Technology News

Kilrah_il writes "After having a go with a Name-Your-Price album and an open-source video, Radiohead is again breaking new ground, this time with a fan-based initiative. A group of fans went to one of the band's shows in Prague, each shooting the show from a different angle. By editing it all together and adding audio from the original masters provided by the band, they have created a video of the show that is 'Strictly not for sale — By the fans for the fans,' adding, 'Please share and enjoy.' Can this be the future of live show videos?"

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harrymcc writes "I'm at IFA in Berlin — Europe's equivalent of the Consumer Electronics Show — and the massive halls are dominated by 3D TVs made by everyone from Sony, Samsung, and Panasonic to companies you've never heard of. The manufacturers seem pretty excited, but 3D has so many downsides — most of all the lousy image quality and unimpressive dimensionality effect — that I can't imagine consumers are going to go for this. 'As a medium, 3D remains remarkably self-trivializing. Virtually nobody who works with it can resist thrusting stuff at the camera, just to make clear to viewers that they’re experiencing the miracle of the third dimension. When Lang Lang banged away at his piano during Sony’s event, a cameraman zoomed in and out on the musical instrument for no apparent reason, and one of the company’s representatives kept robotically shoving his hands forward. Hey, it’s 3D — watch this!'"

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wiredmikey writes "Undersecretary of Defense William J. Lynn is being challenged by IT security experts who find it hard to believe that the incident which led to the Pentagon's recognizing cyberspace as a new 'domain of warfare' could have really happened as described. In his essay, 'Defending a New Domain,' Lynn recounts a widely-reported 2008 hack that was initiated when, according to Lynn, an infected flash drive was inserted into a military laptop by 'a foreign intelligence agency.' Critics such as IT security firm Sophos' Chief Security Adviser Chester Wisniewski argue that this James Bond-like scenario doesn't stand up to scrutiny. The primary issue is that the malware involved, known as agent.btz, is neither sophisticated nor particularly dangerous. A variant of the SillyFDC worm, agent.btz can be easily defeated by disabling the Windows 'autorun' feature (which automatically starts a program on a drive upon insertion) or by simply banning thumb drives. In 2007, Silly FDC was rated as Risk Level 1: Very Low, by security firm Symantec."

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After months of pressure from state attorneys general, Craigslist pulled its adult services listings offline over the Labor Day weekend. Visitors to the site were greeted with a black bar with the word "censored" in white text (as seen to the right) where the link to the adult services listings would normally be.

The adult services listings have been a perpetual source of concern for law enforcement, including numerous state attorneys general, who have said that listings facilitate prostitution and that children are often victimized by the ads. Craigslist originally had an Erotic Services section, but shut it down in May 2009 in response to pressure from law enforcement. The company had previously attempted to stave off criticism by verifying listings over the phone and working with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, but decided that having an entire section of the site devoted to the sex trade was a bad idea. Shortly after the erotic services section was yanked, it was replaced with the adult services section.

The new section, which required credit card payments for listings that were reviewed by moderators before going live, failed to mollify critics. The attorney general of Connecticut and 37 of his colleagues across the country subpoenaed the classified site over what they described as its brothel business. In late August, Kansas attorney general Steve Six called on Craigslist once again to shut down adult services, saying that the site had not done enough to fight "illegal sexual activity on the Internet."

At this time, it's not clear whether craigslist is going to get out of the adult services business altogether. The classifieds giant has remained silent so far, not offering any rationale for its move. If this does indeed mark the end of the line for the adult services section on Craigslist, it doesn't mean that all adult services ads will magically vanish; they're likely to migrate to other parts of the site. That said, the attorneys general will no doubt view the apparent shutdown of the adult services section as a victory in their war against the online sex trade.

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Trailrunner7 writes "There's an unpatched vulnerability in Internet Explorer 8 that enables simple data-stealing attacks by Web-based attackers and could lead to an attacker hijacking a user's authenticated session on a third-party site. The flaw, which a researcher said may have been known since 2008, lies in the way IE8 handles CSS. The vulnerability can be exploited through an attack scenario known as cross-domain theft, and researcher Chris Evans originally brought the problem to light in a blog post in December. At the time, all of the major browsers were vulnerable to the attack, but since then, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera all have implemented a simple defense mechanism. The upshot of this is that if a victim has visited a given Web site, authenticated himself to the site, and then visits a site controlled by an attacker, the attacker would have the ability to hijack the user's session and extract supposedly confidential data. This attack works on the latest, fully patched release of IE8."

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eldavojohn writes "Google's Buzz service will cost the company $8.5 million in settling a class action lawsuit related to the privacy debacle from the days after its release. Ars reports: 'In the proposed settlement submitted to the court this week, Google agreed to make efforts to better educate Buzz users on issues of privacy and the particular privacy features that Buzz offers. Additionally, Google also agreed to pay out $8.5 million to a fund which will be disbursed as cy pres awards for organizations that focus on Internet privacy policy or education.' In other words, the victims (Buzz users) won't see any of that money, but it will be used to promote healthy Internet privacy policies." Several readers have also noted that Google has simplified its privacy policy, condensing a number of product-specific policies into one and adding a privacy tools page in an effort to make everything more easily understood.

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The Associated Press didn't need any help from a bunch of unshowered bloggers pecking away at their keyboards from the basement offices in which they play "reporter," thank you very much. Now it knows better.

At the AP's 2009 annual meeting, Chairman Dean Singleton reminded his audience (read the speech) that the AP and its members "are the source of most of the news content being created in the world today." The collective remains "the gold standard of newsgathering and reporting throughout the world." And with 62 journalists killed, beaten, or detained in 2008, journalism "is not a profession for the fainthearted, or those who work in their pajamas."

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smellsofbikes writes "Wired has a short but pithy interview with Simon Singh about his defense against a libel suit brought by the British Chiropractic Association, in which he spent more than $200,000 and emerged victorious."

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An Apple event means lots of new announcements. Almost the entire iPod line got updated, Apple TV got a serious makeover, and iTunes 10 got... something. But we also covered a patent suit, some lessons learned from Delicious Library 2, and a rumor about an iPhone revision. Read on for the roundup:

Microsoft cofounder drops patent bomb on Apple, Google, Facebook: Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen has filed a lawsuit against 11 tech companies for violations of his current company's patents that cover basic Internet concepts. The list includes Google, Facebook, and Apple... but not Microsoft.

Hands-on photos, observations of new iPods, Apple TV: Following the fall Apple media event, Ars got some hands-on time with the new iPod touch, iPod nano, iPod shuffle, and Apple TV. We have some up-close and personal photos to share with you, as well as extra product details that we got out of the Apple representatives.

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pickens writes "The NY Times weekend magazine has a long profile, well worth reading, of self-described 'working actor' William Shatner. He began acting at age 6 and at one point in the late 1950s was mentioned in the same breath as his contemporaries Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, and Robert Redford — until, without explanation, his career faded before it bloomed. Shatner, now 79, pulls no punches in his memories of the Star Trek years. 'I never thought it'd become a big deal, just 13 episodes and out,' says Shatner. 'I didn't think I was hard to get along with. There were a few disaffected actors who came in once a week. I had nothing to do with them. Friendly! I was working seven days a week, learning 10 pages of dialogue a day. They had one line!' Which was the beginning of the William Shatner character. 'They said I was this William Shatner character, and I figured I had to be it. Pompous, takes himself seriously, hardheaded.' Shatner said that that character evolved slowly, until one day he realized he couldn’t change it. 'So I played it. But I didn’t see it. That character doesn’t seem like me to me. I know the real William Shatner.'"

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The fallout from Google's Buzz social networking aggregator continues: the company has agreed to settle a class action lawsuit over concerns that the service's original configuration violated users' privacy. While Google has made numerous changes to the service since its February launch and maintains that it did no wrong, the company has agreed to pay out $8.5 million to end the litigation.

Buzz launched in early February to a lukewarm reception, which was quickly followed by an enormous controversy over concerns that the default settings revealed private information. At the heart of the problem was an auto-follow feature meant to facilitate quick adoption. Users quickly found, however, that it could reveal their Google accounts to people they'd like to avoid. Journalists were concerned that confidential sources could be revealed to the public, while one woman noted that her private Google account was auto-followed by her abusive ex-husband.

Google worked quickly to make changes, turning the auto-follow feature off in favor of recommendations, and making some features easier to opt out of. Still, it wasn't long before a federal class-action suit was filed on behalf of all Gmail users who were automatically opted-in to the Buzz service.

Google has also faced criticism from advocacy groups like EPIC and the EFF, US lawmakers, and foreign governments.

In the proposed settlement submitted to the court this week, Google agreed to make efforts to better educate Buzz users on issues of privacy and the particular privacy features that Buzz offers. Additionally, Google also agreed to pay out $8.5 million to a fund which will be disbursed as cy pres awards for organizations that focus on Internet privacy policy or education.

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theodp writes "The winners of the childhood obesity infographic design contest sponsored by GOOD and First Lady Michelle Obama's Let's Move! initiative are in, and the overall winner calls out Sony's PlayStation as a major milestone on its timeline of childhood obesity (together with Coke, Pepsi, mall food courts, fructose and high sugar tariffs, TV, McDonald's, and other fast food). Somewhat ironically, the First Lady's other anti-childhood obesity efforts include a $60,000 video game contest."

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Would it be sad to admit I was excited when our Move feature was pimped on the official True Blood twitter account? If so, chain me to the sad pole, because that was awesome. We went toe-to-toe with Sony's PlayStation Move for a week, and liked what we saw. Microsoft announced the price for Xbox Live was going less than the price of a cup of coffee a month, and the rage was intense.

There will also be a new official Xbox 360 controller, but right now we don't know if it will be better... or just different. This is what gamers were talking about this week.

P.S: go buy Ivy the Kiwi.

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neoflexycurrent writes "Three adult media entertainment producers filed suit Thursday in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois alleging copyright infringement against hundreds of anonymous defendants accused of trading videos using Bittorrent. This kind of action resembles the much-criticized mass litigation undertaken by the US Copyright Group against hordes of unknown accused Bittorrent users trading movies like The Hurt Locker. In this case, the subject matter promises to be more provocative."

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Samsung fires first Android-powered salvo at iPad with Galaxy Tab: Samsung is putting the iPad in its crosshairs with its new Android-powered Galaxy Tab touchscreen tablet. The well-specced device will launch in a few week in Europe, with the US and Asia to follow soon.

Chrome 7 shows off hardware acceleration, "Tabpose": Google's Chrome Web browser will soon gain hardware-accelerated graphics—the latest trend for Web browsers that has already shown up in early builds of Internet Explorer 9 and Firefox 4.

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RandyDownes sends word that Canonical has released the beta version of Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat). The release announcement boasts faster boot times, GNOME 2.31, and a speedier version of Evolution. In addition, "The Ubuntu Software Center has an updated look and feel, including the new 'Featured' and 'What's New' views for showcasing applications, and an improved package description view. You can now easily access your package installation history too." The release notes and download page are both available.

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An anonymous reader writes "Scammers and spammers have deluged the new Ping musical social network, created by Apple and built into the new version of iTunes. Sophos researchers have found that Ping is being overrun by scams and spam messages. 'Apple seems to have anticipated a certain degree of malfeasance, as profile pictures that you upload will not appear until approved by Apple. They are likely filtering for other offensive content as well, so they probably have means in place they could use to stop the spam.' It's ironic that the most common scams on Ping right now revolve around Apple's own iPhone." The Sophos blog post adds that Apple is doing their best to clamp down on the spam, manually deleting many of the offending messages for now. Reader Tootech adds that Facebook integration was quickly disabled, possibly because of blocked API access.

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Microsoft unveils shape-shifting Arc Touch Mouse: Microsoft has officially announced the $70 the Arc Touch Mouse. The device is available for presale now, starts shipping in December, and officially goes on sale in January.

New malware detects browser, shows fake malware warning page: There's a clever new piece of malware that goes to extreme lengths to pass itself off as genuine software.

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Hugh Pickens writes "The AP reports that Texas' attorney general, Greg Abbott, has opened an anti-trust investigation against Google spurred by complaints that the company has abused its power as the Internet's dominant search engine. The review appears to be focused on whether Google is manipulating its search results to stifle competition. European regulators already have been investigating complaints alleging that Google has been favoring its own services in its results instead of rival websites and several lawsuits have also been filed in the US that have alleged Google's search formula is biased. However Google believes Abbott is the first state attorney general to open an antitrust review into the issue."

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onreserve writes with an excerpt from a site dedicated to laws affecting wine: "[L]ast week, Australia signed an agreement with the European Union to comply with the geographical indicator (GI) system of the EU. The new agreement replaces an agreement signed in 1994 between the two wine powers and protects eleven of the EU drink labels and 112 of the Australian GI's. Specifically, this means that many of the wine products produced in Australia that were previously labeled according to European names, such as sherry and tokay, will no longer be labeled under these names. Wine producers in Australia will have three years to 'phase out' the use of such names on labels. Australian labels that will be discontinued include amontillado, Auslese, burgundy, chablis, champagne, claret, marsala, moselle, port, and sherry."

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