Schools have installed CCTV cameras and microphones in classrooms to watch and listen to pupils as young as four. The Big Brother-style surveillance is being marketed as a way to identify pupils disrupting lessons when teachers’ backs are turned. But data protection watchdog the Information Commissioner has warned the surveillance may be illegal and demanded to know why primary and secondary schools are using this kind of sophisticated equipment to watch children
The prevalence of American-made goods in Iran has led US officials to crack down on the cottage industry of smugglers in nearby Dubai who purchase everything from iPhones to Bratz dolls to sell in Iran. But the biggest share of HP printers, among the most visible of US goods here, come not through smugglers, but through a series of international transactions that enable HP to sidestep US sanctions
The Internet needs to be globally regulated if it is to have any chance of stopping scams such as security scareware
, a researcher has suggested. According to Mary Landesman of ScanSafe, the recent Federal Trade Commission (FTC) injunctions against two companies accused of distributing fake anti-virus programs is a step in the right direction but against a backdrop of widespread abuse
With millions of potential targets, BitTorrent sites are a great arena for scammers and spammers. Vertor is a new BitTorrent site that aims to eliminate these threats. Every torrent on the site is checked for viruses, DRM and password protected archives by Vertor’s software, and users are able to preview the contents of torrents before they download them
Text messaging is a wonderful business to be in: about 2.5 trillion messages will have been sent from cellphones worldwide this year. The public assumes that the wireless carriers’ costs are far higher than they actually are, and profit margins are concealed by a heavy curtain
Pop culture is finally hitting the eject button on the VHS tape, the once-ubiquitous home-video format that will finish this month as a creaky ghost of Christmas past. After three decades of steady if unspectacular service, the spinning wheels of the home-entertainment stalwart are slowing to a halt at retail outlets. On a crisp Friday morning in October, the final truckload of VHS tapes rolled out of a Palm Harbor, Florida, warehouse run by Ryan J Kugler, the last major supplier of the tapes
Last month, Microsoft’s market share in the browser dropped below 70% for the first time in eight years, while Mozilla broke the 20% barrier for the first time in its history. Initial data sets provided by Net Applications suggest that the Internet Explorer will drop once again significantly in December to below 69% and Mozilla will climb above 21%. IE8 is just around the corner, but current market share data suggests that Microsoft has no effective tool to stop the bleeding at this time — and Mozilla can pick up two out of every three users Microsoft surrenders
The heat source is a pair of headlights. A car door alarm signals emergencies. An auto air filter and fan provide climate control. But this contraption has nothing to do with transportation. It is a sturdy, low-cost incubator, designed to keep vulnerable newborns warm during the first fragile days of life. Unlike the notoriously high-maintenance incubators found in neonatal intensive care units in the United States, it is easily repaired, because all of its operational parts come from cars. And while incubators can cost $40,000 or more, this one can be built for less than $1,000
Microsoft issued a reprieve for Windows XP. To promote adoption of its new Windows 7 OS, Microsoft planned to make Windows XP unavailable in February. Now, Microsoft will allow Windows XP licenses to be received until 30 May. Many businesses had stuck with Windows XP rather than upgrade to Windows Vista due to incompatibility issues
The internet was supposed to bring vast choice for customers, access to obscure and forgotten products and a fortune for sellers who focused on niche markets. But a study of digital music sales has posed the first big challenge to this long tail
theory: more than 10 million of the 13 million tracks available on the internet failed to find a single buyer last year. The idea that niche markets were the key to the future for internet sellers was described as one of the most important economic models of the 21st century when it was spelt out by Chris Anderson in his book The Long Tail in 2006. But a study by Will Page, chief economist of the MCPS-PRS Alliance, a not-for-profit royalty collection society, suggests that the niche market is not an untapped goldmine and that online sales success still relies on big hits
Previously thought to be limited to HTTP and HTTPs web traffic, the touted Australian Internet filter will also target P2P traffic. In response to a comment posted by a user on his department’s blog, Broadband Minister Stephen Conroy has admitted that BitTorrent filtering will be attempted during upcoming trials
Sharing a movie with an insensitive eight-armed animal may not be every woman’s perfect date. Renata Pronk did it for science, and made two significant discoveries. Her unsettling news for Christmas revellers preparing to tuck into seafood platters is that octopuses can watch television and understand at least some of what they see. Discriminating viewers, however, they enjoy only high-definition programs. In a second finding, the Macquarie University marine biology researcher resolved a long scientific debate, discovering that octopuses, despite their intelligence, lack individual personalities
Internet and phone communications between Europe, the Middle East, and Asia have been seriously disrupted after submarine cables were severed. It is thought the FLAG FEA, SMW4, and SMW3 lines, near the Alexandria cable station in Egypt, have all been cut. A fault was also reported on the GO submarine cable 130km off Sicily. Experts warned that it may be days before the fault is fixed and said the knock on effect could have serious repercussions on regional economies
A new working model of the mysterious 2,000-year-old astronomical calculator, dubbed the Antikythera Device, has been unveiled, incorporating the most recent discoveries announced two years ago by an international team of researchers
A Winnipeg business owner is on the hook for a $52,000 phone bill after his voice-mail system was hacked and hundreds of calls were made to Bulgaria. Alan Davison, who owns HUB Computer Solutions, noticed something was wrong when feature 36
— a message unknown to him — kept popping up on his phone
Toshiba said Thursday that it will show off a new line up of NAND-flash-based solid state drives with the industry’s first 2.5-inch 512GB SSD. The drive is based on a 43 nanometer Multi-Level Cell NAND and claims to offer a high level of performance and endurance for use in notebooks as well as gaming and home entertainment systems
In a detailed open letter to Senator Conroy, the System Administrators Guild of Australia (SAGE-AU) said today that it couldn’t support the proposed net filtering scheme on technical grounds
Microsoft has released a critical security patch to plug vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer, a move that comes amid malicious attackers taking advantage of the security flaws
Today, Yahoo upped the ante when it comes to protecting search engine users’ privacy, announcing a new data retention policy providing for anonymisation of search queries — as well as page views, page clicks, ad views and ad clicks — after 90 days. This announcement comes on the heels of Google’s announcement in September that it would be anonymising its logs after 9 months
Yahoo has began weaving social-networking features into its popular free email service as it vies to be the preferred launching point for internet surfers. Yahoo says it is providing tools that let people use its email service to build interactive communities based on friends and interests
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