Google is making excessive use of their GeoIP database these days to test new features in a limited area of their choice. Now they decided to only let users from the US use the street view option in Google Maps. If you live in another country, you’d actually have to wait until Google releases the feature worldwide or use a proxy from inside the states. There’s another way to avoid Google’s IP filter though: Add &gl=us at the end of the URL
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) continues to build cyberwarfare units and develop viruses to attack enemy computer systems as part of its information-warfare strategy, the US Department of Defense (DOD) warned in a report released on Friday. These capabilities are part of China’s ongoing military modernisation efforts, which have seen the country add dozens of high-tech fighters and ballistic missiles to its arsenal. China isn’t alone in building the capability to attack an enemy’s computer systems. The US and other countries have developed similar abilities
In an unanimous decision released today, Helsinki District Court ruled that Content Scrambling System (CSS) used in DVD movies is ineffective
. The decision is the first in Europe to interpret new copyright law amendments that ban the circumvention of effective technological measures
. The legislation is based on EU Copyright Directive from 2001. According to both Finnish copyright law and the underlying directive, only such protection measure is effective, which achieves the protection objective
Nine people involved in a community portal Napisy.org were held for questioning by the Polish police force. They will be probably be accused of publishing illegal translations of foreign movies, which is forbidden by Polish copyright law
At least 25 countries around the world block Web sites for political, social, or other reasons as governments seek to assert authority over a network meant to be borderless
A Brazilian rancher has been found guilty of killing US-born nun and environmental activist Dorothy Stang. A court in the city of Belem sentenced Vitalmiro Bastos Moura, 36, to 30 years for paying gunmen to shoot the 73-year-old missionary dead in 2005. Sister Dorothy campaigned for poor farmers’ rights and to preserve the rainforest from loggers and developers
The San Francisco controller’s office issued a favourable review Friday on a proposal by EarthLink and Google to provide the city with free wireless Internet access. The report estimates residents could save $9 million to $18 million in Internet bills annually by having the option of choosing the EarthLink service, which will offer free access as well as a paid service that is cheaper than other broadband options like DSL and cable
The Church Of Scientology is currently engaged in a row with the BBC, a result of an investigation by reporter John Sweeney. Sweeney is investigating the Church Of Scientology, trying to judge changes in the organisation over the last few years; He’s trying to discover if they’ve moved away from the questionable practices and secrecy they have employed in the past. The conflict centres around a YouTube video posted by the scientologists. It shows Sweeney losing his temper with a scientology spokesman. Sweeney’s outburst came at the end of a tour of a scientology exhibition which attempts to portray psychiatrists as evil nazi type torturers entitled Psychiatry: Industry of Death
which is both gruesome and utterly unconvincing. The BBC appears willing to stand behind its reporter, in spite of the pressure brought to bear by the scientologist organisation — via Slashdot
A new £3.6bn project to upgrade the space communications network for British forces including the Army, Royal Navy, and RAF has gone underway. The first craft, Skynet 5A was launched from Kourou in French Guiana on 11 March 2007. There will be a constellation of three satellites in total. This system is also not an exclusive project for the armed forces, it is actually outsourced to a company called Paradigm Secure Communications. They work with NATO, France, Germany, Canada, Portugal and the Netherlands. They are also seeking new business in the US, Australia, and the Middle East
An online critic of Scientology was confronted at a routine hearing Tuesday with surprise arrest warrants and thrown into jail. Six years as a fugitive ended in February. (After picketing a Scientology complex in 2000 over the unexplained death of a woman there, he’d been arrested for threatening a religion
over a Usenet joke about Tom Cruise Missiles
.) But 64-year-old Keith Henson had been out on bail, and was even scheduled to address the European Space Agency conference on Space Elevators, just a few days before he was arrested — via Slashdot
The BBC Trust — the organisation that oversees the BBC’s operations — has driven another nail into the BBC’s relevancy for the 21st century today by giving the broadcaster permission to use DRM on its online offerings. The BBC has turned its back on its promise to deliver a remixable, DRM-free archive of its video materials to the British public. Instead, it has opted for the iPlayer
, a crippling technology that infects PCs and makes them incapable of saving and using some of the files on their hard-drives. At the core of this is a Microsoft technology, the WMV file-format
One of the world’s oldest libraries, at the Vatican, is to close for three years for rebuilding, in an unexpected blow to scholars around the world. The decision to shut the library was made without warning. After the library closes for its summer break in mid-July, it will not reopen until September 2010, the Vatican says. The reason is that some buildings constructed only a quarter of a century ago are now considered unsuitable for the safe storage of ancient books
Google and the French-language newspapers of Belgium said Thursday that they had begun discussions aimed at defusing a legal battle over what content Google could index. The newspapers complained that the search engine’s cached
links, which show material that may have been taken off the Web by the site owner, offered free access to archived material that the papers normally sell
Google is having to search the United States for IT workers to staff the search engine’s growing operations in Australia. The Silicon Valley-based company will host an Australian-themed open day next Tuesday at its global headquarters in Mountain View, California. The session, branded G’day Google, will urge both American engineers and some of the 100,000 Australian expats in California to help address the chronic shortage of IT workers in Australia
The Ontario government has given approval for a California company to construct a massive solar farm
near Sarnia that will blanket an area larger than all three Toronto islands with hundreds of thousands of sun-soaking panels. It will be the largest solar power station in North America and among the most expansive in the world to use photovoltaic cells that produce electricity when exposed to sunlight. Once complete, the 40-megawatt Sarnia project will be able to supply enough emission-free electricity to power between 10,000 and 15,000 homes on sunny days
Officials in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, are taking to the air in an attempt to make the city safer. The council has bought three mini remote-controlled airships which are soon to be launched to look down on the city monitoring criminal activity. Each has a camera mounted on it, which beams back pictures to a control room
An inquiry into one of Canada’s leading pathologists has revealed he was responsible for wrongful diagnoses, which resulted in a number of innocent people going to jail. The investigation looked at 45 cases where Dr Charles Smith had determined children had been murdered. They found that in at least 20 cases the children had in fact not been murdered. One man spent 12 years in prison after Dr Smith said he had raped and killed his niece, but the girl had not been raped and was not murdered
Within a few weeks, Australia may introduce new laws to censor films and literature deemed by the government to be supportive of terrorism. This is not the first time material has been censored in Australia, which has previously censored films and banned publications, including one titled Defence of the Muslim Lands (censored in mid 2006 by Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock). The proposed laws are aimed to target material such as a DVD by Feiz Mohammad containing some of his past controversial sermons calling for jihad and comparing Jews with pigs. The Office of Film and Literature Classification previously classified this DVD as PG
, suitable for viewing by anyone under 15 years of age with parental guidance
It was just a bit of text advocating open data formats that was slipped into a Florida State Senate bill at the last minute with no fanfare, but within 24 hours three Microsoft-paid lobbyists, all wearing black suits, were pressuring members of the Senate Committee on Governmental Operations (COGO) to remove the words they didn’t like
Up to 5.9 million children face having their fingerprints taken by schools in another move towards a Big Brother
society. Pupils will have to hand over their biometric details simply to borrow library books or gain access to school dinners. A million children’s fingerprints are believed to have been taken already, some without parental approval and even by con tricks
such as pretend spy games. Freedom of Information data obtained by the Tories reveals a further 4.9 million sets of prints could now be added to school computers after the vast majority of local education authorities sanctioned the practice
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