Column of the Wolf

A daily mix of news covering technology, science, human rights, wolf news, stupid human tricks and many other topics.

24.06.2009

Sadly not — but the news that the US department of justice has secured guilty pleas from five prolific spammers, including Alan Ralsky, might make other US-based spammers pause for thought. And many of the most troublesome spammers are based in the US, although they use servers in China and other countries to serve their wares. Ralsky, 64, and his son-in-law, Scott Bradley, 38, face maximum sentences of six years in prison and $1m fines for breaking the CAN-SPAM act and additional charges of wire fraud, money laundering and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The latter activities will have attracted rather more law enforcement efforts than the first: the CAN-SPAM act, which became law in 2003, has been widely derided by anti-spam activists, partly because it gives spammers virtual carte blanche to spew out unwanted marketing messages without the receiver's permission, and bans individuals from suing the spammers — which could otherwise have shut many down

23.06.2009

The Iranian regime has developed, with the assistance of European telecommunications companies, one of the world's most sophisticated mechanisms for controlling and censoring the Internet, allowing it to examine the content of individual online communications on a massive scale. Interviews with technology experts in Iran and outside the country say Iranian efforts at monitoring Internet information go well beyond blocking access to Web sites or severing Internet connections. Instead, in confronting the political turmoil that has consumed the country this past week, the Iranian government appears to be engaging in a practice often called deep packet inspection, which enables authorities to not only block communication but to monitor it to gather information about individuals, as well as alter it for disinformation purposes, according to these experts. The monitoring capability was provided, at least in part, by a joint venture of Siemens AG, the German conglomerate, and Nokia, the Finnish cellphone company, in the second half of 2008, Ben Roome, a spokesman for the joint venture, confirmed

Recognising that the online encyclopedia Wikipedia is increasingly used by the public as a news source, Google News began this month to include Wikipedia among the stable of publications it trawls to create the site

The impetus to regulate online marketing may be gathering steam. On 18 June a House of Representatives subcommittee held a hearing to take a closer look at how advertisers gather and use information on consumers' Web-surfing habits. Up to now the government has had a hands-off policy toward online marketing, giving companies relatively free rein in how they use tools that track what people do online and then use that data to deliver tailored marketing messages. Although regulation is likely to be far off, it would surely rewrite how Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, and a wide range of other Internet companies grapple for share in the $25.7 billion online ad market

22.06.2009

Australian iPhone users have started downloading widely available configuration files to activate the device's tethering feature and bypass Optus' planned $10 monthly fee

Just two weeks after the Swedish Pirate Party won a seat in the European Parliament, the German PiratenPartei has gained a seat in the German government. Jörg Tauss has left the Social Democrats Party (SPD) and has joined the Pirate Party

21.06.2009

This may come as a surprise, but I have a lot of sympathy with artists' rights groups and even entertainment companies that mistrust giants like Amazon.com and Google. Now, it's not that I hate Amazon or Google, but I do understand that they are fast becoming the intermediary between creators and audiences (and vice-versa), and that this poses a danger to everyone involved in the creative industries

Threatened with losing the HP Wright Library to state budget cuts, volunteers from across Ventura County are coming together and pulling out all the stops — and, next weekend, literary icon Ray Bradbury — in their campaign to keep the Ventura library open

20.06.2009

The Chinese government will force the world's biggest technology company Google to block a raft of overseas sites on its search engine. This is China's third major internet censorship move in a month amid growing internet activism in the country and in the shadow of a strong online element in the disputed election in Iran. The attack on Google was issued under a pornography crackdown and comes only two weeks after the government surprised its media and technology sector by introducing the Green Dam Youth Escort filtering software onto every new computer sold after 1 July. It also came only a month after a range of international sites, including Microsoft Hotmail and micro-blogging site Twitter, were blocked ahead of the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre

Google has stepped up work to release a tool that will translate Farsi into English and vice-versa. The company told the BBC it was speeding up the project because of the huge interest in what was currently going on in Iran. At the same time, the world's biggest social networking site, Facebook, is launching a Persian version. Both companies say they hope their efforts will improve access to information and communication

Amid economic woes, stagnant growth, and a management shakeup, onetime social-networking pioneer MySpace has announced that it has cut its head count by slightly under 30 percent in what the company calls a return to start-up culture. Well, that's a nice way to put it. Reports had circulated that MySpace would be laying off nearly half its employees in a move that had delayed its relocation to a bigger office space in the Los Angeles area. With the layoffs, MySpace's full-time US employee roster will be down to 1,000 people — which means somewhere just south of 500 jobs were cut. MySpace said that the layoffs are evenly distributed across all US divisions of the company. Since MySpace also operates a number of offices overseas, it's not yet clear how they were affected (if at all), and representatives declined comment as to whether international offices would be affected down the road

19.06.2009

Rats are able to play the odds in a gambling task designed by scientists to test the biology of addiction. In the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, researchers describe how the rodents developed a strategy in a timed task where they make choices to earn treats. The rodents avoided high-reward options because these carried high risks of punishment — their sugar pellet supply being cut off for a period

The German lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, has adopted a new set of laws making it possible to block child pornography Web sites. The legislation requires Web hosting companies to post stop signs when internet users try to access child pornography sites. The bill still has to go through several stages before it becomes law. The motion has been the subject of a protest petition, with opponents claiming it is a first step towards Internet censorship. The petition has gathered 130,000 signatures calling for the bill to be scrapped

The National Security Agency is facing renewed scrutiny over the extent of its domestic surveillance program, with critics in Congress saying its recent intercepts of the private telephone calls and e-mail messages of Americans are broader than previously acknowledged, current and former officials said. The agency's monitoring of domestic e-mail messages, in particular, has posed longstanding legal and logistical difficulties, the officials said

Personal data including the signatures of recipients has been exposed to those tracking deliveries on the Parcelforce web site, the BBC has discovered. A failure in the system allowed people using the mail tracing service access to the name, postcode and signature of various addressees. The breakdown put Parcelforce at risk of breaching data protection rules. The delivery service, part of the Royal Mail Group, apologised. It said the problem had been resolved

18.06.2009

In a dangerous judgment for British bloggers and whistleblowers, a British court has ruled (absurdly) that because blogging itself is a public activity, bloggers have no reasonable expectation of privacy regarding their identities, and newspapers are allowed to publish their identities if they can find them by fair or foul means. A British police detective who recently won the Orwell Prize for his excellent political writing used his blog to write highly critical accounts of police activities and unethical behavior, making very powerful enemies in the process. A well-funded newspaper with powerful connections quickly heard of his blog and decided it was absolutely vital to expose his identity using an investigative journalist. Like any good newspaper, the blogger anonymized the people and the locations in all the cases he discussed on his blog, but the newspaper alleges these were not sufficiently anonymised and complains that they could work out the identities, though British newspapers don't complain that they are allowed to publish the identities of men who are falsely accused of rape and cleared in court. The newspaper also helpfully contacted the blogger's employer, and his job is now threatened — via Slashdot

A black hole created by Israeli scientists won't destroy Earth, but it could make our planet just a little bit less noisy. Using Bose-Einstein condensates, the scientists created a black hole for sound. The new research could help scientists learn more about true black holes and help confirm the existence of as-yet to be discovered Hawking radiation

An international group of scientists has developed a polymer-based solar cell with an ability not yet seen in similar cells: almost every single photon it absorbs is converted into a pair of electric-charge carriers, and every one of those pairs is collected at the cell's electrodes

Weather balloons may soon provide the first affordable broadband Internet access to the one-billion-strong African mass market. Accountant Timothy Anyasi and petroleum engineer Collins Nwani, both Nigerian-born serial entrepreneurs based in the US, have secured exclusive rights to market a type of near-space technology — developed by American telecommunications company Space Data — throughout the African continent

17.06.2009

The US Patent and Trademark Office has announced that it will revoke an illegitimate patent on Internet subdomains as a result of the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF) Patent Busting Project campaign. US Patent No 6,687,746, now held by Hoshiko, LLC, claimed to cover the method of automatically assigning Internet subdomains, like action.eff.org for the parent domain eff.org. Previous patent owner Ideaflood used this bogus patent to demand payment from website hosting companies offering personalised domains, such as LiveJournal, a social networking site where each of its three million users may have their own subdomain

Fixed-line telephone users will pay £6 a year to fund the rollout of superfast broadband across the country, the government said today as it launched its Digital Britain report into the future of the media landscape. A 50p-a-month levy on every copper telephone line will help pay for next-generation broadband for 90% of the population

Caving to public pressure, China on Tuesday said that use of its controversial Green Dam Youth Escort software is not required, though all PCs sold on the mainland will come with it pre-installed. China's turnaround comes as public outcry over the Green Dam Web filtering software struck a nerve both inside and outside China. Last week, the Chinese government mandated that as of 1 July, all PCs sold in the country must have the Green Dam software to block pornographic and violent Web sites. The public fought back, claiming the software could also block users from viewing political content and censor other content. Some opponents also contend that the software can create security vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers. An official with China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology who wouldn't reveal his name told The Associated Press that the use of the Green Dam Youth Escort software is not compulsory

New research shows small native animals in the Northern Territory seem to benefit from the presence of dingoes. Dr Mike Letnic from the University of Sydney has studied areas in central Australia on either side of a dingo fence. He found that rather than reducing the numbers of small native animals, dingoes seem to encourage them to flourish because dingoes suppress predators such as foxes

16.06.2009

Octopus and squid can hear. The discovery resolves a century-long debate over whether cephalopods, the group of sea creatures that includes octopus, squid, cuttlefish and nautiluses, can hear sounds underwater. Compared to fish, octopus and squid do not appear to hear particularly well. But the fact they can hear raises the possibility that these intelligent animals may use sound to catch prey, communicate with one another or listen out for predators

Anti-piracy groups and lawyers across Europe are unmovable — they say that since they logged a copyright infringement from a particular IP address, the bill payer is responsible. Now a court in Rome has decided that on the contrary, an IP address does not identify an infringer, only a particular connection

The Australian communications regulator says it will fine people who hyperlink to sites on its blacklist, which has been further expanded to include several pages on the anonymous whistleblower site Wikileaks. Wikileaks was added to the blacklist for publishing a leaked document containing Denmark's list of banned web sites. The move by the Australian Communications and Media Authority comes after it threatened the host of online broadband discussion forum Whirlpool last week with a $11,000-a-day fine over a link published in its forum to another page blacklisted by ACMA — an anti-abortion web site

As the embattled government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appears to be trying to limit Internet access and communications in Iran, new kinds of social media are challenging those traditional levers of state media control and allowing Iranians to find novel ways around the restrictions. Iranians are blogging, posting to Facebook and, most visibly, coordinating their protests on Twitter, the messaging service. Their activity has increased, not decreased, since the presidential election on Friday and ensuing attempts by the government to restrict or censor their online communications

15.06.2009

If you've ever thought those tiny disclaimers on premium SMS services were irresponsible and deceptive, you're not alone — the ACCC is now hunting down advertisers who promote such services without making it clear what sort of fiscal hole the purchaser is digging for themselves. Back in May the ACCC announced new regulations for premium SMS providers, but it is already cracking down on the advertising of such services. Last week it announced two prosecutions relating to inadequate disclosure of terms as acting chairman Peter Kell

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