The 16th Century Religious Wars And Today’s Copyright Monopoly Wars Have More In Common Than You Think

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21 January 2013
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People in power have always tried to prevent the common folk from obtaining knowledge that threatens their power. This happened in the 16th century, and it is happening now.

Information advantage has always equalled power.

The group in society that can control what the other groups know and don’t know will rise to power in every other aspect. Therefore, information technology has always been policed and even militarized to some extent, by any group that obtains the ability to control it.

It has been the case since the dawn of civilisation that some group has told everybody else what the world looks like, how it works, and what happens in it. (Usually, that group is placed at the centre of that particular world view in one way or another.) This continues today, with governments all over the world trying to put their spin of events on the news flow, putting themselves in a good light to literally get away with murder.

The quest for the net’s liberty is not a fight for some silly right to download free music. It is much larger than that: it breaks a hegemony that has stood for millennia — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Swartz, Assange, Manning, Dotcom: overreaction to online activism

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21 January 2013
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Much of the discussion following the death of Aaron Swartz relates to the issue of disproportionate prosecution.

Legal heavyweights and online activists discuss whether Massachusetts prosecutors were pursuing him overzealously, and the nature of Swartz’s alleged crimes when he downloaded 4 million articles from JSTOR, an archive to which he had legitimate access. Swartz faced up to 35 years in jail for downloading the articles. The prosecutor responsible for the pursuit of Swartz, Carmen Ortiz, last week tried to wash her hands of responsibility for his death.

Whatever the legal and procedural merits of Ortiz’s pursuit of Swartz, aggressive over-prosecution is normally the fate of anyone deemed to be an online activist.

Bradley Manning faces life imprisonment for leaking evidence of US war crimes, should the US military ever cease regularly delaying his trial. Manning was even found by a US military judge to have been systematically mistreated while in custody.

Barrett Brown currently faces 45 years in prison for, inter alia, posting a URL and quoting a Fox News threat to kill Julian Assange in a tweet.

Hacker Jeremy Hammond faces life in prison for allegedly breaking into the emails of self-promoting alternative CIA Stratfor, a global intelligence company. Hammond’s case is in the hands of a judge who is married to one of the hack’s victims.

Then there’s the case of Julian Assange, who is either the victim of an international conspiracy to keep him permanently entangled in criminal prosecution, or who has a strange capacity to induce irrational and obsessive overreactions from governments.

The list goes on and on? — ?there’s the over-the-top raid on Kim Dotcom in New Zealand, which turned out to be illegal, along with the spying on Dotcom by a New Zealand intelligence agency that is now the subject of an inquiry — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Chipmaker Races to Save Stephen Hawking’s Speech as His Condition Deteriorates

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21 January 2013
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Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking has long relied on technology to help him connect with the outside world despite the degenerative motor neuron disease he has battled for the past 50 years. Whereas Hawking’s condition has deteriorated over time, a highly respected computer scientist indicated at last week’s International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) that he and his team may be close to a breakthrough that could boost the rate at which the physicist communicates, which has fallen to a mere one word per minute in recent years.

For the past decade Hawking has used a voluntary twitch of his cheek muscle to compose words and sentences one letter at a time that are expressed through a speech-generation device connected to his computer. Each tweak stops a cursor that continuously scans text on a screen facing the scientist.

At CES, Intel chief technology officer Justin Rattner noted that Hawking can actually make a number of other facial expressions as well that might also be used to speed up the rate at which the physicist conveys his thoughts. Even providing Hawking with two inputs would give him the ability to communicate using Morse code, which would be a great improvement, said Rattner, who is also director of Intel Labs — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Mr Dotcom aims a load down under

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21 January 2013
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Controversial web entrepreneur Kim Dotcom has brushed off ongoing lawsuits and the protests of copyright holders to relaunch his file-sharing business with plans to base part of it in Australia.

Speaking to The Australian Financial Review from his New Zealand mansion on the eve of the service’s launch, Mr Dotcom said 500,000 people registered for the Mega service in under 24 hours.

The launch comes exactly one year after his original Megaupload site was shut down after a dawn helicopter raid by the Auckland police.

Mr Dotcom said the service had at least one major Australian investor and technology suppliers who were working closely on the project — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Tiny pill joins the battle of the bushfires

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19 January 2013
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A tiny capsule swallowed by firefighters is changing the way volunteers work on the front line.

The pill can relay an individual’s core temperature in real time, giving a better understanding of the body’s vulnerability to heat stress to protect firefighters.

Victoria’s Country Fire Authority health and wellbeing officer Peter Langridge said the data gathered in a CFA trial had led to changes in firefighters’ work patterns, including the length of time they are exposed to blazes.

If we see their core body temperature increasing then we know to remove them from the fire and put them into the rehabilitation area, he said.

Working in hot environments will stress different people at different rates. There is no set formula for how long a person can fight a fire before they start suffering from heat stress or dehydration and management is the key to protecting our fire fighters — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Hobart Teen Wins Top Science Award for Wheelchair Innovation

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16 January 2013
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An Australian teenager’s simple idea that would allow a complete quadriplegic to control a wheelchair by voice has earned her international recognition and a top science award for school students, handed out by Commonwealth science agency CSIRO.

Yaya Lu, 16, of Hobart, has her mind set on helping the disabled through technology and has just arrived back home after presenting a research paper about her wheelchair to the 5th Biomedical Engineering International Conference in Bangkok.

She was able to present her findings to the conference in Thailand after Google sponsored her and her mother’s trip.

Yaya was recently awarded the Gold CREST Award by the CSIRO, which is only given to a select few students each year and requires original ideas and more than 100 hours of work to enter. As part of her submission for the award she put together a 60-page report, showed prototypes, a video and participated in a verbal examination — via redwolf.newsvine.com

News outlets improperly used photos posted to Twitter: judge

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16 January 2013
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A judge has found that two news organisations improperly used images that a photojournalist had posted to Twitter in one of the first big tests of intellectual property law involving social media.

Agence France-Presse and The Washington Post infringed on the copyrights of photographer Daniel Morel in using pictures he took in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake in January 2010, District Judge Alison Nathan in Manhattan ruled.

While AFP had argued that once the pictures appeared on Twitter they were freely available, the judge said that Twitter’s terms of service did not give the news agency a license to publish the images without Morel’s permission.

The judge, in a decision released late Monday, partially granted Morel’s summary judgement motion but also limited damages he could potentially recover. Several other issues in the case were left to be decided at trial. A trial date has not been set — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Guardian News & Media to launch digital Australia edition

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16 January 2013
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The Guardian is to launch a digital edition in Australia, backed by internet entrepreneur and philanthropist Graeme Wood.

Katharine Viner, the Guardian’s deputy editor, will be relocating to Sydney to head up and launch the venture later this year, which follows publisher Guardian News & Media’s move to establish a US digital operation in 2011.

Paul Chadwick, the outgoing director of editorial policy at Australian public service broadcaster ABC, will become a non-executive director of Guardian Australia.

This is such an exciting time to be launching the Guardian in Australia, said Viner. We already have a large number of Australian readers, who tell us they want more of our on-the-ground reporting, lively commentary and groundbreaking open journalism — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Spy agency ASIO wants powers to hack into personal computers

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15 January 2013
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Spy agency ASIO wants to hack into Australians’ personal computers and commandeer their smartphones to transmit viruses to terrorists.

The Attorney-General’s Department is pushing for new powers for the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation to hijack the computers of suspected terrorists.

But privacy groups are attacking the police state plan as extraordinarily broad and intrusive — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Aaron Swartz’s family condemns MIT and US government after his death

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14 January 2013
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The family of celebrated internet activist Aaron Swartz has accused prosecutors and MIT officials of being complicit in his death, blaming the apparent suicide on the pursuit of a young man over an alleged crime that had no victims.

In a statement released late Saturday, Swartz’s parents, Robert and Susan, siblings Noah and Ben and partner Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman said the Redditt builder’s demise was not just a personal tragedy but the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach.

They also attacked the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for not supporting the internet activist in his legal battles and refusing to stand up for its own community’s most cherished principles.

The comments came a day after the 26-year-old killed himself in his Brooklyn apartment on Friday night — via redwolf.newsvine.com

A pre-ticked box in web forms should NOT mean consent

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11 January 2013
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Businesses will not be able to use pre-ticked boxes to gain user consent for the processing of their data under changes proposed by the European Parliament to new EU data protection laws.

In a new report, Jan-Philipp Albrecht, a rapporteur for the European Parliament’s Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee on the proposed EU data protection reforms, said that consumers should not have to opt out from automatic settings in order to avoid businesses deeming that they have given consent to their personal data being processed — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Australian Do Not Call Register operator breaches Register

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9 January 2013
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The company to which Australia outsources operations of its Do Not Call Register has been fined for making telemarketing calls to numbers listed on the Register (not The Register, which we italicise).

Australia implemented a Do Not Call Register in 2007, after consumer anger about telemarketing moved the federal government to act. If consumers choose to be listed on the Register, telemarketers must not call 30 days after the date of enrolment. The Register was well-received by consumers and the direct marketing industry, with the latter accepting it as an inevitability.

A contract to operate the service was awarded to Service Stream Solutions, a listed company the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) says still operates the service today.

ACMA also says a 10 week campaign arranging installations for energy-saving products conducted by Service Stream used numbers listed on the Register, because the list wasn’t re-checked against the Register.

That’s a silly thing to do, because ACMA suggests calling lists should be checked every 30 days — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Canadian astronaut warns William Shatner of life on Earth

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7 January 2013
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William Shatner — aka Captain James Tiberius Kirk (also the porky lawyer from Boston Legal, depending on your age) — has been communicating with a Canadian astronaut stationed on the International Space Station.

Chris Hadfield, currently on board the ISS as a flight engineer and due to take over as mission commander after the current crew leaves in March, got a tweet from Shatner asking @Cmdr_Hadfield Are you tweeting from space? MBB. (MBB stands for My best, Bill, in case you’re wondering.)

Hadfield’s reply shows a more than casual interest in the tales of a younger Kirk and his fictional exploits across the universe:

@williamshatner Yes, Standard Orbit, Captain. And we’re detecting signs of life on the surface.

— Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) January 3, 2013

— via redwolf.newsvine.com

Police website raises hope of identifying 1,000 mystery bodies

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5 January 2013
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The body of an unidentified man recovered from the sea off north Wales 30 years ago will be exhumed this month in the hope that it can be returned to his family.

The exhumation, from an unmarked grave at Menai Bridge cemetery, on Anglesey, is part of a nnationwide attempt by police forces around Britain to put names to more than 1,100 unidentified bodies dating back to the 1950s.

The national Missing Persons Bureau, which is the driving force behind the work, has established a website containing images and identifying features of the individuals who have remained nameless for so many years, in the hope of closing some of the cases. The site is one of only a few such facilities in the world.

As well as 1,029 men and women, the site contains details of 105 babies in unmarked graves, unclaimed by families, sometimes for decades — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Mild Surprise

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4 January 2013
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Bargain sites are useful for highlighting specials, but don’t readily identify the pricing history for a given item. Shopping tracker site Mild Surprise runs twice-daily price checks on items for sale online at JB Hi-Fi, Harvey Norman and Officeworks, and highlights goods that have seen the biggest price changes.

That in itself makes for interesting shopping fodder, but what makes Mild Surprise really useful is the ability to create a watchlist of individual items and set a price threshold. (That requires registering for a free account.) You can also search for products to check out their pricing history.

The interface and design is very basic right now, but this could potentially be a very handy resource for bargain hunters. The site developers say they are working on adding additional retailers

Customise And Cut The Bloat From Windows 8 With WinReducer

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29 December 2012
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For Windows 8, there’s WinReducer 8. While it’s still in its infancy, it is being updated regularly. You can remove unwanted accessories, fonts, drivers, languages, themes and services and enable tweaks to hide the Charms bar or show file extensions in Explorer (among many others), saving you trouble of applying these changes every fresh install. You can even configure the unattended install settings, if you’d like to cut that step out also — via Lifehacker

Apache: Aliasing and Redirection

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29 December 2012
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It’s common for a client to send a request for a file that either does not exist on the server, or exists in a different location. This can occur for a variety of reasons. You might move your files around the server (or to a completely different server), or you may want to present a logical file system structure to connecting clients.

Normally, these actions result in error message, but Apache’s aliasing and redirection capabilities, available thanks to the mod_alias module, allow you to handle these scenarios by directing clients to the new resource location — via Nettuts+

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