Rats thousands of miles apart collaborate on simple tasks with their brains connected through the internet Share 9893 inShare61 Email Ian Sample, science correspondent The Guardian, Friday 1 March 2013 jQ(document).ready(function(){ jQ.ajax({ url : 'http://resource.guim.co.uk/global/static/file/discussion/5/fill-comment-counts-swimlaned.js', dataType : 'script', type : 'get', crossDomain : true, cache: true }); }); Jump to comments (449) A rat with a brain-to-brain implant responds to a light (circled) by pressing a lever. Its motor cortex was connected to that of another rat. Photograph: Scientific Reports Scientists have connected the brains of a pair of animals and allowed them to share sensory information
  • US team fitted two rats with devices called brain-to-brain interfaces that let the animals collaborate on simple tasks to earn rewards
  • experiments showed that we have established a sophisticated, direct communication linkage between brains
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • In one radical demonstration of the technology, the scientists used the internet to link the brains of two rats separated
  • If the receiving rat failed at the task, the first rat was not rewarded with a drink, and appeared to change its behaviour to make the task easier for its partner.
  • an organic computer
  • we are creating
  • Even though the animals were on different continents
  • they could still communicate
  • we could create a workable network of animal brains distributed in many different locations
  • you could imagine that a combination of brains could provide solutions that individual brains cannot achieve by themselves
  • the work was "very important" in helping to understand how brains encode information
  • Very little is known about how thoughts are encoded and how they might be transmitted into another person's brain – so that is not a realistic prospect any time soon
donnamariee

Firefox OS won't magically succeed just because it's open source - see webOS | Technolo... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...firefox-os-open-source-failure

shared by donnamariee on 01 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Firefox OS won't magically succeed just because it's open source - see webOS The siren song of open source means some people think Firefox OS could take the smartphone market by storm - but that's what they thought about webOS
  • Open source" operating systems are the siren call of the internet. For years, we were promised, Linux was going to be the Next Big Thing on the desktop; the tired old empires of Windows and MacOS were going to be pushed aside, and everyone was going to embrace Linux (though quite which distro wasn't clear). From infants to grannies, they would all see the light, and install software that was built with the user in mind - as long as the user was someone who could hold the idea of the concentric circles of file ownership (root/wheel/std) in their head
  • Despite the fevered imaginings of a fair number at the time, there was simply no chance that webOS was going to go anywhere without direct help from HP; and HP wasn't going to give it that help, since it had plenty of troubles of its own.
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  • LG has indicated that it will be using webOS in its Smart TV line (which, in passing, suggests that Google's hopes of having a multi-manufacturer-pronged assault on the living room with Google TV are being chipped away; Samsung has gone its own way, Sony offers a mixture of Google and its own smart TV offerings, and now it looks like LG isn't exactly all-in). Though that might, in time, become something that it uses on phones or tablets, you'd be crazy to bet on it. LG is smart enough to know that TVs are a world away from phones and tablets, both in terms of the user interaction experience, and the demands that they make for user acceptance.
  • But the siren song of open source OSs becomes deafening when you look at the other announcement to come out of Mobile World Congress, in which Mozilla is touting its Firefox OS as the anathema to the world's ills - or at least those afflicting the smartphone industry. What does Moziila chief executive Gary Kovacs think is going to be the unique selling point of the Firefox OS phones that he expects to see in 2014? "Our goal is to level the playing field and usher in an explosion of content and services that will meet the diverse needs of the next two billion people online," he said in Barcelona, adding "We're not trying to get in the middle of an operating system fight; what we are trying to do is be the catalyst to drive more development around the open web."
  • The problem for Firefox OS is that it doesn't have a dedicated hardware backer. Sure, Sony has said that it will make some phones using it. ZTE and Alcatel say they will build hardware that will run it. And Kovacs points to the fact that Firefox OS will run HTML5 apps - not "native" apps (in the sense that iOS or Android apps run natively). That might put a questionmark over whether, by some analysts' measure, the FFOS phone is truly a "smartphone", since their definition for that includes "running apps on a native API". (That's why Gartner and IDC don't class Nokia's Asha phones as smartphones.)
  • So how did Android succeed? Three things. First, Google get a vibrant app ecosystem going even before there was a single phone: it had competitions for apps, with a $10m fund to seed developer ideas. By April 2008 there were almost 2,000 Android applications; two-third came from outside the US. Among the offerings: photo-enhanced driving, on-the-fly party mashups with maps, maintaining passive surveillance on your family's whereabouts. (Some things never change.) Second, it was able to go to Verizon, which was looking enviously at how AT&T was able to offer the iPhone, and suggest that Android phones - when they came along - could be the answer to that competitive challenge. And third, it was Google - the gigantic search-engine-and-everything-else company with the international reputation. If Google was doing a new generation of smartphone software (and if Apple had validated the idea), then it looked like a good deal for everyone. And handset manufacturers were eager to find an alternative to Microsoft.
  • Android is gigantic - some version of it might be on a billion phones this year - meaning there's no obvious need for another open source OS. What, after all, is FFOS actually going to do that Android doesn't, or that iOS or Windows Phone or BlackBerry can't? Yes, we've heard that the target isn't the west, but the developing world; that still doesn't explain why a Chinese handset manufacturer would deploy FFOS rather than Android, whether the Google version or a forked one that could connect to a local app store.
  • Even worse, FFOS is at an immediate competitive disadvantage because the principal browser on smartphones now is based on WebKit. Chrome uses it, MobileSafari uses it, BlackBerry uses it, and Opera uses it too now. That leaves only Internet Explorer on Windows Phone standing alone. Developers writing HTML5 apps will naturally write for compatibility with WebKit, which is always going to behave slightly differently from Firefox's Gecko rendering engine. For FFOS's sake, you have to hope the differences aren't big.
  • That's the trouble with the magical thinking that often attaches to open source projects. Making webOS open source didn't solve its problems; it simply shoved them off into a siding. Having an open source mobile OS didn't guarantee Android's success; the efforts of Google, and the timing in the market, did that.
  • Perhaps for that reason, people have high expectations for the Ubuntu OS and phone, with its fabulously complex array of gestures for control. Bad news, dreamers: it's going to fail in the market too if Canonical attempts to market it as a hardware-software combination - that is, sells Ubuntu phones at retail.
Katja Jerman

Digital rights advocates wary of new 'six strikes' initiative for online piracy | Techn... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...ital-six-strikes-online-piracy

piracy CAS ISP online

shared by Katja Jerman on 03 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • The Copyright Alert System (CAS) was devised by a coalition of internet service providers (ISPs), content owners and the US government to curb illegal downloading by alerting "casual infringers" when illegal filesharing is detected on their IP address
  • Initially, the alerts are intended to be educational. They tell the customer what happened and how they can prevent it from happening again. If pirating continues to happen through the IP address, users will receive the message again, followed by messages that ask them to confirm they have seen the alerts. The fifth and sixth alert are called mitigation alerts and will temporarily slow users' internet speeds, depending on the ISP.
  • CAS has also been criticized because the person who audited the MarkMonitor software to ensure that it fairly identifies copyright violations is a former lobbyist for the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), one of the industry groups fronting money for system.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • Jill Lesser, executive director of the Center for Copyright Information said in an interview with On the Media that the program is meant to abet the "casual infringer".
  • McSherry said that people engaged in wholesale commercial infringement wouldn't be fazed by the system because they are familiar with ways around the system.
  • The newest attempt to thwart illegal filesharing in the United States launched Monday and while the "six strikes and you're out" initiative seems to offer light penalties, digital rights advocates are concerned that it lacks transparency.
  • Copyright Alert System (CAS)
  • was devised by a coalition of internet service providers (ISPs), content owners and the US government to curb illegal downloading by alerting "casual infringers" when illegal filesharing is detected on their IP address.
  • Initially, the alerts are intended to be educational.
  • . If pirating continues to happen through the IP address, users will receive the message again, followed by messages that ask them to confirm they have seen the alerts. The fifth and sixth alert are called mitigation alerts and will temporarily slow users' internet speeds, depending on the ISP.
  • It's certainly not how we should be doing copyright policy,
  • it's a private copyright system and it doesn't have the protections and balances that the public copyright system has.
  • to ensure that it fairly identifies copyright violations is a former lobbyist
  • McSherry said that people engaged in wholesale commercial infringement wouldn't be fazed by the system because they are familiar with ways around the system
  • This failed to have a significant effect on pirating, and the industry stopped suing these type of casual users several years ago.
  • Katja Jerman on 06 Mar 13
     
    article 1
Jernej Prodnik

Google raises privacy fears as personal details are released to app developers | Techno... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...e-privacy-fears-app-developers

google privacy technology guardian personal details surveillance surveillance society

shared by Jernej Prodnik on 25 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Google raises privacy fears as personal details are released to app developers Campaigner says tech giant's policies don't make it clear that Google Play users who buy apps give over information
  • Charles Arthur guardian.co.uk, Monday 25 February 2013 14.39 GMT
  • Google Play: the personal details of app buyers are released to developers Google could face a third privacy row in a two years, after a leading campaigner called for the US government to investigate the fact that the names, geographic region and email addresses of people who buy apps from its Play store are passed on to the app developers without users' explicit permission.
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  • Ben Edelman, an associate professor at Harvard Business School, says that analysis of Google's terms and conditions relating to its Google Play store and Google Wallet transaction system (used for buying apps) doesn't show any clauses where users are specifically told that their emails will be sent on to the developer. He also warns that developers could use that information to "track and harass" people who have given apps low ratings or requested refunds. And hackers – or malicious developers – could create personalised emails to send out to people to steal passwords (phishing) or install "updates" that were actually malware.
  • Google says it has to provide some location data about which country apps are bought in so developers can calculate the correct amount of tax to pay. But that does not explain why it passes on buyers' names and email addresses, which together with a postcode could be used to identify a person's location and address."Google's prior privacy blunders have put [it] under higher scrutiny," Edelman says, pointing to the 20-year consent order with the US Federal Trade Commission that Google signed in March 2011 in the wake of its Buzz social network fiasco – followed by a record $22.5m fine in August 2012 for hacking Apple users' browsers to install tracking cookies. It has also been fiercely criticised in Europe for its changes in March 2012 to its privacy policies, which data protection chiefs said could mean "uncontrolled" use of personal data.
  • Eric Butler, a freelance software developer of the Tapchat and Farebot apps, tweeted in July 2012 "I wonder if most Android users realise that when you buy an app in the Play Store the seller [of the app] can see your name, email address and phone."Following the row, he has noted on his blog that "Because the entire experience of purchasing Android apps is so sloppy, it's not unreasonable to assume that this privacy issue was actually an oversight." But, he says, "Google should follow Apple's lead and offer users and developers better privacy protection."
  • Another developer, Jesse Wilson, pointed out the same problem in November on Google+, and was quickly echoed by Chris Lacy, who said that "as a developer I never asked for this information, I have no need for it, and I simply do not want to be a custodian of such information."Lacy added that "As a consumer, this is distressing on many levels: there is no fair warning that this information will be transferred … trusting my personal information to Google is one thing. But with this system, users are unknowingly having to trust their information to a third party. There's no way to know what security measures that third party might have in place." He added that it meant that the app developer "has gained my personal information without requesting the appropriate permissions via the app."
  • Google has said that passing on the details does not breach its privacy conditions. In a quote to Siliconvalley.com, a representative told the site that "Google Wallet shares the information necessary to process a transaction, which is clearly spelled out in the Google Wallet privacy notice."
Jernej Prodnik

Aaron Swartz files reveal how FBI tracked internet activist | Technology | guardian.co.uk - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...i-tracked-classified-documents

internet activist guardian political communication internet activism activism aaron swartz fbi surveillance surveillance society big brother

shared by Jernej Prodnik on 24 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Aaron Swartz files reveal how FBI tracked internet activist Firedoglake blogger Daniel Wright publishes once-classified FBI documents that show extent of agency's investigation into Swartz
  • Amanda Holpuch guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 19 February 2013 22.42 GMT
  • A blogger has published once-classified FBI files that show how the agency tracked and collected information on internet activist Aaron Swartz. Swartz, who killed himself in January aged 26, had previously requested his files and posted them on his blog, but some new documents and redactions are included in the files published by Firedoglake blogger Daniel Wright.Wright was given 21 of 23 declassified documents, thanks to a rule that declassifies FBI files on the deceased. Wright said that he was told the other two pages of documents were not provided because of freedom of information subsections concerning privacy, "sources and methods," and that can "put someone's life in danger."
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • The FBI's files concern Swartz's involvement in accessing the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (Pacer) documents. In pursuit of their investigation, the FBI had collected his personal information and was surveilling an Illinois address where he had his IP address registered. Aaron H. Swartz FBI File by Daniel Wright
  • One page reads: "Washington Field Office requests that the North RA attempt to locate Aaron Swartz, his vehicles, drivers license information and picture, and others. Since Swartz is the potential subject of an ongoing investigation, it is requested that Swartz not be approached by agents." The FBI also collected information from his social networking profiles, including Facebook and Linkedin. The latter proved to be a catalog of his many notable accomplishments, which include being a co-founder of Reddit, a founder of a website to improve the government, watchdog.net and as metadata adviser at Creative Commons.
  • Information from a New York Times article about his Pacer hack was also included in the files, though strangely, since the article can still be read online, the name of the article's other subject, Carl Malamud, was blocked out.Hacking collective Anonymous released a State Department database Monday in memory of Swartz. The files included employees' personal information such as addresses, phone number and emails.
Gabrijela Vrbnjak

Apple and Samsung smartphone patent row set for new jury trial | Technology | guardian.... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...artphone-patent-new-jury-trial

apple samsung smartphone patent jurytrial

shared by Gabrijela Vrbnjak on 04 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • battle between Apple and Samsung over smartphone patents
  • Samsung used to be Apple's biggest supplier for phone parts, and Apple its largest customer. But in 2010, Steve Jobs, then Apple's chief, vowed to go to "thermonuclear war" over what he saw as copying of iPhone features by Android phones.
  • the jury decided that some Samsung products had copied the appearance of Apple's iPhone 3GS
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • is not quite over yet.
  • Samsung meanwhile became the largest smartphone manufacturer in the world, and the second most profitable behind Apple. Together, the two companies produce around half of all the smartphones shipped worldwide.
  • Samsung has mounted a series of complaints against the jury decision
  • Apple meanwhile is seeking to have the damages increased.
anonymous

Google's Sergey Brin: smartphones are 'emasculating' | Technology | guardian.co.uk - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...-brin-smartphones-emasculating

shared by anonymous on 07 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Smartphones are "emasculating" – at least according to Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google, who explained his view while addressing an audience wearing a computer headset that made him look slightly like a technological pirate.
  • Brin suggested that the way people today use their smartphones was unappealing.
  • "When we started Google 15 years ago," Brin said, "my vision was that information would come to you as you need it. You wouldn't have to search query at all."
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  • At the website BoingBoing, the suggestion was that Google Glass would need an appropriately named version of the Android mobile operating system – whose robot-themed icon has pleased many geeks. But each version is named after a dessert (Frozen Yogurt, Jelly Bean) – insufficiently manly, suggested Rob Beschizza.
  • "My vision when we started Google 15 years ago was that eventually you wouldn't have to have a search query at all – the information would just come to you as you needed it," he said. Glass, added Brin, "is the first form factor that can deliver that vision". He said it had improved radically in the past two years since its first versions, which he said were "like a cellphone [mobile phone] strapped to your head".
metapavlin

Kim Dotcom announces Mega, successor to Megaupload | Technology | guardian.co.uk - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...tcom-announces-mega-megaupload

kim mega announces successor megaupload technology

shared by metapavlin on 12 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Kim Dotcom, founder of the banned Megaupload filesharing site, has announced a new version called Mega designed to sidestep the American laws under which he is being prosecuted for £175m worth of alleged online piracy, racketeering and money laundering.
  • The site would not use US-based hosting companies as partners in order to avoid being shut down by US authorities, Dotcom said.
  • Megaupload was shut down in January 2012 when New Zealand police helicopters swooped into Dotcom's mansion outside Auckland to seize computers and other evidence at the request of US authorities.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Users of Mega would be able to upload, store and share photos, text files, music and films, encrypt those files and grant access using unique decryption keys, Dotcom said. "You hold the keys to what you store in the cloud, not us," a statement on the Mega website said.
  • Ensuring that files are not pirated will be the job of content owners, a major change from Megaupload, which the US film industry says ignored illegal content and profited from it.
Jan Keček

Yahoo to shut down seven products, including BlackBerry app | Technology | guardian.co.uk - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...yahoo-internet

blackberry yahoo ipraktikum

shared by Jan Keček on 07 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Yahoo is shutting down seven products, including its mobile app for BlackBerry smartphones, as new chief executive Marissa Mayer emulates Google by eliminating unsuccessful products.
  • Mayer said at an investor conference last month that Yahoo would reduce its current 60 to 75 mobile apps to a more manageable 12 to 15.
  • The other Yahoo products to be terminated include Yahoo App Search, Yahoo Sports IQ, Yahoo Clues, the Yahoo Message Boards website and the Yahoo Updates API.
Blaž Gobec

Everything you need to know about the internet | Technology | The Observer - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...ternet-everything-need-to-know

technology web2.0 socialmedia EverythingAboutInternet

shared by Blaž Gobec on 05 Mar 13 - Cached
  • The internet has quietly infiltrated our lives, and yet we seem to be remarkably unreflective about it.
  • All of which might lead a detached observer to ask: if the internet is such a disaster, how come 27% of the world's population (or about 1.8 billion people) use it happily every day, while billions more are desperate to get access to it?
  • THE WEB ISN'T THE NET
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • So the thing to remember is this: the web is huge and very important, but it's just one of the many things that run on the internet. The net is much bigger and far more important than anything that travels on it.
  • On the internet, web pages are only one of the many kinds of traffic that run on its virtual tracks.
  • 5 COMPLEXITY IS THE NEW REALITY
  • 6 THE NETWORK IS NOW THE COMPUTER
  • 7 THE WEB IS CHANGING
  • But in fact, the web has gone through at least three phases of evolution – from the original web 1.0, to the web 2.0 of "small pieces, loosely joined" (social networking, mashups, webmail, and so on) and is now heading towards some kind of web 3.0 – a global platform based on Tim Berners-Lee's idea
  • For baby-boomers, a computer was a standalone PC running Microsoft software.
  • First, the companies (Yahoo, Google, Microsoft) who provided search also began to offer "webmail" – email provided via programs that ran not on your PC but on servers in the internet "cloud".
Blaž Gobec

SXSW 2011: The internet is over | Technology | The Guardian - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...sxsw-2011-internet-online

sxsw future guardian trends internet over

shared by Blaž Gobec on 01 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • After three days he found it: the boundary between 'real life' and 'online' has disappeared
  • If my grandchildren ever ask me where I was when I realised the internet was over – they won't, of course, because they'll be too busy playing with the teleportation console
  • If Web 2.0 was the moment when the collaborative promise of the internet seemed finally to be realised – with ordinary users creating instead of just consuming, on sites from Flickr to Facebook to Wikipedia – Web 3.0 is the moment they forget they're doing it. When the GPS system in your phone or iPad can relay your location to any site or device you like
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  • when Facebook uses facial recognition on photographs posted there, when your financial transactions are tracked, and when the location of your car can influence a constantly changing, sensor-driven congestion-charging scheme, all in real time, something has qualitatively changed. You're still creating the web, but without the conscious need to do so. "Our phones and cameras are being turned into eyes and ears for applications,"
  • Videogame designers, the logic goes, have become the modern world's leading experts on how to keep users excited, engaged and committed: the success of the games industry proves that, whatever your personal opinion of Grand Theft Auto or World of Warcraft.
  • Three billion person-hours a week are spent gaming. Couldn't some of that energy be productively harnessed?
  • His take on the education system, for example, is that it is a badly designed game: students compete for good grades, but lose motivation when they fail.
  • A good game, by contrast, never makes you feel like you've failed: you just progress more slowly. Instead of giving bad students an F, why not start all pupils with zero points and have them strive for the high score?
  • "is an interactive technology inspired by snakes."
  • the internet is distracting if it stops you from doing what you really want to be doing; if it doesn't, it isn't. Similarly, warnings about "internet addiction" used to sound like grandparental cautions against the evils of rock music; scoffing at the very notion was a point of pride for those who identified themselves with the future. But you can develop a problematic addiction to anything: there's no reason to exclude the internet,
  • we come to treat ourselves, in subtle ways, like computers. We drive ourselves to cope with ever-increasing workloads by working longer hours, sucking down coffee and spurning recuperation. But "we were not meant to operate as computers do," Schwartz says. "We are meant to pulse." When it comes to managin
  • g our own energy, he insists, we must replace a linear perspective with a cyclical one: "We live by the myth that the best way to get more work done is to work longer hours."
inesmag

Apple value falls below $400bn, as Warren Buffett says 'ignore critics' | Technology | ... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...lue-400-billion-warren-buffett

apple technology critics value samsung company

shared by inesmag on 05 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Apple is still embroiled in a legal tussle with Samsung, once its biggest supplier of phone parts. Photograph: Michaela Rehle/Reuters
  • The company is under increasing pressure from rivals including Google and smartphone manufacturers like South Korean electronics giant Samsung, whose Galaxy line has challenged iPhone's success.
  • Samsung used to be Apple's biggest supplier for phone parts, and Apple its largest customer. But in 2010, Jobs vowed to go to "thermonuclear war" over what he saw as copying of iPhone features by phones using Google's Android operating system.
Jan Sekavčnik

Twitter in Pyongyang: how North Korea got the mobile internet | Technology | guardian.c... - 1 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...er-north-korea-mobile-internet

northkorea twitter internet

shared by Jan Sekavčnik on 02 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • the secretive country begins allowing tourists to use the mobile internet
  • it was believed to be the first tweet sent from a mobile phone using the country's new 3G mobile data service.
  • photographer David Guttenfelder uploaded an image to Instagram of a tour guide at a mountain temple, geotagged to Pyongyang.
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • rists visiting
  • ere strict for to
  • th Kore
  • he past, rule
  • In 2009, I did not offer up my iPhone as we went through customs
  • We'd leave our mobile phones at the airport but use locally purchased phones with SIM cards
  • broadband internet that may be installed on request at our hotel, which is for international visitors.
  • But they cannot surf the "international" internet
  • sim cards are €50,
  • calls to Switzerland are an inexplicably cheap €0.38 a minute
  • Our North Korean colleagues watched with surprise as we showed them we could surf the internet from our phones.
  • Not all North Koreans have local mobile phones
  • The world wide web remains strictly off limits for most North Koreans
  • 3G mobile internet would be available within a week only for foreigners.
  • North Korean universities have their own fairly sophisticated Intranet system
  • Students say they can email one another, but they can't send emails outside the country.
  • Kim Jong Un has pushed science and technology as major policy directives, and we're starting to see more laptops in North Korean offices
  • Jan Sekavčnik on 02 Mar 13
     
    "Ads by Browse to Save Twitter in Pyongyang: how North Korea got the mobile internet"
Rok Urbancic

Microsoft faces hefty EU fine | Technology | guardian.co.uk - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...-antitrust-european-commission

shared by Rok Urbancic on 07 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • European commission expected to fine Microsoft hundreds of millions of euros after software company broke antitrust promise
  • The EU competition commissioner, Joaquín Almunia, is expected to use the fine – which could run into hundreds of millions of euros – to set an example after the US software giant became the first company to break a promise made to end an antitrust probe
  • The fines relate to an antitrust battle in Europe more than a decade ago. In order to avoid a penalty then, Microsoft promised to offer European consumers a choice of rival browsers.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • EU rules mean the company could be penalised $7.4bn (£4.9bn) – or 10% of its fiscal 2012 revenues
  • this did not happen for a period during February 2011 and July 2012, a lapse Microsoft blamed on a technical error. It has said it since tightened internal procedures to avoid a repeat.
  • The European commission has already fined Microsoft €1.6bn (£1.4bn)
  • Microsoft's share of the European browser market has roughly halved since 2008 to 24% in January, below the 35% held by Google's Chrome and Mozilla's 29% share
Jan Keček

Microsoft fined €561m for 'browser choice' error | Technology | guardian.co.uk - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...microsoft-fined-browser-error

microsoft ipraktikum internet

shared by Jan Keček on 07 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Microsoft has been fined €561m by the European commission for failing to give users a choice of web browser when they logged into Windows computers in Europe between May 2011 and July 2012 – breaking a binding commitment it had made in 2009.
  • Microsoft made a five-year commitment in 2009 to offer users a choice of different browsers, after the EC's competition commission determined that the combination of its dominance on the desktop – where Windows runs around 95% of machines – gave the pre-installed Internet Explorer browser an unfair advantage over rivals
  • The commission implemented the "browser choice" system to create a level playing field - and said that once in use, it was very effective: "The choice screen was very successful with users," Joaquín Almunia, the competition commissioner, said in a statement. "For example, until November 2010, 84 million browsers were downloaded through it."
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  • Microsoft said it took "full responsibility" for the technical error that caused the problem and that it had apologised for it.
  • "We provided the commission with a complete and candid assessment of the situation, and we have taken steps to strengthen our software development and other processes to help avoid this mistake – or anything similar – in the future."
  • ource close to Microsoft explained: "It was a single line in the code that triggered the browser choice program. It had a list of versions of Windows to test against: if the version was found in that list, the program would run. They didn't include Service Pack 1, which is effectively a different version of Windows, in that list. And so the program didn't run.
petra funtek

UK film distributors give cinema staff cash rewards for rooting out piracy | Film | gua... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...tributors-cinema-reward-piracy

money for foiling ilegal filming

shared by petra funtek on 20 May 13 - No Cached
  • Cinema staff are being incentivised with cash rewards in the fight against theatrical piracy. Thirteen ushers from across the UK have already been given sums of up to £700, adding up to a sum of thousands of pounds, as rewards for identifying potential pirates at screenings of Skyfall, Ted, The Dark Knight Rises and The Hobbit.
  • The initiative is funded by UK film distributors via the Film Distributors' Association and has been running since 2006.
mancamikulic

Google Glass: is it a threat to our privacy? | Technology | The Guardian - 1 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...le-glass-threat-to-our-privacy

google glass technology privacy shooting

shared by mancamikulic on 06 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • glasses that can shoot video, take pictures, and broadcast what you're seeing to the world
  • They weren't due to get them until last Friday
  • Google Glass is the most hotly anticipated new arrival in "wearable computing"
  • ...46 more annotations...
  • from "mainframe" computers
  • Google's idea is that you need only speak to operate it
  • "OK, Glass, take video!"
  • The only other way to get that point of view is to strap a camera to your head.
  • And yet people are already beginning to fret about the social implications of Glass
  • the question of privacy
  • how will we behave in groups
  • David Yee, the chief technology officer at a company called Editorially
  • Yee's worry was that the young person might be filming everything
  • Joshua Topolsky
  • have tried out Google Glass
  • This is the company that has repeatedly breached the boundaries of what we think is "private".
  • forgetting that sometimes deadly enemies have mutual friends
  • use of personal data without an individual's clear consent.
  • So how comfortable – or uneasy – should we feel about the possibility that what we're doing in a public or semi-public place (or even somewhere private) might get slurped up and assimilated by Google?
  • Oliver Stokes
  • ou could inadvertently become part of somebody else's data collection – that could be quite alarming
  • Now it's going to be able to compute what it is you're looking at.
  • Song Chaoming
  • nalysing mobile phone records
  • how your smartphone is able to show where you are on an onscreen map
  • Social media
  • Where the five million are the wearers of Glass – and the one monitor is Google
  • Google probably knows what you're going to do before you do.
  • Twitter
  • we're more used to the snatched photo or video that tells a story
  • Google doesn't want to discuss these issues.
  • this is a live issue,
  • One of the reasons they're doing Explorers is to get feedback on these things
  • how will we behave with each other?
  • hows data such as your speed, altitude, and even ski-resort maps
  • Concentrating on what was in front of me wasn't hard
  • they do it without letting others realise you are doing anything
  • we get too deeply involved with our technology
  • she pointed out how smartphones change us:
  • Topolsky
  • It brought something new into view
  • the more I used Glass the more it made sense to me; the more I wanted it."
  • how text messages or phone calls would just appear as alerts
  • Glass makes you feel more powerful
  • Hurst
  • is likely to be annoying
  • here's where the problems really start – you don't know if they're taking a video of you.
  • body language change
  • model seems to require voice control
  • how much are we going to share with others
Jan Keček

Doubt cast on Pirate Bay's claim to have set up in North Korea | Technology | guardian.... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...pirate-bay-north-korea

pirate bay north korea internet

shared by Jan Keček on 05 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Pirate Bay says it was 'persecuted for beliefs of freedom' but analysts say site is still likely being routed through Europe
  • The Pirate Bay, the notorious file-sharing site that was ejected from Sweden last week, claimed to have set up shop in North Korea on Monday.
  • The Pirate Bay is a popular site that hosts links to torrented material, though a separate program is required to download the links' content. This function puts the Pirate Bay in a legal grey area in most countries though it has been the subject of many lawsuits.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • It seems that the Pirate Bay's claim was an elaborate joke. North Korea has been claiming to have opened up its internet boders recently, playing host to Google executive Eric Schmidt. In late February, North Korea began allowing foreigners to access mobile internet, resulting in a fresh cache of Instagram images of North Korea.
Katja Kotnik

Me and my data: how much do the internet giants really know? | Technology | The Guardian - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...me-and-my-data-internet-giants

shared by Katja Kotnik on 02 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Google is not only the world's largest search engine, it's one of the top three email providers, a social network, and owner of the Blogger platform and the world's largest video site, YouTube. Facebook has the social contacts, messages, wallposts and photos of more than 750 million people.
  • The site also lists my most recent sent and received emails (in both cases a "no subject" conversation thread with a colleague).
  • The big relief comes when I note Google isn't tracking the internet searches I've made on my work account
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • only around 29% of the information Facebook possesses on any given user is accessible through the site's tools.
  • The Facebook extended archive is a little creepier, including "poke info", each instance of tracking cookies they possess, previous names, and full login and logout info
  • Looking through anyone's list of searches gives a distressing degree of insight into odder parts of their personality.
  • sell us stuff
  • how much do the internet giants really know?
  • picked up by hackers
  • how much the internet giants know about us.
  • Google isn't totally unhelpfu
  • Every event to which I've ever been invited is neatly listed, alongside its location, time, and whether I said I would attend .
  • One piece of information – a supposed engagement to a schoolfriend, Amy Holmes – stands out. A Facebook "joke" that seemed faintly funny for about a week several years ago was undone by hiding it from any and all Facebook users, friends or otherwise (to avoid an "… is now single!" status update). The forgotten relationship helpfully explains why Facebook has served me up with badly targeted bridalwear adverts for several years, and reassures me that Facebook doesn't know quite everything.
  • This is the core of the main comfort
  • despite their mountain of data, Google and Facebook seem largely clueless, too – they've had no more luck making any sense out of it than I have. And that, for now, is a relief.
Janja Petek

Forty years of the internet: how the world changed for ever | Technology | The Guardian - 1 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...internet-40-history-arpanet

history web changed world

shared by Janja Petek on 06 Mar 13 - Cached
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  • In October 1969, a student typed 'LO' on a computer - and the internet was born
  • Towards the end of the summer of 1969
  • a large grey metal box was delivered to the office of Leonard Kleinrock, a professor at the University of California in Los Angeles.
  • ...32 more annotations...
  • At 10.30pm, as Kleinrock's fellow professors and students crowded around, a computer was connected to the IMP, which made contact with a second IMP, attached to a second computer, several hundred miles away at the Stanford Research Institute, and an undergraduate named Charley Kline tapped out a message.
  • It's impossible to say for certain when the internet began, mainly because nobody can agree on what, precisely, the internet is.
  • It's interesting to compare how much has changed in computing and the internet since 1969 with, say, how much has changed in world politics.
  • On the other hand, the breakthrough accomplished that night in 1969 was a decidedly down-to-earth one
  • Twelve years after Charley Kline's first message on the Arpanet, as it was then known, there were still only 213 computers on the network; but 14 years after that, 16 million people were online, and email was beginning to change the world; the first really usable web browser wasn't launched until 1993, but by 1995 we had Amazon, by 1998 Google, and by 2001, Wikipedia, at which point there were 513 million people online. Today the figure is more like 1.7 billion.
  • on New Year's Day 1994 – only yesterday, in other words – there were an estimated 623 websites.
  • On the one hand, they were there because of the Russian Sputnik satellite launch, in 1957, which panicked the American defence establishment, prompting Eisenhower to channel millions of dollars into scientific research, and establishing Arpa, the Advanced Research Projects Agency, to try to win the arms technology race. The idea was "that we would not get surprised again,"
  • "In a few years, men will be able to communicate more effectively through a machine than face to face," they declared.
  • The few outsiders who knew of the box's existence couldn't even get its name right: it was an IMP, or "interface message processor"
  • It was already possible to link computers by telephone lines, but it was glacially slow, and every computer in the network had to be connected, by a dedicated line, to every other computer, which meant you couldn't connect more than a handful of machines without everything becoming monstrously complex and costly.
  • The solution, called "packet switching" – which owed its existence to the work of a British physicist, Donald Davies – involved breaking data down into blocks that could be routed around any part of the network that happened to be free, before getting reassembled at the other end.
  • Still, Kleinrock recalls a tangible sense of excitement that night as Kline sat down at the SDS Sigma 7 computer, connected to the IMP, and at the same time made telephone contact with his opposite number at Stanford. As his colleagues watched, he typed the letter L, to begin the word LOGIN.
  • One of the most intriguing things about the growth of the internet is this: to a select group of technological thinkers, the surprise wasn't how quickly it spread across the world, remaking business, culture and politics – but that it took so long to get off the ground.
  • In 1945, the American presidential science adviser, Vannevar Bush, was already imagining the "memex", a device in which "an individual stores all his books, records, and communications", which would be linked to each other by "a mesh of associative trails", like weblinks.
  • And in 1946, an astonishingly complete vision of the future appeared in the magazine Astounding Science Fiction. In a story entitled A Logic Named Joe, the author Murray Leinster envisioned a world in which every home was equipped with a tabletop box that he called a "logic":
  • Instead of smothering their research in the utmost secrecy – as you might expect of a cold war project aimed at winning a technological battle against Moscow – they made public every step of their thinking, in documents known as Requests For Comments.
  • Deliberately or not, they helped encourage a vibrant culture of hobbyists on the fringes of academia – students and rank amateurs who built their own electronic bulletin-board systems and eventually FidoNet, a network to connect them to each other.
  • n argument can be made that these unofficial tinkerings did as much to create the public internet as did the Arpanet. Well into the 90s, by the time the Arpanet had been replaced by NSFNet, a larger government-funded network,
  • It was the hobbyists, making unofficial connections into the main system, who first opened the internet up to allcomers.
  • This was the software known as TCP/IP, which made it possible for networks to connect to other networks, creating a "network of networks", capable of expanding virtually infinitely
  • Nevertheless, by July 1992, an Essex-born businessman named Cliff Stanford had opened Demon Internet, Britain's first commercial internet service provider.
  • After a year or so, Demon had between 2,000 and 3,000 users,
  • the @ symbol was introduced in 1971, and the first message, according to the programmer who sent it, Ray Tomlinson, was "something like QWERTYUIOP".
  • A couple of years later I got my first mobile phone, which came with two batteries: a very large one, for normal use, and an extremely large one, for those occasions on which you might actually want a few hours of power
  • For most of us, though, the web is in effect synonymous with the internet, even if we grasp that in technical terms that's inaccurate: the web is simply a system that sits on top of the internet, making it greatly easier to navigate the information there, and to use it as a medium of sharing and communication.
  • The first ever website was his own, at CERN: info.cern.ch.
  • The idea that a network of computers might enable a specific new way of thinking about information, instead of just allowing people to access the data on each other's terminals, had been around for as long as the idea of the network itself: it's there in Vannevar Bush's memex, and Murray Leinster's logics.
  • Web browsers crossed the border into mainstream use far more rapidly than had been the case with the internet itself: Mosaic launched in 1993 and Netscape followed soon after, though it was an embarrassingly long time before Microsoft realised the commercial necessity of getting involved at all. Amazon and eBay were online by 1995. And in 1998 came Google, offering a powerful new way to search the proliferating mass of information on the web.
  • Google, and others, saw that the key to the web's future would be helping users exclude almost everything on any given topic, restricting search results to the most relevant pages.
  • It is absurd – though also unavoidable here – to compact the whole of what happened from then onwards into a few sentences: the dotcom boom, the historically unprecedented dotcom bust, the growing "digital divide", and then the hugely significant flourishing, over the last seven years, of what became known as Web 2.0.
  • The most confounding thing of all is that in a few years' time, all this stupendous change will probably seem like not very much change at all.
  • Will you remember when the web was something you accessed primarily via a computer? Will you remember when there were places you couldn't get a wireless connection? Will you remember when "being on the web" was still a distinct concept, something that described only a part of your life, instead of permeating all of it? Will you remember Google?
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