Modifying web pages before those get into customers hands and eyes is risky enough business. This week, two U.S. lawmakers have raised deep privacy concerns over cable service provider Charter Communication's intent on tracking its users' web traffic.
While Charter on the one hand has claimed they do not gather any information that can specifically pinpoint an individual, they have also confirmed that will alter advertisements on web pages that are more “catered” to the viewer – even though the person surfing the net could have no prior knowledge of this taking place behind the scenes.
The U.S. reps have complained with Charter making this an opt-out program, saying that a mere snippet is not enough to inform people about what is really going on. Some (perhaps many) of its users have taken some very reasonable exception to Charter's confession of Internet-usage stat gathering as a result.
The program, which has yet to launch, is one of several other such examples in which an ISP is looking to generate extra revenue by controlling what sort of sites and advertisements a customer sees. The problems that can arise as a result are plentiful, from depriving website owners of their own advertising revenue as well as not presenting an “honest” web page to a customer. With only a little abstraction, an ISP could theoretically modify any page they wish. Imagine if you were looking for an alternative provider for Internet access, only to have search queries take you nowhere except your current ISPs pages. Charter is entering some dangerous territory.
Known simply as the Asus C90S, this is the first product to be released on a new series of laptop barebones that the manufacturer is aiming at the mobile performance crowd.
Unlike conventional laptop computers, the C90S is an upgradeable laptop, meaning that the user is free to replace many of its core components including the processor and the graphics card. Possibly even more interesting than this is Asus' choice of platform, not quite the standard for a mobile system.
The Asus C90S is powered by Core 2 desktop processors rather than the 'Merom' mobile variety. That includes support for the 800MHz FSB Allendale models, as well as the 1066MHz FSB Conroe processors. It is possible, then, to configure the C90S with a Core 2 Extreme X6800 processor operating at 2.93GHz if you'd choose to do so, which certainly makes the C90S a very unique laptop, or should we say mobile desktop replacement.
Samsung’s OLED TVs are on their way for 2009, but the company has given us even more reason to get all smitten over the technology courtesy of their ultra-thin AMOLED notebook prototype. The system uses a 12-inch AMOLED (active matrix organic light-emitting diode) display that would match the resolution of a same-size LCD at 1280x768 but produce a much better picture.
The screen’s lack of any need for a backlight also allows for an extremely thin display. On top of that the prototype has a touch sensitive keypad too, making it far thinner than the world’s current record holder, the MacBook Air. I doubt this 12.1-inch beauty will hit the market anytime soon – if at all – but Samsung has already said they are planning to offer 14- and 15-inch OLED-based laptops as soon as 2009. (Image source: Engadget)
Google Maps’ Street View has become popular among drivers but courted controversy when it was found that the photos often displayed individuals on the street and inside buildings. Though many in the US have complained over potential privacy issues, no legal measures have been taken against it as it is considered to be in accordance with the law.
In the European Union, unsurprisingly, the search giant may face some hurdles for displaying ground level photos of the streets online. EU data protection supervisor Peter Hustinx said that if the service eventually is offered in European countries it could cause privacy problems under current legislation. Even before Hustinx made the comment to reporters, however, Google said that it had already begun testing a new feature which will blur people’s faces. Whether or not the measure will be enough to put regulators’ privacy concerns to rest remains to be seen.
If you are one of the XP SP3 users that are plagued by the non-stop rebooting, you can breathe a sigh of relief today. A third-party, who is a formerly security manager for Microsoft, has released a tool that will be able to detect the problem and hopefully fix it.
The tool will prompt you to install the fix once you use it only if it detects a problem, and is a miniscule 16k VBScript file making it easy to acquire. The problem seems to be related to a driver intended for Intel devices which is attempting to load on AMD based machines. The tool is, of course, available for free. If you are suffering from this problem, it's definitely worth snagging it. It is unfortunate that once again a third party has had to step in, due to Microsoft being content with waiting weeks or even longer to fix these glaring issues.
Overstock.com Takes Stand Against NY Sales Tax @ PC Magazine Senators OK $1 billion for online child porn fight @ News.com Gears of War 2 Four Player Co-op Confirmed @ ShackNews HP Fixing XP SP3 Problems @ eWeek See more articles and reviews.
Looks like RIM is seriously stepping up its game. Hot on the heels of its BlackBerry Bold announcement – its first major new model of the BlackBerry in more than a year – rumors are now rife that the company is planning to launch a touch-screen version of its popular wireless device in the third quarter of this year.
Dubbed Thunder, the device does completely away with the hardware keyboard and will be sold exclusively in the US through Verizon while Vodafone will be the exclusive agent abroad, according to a WSJ report. RIM has neither confirmed nor denied that the Thunder exists, but if the report is to be believed, and the device incorporates the Bold’s 3G and Wi-Fi capabilities, the product would be a direct rival to the iPhone.
The Eee 900 has been out for merely a week, but Digitimes is now reporting that an update is just around the corner. According to the report, Asus will launch its 8.9-inch Eee PC 901 on June 3 with a few noticeable differences exterior-wise, a Bluetooth module and the new Intel Atom chip.
Cosmetic enhancements include several metal alloy parts added to the casing, including on the screen hinge – which is also lacking the power button now – on the keyboard, and track pad. The Eee PC 901 will replace the Asustek logo with an Eee logo at the bottom of the display and on the top of the lid, perhaps confirming that the Eee brand is here to stay. One last thing worth noting is the Linux version of the Eee PC 901 will have more software applications added to it. Other than that, the specs are supposedly the same as with the 900, and it’ll go for somewhere under $650.
Comcast’s practice of interfering with peer-to-peer traffic is hardly news to anyone, but a new study has found that Cox Communications and Singapore’s StarHub have been meddling with their subscriber’s connections as well.
What is a bit more interesting – though not really that surprising – is that although Comcast defends its content blocking practices as “reasonable network management” that is done only on peak hours of Internet use, the report indicated that both Comcast and Cox blocked or delayed BitTorrent traffic at all times of the day.
Comcast’s content blocking has already led to various customer lawsuits and several hearings into proper network management conducted by the FCC, so these findings could spell even more trouble for the ISPs which must deal with the legal questions such activities brings up.
The iPhone is preparing itself to duplicate and propagate further, after the French company “Orange” announced it had worked up deals for many new countries. With the iPhone's popularity, growth of the user base in Europe has been stymied by it being introduced in only a few countries, leaving a huge market unavailable to Apple. Now, the company will be able to add Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Portugal, Egypt, Jordan and the Dominican Republic to the list of iPhone-toting countries.
Every month that goes by sees another handful of countries added to the same list as well, leaving Apple in a curious position of having a single device available all over the world. Five million sold might have been a milestone six months ago, but a year from now they could feasibly be celebrating 10 times that much in sales. Larger mobile providers like Nokia might change their stance on the iPhone in the coming years if the trend continues.
Microsoft has had their eyes set on low cost laptops for a while, telling the world they would work hard to get Windows XP functioning on the infamous XO units made by the OLPC project. Now, after a lot of controversy from both sides of the fence, Microsoft and the OLPC project are teaming up. The leader and founder of the project, Nicholas Negroponte, claims that partnering with Microsoft will give the project a broader acceptance in the community and get the platform a better chance of growing. That may be true, but considering the original aim for the laptop was to get low cost machines into the hands of children in developing countries, it almost seems like a step back.
On the other hand, the bottom line for Governments and others looking to deploy the machines will be cost. If Windows undercuts Linux, it may be a serious blow to the free and open platform the OLPC was founded upon.
Just last month, one of the senior execs for the OLPC company made a very public exit, citing disagreements with Negroponte and the direction the company was headed in. This deal was likely a big reason in that decision, and if the OLPC project continues to walk this path it's likely they will lose more people that don't want to see the project become just another Windows laptop.
Microsoft may be celebrating a milestone of their own for console sales, but how did the current number one console fare in light of the GTA IV release leaving them in the cold? Quite well, it seems, with the Nintendo Wii taking the number one place for console sales in April. The most recent figures put the Wii at 714,000 sales last month, which completely dwarfs Microsoft's and Sony's sales at around 188,000 each. Nintendo's handhelds units also exceeded the PS3 and Xbox 360 by an impressive amount, showing that Nintendo's current strategies are doing well.
Those are impressive figures given that no high profile games for the Wii came out in April, with which Nintendo gives partial credit to Mario Kart Wii. The numbers are likely to more favor Microsoft and Sony in May, as more high profile games are on the horizon for both of those consoles as opposed to the Wii.
With Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull hitting theaters next week, Microsoft and LucasArts are offering gamers and fans of the series alike an exclusive playable PC demo of its forthcoming action adventure title “LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures” for Windows.
Developed by the same team that created the LEGO Star Wars series, the game includes more than 60 playable characters and presents a humorous take on the first three cinematic adventures of Indiana Jones. The 464MB demo – which you can get from our download section – offers a taste of what gamers can expect from the full game when it hits stores early June.
by Jose Vilches on May 15, 2008, 4:48 PM | (7 comments)
Today, the Recording Industry Association of America was ordered to pay $107,834 as a result of a failed lawsuit against Tanya Andersen that accused her of illegal file sharing. The ruling marks what it is said to be the highest awarded compensation against the RIAA in terms of legal fees.
But the RIAA’s woes did not end there. In fact, the much bigger news concerns the infamous Jammie Thomas case, in which the jury found Thomas liable for infringement merely for “making available” 24 songs – even though there was no proof of distribution – and awarded the music industry $222,000. Well, as it turns out, the act of making music available online may not be a copyright violation after all.
The judge is now saying that he may have committed a “manifest error of law” in his jury instructions by overlooking controlling Eighth Circuit authority, the case of National Car Rental v. Computer Associates, which held that there can’t be a violation of the ‘distribution right’ without an actual dissemination of copies. Apparently, the judge is now considering granting a new trial.
This is a major setback for the RIAA which has been holding up the Thomas case over and over again as proof that “making available” is infringement. If the judge does decide to order a retrial, more proof may be needed in future lawsuits to establish a violation of copyright law by users of peer-to-peer file sharing networks.
by Jose Vilches on May 15, 2008, 3:18 PM | (4 comments)
Last month we published several leaked details about AMD’s next-generation graphics card lineup, but as we get closer to the launch the folks over at TG Daily have managed to get the scoop on AMD’s launch plan details for its upcoming HD 4800 series of graphics cards.
Contrary to last month’s rumors, the series will apparently debut in mid-June after all in the form of the Radeon 4850, which will boast 512 MB of GDDR3 memory, single-slot cooling, CrossFireX support, and a price tag between $189 and $219. This will be followed by the dual-slot cooled GDDR5 bearing HD 4870 and the HD 4870 X2 in mid-July, both priced between $249 and $279. You can check out the rest of the report for more information on features, specs and performance claims regarding these cards.
