Toshiba Shows Off Thinnest Android Tablet

Toshiba has shown off what is said to be the thinnest ever tablet computer - the Android OS based Excite X10.

It was reported that the tablet will offer an upgrade to Android 4.0 software later, which is the dedicated tablet OS from Google.

Hardware wise, the tablet comes with a  dual-core Tegra 2 processor, front and rear cameras, with the main camera sporting a 5 megapixel sensor.

The Android 3.2 based tablet should start shipping later this month in both 16GB and 32GB versions at US$530 and US$600 respectively.

Toshiba Excite X10

US Rejected Anti-Piracy Law

After the Copy Culture Survey has been released, it appeared to be bad news for those politicians who hoped to pick up some reactionary votes from pushing through anti-piracy rules.

It seems that the great unwashed think that online piracy is socially acceptable prevails in the States. Indeed, if you say at a party that you’ve just ripped your Beatles collection, your friends won’t shun you. You will also have no problem with downloading a copy of "Sherlock" last night and your parents finding that out. In other words, piracy is an essential part of the modern society.

The above mentioned Copy Culture survey was paid for by the American Assembly, supported by a research award from Google. Its results were based on interviews on both landline and mobiles conducted in English with over 2,300 adults residing in the continental US in August 2011. For the results that are based on the entire sample, the margin of error is estimated as two percentage points.

The survey revealed that copyright violation among family and friends is quite common. It also showed that 46% of adults and 75% of young people have ever purchased, copied, or downloaded any kind of copyright infringing content. Over 70% of the respondents believe that it’s really reasonable to share music files with friends and family.
Meanwhile, solid majorities of the US online users oppose copyright enforcement which is clearly perceived to intrude on personal rights and freedoms. At the same time, support for online blocking schemes was at 16%. The research in question will probably be taken one way by the entertainment industry: that the consumers have no idea what's really good for them and an anti-piracy bill like SOPA is what they really need.

However, it seems now that rather than winning votes, the proposed copyright legislation could cost the politicians supporting it. In other words, this could do more damage than votes generated by, say, the bribe money and campaign contributions from the entertainment industry can buy you. At the same time, other surveys claim that around 50% of Internet pirates admitted that they pirated less after the emergence of streaming services. That’s probably what the politicians should pay attention to, rather than insisting on implementing strict anti-piracy rules.

American Police Refused To Hand Over Hackers To France

While the American government requires that UK citizens are dragged into one of their courts to face sixty-year sentences, it looks like it is not even reluctant to hand over one of its own hackers over to a more sensible French court.

The US cyclist Floyd Landis had a go at cracking the PCs of the anti-doping lab that found him cheating during Tour de France 6 years ago. He was charged by the court in Paris, which heard how he and his former coach refused to show up in court. In addition, they both were helped by the government of the United States that refused to co-operate against the US hackers.

It turned out that Landis was similar to a UK hacker looking for UFOs or an Australian who published secret tapes of the US helicopter pilots who laughed as they gun down Reuters journalists. Anyway, the authorities seem to be reluctant to hand over American sporting heroes when they do the same sort of thing.

In fact, the French did have enough evidence to convict both Landis and Baker after a Trojan horse spy program was used 6 years ago to poke into the lab's servers to extract data about Landis' file, several months after he tested positive. After this, Landis admitted that he took drugs in his career. Meanwhile, the police explained that they couldn’t turn up who exactly ordered the hacking, thanks to the American authorities sitting on their hands. The data received during the hack was later used in an unsuccessful appeal to sports authorities. It was supposed to prove that Landis was clean and that the lab work was actually faulty. The court decided that Landis' role was limited to the knowledge that he had about the fraudulent origin of the laboratory data used by him and his defense team.The court also ruled that Landis knew that these lab results were really accurate, because he would admit 4 years later that he had taken drugs since 2002.

While Landis didn’t comment the trial, Baker insisted that the charges weren’t true. He said that he had nothing to do with any hacking and as far as he knew, the lab papers he received while serving as an expert consultant to the legal team were received in a legal way. He believes that everything is part of a plot to protect the laboratory, which appears to be a national French institution. As a result, they were both given a year's suspended sentences, which means that there’s probably nothing to worry about unless they ever commit another crime in this country again.

GoDaddy Stopped Supporting SOPA

An online boycott that started last week on reddit proved successfull and spred across the Internet. Thanks to it, domain registrar GoDaddy had taken a decision to drop its support for SOPA, according to media reports.

The press announced that GoDaddy was no longer supporting SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), which is currently working its way through the American Congress. Since addressing digital piracy is the most important issue, GoDaddy has been working to help craft revisions to the proposed law, but decided that it can clearly do better. The newly appointed CEO of GoDaddy claimed that it’s very important to make all online stakeholders working together on this. If they get it right, it would worth the wait. The service will support it when and if the online community supports it, according to the announcement the company made in press.

After the boycott took life last Thursday, GoDaddy’s competitors had begun providing special deals with promo codes, such as “SopaSuck”, in order to lure GoDaddy switchers. That’s when GoDaddy claimed that the servie has received some emails looking to stem from the boycott prompt, but they hadn’t seen any impact to the business. But considering the fact that the customers of the service weren’t pleased much with such response, the impact on the service’s business appeared to be considerable.

According to the company’s claims during the negotiations over the proposed legislation, GoDaddy tried to express the concerns of the entire online community and to improve the legislation by pushing to make the law’s provisions not so aggressive. Nevertheless, the company reconsidered the entire situation and announced that in changing its position, the service remains steadfast in its promise to support security and stability of the web.

Spanish Minister Will Fight Piracy

Jose Ignacio Wert, the country’s Minister of Culture and Education, has recently made his position on piracy clear – he claimed at his first appearance as a minister that he is going to address digital piracy and go away from the present subsidy-based model of movie financing.

Just after taking office last week, Jose Ignacio Wert said that nobody respects the culture of Spain, which is the leader in the ranking of unauthorized downloads, and the country shouldn’t go anywhere in that direction. He added that the culture is in fact the essence of intellectual property legislation. Wert said that very soon they would have news, but he could say with full clarity that no objectives that they were currently considering were compatible with the existence of legal loopholes allowing for the abuse of intellectual property or the pillaging of creators.

According to the study, carried out by the Observatory of Piracy and Consumption Habits of Digital Content, over 77% of the digital content consumed in the country in the first half of the last was illegal. Moreover, the same research revealed that the damage caused by piracy to the entertainment industry was up to 5.2 billion euros in the first half of the last year, which shows a raise of 3% compared to the previous year.

The current plans of the minister are to pass a long-tabled anti-piracy legislation allowing to take offline the notorious file-sharing websites. During his swearing in, the minister claimed that the country’s cultural strategy would be both careful and realistic, and therefore should work on very limited resources, appropriate to the time they are in office.

Wert pointed out that it wasn’t a right time to blow seeds to the wind, but rather that each seed sowed is placed where it has the best chance to give fruit. In other words, the government doesn’t want to do away with cultural subsidies, but rather to the culture of subsidies. Meanwhile, the subsidy fund pooled $100 million in the last year. Nevertheless, a drop is expected this year, according to the experts reports. As for the entertainment industry, voices fear a serious attack on the way movies are financed in the country. That’s why Wert says that a sponsorship bill should be urgently passed. He hopes to get it ready in the first quarter of 2011, describing it as a key piece to bringing back society’s say in culture.

India Became Spam Giant

The oldest civilization in the globe has become the largest source of spam, according to a report presented by Kaspersky Lab. The insecurity outfit claims that spammers have made use of lax legislation and absent policing to make the world's spam hub out of the country.

Kaspersky explained that more spam was sent from India than anywhere else in the globe in the third quarter of 2011. According to its report, 80% of email traffic was spam. Of that, 15% originated in India, 11% came from Indonesia, and 10% from Brazil. The company’s spam engineer Darya Gudkova claimed that there was a growing trend for junk mail to be sent from PCs in Asia and Latin America.

Today India became one of the best places for spammers to set up due to the lack of awareness about online security and anti-spam legislation, which had given spammers free reign. Apparently, the spammers preferred to outsource their operations in India when other countries cracked down on the practice.

Although the Indians created the Information Technology Act 12 years ago, which was supposed to address spammers, nobody has been convicted under it thus far. Anyway, India appeared to be a great place for a spammer to set up, since it has 112 million online users, which makes it the third n the world after China and the US. In other words, there’s a great local market to target even before having a crack at the Europeans and Americans.

Darya Gudkova explained that online hygiene from the use of anti-virus software or good passwords appears poor among people, companies and even the government. Meanwhile, Gudkova told during the interview that this lack of awareness in the country helps cyber criminals to easily create botnets.

Microsoft vs Drunk Events

It seems that Microsoft employees didn’t get great Christmas parties as they hoped – software giant, Vole, appeared to be too worried that its image has been tarnished by the heavy drinking antics of its sales people. As a result, he just ordered its staff back off the wagon.

In 2011, the company was too embarrassed after a number of court cases showed that some of its sales meetings looked more as drunk events, just as if the company made a career in drinking. It all started after the Microsoft Global Exchange conference that took place in Atlanta, with the vodka and Jagermeister flowing like water. Indeed, a number of senior executives are alleged to have got "ridiculously drunk", as well as to have made some unwelcome sexual advances toward female colleagues.

Meanwhile, Microsoft declines the fact that the company has a culture of heavy drinking. As for the industry experts, they joke that attempts to sell Vista would have driven any sane person to the bottle. As a result, Vole has decided to update its code of "ethics and compliance", which now includes the requirement for both event organizers and participants to exercise common sense and good judgment when alcohol is served at social events. In other words, vodka and Jagermeister are supposed to be off the menu, replaced by a few top quality and unassuming reds.

Although Vole allowed the food to be served along with alcoholic beverages, he added that participants should manage their level of alcohol consumption. Moreover, event sponsors are required to ensure that some alternative forms of transportation are available, just as legs. The requirement reads that any participant becoming inebriated is supposed to be prevented from consuming alcoholic beverages along with operating a vehicle.

Spanish Author Gave Up Writing Due To Ebook Piracy

A prominent Spanish author named Lucía Etxebarria has announced an abrupt end to her life as a writer because of the effects of ebook piracy. However, her decision proved controversial.

Lucía Etxebarria claimed during the interview that she would not publish any more of her writings for a while now because there were more unauthorized copies of her latest novel downloaded than those purchased legitimately.

Unlike most writers, and indeed content creators in general, who would hope to seek for financial compensation, the way how this author has turned her back on her profession has caused fierce debate about the role of content creators in our digital age where material can easily be accessed for free.

For instance, a backlash was immediately felt on Facebook, where the writer quickly shut down her account. In fact, Etxebarria is among the small percentage of authors who have been fortunate to make a good living, since Lucía has won the lucrative Planeta and Primavera awards, which gave her around £750,000 in prize money. Nevertheless, with the ever-increasing popularity of electronic books throughout the globe, as well as the ability to access the material for free, the debate over financial aspirations for writers has started again.

For example, sci-fi and fantasy writer Storm Constantine thinks that financial considerations shouldn’t take precedence a compulsion for authors, who write because it’s in their blood, because it’s what they do. The supporters of this point of view believe that if a writer is a true story teller, they couldn’t bear to give up writing – in fact, the only person they would hurt are themselves.

Who Was The First Hacker?

New Scientist has recently revealed the name of the world's first hacker, who managed to discover a security hole in Marconi's wireless telegraph and managed to show the inventor up.

It turned out that a stage magician named Nevil Maskelyn wrecked a public demo of Marconi's wireless telegraph over a century ago, in 1903, – he sent insults in Morse code down the wire. The crowd was really amused when the physicist John Ambrose Fleming has been adjusting arcane apparatus while preparing to show the long-range wireless communication system created by his boss, the Italian radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi, who was several hundreds miles away trying to send the message.

However, before the show could start, the apparatus in the lecture theater started to tap out a message – it appeared to be a poem accusing Marconi of "diddling the public". Fleming's assistant found out that beaming powerful wireless pulses into the theater were strong enough to be able to interfere with the electric arc discharge lamp of the projector. The apparatus began spelling "Rats" repeatedly and after this ripped into the poem.

That’s how Maskelyn proved that Marconi's item was insecure, and the others could easily eavesdrop on private messages as well. Meanwhile, Fleming fired off a missive to the Times, calling the hack “scientific hooliganism” and asking the readers to help him find the hacker. Nevertheless, Maskelyn, whose family earned money by making "spend-a-penny" locks in pay toilets, outed himself 4 days later. He tried to justify his actions by the security holes it discovered for the public good. He used Morse code in his mind-reading tricks and managed to send wireless messages between a ground station and a balloon located 10 miles away. Nevertherless, Maskelyn was stuffed up by the fact that Marconi had patents on his technology but failed to develop it.

It later appeared that he was hired as a spy for the Eastern Telegraph Company that was worried that Marconi could stuff up its business.

The first hacker built a 50-metre radio mast somewhere on the cliffs in order to find out if he could eavesdrop on messages beamed by Marconi Company to vessels. As a result, Maskelyn pointed out that Marconi’s security was a doddle to hack. Although Maskelyne's name had been forgotten, he is now again in the history books as the world's first hacker.

Techrights Outfit Called To Boycott Apple

Some anti-patent campaigning outfit has called to boycott Apple products, trying to get Cupertino to drop its lawsuit strategy launched against Android and Linux.

Techrights that has launched campaigns against Microsoft and Novell earlier was against software patents in general. Nevertheless, they claimed that Apple was being a real pain with lawsuits, untrue allegations and doctored “evidence”. For example, Dr. Roy Schestowitz claimed that the cult of Steve Jobs loved to pretend that they invented the smartphone, tablets and all other things shiny. Meanwhile, the scariest part of all this is that Apple fan websites keep celebrating Apple patents and trademarks.

After Schestowitz called Apple a company that had built itself on knockoffs, he added that it has been working hard to embargo the competition. According to his claims, given the latest actions from the giant, Techrights can’t help recommending that consumers purchase nothing from Apple and start boycotting the corporation for being a real threat to both IT landscape and for common sense.

Techrights explained that the corporation used to be a lot more benign, but when it began the legal assaults, Apple made it clear that it appeared to be just a frantic embargo company rather than a producer. Surprisingly enough, they noticed some quarters of the press appeared to be colluding, like the Telegraph attacking Google on Christmas eve with general smear campaigns and unbalanced articles. Indeed, the Telegraph claimed that Google's Android, which competes ith the Apple's iOS, is currently under heavy fire from all sides. In addition, the best-selling software was claimed to be accused in courts across the globe of plundering the original ideas of others.