Commonwealth Bank’s web banking service NetBank failed today, in what could be a hacker attack, leaving thousands of customers unable to access their accounts via the internet. A recorded message on the bank’s phone access line acknowledged the problem with NetBank, saying it was working to resolve this as a matter of emergency
. The bank blamed intermittent network issues
and gave no set time for the entire system to be restored
For seven months, The New York Times managed to keep out of the news the fact that one of its reporters, David Rohde, had been kidnapped by the Taliban. But that was pretty straightforward compared with keeping it off Wikipedia. Times executives believed that publicity would raise Mr Rohde’s value to his captors as a bargaining chip and reduce his chance of survival. Persuading another publication or a broadcaster not to report the kidnapping usually meant just a phone call from one editor to another, said Bill Keller, executive editor of The Times. But Wikipedia, which operates under the philosophy that anyone can be an editor, and that all information should be public, is a vastly different world. A dozen times, user-editors posted word of the kidnapping on Wikipedia’s page on Mr Rohde, only to have it erased. Several times the page was frozen, preventing further editing — a convoluted game of cat-and-mouse that clearly angered the people who were trying to spread the information of the kidnapping. Even so, details of his capture cropped up time and again, however briefly, showing how difficult it is to keep anything off the Internet — even a sentence or two about a person who is not especially famous. The sanitising was a team effort, led by Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, along with Wikipedia administrators and people at The Times. In an interview, Mr Wales said that Wikipedia’s cooperation was not a given. We were really helped by the fact that it hadn’t appeared in a place we would regard as a reliable source,
he said. I would have had a really hard time with it if it had
Amazon carried through with threats to end its relationship with online businesses based in North Carolina Friday, raising the stakes in a game of chicken over online sales taxes. The local businesses, which Amazon calls affiliates
, refer customers to the retailer through ads on their own Web sites. Typically, the ads recommend specific books or music. North Carolina lawmakers have proposed applying sales taxes to those transactions, something Amazon says would be unconstitutional. The company won’t specify how many affiliates it has in the state
When FreeLegoPorn.com began publishing pornographic images created with Lego toys, Lego acted quickly. The content available on the site consisted of animated mini-figures doing very explicit things. We were not amused,
says Peter Kjaer, an attorney for Denmark-based Lego. Lego didn’t go to court. Instead it filed a complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organisation, which ruled in its favor. The domain registrar for FreeLegoPorn.com, GoDaddy.com, eventually shut down the site and transferred the domain name to Lego under ICANN rules. But it’s not just Lego and Verizon that are suffering. Green energy is a hot topic, so cybersquatters have been targeting wind and solar energy start-ups. And malicious sites can create havoc with a brand’s reputation. Cybersquatting activity rose by 18% last year, with a documented 440,584 cybersquatting sites in the fourth quarter of last year alone, according to MarkMonitor’s annual Brandjacking Index report. And WIPO cited an 8% jump in dispute filings in 2008, to 2,329 complaints — a new record. Now, ICANN is preparing to open a potentially unlimited number of new top-level domains as early as the first quarter of 2010 — via Slashdot
This community has complained long and loudly about the very one-sided approach to copyright, and the not-so-slow erosion of the public domain. On top of the corporate lobbying to remove increasingly larger parts of the public domain, there is now an growing pattern whereby works are directly taken from the public domain and effectively stolen by a single company leveraging protections provided under copyright law. The Register’s article is based on a paper by Jason Mazzone at the Brooklyn Law School, which starkly details the problems that are now becoming evident as entities grab control over public domain works. The paper proposes some possible solutions, such as amending the Copyright Act. From the abstract: Copyright law itself creates strong incentives for copyfraud. The Copyright Act provides for no civil penalty for falsely claiming ownership of public domain materials. There is also no remedy under the Act for individuals who wrongly refrain from legal copying or who make payment for permission to copy something they are in fact entitled to use for free. While falsely claiming copyright is technically a criminal offense under the Act, prosecutions are extremely rare. These circumstances have produced fraud on an untold scale, with millions of works in the public domain deemed copyrighted, and countless dollars paid out every year in licensing fees to make copies that could be made for free
— via Slashdot
Swiss adventurer Bertrand Piccard has unveiled a prototype of the solar-powered plane he hopes eventually to fly around the world. The vehicle, spanning 61m but weighing just 1,500kg, will undergo trials to prove it can fly through the night. Dr Piccard, who made history in 1999 by circling the globe non-stop in a balloon, says he wants to demonstrate the potential of renewable energies. The final version of the plane will try first to cross the Atlantic in 2012
A company based in Berkeley, CA, is developing lightweight, high-energy batteries that can use the surrounding air as a cathode. PolyPlus is partnering with a manufacturing firm to develop single-use lithium metal-air batteries for the government, and it expects these batteries to be on the market within a few years. The company also has rechargeable lithium metal-air batteries in the early stages of development that could eventually power electric vehicles that can go for longer in between charges
Apple Australia today confirmed it was directly selling unlocked iPhone 3GS devices in both the 16GB and 32GB models from its own outlets. The unlocked 16GB device will be sold at Apple stores for $879 while the 32GB model’s price tag has been at $1040
After The Pirate Bay defendants lost a high-profile copyright infringement trial in Sweden, they charged that the judge belonged to pro-copyright groups and was therefore biased against them. A Court of Appeals ruling today disagrees; there will be no retrial
The Federal Government has now set its sights on gamers, promising to use its internet censorship regime to block web sites hosting and selling video games that are not suitable for 15 year olds. Separately, the Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, has been nominated by the British ISP industry for its annual internet villain
award, competing alongside the European Parliament and French President Nicolas Sarkozy
Two major Australian university research units working independently said they were preparing to publish important quantum computing breakthroughs. Quantum computing is a field in its infancy, which promises incredibly quick calculations of momentous problems such as cracking every encryption system in use today. Research groups around the world are racing to produce practical quantum computing designs. A University of NSW senior scientist said the institution was close to publicising a major breakthrough involving a quantum computer that relied on atoms suspended in silicon. Another research group, at the University of Queensland, said it had become the first in the world to use a prototype quantum computer to calculate the energy of an atom
Google has made several enhancements to its anti-malvertising site to help its ad network customers prevent attempts to distribute malware through advertising. The web giant launched an initial custom search engine at the beginning of the year, which is designed to allow ad networks to perform quick background checks on prospective advertisers to minimise the risk of malware
In an effort to save money, a village in central Germany has opted to turn off its street lights. But residents have no need to be in the dark: Using a mobile phone and code, they can order lighting for up to 15 minutes
Aviation Week reports on a television special from the National Geographic Channel on what may have been the world’s first true stealth fighter, the Horten Ho 229, a wooden design that was to include a layer of carbon material sandwiched in the leading edge to defeat radar. Northrop Grumman, experts at stealth technology from their Tacit Blue and B-2 programs, have built a full-size replica of the airframe and tested it at their desert facilities where they determined that the design was indeed stealthy, and would have been practically invisible to Britain’s Chain Home radar system of WWII — via Slashdot
The company who also own’s Bethesda’s stable of powerhouse franchises now includes Doom, Quake, Wolfenstein, and RAGE. In a move that few, if any, saw coming, Zenimax Media today announced the acquisition of id Software, the legendary creator of the DOOM, Wolfenstein, and Quake
The Regional Court in Hamburg, Germany, has ruled that file-hosting service Rapidshare must proactively filter certain content. Music industry outfit GEMA asked the court to ban Rapidshare from making 5,000 tracks from its catalogue available on the Internet. The court estimated the value of the tracks at $34 million
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
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
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