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Comment Re:Internet megacorps not on level playing field (Score 1) 236

by mrspoonsi (#45782377) Attached to: Italy Approves 'Google Tax' On Internet Companies
Perhaps tax avoidance is not illegal, however these companies are so efficient at gaming the system, there is a tidal wave of public opinion forming against them, and regulation like this Italian one is going to hit these big companies hard, serves them right (that the final outcome will be much worse for them than if they have not tried so hard).

Submission + - Upload a spoof video, go to jail (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: That is what exactly has happened to several people in Abu Dhabi.

Shezanne Cassim, 29, a Sri Lankan-born US citizen, and two Indians were jailed for a year over the video, which was held by the UAE’s state security court in Abu Dhabi to have endangered the image of the country.

The foreigners were the first to be charged under a 2012 cybercrimes law, and were accused of violating Article 28, which calls for imprisonment for anyone who uses information technology "with the intent of inciting to actions, or publishing or disseminating any information, news, caricatures, or other images liable to endanger state security and its higher interests or infringe on the public order".

The video, posted to Youtube, was a gentle satire on young men in the Satwa residential suburb of Dubai who adopt a “gangsta” pose despite living the sedate, prosperous lifestyle more usually associated with Dubai residents.

The video, The 19-minute video, entitled Satwa Combat School, was posted on YouTube in October 2012, and can be seen @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=IUk5CB9kaBY

Submission + - Alan Turing Pardoned (cryptome.org)

Submitted by a.ferrier
a.ferrier writes: Today’s computing would be unthinkable without the contributions of the British mathematician Alan Turing, who laid down the foundations of computer science, broke Nazi codes that helped win World War II at the famous Bletchley Park, created a secure speech encryption system, made major contributions to logic and philosophy, and even invented the concept of Artificial Intelligence. But he was also an eccentric and troubled man who was persecuted (and prosecuted) for being gay, a tragedy that contributed to his suicide just short of the age of 42 when he died of cyanide poisoning, possibly from a half-eaten apple found by his side. He is hailed today as one of the great originators of our computing age. Today he received a Royal Pardon.

Submission + - Airport security is "all bullshit, TSA couldn't protect you from a 6-year-old"

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: ...so says Rafi Sela Airport Head of Security at an Israel airport. Sela has seven major issues with the TSA. First, the TSA "essentially makes its own rules," according to Sela, the TSA is a regulatory agency and a security agency. They essentially make their own rules. No one else — not the FBI, not the CIA, not anyone but a loose-cannon New York cop — gets to do that. I call the TSA the biggest train system in the world, because it's common for much of the floor force to be replaced on a yearly basis. So if the TSA only drills once or twice a year, you've got a ton of screeners who go their entire (short) careers without ever being tested. People need to realize that security can't be treated like a fast food company. These people are tasked with finding bombs, not flipping burgers. Full-body scanners: these scanners were useless. I could strap a bomb capable of taking down a 747 to my body and walk right through a body scanner. Nobody would catch me. Most people pose no threat to anyone, and there's no point in even checking them. The very few terrorists that exist are like needles in a haystack. But the TSA's approach is to check every single piece of hay, in case it might actually be a needle. But if you only check luggage and you don't check the person behind the luggage, how do you know he hasn't camouflaged something into the luggage that you can't find? Trust me: Hiding things is so easy to do, it isn't even funny. At Ben Gurion Airport, we get travelers from their car to their gate in 25 minutes. When was the last time that happened to you in an American airport? Probably never, because a dozen 747s worth of cranky travelers can't take their shoes and coats off, pull their laptops out of their luggage, and queue up for pat downs without chaos.

Submission + - NSA Spied Upon: 60 Countries, Unicef, EU Competition Commissioner & Israeli

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: BBC Reports: More details of people and institutions targeted by UK and US surveillance have been published by The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel. The papers say that the list of around 1,000 targets includes a European Union commissioner, humanitarian organisations and an Israeli PM. They suggest over 60 countries were targets of the NSA and Britain's GCHQ. GCHQ monitored the communications of foreign leaders — including African heads of state and sometimes their family members — and directors of United Nations and other relief programmes. The paper reports that the emails of Israeli officials were monitored, including one listed as "Israeli prime minister". The PM at the time, 2009, was Ehud Olmert. The Dutch Liberal MEP Sophia in 't Veld described the latest claims as "shocking". "The UK spying on its fellow EU member states in order to get an economic advantage is simply unacceptable"

Submission + - Scientists Crack Major Aids Mystery

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: Business Insider Reports: The difference between HIV infection and full-blown AIDS is, in large part, the massive die-off of the immune system's CD4 T-cells. But researchers have only observed the virus killing a small portion of those cells, leading to a longstanding question: What makes the other cells disappear? New research shows that the body is killing its own cells in a little-known process. What's more, an existing, safe drug could interrupt that self-destruction, thereby offering a way to treat AIDS. The destructive process has caught scientists by surprise. "We thought HIV infects a cell, sets up a virus production factory and then the cell dies as a consequence of being overwhelmed by virus. But there are not enough factories to explain the massive losses," says Warner Greene, director of virology and immunology at the Gladstone Institutes, whose team published two papers today in Science and Nature describing the work. Greene estimates 95 percent of the cells that die in HIV infections are killed through pyroptosis, so the findings raise hope for a new type of treatment that could prevent HIV from progressing into AIDS. "Inhibiting activation of the immune system is not a new concept, but this gives us a new pathway to target," says Robert Gallo. And in fact, a drug already exists that can block pyroptosis. Known as VX-765, it was tested years ago by Vertex Pharmaceuticals as a treatment for chronic seizure disorder. A trial showed that it wasn't effective enough against seizures, but it was safe for humans. "Now it's just sitting on a shelf waiting for a disease to cure," says Greene, who is trying to arrange a phase II trial to test the drug in HIV patients."

Submission + - Peakl Oil Threat Gone - Era of Cheap Biofuels finaly here?

Submitted by Bodhammer
Bodhammer writes: Pacific Northwest Nation Labs has developed a new technology that turns algae to crude in an hour. This press release http://www.pnnl.gov/news/release.aspx?id=1029 describes process and the partner they have selected for the pilot plant. The process is efficient and produces crude oil which can be traditionally refined, clean water, gas which can be burned or cleaned to make LNG, and nutrients that can go back into the process. Is this the end of the Peak Oil threat?

Submission + - Mark Zuckerberg Gives $990 Million to Charity

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: BusinessInsider Reports: This morning, Mark Zuckerberg announced plans to give 18 million Facebook shares to charity by the end of the month. Facebook is currently trading at $55 per share, so Zuckerberg's gift is worth just under $1 billion. The money will go toward Zuckerberg's foundation, the Silicon Valley Community Foundation and The Breakthrough Prize In Life Science, a Noble Prize-like award. Zuckereberg is giving his shares away as part of a secondary stock offering from Facebook. Reuters says Zuckerberg will sell 41.4 million shares, reducing his voting power in the company from 58.8% to 56.1%. Other insiders selling include board member Marc Andreessen, who will sell 1.65 million shares. Facebook is selling 27 million.

Submission + - Billion Star Surveyor 'Gaia' Lifts Off

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: BBC Reports: Europe has launched the Gaia satellite — one of the most ambitious space missions in history. The 740m-euro (£620m) observatory lifted off from the Sinnamary complex in French Guiana at 06:12 local time (09:12 GMT). Gaia is going to map the precise positions and distances to more than a billion stars. This should give us the first realistic picture of how our Milky Way galaxy is constructed. Gaia's remarkable sensitivity will lead also to the detection of many thousands of previously unseen objects, including new planets and asteroids. Gaia will use this ultra-stable and supersensitive optical equipment to pinpoint its sample of stars with extraordinary confidence. By repeatedly viewing its targets over five years, it should get to know the brightest stars' coordinates down to an error of just seven micro-arcseconds. "This angle is equivalent to the size of a euro coin on the Moon as seen from Earth," explained Prof Alvaro Gimenez, Esa's director of science.

Submission + - Panel Urges Major NSA Spying Overhaul (securityweek.com)

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: A board set up to review the NSA's vast surveillance programs has called for a wide-ranging overhaul of National Security Agency practices while preserving "robust" intelligence capabilities. The panel, set up by President Obama, issued 46 recommendations, including reforms at a secret national security court and an end to retention of telephone "metadata" by the spy agency.

The 308-page report (PDF) submitted last week to the White House and released publicly Wednesday says the US government needs to balance the interests of national security and intelligence gathering with privacy and "protecting democracy, civil liberties, and the rule of law."

Panel members said the recommendations would not necessarily mean a rolling back of intelligence gathering, including on foreign leaders, but that surveillance must be guided by standards and by high-level policymakers.

Submission + - US Federal Reserve reduces economy stimulation by $10 billion a month

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: BBC Reports: The US Federal Reserve has announced a slowdown in its effort to boost the US economy. The central bank said it planned to scale back its $85bn (£51.8bn) a month bond buying programme by $10bn a month. Stimulus of this kind is designed to lower interest rates and boost economic activity. The Fed's governing committee cited stronger job growth as a reason for the decision to pullback its programme of bond buying. The Fed's decision to begin to ease its extraordinary stimulus efforts also indicates that the central bank believes that the US economy has finally strengthened enough that it no longer needs as much support.

Submission + - NSA Says It Foiled Plot To Destroy Our Economy By Bricking Computers

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: Business Insider Reports: The National Security Agency described for the first time a cataclysmic cyber threat it claims to have stopped On Sunday's "60 Minutes." Called a BIOS attack, the exploit would have ruined, or "bricked," computers across the country, causing untold damage to the national and even global economy. Even more shocking, CBS goes as far as to point a finger directly at China for the plot — "While the NSA would not name the country behind it, cyber security experts briefed on the operation told us it was China." The NSA says it closed this vulnerability by working with computer manufacturers. Debora Plunkett, director of cyber defense for the NSA: One of our analysts actually saw that the nation state had the intention to develop and to deliver — to actually use this capability — to destroy computers.

Submission + - DRM has always been a horrible idea (computerworld.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: For years, the reaction of the big entertainment companies to digital disruption has been to try and restrict and control, a wrong-headed approach that was bound to backfire. But the entertainment companies were never known for being forward thinking whether it was radio in the 20s or cassette tapes in the 70s or VCRs in the 80s or Napster in the 90s. The reaction was the always the same. Take a defensive position and try to battle the disruptive force --and it never worked.

And DRM was perhaps the worst reaction of all, place restrictions on your content that punish the very people who were willing to pay for it, while others were free to use it without restriction. It was an approach that never made much sense, and it's good to know that mounting evidence proves that's the case.

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