Online fraud against UK merchants is at levels that have forced many to refuse orders from certain countries, with Nigeria, Ghana, and the US heading the list, a new e-commerce report has found — via redwolf.newsvine.com
CSIRO will attempt to smash its current top speeds with its new Wi-Fi TV antenna technology, connecting up to 12 users on one 7MHz TV spectrum band at 50Mbps — instead of the old 12Mbps — via redwolf.newsvine.com
While Internet Explorer 9 will not support Microsoft’s Windows XP, Firefox 4 supports the still-popular OS as well as Windows 2000. Microsoft said IE9 dropped Windows XP to utilize the graphics processor. Mozilla’s Firefox 4 provides partial acceleration in Windows XP — via redwolf.newsvine.com
In a blockbuster mobile deal, AT&T announced today it had agreed to acquire T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom for $39 billion.
The acquisition will make AT&T the dominant wireless player in the U.S. with the addition of more than 33 million subscribers to its 95.5 million customer user base, giving it a new total of more than 129 million subscribers. Verizon Wireless, the U.S. second largest wireless carrier, has a little more than 102 million subscribers — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Rural health providers fear the 3 per cent of Australians living in remote areas who would benefit most from broadband access will be further disadvantaged by the satellite services they will end up with under the National Broadband Network — via redwolf.newsvine.com
ICANN has approved the formation of the .XXX domain, the board of the organization said Friday.
The board said it will allow its general counsel to allow execute a registry agreement with ICM, who will oversee the new domain. According to Peter Dengate Thrush, a New Zealand lawyer and chairman of ICANN, nine ICANN board members voted for the resolution, three against, with four abstentions.
I think 9 to 3 is pretty good,
Thrush said, in an interview — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The global volume of junk e-mail sent worldwide took a massive nosedive today following what appears to be a coordinated takedown of the Rustock botnet, one of the world’s most active spam-generating machines.
For years, Rustock has been the most prolific purveyor of spam — mainly junk messages touting online pharmacies and male enhancement pills. But late Wednesday morning Eastern Time, dozens of Internet servers used to coordinate these spam campaigns ceased operating, apparently almost simultaneously — via redwolf.newsvine.com
You wouldn’t write your username and passwords on a postcard and mail it for the world to see, so why are you doing it online? Every time you log in to Twitter, Facebook or any other service that uses a plain HTTP connection, that’s essentially what you’re doing.
There is a better way, the secure version of HTTP — HTTPS. That extra “S” in the URL means your connection is secure, and it’s much harder for anyone else to see what you’re doing. But if HTTPS is more secure, why doesn’t the entire web use it? — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Breaking in to an encrypted router and using the WiFi connection is not an criminal offence, a Dutch court ruled. WiFi hackers can not be prosecuted for breaching router security.
A court in The Hague ruled earlier this month that it is legal to break WiFi security to use the internet connection. The court also decided that piggybacking on open WiFi networks in bars and hotels can not be prosecuted. In many countries both actions are illegal and often can be fined — via benno.newsvine.com
Yahoo is believed to be on the verge of selling its bookmarking service Delicious, possibly to the social discovery engine
StumbleUpon, for a price believed to be around $1m (£619,000) — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The US military is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social media using fake online personas designed to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda.
A Californian corporation has been awarded a contract with the US Central Command (Centcom) to develop what is described as an online persona management service
that will allow one serviceman or woman to control up to 10 separate identities at once.
The contract stipulates each persona must have a convincing background, history and supporting details, and that up to 50 controllers must be able to operate false identities from their workstations without fear of being discovered by sophisticated adversaries
.
The project has been likened by web experts to China’s attempts to control and restrict free speech on the internet — via smd12364.newsvine.com
Research in Motion thought the iPhone would bomb, basically, because it’s not a BlackBerry.
A Reuters report (PDF) on RIM’s prospects quotes an anonymous former employee as saying that RIM was convinced the iPhone was so badly flawed from day one
. They thought users wanted great battery life, great security, great mail handling, minimal network use, and a great keyboard experience
. It turns out, a great user experience beats all those things — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Anti-piracy reports that are commissioned by the entertainment industries are suspicious by definition, but the mystery that surrounds a recent study goes far beyond that. Despite being widely covered in the press, no journalist has actually seen a copy of the report. Even worse, the company that produced the in-depth report was registered only four months ago, and appears to be carefully hidden from the public — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Today’s 8.9 magnitude earthquake in Japan has had surprisingly limited impacts on the structure and routing dynamics of the regional Internet. Of roughly 6,000 Japanese network prefixes in the global routing table, only about 100 were temporarily withdrawn from service — and that number has actually decreased in the hours since the event. Other carriers around the region have reported congestion and drops in traffic due to follow-on effects of the quake, but most websites are up and operational, and the Internet is available to support critical communications.
Those who have been following our blogs on Libya will be familiar with the excellent Google Transparency Report, which summarizes the rate of queries coming from each country over time. Despite terrible fires, floods, and power outages, traffic from Japanese clients just keeps going. It’s quite a remarkable plot — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The National Federation of the Blind claims that Google Apps lacks required features for blind people and wants the US government to investigate whether schools that adopt the e-mail and collaboration suite run afoul of civil rights laws — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The only way to stop piracy is to cut prices. That’s the vedict of a major new academic study that reckons copyright theft won’t be halted by three strikes
broadband disconnections, increasing censorship or draconian new laws brought in under the anti-counterfeiting treaty ACTA — via redwolf.newsvine.com
A flash memory working group announced a new interface specification on Tuesday that could speed up data transfers from flash storage products such as solid-state drives inside computers and consumer electronics.
The Open NAND Flash Interface (ONFI) Working Group released the ONFI 3.0 controller specification, which allows for transfer of data at 400 megabytes per second. That is double the speed of the previous ONFI standard, ONFI 2.3, which was released last August — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Microsoft has trotted out its latest warrior in the browser wars, Internet Explorer 9, but business use of the software is likely to be constrained because it doesn’t run on Windows XP — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Google’s YouTube said today it has acquired digital video technology maker Green Parrot Pictures for an undisclosed amount.
The Irish start-up’s technology will enable YouTube to improve the quality of jerky, blurry or unsteady videos as they are being uploaded to the site, Jeremy Doig, a director for Google’s video technology, said in a blog post — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Imagine the perfect library book. Its pages don’t tear. Its spine is unbreakable. It can be checked out from home. And it can never get lost.
The value of this magically convenient library book — otherwise known as an e-book — is the subject of a fresh and furious debate in the publishing world. For years, public libraries building their e-book collections have typically done so with the agreement from publishers that once a library buys an e-book, it can lend it out, one reader at a time, an unlimited number of times.
Last week, that agreement was upended by HarperCollins Publishers when it began enforcing new restrictions on its e-books, requiring that books be checked out only 26 times before they expire. Assuming a two-week checkout period, that is long enough for a book to last at least one year — via redwolf.newsvine.com
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