Kazakhstan Suspended Mobile And Internet Broadband

Hardline president of Kazakhstan has recently switched off some of his Glorious Nation's Internet in order to try and stop an Arab Spring style that was uprising in the former Communist bloc country. Kazakhstan’s president Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has been in charge for twenty years already, has imposed a 3-week state of emergency in an oil city where ten people had been killed in a clash between cops and demonstrators. The government claimed that the order had been restored in Zhanaozen, a town with population 90,000 people in the country’s far southwest. However, the part of the crackdown involved switching off all cell phones and online connections in the town in order to prevent protesters organizing themselves. This seems as an exactly the same scenario that had been advocated by UK’s David Cameron as a way of preventing riots in the Glorious Nation of England. Meanwhile, Kazakhstan's Foreign Ministry explained that the clashes have been conducted by a tiny group of provocateurs allegedly set on disrupting a public celebration of the 20th anniversary of the country’s independence. The country’s Ambassador to the United States Erlan Idrissov said during the interview that those were people determined to attack peaceful celebrants in an effort to gain maximum attention and create as much destruction as they could. The ambassador was the person making a really good stab at showing the world that his country was nothing like Borat in a calm and reasoned way. This was unlike the country’s embassy spokesman Roman Vasilenko, who kept pointing out that their citizens didn’t drink fermented horse urine, but rather a beverage called kumys, produced from fermented horse milk. Nevertheless, Idrissov could be mistaken about provocateurs, because it’s clear that the riots aren’t about anything that revolutionary. The town has been the site of a month-long sit-in by oil workers demanding higher wages, with most of them being fired over the past summer. Demonstrators have targeted headquarters of a gas company UzenMunaiGas, together with the mayor's office and a hotel. The country’s president has kept a tight lid on any signs of public discontent within his 20 years of rule. In addition, he also had problems with a surge in radical Islamist-inspired violence not long ago, but it looks like right now his first reaction for some reason was to turn off the web.

Entertainment Industry Discontent With Google

Search giant Google has been blasted by the Recording Industry Association of America for doing not much to fight piracy. Last year the company promised to take 4 specific anti-piracy steps like responding to take-downs in a faster way, deleting pirated terms from their auto-complete feature and make it harder for violating websites to participate in their advertisement feature AdSense, as well as make it easier to search for legal material. Back in 2010, the music industry has issued a so-called “report card” on what it believes is search giant’s slow progress towards making this happen. There the Recording Industry Association of America claimed that the company’s efforts are incomplete, but it wasn’t clear until now what they meant by that since it gave a clear indication about what it really wanted. The industry complained that if a user types in a torrent-related term, the auto-complete feature will still give them answers instead of automatically banning the user or doing anything else. The RIAA believes that the search giant should prioritize online services selling legitimate content over unauthorized ones. Although this seems harmless, Google could be justified in pointing out that it gives the entertainment industry authority to take a decision which of its members should be at the top of any search. The anti-piracy outfit added that the search engine needs to be more proactive about banning unauthorized websites from using its advertising program. Now if the music industry sees a website it doesn’t like, it should send a take-down notice to the company. In other words, Google is required to somehow censor its own results by psychically finding out which services the RIAA doesn't like and taking it offline without asking. Meanwhile, the report also moans about the engine’s promise to respond quickly to take-down requests. The matter is that Google still doesn’t filter Android Marketplace, i.e. doesn’t adequately screen applications before accepting them in its store and doesn’t blacklist them from AdSense and Google Wallet. In response, Google has probably started suspecting that the RIAA is never going to be friendly to the search engine. The industry experts suggest that it’s perhaps better for Google to obey the law instead of going down the messy road of trying to butter up the industry.

Ireland Will Implement Website Blocking

Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner has ordered a halt on the “three-strikes” regime because of its conflicts with privacy policies and the failure of the country’s Internet service provider Eircom to properly apply the “graduate response system”. The issue dates back to 2009, when the Irish Recorded Music Association had reached an agreement with one of the largest ISPs in the country on the issues of unauthorized file-sharing. Under this agreement, the ISP, supervised by the outfit members (EMI, Sony, Universal and Warner), had to introduce the graduated response system. A year ago, Eircom promised that it would be proceeding with implementation of the protocol which might lead to the suspension and ultimately disconnection of Internet service for those subscribers who deliberately and persistently violate copyright legislation. Nevertheless, something went wrong when the ISP sent 300 notification letters to the wrong people. This failure wasn’t taken easy by the country’s Data Protection Commissioner that launched an investigation to establish the legality of the “three-strikes” regime. A report was released, saying that the authorities have decided to put a halt to the practice. The industry experts agree that today both the courts and the official Data Protection Commissioner are starting to understand the fundamental right of users to access the web, and not to be tracked while doing so. Despite the fact that things looked bleak for the entertainment industry, one more report was released recently, revealing that website blocking can be considered as an alternative solution. According to the local media, Seán Sherlock (Minister of State for Enterprise) is going to publish an order early next year which will allow copyright owners, after obtaining a court order, to deny access to violating services with the help of broadband providers. However, it is still unclear which websites will be classified as infringing. The decision of the minister was mainly influenced by EMI’s threats to sue Ireland if it fails to find a feasible solution against digital piracy. In response, the Department of Enterprise, Innovation and Jobs said to EMI that the order is expected to be published and applied as law in January 2012.

Top 5 Camera Phones In December

These pocketable devices are not just any other phone with a camera but can be viewed as a camera with mobile phone functionality.

Couple of years back, a mobile phone with a camera used to be a rarity and is usually priced on the higher side. But now the scenario has changed with almost all mobile phones now equipped with lenses of varying capacity.

Today mobile phones come with advanced cameras with features like advanced optics, complex image sensors and a whole lot of technology running in the background. In fact, today digital cameras are having a tough time selling in numbers all thanks to the camera phones.

Since our last Top 5 Camera Phone installment , lots of things have changed in this arena. From the last list the Galaxy S2, HTC Sensation, and even the iPhone 4S have been replaced with newer more powerful devices.

So here we have this month's installment of our top 5 camera phones money can buy, read on.

Apple iPhone 4s — 8 Megapixel (Price Rs 44,300)

Touted as the fastest iPhone, this handset is truly a remarkable device from Apple. The iPhone 4s comes with a sleek, sharp and thinner design that is similar to its predecessor — the iPhone 4. The fifth-generation model of Apple iPhone comes with a similar 3.5 inch screen with 640 X 960 pixel resolution which is known as the Retina display, the highest resolution display ever built into a phone, and FaceTime for video calling. The display has also been treated with a special oleo phobic coating which is very useful for the Indian environment.

The phone has got an 8 megapixel camera as compared to the 5 megapixel of iPhone 4. The camera has an LED flash also for illumination. The 8 megapixel snapper uses the one of the best image sensors to reproduce life like colours with detail and variance. The camera can also record full HD 1080p video and get functionalities like touch focus and Geo tagging. Along with this, the upgraded OS 5 and a mighty faster dual core processor makes it easier to edit and share pictures.

Apple users can also make use of the Apple iCloud service to store their pictures. Apple is offering 5 GB of space free on iCloud to all its users.

Nokia N8 with Anna — 12 Megapixel (Price Rs 22,000)

Many camera phones have come and gone but this device of Nokia continues to top the charts due to its amazing camera quality. The Nokia N8 boasts of Carl Zeiss optics, a 12 megapixel 1/1.183 inch optical format CCD image sensor, Xenon flash with automatic red-eye removal and auto focus. This type of a sensor has never been used in a camera phone before that makes the N8 unique to its technology and allows it to capture images that are far better in terms of resolution and variance as far as pictures are concerned.

With the Symbian Anna upgrade, the Nokia N8 has gotten newer video recording capabilities such as continuous auto focus, 720P video recording capability. Besides, N8 users can record videos in 30 frames /second as opposed to present 24 frames / second earlier.

Not just the camera, the N8 is an equally excellent device with good hardware and a very responsive and vibrant 3.5 inch touchscreen which makes usage of this device a breeze. The speedy 600 MHz processor might sound puny in front of the bigger multi core competitors but it has been optimised so beautifully that there is virtually no lag in anything you do on this device.

Samsung Galaxy Note — 8 Megapixel (Price Rs 32,299)

Apart from having the biggest smartphone screen, the Galaxy Note is by far the fastest Android smartphone available to the Indian customers. The Galaxy Note is powered by a faster 1.4 GHz dual core processor and comes with a 5.3 inch Super Amoled plus screen and 16 GB inbuilt memory. This phone is almost 200 MHz faster than the Galaxy S2 which is very useful for doing memory intensive tasks like photography and image editing.

The device has an 8 megapixel auto focus camera with LED flash. The device manufacturer has managed to keep the size of the device slim even while incorporating a higher resolution sensor. In terms of video recording, the Galaxy Note offers 1080p HD video recording at 30 FPS. In fact, it is the highest ever frame rate attained by a smartphone in terms of video recording.

The 5.3 inch display is very useful for seeing pictures and especially while editing them on the go. The device has all the necessary hardware for speedier operation and is a breeze to operate even with the included stylus.

HTC Sensation XL — 8 megapixel (Price Rs 38,800)

The Sensation XL is HTC's first ever phone to feature a 1.5 GHz processor supplied by Qualcomm and a whole new interface with the latest HTC sense 3.5 UI. Backed by the latest Android operating system, this device works flawlessly and offers users unparalleled performance. The Sensation XL comes powered with Dr Dre's beats audio enhancement system along with a pair of tuned "Beats' headphones.

The Sensation XL, like its predecessor HTC Sensation, features an 8 megapixel camera which is capable of recording high definition videos in 720p HD resolution. The quality of the camera is good with both stills and videos. The camera also features auto focus to give precise but automatic control to the user. The Sensation allows manual tweaking as well with its touch focus feature that makes the camera focus on the point where the user wishes to.

The device features a 4.7 inch qHD resolution based touchscreen that makes watching pictures and videos fun. The device is complete with its great camera capabilities along with exceptional sound quality thanks to the Beats audio enhancement.

Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc -8 Megapixel (Price Rs 29,000)

Although Sony Ericsson has upgraded the Arc to Arc S, somehow the former gives better camera wise performance than the later. In the past, we have seen world class camera phones that offer best in class photography options and results coming from the brand Sony Ericsson and the Arc is no exception to that.

The Arc features an 8.1 megapixel camera with HD video capability featuring Sony's exclusive Exmor R (CMOS) based image sensor that enhances still images and videos even in low light conditions. The image quality is impressive while the device meets all expectations any shutterbug might have. It records 720 P videos and has a very capable flash for low light shooting as well.

The Xperia Arc is powered with a 1 Ghz processor from Snapdragon including a dedicated Adreno 205 graphics engine for faster operations and a 4.2 inch touchscreen display. The phone features a 512 MB of RAM and a 364 MB of ROM for speedy operations and the phone also comes bundled with an 8 GB microSD card and can manage up to 32 GB of external storage.

The phone also features touch focus, which allows users to manually select which area to focus on while capturing an image. Users can also leave the phone on full auto mode or can select smile detection for that perfect shot.

New Tracking Service Will Reveal Your Downloads

There’s a new portal out there, Youhavedownloaded.com, which was designed to compile the biggest database of all the content downloaded through BitTorrent networks. It operates according to a basic principle: if you have ever visited this site, it would scan for your IP address and if you’ve downloaded any content on BitTorrent, it would reveal that.

Thus far, over 52 million users and 110,000 torrents, which consist of 2,000,000 individual files, became part of this service’s database. A sample of what Internet users have downloaded is indicated on their main page, like “Spy Kids 4” and show “The Walking Dead”.

The founder of the project, Suren Ter-Saakov, explained to cyber security researcher Brian Krebs that the portal had been launched as a proof-of-concept, which means that Youhavedownloaded.com stops short parsing through dynamic IPs. Despite the fact that the service neither stores nor collects personal identifiable details, Youhavedownloaded.com is still able to provide with a good scare for anyone.

When a user visited the service, he would see a message with his IP address, location and list of content that they’ve recently downloaded. Nevertheless, they can also see a removal request in the right corner of this page, saying that the service only aggregates publicly available data, and therefore doesn’t have to accommodate requests for removal. But since the founder wants to be nice, he offers a “Remove Me!” button over there. This is because Suren Ter-Saakov once received a “remove me!” e-mail from one user who has downloaded pornographic video and was afraid that his parents would know what kind of content he downloaded.

Meanwhile, cyber security researcher Brain Krebs admitted that the website in question only emphasizes an important but often overlooked fact – file-sharing networks became a very common and effortless way to spread malicious software. He reminds all Internet users that regardless of the content you want to download, you have to be always alert for virus attack. Bottom line is to be on the lookout for malicious software and make sure to have an anti-virus started at all times. In other words, everyone has to do their best to protect their own privacy and that of their personal computer. Although this has nothing to do with illegal downloading, it is still about downloading via BitTorrent.

US Senator Launched Petition Against Copyright Bills

An online petition started by Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is asking the Congress to stop the SOPA and the Protect IP Act.

The petition in question claims that the country has had enough of government’s meddling and over-regulation, but Congress is for some reason still pushing a couple of dangerous and unconstitutional legislations meant to regulate the sector of the US economy which is creating jobs: the Internet. This senator has already spoken against the suggested laws earlier, trying to explain the problems raised by them. In response, the entertainment industry insisted that both bills are necessary to fight piracy, which would increase the US income. At the same time, tech industries argue that the laws aren’t just going to affect their businesses, but also represent a threat to free speech.

However, Senator Paul wasn’t mentioned among the announced co-sponsors of the alternate piracy legislation expected to be released in a few days by House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa and Senator Ron Wyden. This new bill would rely on the International Trade Commission to handle copyright claims and focus on payment processors and advertising networks, dispensing search providers and different online companies from having to take action.

In response, House’s chairman claimed they didn’t need a petition to kill a suggestion to prevent intellectual property theft on the Internet. Instead, they were waiting for a petition to stop “notorious” foreign sites stealing goods, profits and jobs that belong to US innovators. Aside from stealing entertaining content, such services also offer counterfeit medicine, automobile parts and even baby food. The government also pointed out that the introduced manager’s amendment considers legal and technical concerns with the original draft of the law. Meanwhile, the proposed changes reflect conversations with such web giants as Microsoft and Facebook, making it clear that the law particularly targets the worst-of-the-worst foreign notorious sites. Legitimate sites like Facebook or Twitter are assured to have nothing to worry about under the proposed legislation. The officials also claimed that the SOPA won’t provide a unilateral authority to the Justice Department or copyright holders to remove foreign sites

Stand-up Comedian Tackled Ownership Issue

Upon the completion of his show at the Beacon Theatre, Louis C.K. managed to sell his “Louis C.K. Live at the Beacon Theater” for $5 a copy, thus making a profit of $200.000. That’s how he addressed an old issue of ownership. Earlier, when you purchased a product, it became really yours – you were free to share it, borrow or do whatever else you wanted. However, with today’s restrictions and DRM, such liberty has gone forever.

Louis claimed that his experiment appeared successful: within 12 hours after the show went on sale, he had more that 50,000 purchases, thus earning $250,000, which would break even on the cost of production and site. Soon he has sold more than 110,000 copies for a total of $500,000, which after deducting PayPal charges etc. left him about $200,000 of net income. Although that’s less than he would have been paid by any company to let it sell the show, they would have charged the consumers around $20 for the copy. Worse still, they would have sold an encrypted and regionally restricted copy and owned consumers’ private details for their own use. In other words, this way, consumers only pay $5 and are able to use the video any way they want.

The reason Louis decided to sell his show without his production company is because it keeps most of the profit. Moreover, it is reluctant to share it with giants like Apple or Google. As for his DRM-free product, he addressed pirates, saying that doesn’t really get the idea of “torrent” thing, but he did whatever he could to make it easier for others to watch and enjoy the show without any corporate restrictions. He asked pirates to consider that he wasn’t a corporation, but an individual who had to pay for the production with his own money, so it would be a right thing to refuse sharing this video but pay 5 little dollars to watch it.

The community’s feedback to his message was surprising – the consumers decided that his example could encourage other content creators to do the same and end up with more frequent releases at cheaper prices, which would worth this $5.

Louis has also conducted an interview to promote his idea, where he said that with the money obtained from this sell he is going to make a movie. However, in this case a comedian has an established large fan base, while the newcomer will need some help with promotion

Kazaa Developer Will Sue Internet Giants

Experienced file-sharers must be familiar with the history of Kazaa – the early peer-to-peer file-sharing application, as well as with its downfall because of copyright issues and its comeback efforts. It seems that today the tables have turned, and Kazaa developer Kevin Bermeister is currently the chairman of an important American company intending to sue online giants like Google and Amazon for patent violation in a case expected to be worth hundreds of millions.

6 years ago, Kevin Bermeister was sued by the entertainment industry as a Kazaa developer and reached a settlement of $150 million. Now he has turned his attention towards the developing technology to fight online piracy. Today Bermeister appears to be an important shareholder and non-executive chairman of a company called PersonalWeb. A couple weeks ago it has filed a number of separate cases in the US District Court against online giants like Google, YouTube, Amazon, and EMC.

The company claimed that those companies violated 8 PersonalWeb patents in their cloud computing products, which includes content addressable storage, as well as distributed search engine technologies. The company’s CEO explained that they protect their proprietary business apps and operations via a portfolio of patents the company owns, and are currently actively pursuing licensing and participation in the operation of companies using such patents.

PersonalWeb helped develop related technologies – for example, the Internet collaboration platform for students named StudyBods, thanks to using their patents. One more project, developed by Bermeister and his team, is called Global File Registry (GFR) and is meant to turn Internet service providers into cyberpolice to stop Internet piracy and child porno. The latter can identify millions of known pirated files, so once it is accomplished GFR would offer a legitimate version of the content, and a law enforcement message is sent for kids porno. Meanwhile, Bermeister, before launching Kazaa, was also known for the creation of video games distributor Ozisoft 30 years ago, the former Sega World theme park in Australia back in 1994, and for being an important investor in Skype.

His complaint claims that Google’s, YouTube’s, and others’ core services are violating the company’s patents around identifying, processing, distributing and controlling access to information on the Internet.

Sony launches Tablet S, Tablet P in India

Sony launched two tablets - Tablet S and Tablet P - in the Indian market, priced at Rs 29,990 and Rs 36,990 respectively. Both Sony tablets are built around a 1 GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 processor.





The Tablet S is wedge-shaped, with one side thicker than the other. The shape mimics that of a magazine that's been folded over





The Tablet S is optimized for rich media entertainment on its 9.4-inch 1,280 by 800-pixel capacitive touchscreen display, and sports 1 GB of RAM, 16 or 32 GB of onboard flash storage





Sony said the S tablet is unique because of a universal remote inside the computer that can be used to control stereos, cable television boxes and TV sets





With a powerful mobile processor, the Tablet S device lets you enjoy the web as well as your favorite content and applications on its large, high-resolution screen





The Tablet S' unique asymmetric design allows for hours of comfortable use and built-in Wi-Fi compatibility means Internet connectivity virtually anywhere there's a hotspot





The Tablet P aims to be more portable, featuring a unique folding design with two 5.5-inch displays and a total weight of 372 grams





Sony's tablet P, comes with 4 GB of memory and looks like a clutch purse





When used for reading, the tablet P can be held vertically to show one page on each screen. When writing an email, the upper screen can be used to show the message while the lower can be used as a keyboard





Sony's tablets tap its entertainment library by offering music and movies services, which should give it an edge over rivals. (Image courtesy: Sony)

Mark Zuckerberg Private Pictures Hacked On Facebook

It turned out that Facebook’s team of developers was fast to drop a massive clanger once it emerged that private pictures of the company’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, could be easily accessed via his own website.

Some online forum, bodybuilding.com, has published a step-by-step guide, demonstrating users how they could navigate past security settings which were supposed to stop Internet users from accessing private pictures.

And it looks like regardless of the claims in the exaggerated Social Network, the private photo album has proved that Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t actually live a wild life of debauchery. As opposed to the private pictures of most wealthy twenty-somethings, now there were no any embarrassing or incriminating tagged pictures featuring Zuckerberg gurning at all-night having eyes like saucers or anything like that.
Aside from a photo with President Obama, Facebook founder’s pictures were quite more mundane, with photos uploaded of him cooking meal and handing out sweets to children on Halloween about as exciting as it gets. Nevertheless, there was a picture of enthusiastic carnivore Mark Zuckerberg holding a live chicken, but people could only speculate as to whether the bird was to meet an untimely death at the hands of Zuckerberg with a passion for killing his own dinner. All users were able to check out the pictures published online.

The pictures could be accessed by fiddling around with the system letting Facebook’s users to flag material on other profiles as inappropriate. Unsurprisingly, not many people had time to get a snoop – the network developers reacted quickly by blocking access once they became aware of the embarrassing gaffe.

It seems that Facebook has attributed the mishap to a latest revision of its software, or at least it’s what it said in the interview with the Wall Street Journal. But the facts remain, and the anonymous poster slammed the network’s supposedly crack team of developers at how easy it was to hack into private material, calling it “really terrible programming on the company’s part”. The same was told by a number of industry experts and IT professionals – they all agree that it was just inexcusable, taking into account the legions of engineers and web developers working for Facebook