Apple has been found guilty of willfully infringing on a predictive snooping
patent awarded to Opti Inc. in 2002. The company has been ordered to pay just over $19 million in compensation, despite its attempts to have the patent thrown out
Google Street View, the controversial web site that shows 360-degree street views of many of Britain’s cities does not breach the Data Protection Act, the information commissioner ruled today. Hundreds of people complained that their privacy was breached by the service, which launched last month for 25 cities and towns. Today the Information Commissioner’s Office rejected those complaints but said it would watch Google closely to ensure that it responded quickly to requests for the removal of images that identified individuals
T-Mobile USA has announced the first-of-its-kind embedded SIM for Machine-to-Machine solutions. Nearly the size of a head of a pin, the durable embedded SIM withstands challenging environmental factors such as temperature, humidity and motion to deliver reliable wireless connectivity. The embedded SIM is ideal for telematics and smart grid infrastructure solutions where environmental factors may reduce reliability and increase maintenance costs of removable SIM-based solutions. The embedded SIM preserves many of the benefits of a GSM-based SIM solution (authentication, encryption and storage), but at a fraction the size of the traditional SIM you’d find in a mobile phone. In addition to the much smaller size, the embedded SIM differs from today’s SIMs in that it’s built from silicon — not plastic
Yahoo is to close its personal web hosting site GeoCities later this year. In a statement, the firm says it will no longer be accepting new customers and will focus on helping customers build new relationships online
. Yahoo bought GeoCities for $3.57bn at the height of the dotcom boom in 1999. At its peak, GeoCities boasted millions of active accounts, but it has since fallen out of fashion, with users migrating to social networking sites
One of the biggest cases in file-sharing history ended last week with The Pirate Bay Four sentenced to huge fines and jail time. Today it is revealed that far from being impartial, the judge in the case is a member of pro-copyright groups — along with Henrik Pontén, Monique Wadsted and Peter Danowsky. There are loud calls for a retrial
Australia’s top science agency has walloped some of the world’s biggest industrial giants in the US patent courts to bring the country a pay check worth up to $1 billion over the next five to 10 years. The CSIRO has won its long-running battle to enforce a patent on technology used in Wi-fi connections that have become virtually ubiquitous in laptops and other devices around the world. Hewlett-Packard was the first of 13 companies to back down early this month when it opted to settle the patent dispute rather than take it before a jury trial in the US federal court. Alex Zelinsky, director of the science agency’s ICT Centre, today confirmed that all of its opponents had chosen to settle the case rather than go ahead with another trial
Germany’s cabinet has agreed a draft law to block access to child-porn web sites, Economy Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg said Wednesday. The government signed agreements last Friday with the country’s main Internet service providers (ISPs) — representing 75 percent of the German market — to block around 1,500 sites per day with illegal images of children. Internet users hoping to download child porn will instead be met with a large red stop
sign, warning of the impact of paedophilia on the victims. They will not have their personal details or IP addressed recorded
BT and other mobile broadband providers are blocking access to The Pirate Bay, as part of a self-regulation
scheme. BT Mobile Broadband users who attempt to access the notorious BitTorrent tracker site are met with a content blocked
message. The warning page states the page has been blocked in compliance with a new UK voluntary code
Microsoft’s biggest-ever Australian grant will help create social networks for the blind. Social networking websites and digitised libraries have become important sources of modern information, but until now they have been inaccessible to the 300,000 Australians who are blind or who have low vision. Microsoft has today announced its largest Australian software grant, valued at $6.7 million, to Vision Australia
A revolutionary Australian National University-developed propulsion system will be the first of its kind to be tested in space. The new type of rocket engine, called a plasma thruster is being modified to be launched within the next four years as part of a prototype satellite
Software giant Oracle is to buy server and software maker Sun Microsystems, the two companies announced late Monday. In a joint statement, Oracle said the transaction was valued at approximately US$7.4 billion, or US$5.6 billion net of Sun’s cash and debt. Sun’s stock will be bought at US$9.50 in cash per share. The deal has been unanimously approved by Sun’s board, but still needs to be approved by Sun’s shareholders and financial regulators, the companies said
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York is developing flexible nanotubes inserted under the skin to create a handheld display — inside your hand. They wirelessly receive data and display reminders and text messages, and the concept has also been broadened to suggest endlessly programmable digital tattoos, while Netherlands-based Royal Philips Electronics is also exploring the concept of the body as a platform for electronics and interactive skin technologies
— Slashdot
Chemist chain Terry White will use Pharmacy Direct to launch its web-based retail drug operations after its $20 million purchase of the online pioneer last week. Pharmacy Direct, which turns over $35-$40 million annually on prescription medicines and over-the-counter lines, faces a brighter future after a period in limbo. The NSW-based former mail-order pharmacy was sold by Wesfarmers for less than half the $48 million Coles paid for it in 2006, as part of Wesfarmers’ plan to shed its non-core retail assets. Coles originally bought Pharmacy Direct and its single warehouse-style store in Sydney’s Silverwater with the apparent aim of wedging the Pharmacy Guild’s campaign against locating chemists in supermarkets. The guild challenged the validity of the deal on pharmacy ownership rules, and the NSW Supreme Court ruled in its favour
Brewster Kahle’s Internet Archive has jumped on Google’s Authors Guild
settlement and asked to be included as a party defendant, claiming that they ought to get the same rights and protections from liability that Google will receive when the settlement is approved by federal court. From the Internet Archive’s letter to Judge Denny Chin: The Archive’s text archive would greatly benefit from the same limitation of potential copyright liability that the proposed settlement provides Google. Without such a limitation, the Archive would be unable to provide some of these same services due to the uncertain legal issues surrounding orphan books
— via Slashdot
He was James Bond’s go-to guy for inventions that included dagger-embedded shoes, radioactive lint and a deadly sofa that swallowed people. Now, Britain’s domestic spy agency — MI5 — is hunting for its very own Q
, of sorts. MI6’s sister organisation, which carries out surveillance on terror suspects inside Britain and gives security advice to the government, is searching for someone to lead its scientific work. Projects could include everything from developing counterterrorism technology to tackling a biological or chemical attack
Law enforcement officials are vastly expanding their collection of DNA to include millions more people who have been arrested or detained but not yet convicted. The move, intended to help solve more crimes, is raising concerns about the privacy of petty offenders and people who are presumed innocent. Until now, the federal government genetically tracked only convicts. But starting this month, the Federal Bureau of Investigation will join 15 states that collect DNA samples from those awaiting trial and will collect DNA from detained immigrants — the vanguard of a growing class of genetic registrants. The FBI, with a DNA database of 6.7 million profiles, expects to accelerate its growth rate from 80,000 new entries a year to 1.2 million by 2012 — a 15-fold increase. FBI officials say they expect DNA processing backlogs — which now stand at more than 500,000 cases — to increase
The risk to spacecraft from a collision with space debris could be reduced by equipping launchers with a gossamer-thin sail
. The idea is to deploy the sail after the rocket has released its payload to amplify the drag of the last vestiges of the atmosphere, and so force the rocket out of orbit. Rocket stages are a particular risk to spacecraft because they often contain large amounts of unused fuel, which can explode when sunlight heats the tank. Leaking fuel can also act like a mini-thruster, pushing the rocket into an orbit where it may cause a collision. One way to tackle the problem is to vent unused fuel in a controlled way, and drain power from the battery, but this is unlikely to eliminate all collisions
A court in Sweden has jailed four men behind The Pirate Bay, the world’s most high-profile file-sharing website, in a landmark case. Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde were found guilty of breaking copyright law and were sentenced to a year in jail. They were also ordered to pay $4.5m in damages. Record companies welcomed the verdict but the men are to appeal and Sunde said they would refuse to pay the fine. Due to outrage over the verdict, the Swedish Pirate Party has gained 3000 members in less than seven hours. It is now bigger than three of the seven parties represented in the Swedish parliament
Broadband operator Bahnhof is continuing to destroy the IP address details of its customers in an open and fully legal bid to undermine Sweden’s new anti-file sharing laws. Bahnhof CEO Jon Karlung, a vociferous opponent of the measures that came into force on 1 April, has said he is determined to protect the company’s clients. The new file sharing law is based on the European Union’s Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED) and allows courts to order internet operators to hand over details that identify suspected illegal file sharers. As such, the law enables Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to retain the IP addresses of file sharers. But ISPs also remain at liberty to destroy information about their users if they so wish
A sophisticated FBI-produced spyware programme has played a crucial behind-the-scenes role in federal investigations into extortion plots, terrorist threats and hacker attacks in cases stretching back at least seven years, newly declassified documents show
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