Comment Re:Didn't we decide we don't want this (Score 1) 286
The Lib Dems, stick to their election promises? What's today's date again? 21/12/12 by any chance?
Comment Re:Encrypte Everything (Score 5, Informative) 286
Encryption of your files is worthless when you can be arrested for failing to give up passwords as per the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. (Which would be more accurately named the Irregulation of Investigatory Powers Act, as it pretty much declares open season on those under suspicion.)
Comment Ah. (Score 1) 286
Now I see why the Brits constantly write Orwellian-dystopia-type fiction. They have every reason to be scared of their government. And there I was thinking that Labour had been overly surveilling at times. That said, I'm fairly certain that I read that BT logged calls anyway, so this simply pushes it out of legal liminality.
Submission + - IG: FBI's Sentinel program still off-track, over b (thehill.com)
GovTechGuy writes: The FBI's new system for managing case files is $100 million over budget and two years behind schedule, according to a new inspector general's report. Sentinel is the successor to the FBI's troubled Virtual Case File system, which was canceled in 2005 after the agency invested $170 million into its development. Lawmakers blasted the news, while an independent estimate by The Mitre Corp. predicted that completing Sentinel using the FBI's current approach would cost an additional $351 million and take six more years.
Submission + - FCC's Copps: Fox threatened net neutrality (thehill.com)
GovTechGuy writes: FCC Commissioner Michael Copps said Wednesday that Fox Networks threatened the openness of the Internet when the company reportedly blocked Cablevision subscribers from accessing websites, including Hulu. com, that it partially owns.
Submission + - Wikileaks Under Attack (twitter.com)
bilotrace writes: Wikileaks seems to be under attack! Someone in its tweeter posted,
"WikiLeaks communications infrastructure is currently under attack. Project BO move to coms channel S. Activate Reston5."
Did they just post some pass phrase?
"WikiLeaks communications infrastructure is currently under attack. Project BO move to coms channel S. Activate Reston5."
Did they just post some pass phrase?
Submission + - The Movie Industry Is Dying, The 1950s Version (techdirt.com)
An anonymous reader writes: With all the claims from the entertainment industry about how the movie industry is dying due to the internet, it's worth pointing out that they seem to claim this with every new advancement. Many people know about Jack Valenti's famous "Boston Strangler" comment in reference to the VCR, but even before that, there was always some new technology that was the enemy. In a 1959 interview, Mary Pickford, one of the original Hollywood starlets (dubbed "America's Sweetheart") who also founded United Artists and the Motion Picture Academy, announced that the movie industry was dead because of television. No one would want to leave their house for an expensive movie, she insisted, and promised it would become much worse once the dreaded "pay TV" became common. This was 1959. It seems worth mentioning that, fifty years later, in 2009, Hollywood had its best year ever at the box office.
Submission + - Digital Cloning & Social Networking as a Cylon (networkworld.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Have you ever wished to once again be able to talk with a loved one who has died? Despite claims that our brain will never live in a matrix and that teams are trying to create purely evil AI, as of today you can be in two places at once and live forever. Somewhere between epically cool and downright creepy, you can create a digital clone that looks like you, talks like you, sounds like you and takes on your personality, so that future generations can find out all about you after your death. Intellitar, or intelligent avatar, could be you, a virtual assistant or a famous professor meant to interact, social network and live forever. Who knows what privacy rights AI might have or what laws might apply in case the avatar is hacked, turns evil, has an e-affair, or switches to a virtual life of crime. The potential to be in two places at once, and to virtually live forever, is both exciting and frightening. How did the Cylons get started?
Comment It's certainly a step up from JPEG, but... (Score 2, Informative) 378
The main problem with new file formats is adoption. JPEGs have been the main image type online ever since the world realized that GIF sucked. Boards that allow image posting allow JPEG, social networks etc. which allow profile pictures allow JPEG, image search engines catalogue primarily JPEGs, almost every site's design utilises JPEGs. Offline it's the same; every OS which allows background images uses JPEG. Every image viewer and editor works with JPEGs. JPEGs have been an integral part of the internet for so long that I heavily doubt that any new format, superior or otherwise, will supersede them for a long time.
Submission + - 68% of iPhone Apps Collect Unique Device ID (www.pskl.us)
An anonymous reader writes: It looks like iPhone users are not immune to the types of data leaks recently discovered on the Android platform. Researchers looked at the top free applications available from the App Store and discovered that "68% of these applications were transmitting UDIDs to servers under the application vendor’s control each time the application is launched." The iPhone's Unique Device ID, or UDID, cannot be changed, nor can it's transmission be disabled by the user. The full paper is here.
Google Releases New Image Format Called WebP 378
An anonymous reader writes "Google has released WebP, a lossy image format based on the image encoding used by VP8 (the video codec used in Google's WebM video format) to compress keyframes. According to the FAQ, WebP achieves an average 39% more compression than JPEG and JPEG 2000 while maintaining image quality. A gallery on the WebP homepage has a selection of images which compare the original JPEG image with the WebP encoded image shown as a PNG. There's no information available yet on which browsers will support the WebP image format, but I imagine it will be all the browsers which currently have native WebM support — Firefox, Chrome, and Opera."
Independent analysis of WebP is available from a few different sources.
Comment Well... (Score 1) 309
In the instance that this does happen, Clarke was only a year off. Stay away from Europa.
Comment Re:Wired's "War on Wikileaks" (Score 1) 258
I'd noticed that Wired were increasingly anti-WL; now I know why. Thank you.
Comment Hm? (Score 4, Insightful) 258
I don't see the problem with Wkileaks, frankly. All sites have downtime; people simply mock the famous ones when they are down. I hardly think that downtime is "falling into disrepair".
Submission + - Wikileaks Down
dotKuro writes: At roughly 20:19 GMT today, Wikileaks, famous Internet whisteblowing site, went down. wikileaks.org, https://wikileaks.org/ secure.wikileaks.org, ircs://secure.wikileaks.org:9999 and collateralmurder.com are all currently inaccessible. A reason for this has not been discovered.
