Thursday, August 1, 2013

TechEye

TechEye

Link to TechEye - Latest technology headlines

UK to ban Google Glass behind the wheel

Posted: 01 Aug 2013 04:31 AM PDT

The British Department of Transport has announced that it is in favour of a ban on Google Glass behind the wheel.

A spokesperson told the Telegraph that drivers need to give their full attention to the road and they should not behave in a way that stops them from observing what is happening on the road.

"We are aware of the impending rollout of Google Glass and are in discussion with the police to ensure that individuals do not use this technology while driving," the spokesperson said.

He added that the Department of Transport views Google Glass as something that falls under the category of careless or distracted driving.

Legislators across the pond are pondering the same problem. However, since the USA is all about personal freedoms, banning anything usually doesn’t go down well with some members of the public, especially in parts of the country where you can buy a confederate flag at any petrol station.

Google told CNET that it is still “early days” for Google Glass and that the company is thinking very carefully about how to design Glass, because technology “always raises new issues”. One would think that looking at what’s in front of the car while driving is hardly a “new issue”.

Google has said in the past that it doesn’t view Google Glass and driving as a dangerous combination. There are possibilities developers could come up with apps that aid drivers rather than distract them. After all, head-up displays have been in fighter jets for decades and they are offered as pricey options in some high-end cars.

The problem is, although some might use Google Glass responsibly, it might prove too difficult for some of the public to drive without tweeting about the royal baby.

Microsoft files DMCA request at Microsoft

Posted: 01 Aug 2013 04:27 AM PDT

Microsoft has ordered Google to purge its own web pages from Google searches for infringing Redmond copyrights.

Microsoft filed a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown request against itself in a case which is being cited as proof that the big software companies are not looking closer at who they are issuing takedown notices to.

The Vole has been using software to automatically generate DMCA takedown requests to try to scrub the net of pirated content.

This leads to the accusation that casting the net too wide traps innocent webmasters.

False requests are providing comedy value as they become more common. The Vole has issued takedown requests against the US Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institutes of Health, TechCrunch, Wikipedia, BBC News, Bing.com, Google.com, and many others.

HBO had a crack at removing links to the open-source VLC media player.

It's being driven by the usual suspects. Big Content outfits like Microsoft, the Recording Industry Association of America, NBC, and Walt Disney.

Google says that it used to receive around 225,000 DMCA requests per week and now it gets 3.5 to 4.5 million a week.

Between January and July 2013, Google erased more than 100,000,000 - that's 100 million - links from the web as a result of DMCA takedown requests. This is twice the number of links Google wiped in 2012.

Google polices the DMCA takedown requests but it only rejects three percent.

It was Google which saved Microsoft's butt when its software tried to delete the six Office solutions pages from the search list.

A red faced Vole told TorrentFreak Google's online form requires identification of both the copyrighted content being infringed and the website address of the infringement.

A vendor properly listed six URLs as Microsoft copyrighted content that was being infringed, but then inadvertently copied and pasted those same six URLs in the field to identify the locations of infringement. 

Google and Starbucks join forces

Posted: 01 Aug 2013 04:23 AM PDT

Friends of the UK taxpayer, Google and Starbucks have decided that they have more in common than an Irish tax-haven.

Starbucks has said it has partnered with Google that will allow it to offer its customers a super-fast method of shipping funds overseas a faster wi-fi service.

In August, Starbucks stores will start getting up to 10 times faster network and wi-fi speeds. And over the next 18 months, Starbucks will convert more than 7,000 US stores to the upgraded service.

It is not clear when they will ship the service to off-shore branches.

Starbucks and Google want to work together to co-develop the next generation of Starbucks' digital network.

It is not clear what the deal is costing Google and Starbucks. No doubt someone will write it off somewhere. 

EFF calls for war on patent trolls

Posted: 01 Aug 2013 03:24 AM PDT

Civil rights group the EFF is whipping up a mob armed with pitchforks and torches to purge patent trolls from under the bridges of the IT industry.

The EFF's mob includes a rabid priest, the Application Developers Alliance, Ask Patents, Engelberg Centre on Innovation Law & Policy at NYU School of Law, Engine Advocacy, Public Knowledge, PUBPAT, and the Samuelson Law, Technology and Public Policy Clinic at Berkeley Law. We made the bit about the rabid priest up.

In a statement, the outfit said it was leading a group of organisations and law schools to launch a new online resource called Trolling Effects.

The big idea is that it will crowdsource data, including demand letters, with the goal of enabling people to tell patent trolls to go forth and multiply.

EFF Activist Adi Kamdar said patent trolls will no longer be able to hide under a cloak of legal darkness.

"Trolling Effects will shine a light on companies that abuse the patent system to shake down innovators," Kamdar said.

Patent trolls use the threat of expensive and lengthy patent litigation to extort settlements from innovators large and small. Since the majority of these threats never become lawsuits, most of the threatening letters never show up in public dockets.

Trolling Effects aims to provide transparency and allow demand-letter recipients to post the documents online, find letters received by others, and research who is really behind the threats.

The site also features comprehensive guides to the patent system and a blueprint for patent reform. Journalists, academics, and policy makers will find the site a resource for researching the patent system.

Kamdar said there was a difference between a company that asserts their patents in order to protect a product and a company that does so solely to extort money through threats of litigation.

Since there is a chance that the claim you've received is legitimate, Trolling Effects will come in handy.

"You can search our database by sender or patent number to see if there have been any claims similar to yours. Trolls distribute their patents among a network of shell companies in order to deliberately make it difficult to track who owns what," he said. 

Michael Dell's private buy-out in trouble

Posted: 01 Aug 2013 03:14 AM PDT

Tin box shifter Michael Dell and Silver Lake's $24.4 billion bid to take Dell private is in trouble.

The company's special committee rejected their request to change the voting rules in exchange for them offering $150 million more.

On the back of the news Dell shares fell more than four percent to a dismal $12.28, their lowest level since news of the takeover broke in January.

According to Reuters, the special committee, set up by Dell's board to assess whether shareholders were getting the best deal, refused to make changes the voting rules to make it easier for the Dell / Silverlake deal to go through.

Michael Dell thinks that the deal will collapse unless there are changes to the voting laws similar to what Mugabe managed in Zimbabwe.

At present, the buyout must be approved by a majority of all Dell shares, excluding the 15.7 percent stake owned by Dell and his chums.

The buyout group last week raised its offer by 10 cents per share on the condition that the deal goes through if approved by a majority of the shares that are actually voted.

This is because the two attempts that Dell has had pushing the deal through with shareholders did not have enough votes supporting the deal.

Dell's problem is that uncounted votes are counted as a "no".

The consortium estimated that in the latest tally, about 27 percent of Dell's shares had not been voted and were therefore counted as "no" votes under the current voting standard.

Alex Mandl, the special committee's chairman, said that they were not going to give Dell what he wanted on voting, it was prepared to bring the voting date forward.

Reuters claimed that the special committee would be willing to push the record date to 10 August for the vote to be held on 10 September. 

Aussie teen rocks Apple secrecy

Posted: 01 Aug 2013 02:59 AM PDT

Apple is trying to plug the source of a leak exposed by a teen from Australia.

Sonny Dickson is causing Apple some serious grief by leaking prototypes of its products online weeks, if not months, before they are officially unveiled.

Dickson also is making a fortune by selling off some of the kit he gets his paws on.

For example, Dickson posted a snap of an iPhone 5 battery before the phone's launch. The battery and specifications listed on it turned out to be true.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Apple seems to have been unable to stop him because he is not an employee or a worker from one of its suppliers' factories.

He does have some strong contacts who seem ready to leak Apple information to him.

Dickson said that he also spent his time uncovering upcoming features in Apple operating systems by trawling through developer code for signs engineers have left behind.

What is interesting is that Dickson is doing what the tech press used to do before it became completely owned by NDAs and press offices. One blogger who knows Dickson said that he had made a name for himself in the trade of Apple-owned material "which no one else would post online".

In other words the formal tech press is too scared to annoy Apple by setting its hacks to work doing the same sort of thing.

Dickson has connections with Apple's Asia supply chain which appear to be even better than Digitimes. He got this by hanging out on online forums or on Chinese social networking websites like Weibo.com. He uses Google translate to deal with the language barrier.

He has even managed to get his paws on internal Apple training videos and details about the iPhone 5's battery, its motherboard, Lightning cable and nine-pin connector, and other components before their unveiling.

His latest leak was a few snaps of a casing of a cheaper, plastic iPhone that he said would come in different colours.

Dickson stopped selling prototypes directly after one of his contacts warned that Apple's global security team was about to start an investigation.

He got rid of all his prototypes before there was a knock on the door. 

Top smartphone players own up to dodgy tin - except Apple

Posted: 31 Jul 2013 07:15 AM PDT

Top smartphone makers have released statements acknowledging they may be using tin mined illegally or among very poor working conditions on Bangka Island, Indonesia in their devices - with one noticeable exception, Apple.

Green pressure group Friends of the Earth has been campaigning for some time now about Bangka Island tin mining which it says destroys tropical forests, kills coral, and wrecks lives in the community. Nokia, Sony, Blackberry, Motorola, Samsung and LG have all made statements on the region, acknowledging possible serious problems in the supply chain.

As is quite typical of early-stage Apple crisis management, it has not said a word.

Manufacturers are committing to "urgent action" to tackle problems in Bangka, leaving Apple by itself among the top brands to make a statement. 24,000 Apple customers are demanding answers.

A Friends of the Earth investigation found that, in 2011, unregulated and dangerous tin mining has lead to an average of one death per week on the island, while there are also "common" reports of child labour in unofficial mines.

Additionally, silt from this tin mining is killing coral reefs and seagrass, FotE claims, driving away fish from the area, a vital local food source. Farmers are also reportedly struggling to grow crops on acidic soil, itself the product of clearing forests for tin mining.

Samsung said in a statement: "We take all of these matters very seriously and have been engaging with Friends of the Earth and the broader electronics industry on this issue for some time. We are also undertaking a thorough investigation of our supply chain in the region to better understand what is happening, and what part we play."

Samsung and other manufacturers made clear that they do not have direct relationships with suppliers from Bangka Island, but recognise that it is likely tin from the area does find its way into their products - as it is one of the biggest sources for tin on the planet.

Sony said some Electronics Industry Citizenship Coalition members, including itself, are holding discussions on starting joint efforts about sustainability, and looking at the impact of Indonesian tin productions, in partnership with the Sustainable Trade Initiative, the International Tin Research Institute and Friends of the Earth.

The full statements are available here (PDF).

An Apple spokesperson directedTechEye to the company's Supplier Responsibility page, where it says: "Bangka Island, Indonesia, is one of the world's principal tin-producing regions. Recent concerns about the illegal mining of tin from this region prompted Apple to lead a fact-finding visit to learn more. Using the information we've gathered, Apple initiated an EICC working group focused on this issue, and we are helping to fund a new study on mining in the region so we can better understand the situation."

But FOE insisted initial pressure on Apple from Friends of the Earth was what resulted in the company setting up an industry stakeholder group to discuss urgent action about the problem.

"Yet its current policy is to refuse to acknowledge that iPhones and iPads contain tin mined in devastating conditions," Friends of the Earth said in a statement.

Pfc. Bradley Manning faces 136 years in military custody

Posted: 31 Jul 2013 07:13 AM PDT

Pfc. Bradley Manning, who handed 700,000 secret documents to transparency website Wikileaks, has been cleared of 'aiding the enemy' - but still faces a maximum sentence of 136 years in military jail.

He was convicted Tuesday for 19 of the 21 charges he faced, including five counts of espionage and five of theft. In court, military judge Colonel Denise Lind declared Manning was "guilty" over and over again as the charges were listed, the Guardian reports.

The guilty verdicts included seven out of eight counts brought under the Espionage Act. He was accused of disclosing Afghanistan and Iraq war logs, files on Guantanamo, and embassy cables with "reason to believe such information could be used to the injury of the US or the advantage of any foreign nation".

Of the files Manning disclosed, one was the now-infamous 'Collateral Murder' video - which showed US military forces gunning down journalists and unarmed civilians in Iraq.

Manning was found guilty of causing US intelligence to be published online "wrongfully and wantonly", with the knowledge that this intelligence "is accessible to the enemy".

Although the over 1,000 days Manning has spent in detention - much of it in solitary confinement - will be deducted from the final sentence, it is likely he will be sentenced to much of his adult life in military jail. It will, in effect, not be much relief that he was not found guilty of 'aiding the enemy'.

Civil liberties activists, human rights campaigners and journalists claim that the severity of the charges and the treatment of Manning set an unprecedented shift in the way investigative journalism and whistleblowing is treated by the United States government.

Amnesty International's Widney Brown said the "government's priorities are upside down," adding it has "refused to investigate credible allegations of torture and other crimes under international law despite overwhelming evidence, yet they decided to prosecute Manning who it seems was trying to do the right thing - reveal credible evidence of unlawful behaviour by the government."

The American Civil Liberties Union warned the use of the Espionage Act serves as a warning shot to other potential whistleblowers and investigative journalists. "It seems clear that the government was seeking to intimidate anyone who might consider revealing valuable information in the future," the ACLU's Ben Wizner said.

In a statement, Julian Assange called the conviction a case of "national security extremism".

"It is a dangerous precedent," Assange said. "It is a short sighted judgment that can not be tolerated and it must be reversed. It can never be that conveying true information to the public is espionage. It's clear the last few years has seen the important backlash against the authoritarianism being exercised by the United States government by the national security extremism we see today. Bradley Manning's alleged actions appear to be part of that, a reaction against abuse. Edward Snowden's actions are clearly a reaction against national security extremism."

"It's a very interesting moment in time," Assange continued. "On the one hand we see a collapse in the rule of law, extrajudicial assassinations, secret trials. All those things that we in the west claim as important and essential to having a liberal democracy. On the other hand, there is a greater movement than ever before in trying to establish these rights. It's not clear which side is going to prevail, and that's what makes this moment such an important time".

Edward Snowden, meanwhile, is still in Moscow being denied the right to travel and the right to asylum. The trial of Bradley Manning will serve as validation that going through official channels in the United States or returning  to face trial would have severe implications for Snowden.

Bradley Manning's sentencing is expected to begin later today.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)