The Agonist - Technology

Internet: Last piece of fibre-optic jigsaw falls into place as cable links east Africa to grid

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 13:21:09 -0700

Xan Rice | Nairobi | August 18

The Guardian - They are the arteries of the modern world. Stretching for tens of thousands of miles over the ocean beds, the vast web of intercontinental submarine cables have brought the possibility of cheap high-speed internet and clear long-distance telephone calls to all major parts of the globe. Except one.

East Africa remains the only large, inhabited coastline cut off from the global fibre-optic network. Reliant entirely on expensive satellite connections, people on the world's poorest continent pay some of the highest rates for logging on or phoning. Local universities are charged up to 50 times more for bandwidth than a typical American college, making online research slow or impossible.

But with the last piece of the global fibre-optic jigsaw about to fall into place, all that is set to change. In October, the first lengths of a new 9,300-mile submarine cable to serve east Africa will be loaded on to a ship and then unrolled into the Indian Ocean.

Patch Tuesday viva la difference

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 06:02:43 -0700

The FUD factor in using internet browser software which leaves end users vulnerable to viruses, worms, trojans and phishing reached new heights this week with Vista left totally 'compromised'.

Zone Alarm however provides a free download that effectively wraps an electronic condom around the browser.

Your pants seem to be a little tight

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 05:29:11 -0700

The Globe and Mail, By Ivor Tossell, August 7

Once every so often, it seems like somebody wakes up in the morning, stretches, looks at themselves in the mirror and says, “I'm going to make the Internet worse today.”

Take the site that sits before me, having floated in from the languid fever swamps of August. It's called NiceCritic, “The Anonymous Way to Send a Helpful Message.” Its purpose is to allow people to send passive-aggressive anonymous e-notes to friends, family, co-workers, neighbours or anyone else they can't bring themselves to criticize directly.

Surfing Google may be harmful to your security

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 18:49:50 -0700

Dan Goodin | August 9

The Register - A well-known researcher specializing in website security has strongly criticized safety on Google, arguing the world's biggest search engine needlessly puts its millions of users at risk.

"Google is and will be and always has been vulnerable," Robert Hansen, CEO of secTheory, told a standing-room-only audience at the Defcon security conference in Las Vegas. "They haven't been open with consumers. Ultimately, this all comes down the the fact that they just want to track you guys."

At issue is Google's policy of hosting untested third-party applications that users can automatically embed into personalized Google home pages. During a talk titled "Xploiting Google Gadgets: Gmalware & Beyond," Hansen and fellow researcher Tom Stracener laid out a variety of attacks that can be unleashed using the programs.

The most devastating is the ability of Google gadgets to immediately redirect victims who log into iGoogle.com to a page under the control of an attacker. This creates a phishing hazard, particularly for less tech-savvy users who don't know to check the browser bar. Even if they do, the bar shows up at gmodules.com, an address many mistakenly believe is safe because it is maintained by Google.

more at the link

Street View / Culture View

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 01:39:04 -0700

globalvoicesonline - One year after its debut in the United States, Google's Street View has arrived in Japan, where it is already drawing criticism.

Rollout in Australia has met similar concerns

Russian Gang Hijacking PCs in Vast Scheme

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 19:27:54 -0700

John Markoff | Atlanta | August 5

NYT - A criminal gang is using software tools normally reserved for computer network administrators to infect thousands of PCs in corporate and government networks with programs that steal passwords and other information, a security researcher has found.

The new form of attack indicates that little progress has been made in defusing the threat of botnets, networks of infected computers that criminals use to send spam, steal passwords and do other forms of damage, according to computer security investigators.

Hi-tech criminals target Twitter

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 06:29:38 -0700

BBC, August 5

Micro blogging site Twitter is the latest target of cyber criminals who are increasingly finding fertile ground on social networks.

A fake Twitter profile with a malicious payload has been spotted by security firm Kaspersky.

Comcast Busted By FCC... YaY !

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 12:54:25 -0700

Aug. 1 2008

Save The Internet - the Federal Communications Commission voted to punish Comcast for violating Net Neutrality and blocking your right to do what you want on the Internet.
This win is yours. Defying every ounce of conventional wisdom in Washington, activists, bloggers, consumer advocates and everyday people have taken on a major corporation and won.
Today's vote at the FCC is also a precedent-setting victory that sends a powerful message to phone and cable companies that blocking access to the Internet will not be tolerated from this time forward.

Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 08:21:34 -0700

Paper or pixel?

Fly Me To The Moon

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 03:32:32 -0700

Crossposted at MLW

There has been a lot of talk recently about the “energy crisis”. I wonder if this is the same energy crisis we heard about in the 70’s? If it is then that means for over 30 years instead of solving our domestic energy needs, we have ignored them and allowed them to grow. In 1970 we were importing about 24% of the oil we used and the embargo back then threw our economy into a tail-spin, imagine what would happen today when we import about 70%. Rather than using the past 30 plus years to develop new or existing technologies to reduce or break our dependence on oil, we have elected to do something worse than nothing. Instead of our vehicles getting smaller and more fuel efficient during this time they have actually gotten larger.

What would the Attic Orators say?

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 21:55:49 -0700

The lawyer for a Missouri mother accused of creating a fake MySpace page to harass a 13-year-old girl is arguing that charges should be tossed out of court because if she is guilty, then so are millions of Internet users every day. {snip} from Wapo
Experts in the field also said that if violating terms of service is a crime, then the Web sites that write the agreements essentially could function as lawmakers or prosecutors.

"The possibilities for abuse are endless because Web site terms of service are arbitrary," said Orin S. Kerr, a former federal computer crime prosecutor and now a George Washington University law professor, who has provided informal advice to the defense. "A computer owner could set up a public Web site; announce that only Christians can visit; and then refer for prosecution any Jews, Muslims or atheists who visit the Web site out of curiosity."

Agonist at the breakfast table, how soon?

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 16:37:39 -0700

Techcrunch web project and LATimesblogentry

Health Map

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 04:24:13 -0700

An interesting use of the internet: health map. Consolidating data from ProMed Mail, Google news, WHO, EuroSurveillance, and Moreover disease outbreaks are mapped.

RoboCup breeding autonomous soccer players

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 17:38:36 -0700

R. Colin Johnson | Portland, OR | July 18

EE Times -
Soccer-playing robots are warming up for the RoboCup 2008 tournament this weekend in Suzhou, China. Over 2,000 researchers from 35 countries have entered their robots in the competition, which also includes a search-and-rescue competition.

Virginia Tech's enlisted 15 students to build and program the latest incarnation of its Darwin robot to compete in the robotic soccer tournament. The team also enlisted engineers at nearby TORC Technologies LLC (Blacksburg, Va.), which specializes in autonomous robotics. TORC's entry won third place in last year's Urban Challenge robotic automobile contest sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency.

Intel Accused of Bribery, Coercion in Europe

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 02:15:44 -0700

July 18

Deutsche Welle - US chip-maker Intel, already under scrutiny in Europe for alleged anti-competitive practices, faces new charges this week. European regulators say Intel used bribery and corruption to monopolize the European market.

The European Commission said that it had sent another so-called "statement of objections" to Intel alleging it has tried to exclude its leading competitor Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) from the x86 central processing unit (CPU) market.

The letter, sent late Thursday, July 17, accused Intel of having offered discounts to a major European personal computer distributor to favor its product. Intel also allegedly paid a PC maker to delay marketing a model line using AMD chips. It also paid the same un-named PC maker to use Intel's own microprocessors over those of AMD.