American Buddhist Net

If you're in Beijing for the Olympics kick starting this weekend, don't be spilling any beans (state secrets or otherwise) in your cab back to the hotel, because you're being listened to. As the WSJ is reporting, on your taxi's dash is a microphone that can be activated remotely, at any time and without the driver's knowledge, for a live listen into any one of Beijing's estimated 70,000 cabs. And then, if the folks on the other end don't like what they hear, they can take things even further.

The GPS-equipped devices also allow for remote disabling by "cutting off the oil or electric supply," effectively shutting down the engine and keeping it from being restarted.

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August 5, 2008
By JOHN MARKOFF

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.

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Business lobbyists and politicians will be meeting today to discuss the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, according to an internal memo released today by Wikileaks.

The proposed agreement would criminalize copyright and intellectual property offenses. Under ACTA, Internet service providers would be required to filter illegal transfers of content and help the government track down the people downloading it. Border patrols would gain the authority to seize and destroy copyrighted materials at the border.

Also, governments would be able to charge individuals with copyright-related crimes even if rights holders do not request that charges be pressed. For comparison, in the U.S., victims of robberies and domestic assaults must press charges against their assailants — the government can’t press charges without compliance from the victim.

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Very good. The FCC did the right thing. Chairman Martin broke from the mind-numbing GOP party-line and voted with commissioners Copps and Adelstein against Comcast and in favor of an "open" internet free of corporate control. This particular instance of corporate malfeasance may not seem all that important, but it is. If the FCC had let Comcast get away with its "discriminatory network management," a first step would have been taken on a slimy and sleazy slippery slope that would inevitably lead to corporate control of the internet and the stifling of first amendment rights. Send Martin, Copps, and Adelstein an email if you get time and say thanks. ABN
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Agency: Blocks on video files hamper 'open' Internet

New York Times News Service
August 2, 2008

In a precedent-setting decision that could affect the future of Internet service, regulators ruled that Comcast Corp. violated federal policies when it blocked customers from sharing online videos and other large files.

The Federal Communications Commission, in a 3-2 vote Friday, asserted a new authority and ordered the cable giant to stop certain practices that interfere with online traffic. At a meeting in Washington, the agency called Comcast's actions inconsistent with "an open and accessible Internet."

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Rogers, one of the two major Canadian Internet Service Providers, has been busy exercising their position of power. Again. After having been injecting content into HTTP webpages for half a year, Rogers has moved on to hijack DNS as well, replacing “not found” responses with pages full of ads. Though why stop there? Internet comes with many more communication protocols; plenty of opportunities to disrupt expected responses and inject unwanted ads into someone else’s content. All in the name of extra profits.

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31 July 2008

An island community of monks were so fed up with their slow internet connection, they've gone broadband.

The Cistercian monks live on Caldey Island, three miles off the coast of Tenby in Pembrokeshire.

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By Alexis Madrigal EmailJuly 31, 2008

A new catalyst makes it feasible to split water with solar power.

MIT chemists say the catalyst, used in conjunction with cheap photovoltaic solar panels, could lead to inexpensive, simple systems that use water to store the energy from sunlight.

In the process, the scientists may have cleared the major roadblock on the long road to fossil fuel independence: Reducing the on-again, off-again nature of many renewable power sources.

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By ANICK JESDANUN , AP Internet Writer, Technology / Internet
July 30, 2008

(AP) -- A massive project to redesign and rebuild the Internet from scratch is inching along with $12 million in government funding and donations of network capacity by two major research organizations.

Many researchers want to rethink the Internet's underlying architecture, saying a "clean-slate" approach is the only way to truly address security and other challenges that have cropped up since the Internet's birth in 1969.

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By Jeremy Hsu
posted: 30 July 2008

An ancient astronomy calculator appears to show the four-year cycle of the early Greek competitions that inspired today's Olympic Games.

Newly uncovered inscriptions on the 2,100 year-old device reveal names linked to the Olympiad cycle of games once celebrated among ancient Greek city-states.

"It's a surprise to find this on what we thought was an astronomical instrument," said Alexander Jones, a science historian at New York University who coauthored a study on the findings that are detailed this week in the journal Nature.

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30/07/2008

BEIJING (AFP) - The Beijing Olympics were plunged into another controversy on Wednesday as China announced a backflip on Internet freedoms for the thousands of foreign reporters covering the Games.

China's decision to reverse a pledge on allowing unfettered web access proved an embarrassment for the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which had repeatedly said foreign press would not face any Internet curbs in Beijing.

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July 30, 2008
By JOHN MARKOFF

Since a secret emergency meeting of computer security experts at Microsoft’s headquarters in March, Dan Kaminsky has been urging companies around the world to fix a potentially dangerous flaw in the basic plumbing of the Internet.

While Internet service providers are racing to fix the problem, which makes it possible for criminals to divert users to fake Web sites where personal and financial information can be stolen, Mr. Kaminsky worries that they have not moved quickly enough.

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I wish people would save their outrage for things that actually mattered. Seriously, what's NOT funny about a princess being force-fed cake? Get a life. Robyn
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By Ben Silverman

She's plump, powerful and ready to cause more controversy than "SuperSize Me."

She's Fat Princess, the star of Sony's upcoming video game of the same name. Debuting at last week's E3 expo, the colorful Fat Princess is a capture-the-flag game with a twist: you can thwart capture attempts by locking the once-thin princess in a dungeon and stuffing her full of cake, thereby increasing her girth and making her harder for your enemies to haul back to home base.

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Yo mama so fat, stupid, nasty, etc.

On the eve of a Lords ruling over US demands for his extradition, a British computer hacker claims that American prosecutors threatened to haul him before a military tribunal

* Jamie Doward, home affairs editor
* The Observer,
* Sunday July 27 2008

When he wakes up this morning, Gary McKinnon will be 72 hours from learning whether he is on the fast track to a 60-year prison sentence, thanks to his obsession with aliens.

McKinnon, 42, from Enfield in north London, is accused by American prosecutors of illegally accessing top-secret computer systems in what they claimed in one legal document was 'the biggest military computer hack of all time'.

The self-taught IT expert insists he was simply looking for information the US government had on UFOs and is adamant that he never damaged any of its computer systems.

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Welcome to Safe Road Maps! This website is a ground-breaking tool that combines information from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System with Google Maps to give you a visual representation of traffic safety across the entire nation. With this system, you can enter an address and view the roads that have the highest number of traffic fatalities in a specified area. You can also view dynamically generated maps that show how public policy has been implemented to improve transportation safety by region. Our hope is that this site brings both increased safety and awareness to transportation policy makers and private citizens.

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The Associated Press wire report July 26, 2008

AUGUSTA - Now that Congress has given immunity to telecommunications companies that helped the government spy on Americans in suspected terrorism cases, a Maine legislator is asking Verizon anew if it turned over any customer records to the federal government.

...Adams had anticipated his query would not be answered.

"Possibly tens of thousands of Mainers have had their private phone records leaked to the federal government without their knowledge or say so, and now none of them may ever know," he said.

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This is looking pretty good. Personally, I believe that anyone who opposes an open internet is an enemy of human civilization and progress. "Bandwidth," "copyright," "censorship," or "free market" excuses are nothing more than stalking horses for private interests seeking to control the internet for private gain. The database of information made available on the internet and the potential for communication across it are unprecedented in human history. To turn this wonderfully functioning mechanism over to private corporations and individuals who inevitably will seek to strangle it and squeeze it for personal gain would be an offense ranking with some of the worst in history. ABN
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Nate Anderson | Published: July 25, 2008 - 09:13PM CT

Once FCC Chair Kevin Martin announced his support for sanctions against Comcast, penalties looked inevitable. The two Democrats on the Commission, long supportive of network neutrality, seemed set to vote along with Martin and punish Comcast for its P2P "delaying" techniques; late this afternoon at FCC headquarters, they did, and a majority has now spoken.

The Wall Street Journal reports tonight that commissioners Copps, Adelstein, and Martin have decided against the cable giant, paving the way for an official vote when the order is publicly voted on next Friday. US ISPs, take note: the FCC has just used its 2005 Internet Policy Statement to draw a line in the sand. Step across it at your peril.

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Network Neutrality -- or "Net Neutrality" for short -- is the guiding principle that preserves the free and open Internet.

Put simply, Net Neutrality means no discrimination. Net Neutrality prevents Internet providers from blocking, speeding up or slowing down Web content based on its source, ownership or destination.

Net Neutrality is the reason why the Internet has driven economic innovation, democratic participation, and free speech online. It protects the consumer's right to use any equipment, content, application or service on a non-discriminatory basis without interference from the network provider. With Net Neutrality, the network's only job is to move data -- not choose which data to privilege with higher quality service.

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By DAVID BARBOZA
Published: July 26, 2008

SHANGHAI — China said the number of Internet users in the country reached about 253 million last month, putting it ahead of the United States as the world’s biggest Internet market.

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July 27, 2008
By NORMAN MAYERSOHN

WHAT makes a motorcycle — not some rare collectible, but a new, limited-production model — worth $120,000?

That was the first question asked by most everyone I told about my test-riding the MV Agusta F4CC, a wickedly purposeful machine from Varese, Italy. The best I could do was to answer with another question: What makes a few special wristwatches cost, say, a half a million dollars? For that matter, what justifies the price of a fountain pen or a bottle of wine that sells for tens of thousands of dollars?

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Good piece> Contains interesting speculation on autism as well as the main topic. ABN
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The race's DNA is changing faster than ever; what it means for our descendants

By Nancy Shute
Posted July 24, 2008

If you judge the progress of humanity by Homer Simpson, Paris Hilton, and Girls Gone Wild videos, you might conclude that our evolution has stalled—or even shifted into reverse. Not so, scientists say. Humans are evolving faster than ever before, picking up new genetic traits and talents that may help us survive a turbulent future.

Much remodeling has gone on since the dawn of agriculture about 10 millenniums ago. "People who lived 10,000 years ago were much more like Neanderthals than we are like those people," says John Hawks, a professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin. "We've changed."

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The prosecution has taken an existing law and applied it where it was never intended to be used. We agree that the case should be thrown out. Also, is there really such a big need for punishment? Drew has surely suffered extreme remorse over her awful behavior, and certainly never meant to cause what happened. ABN
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By Peter Whoriskey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 24, 2008; Page D01

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.

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By JENNIFER C. YATES and SETH BORENSTEIN, Associated Press Writers Wed Jul 23, 7:47 PM ET

PITTSBURGH - The head of a prominent cancer research institute issued an unprecedented warning to his faculty and staff Wednesday: Limit cell phone use because of the possible risk of cancer.

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San Francisco City Council regained access to its own computer network today after Mayor Gavin Newsom convinced network administrator Terry Childs to give them the passwords.

By John Oates for The Register.

Childs is in jail until he can raise $5m in bail. He is accused of blocking all access to the city's network and routers by resetting passwords. He initially refused to cough up the new password. But on Monday afternoon Newsom visited him in jail and persuaded him to hand over the necessary passwords.

After initial confusion, the passwords worked and city officials once again had access to their own network. Childs is accused also of installing hardware on the network to enable remote access.

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Human/robot love inevitable, researcher says

Emily Senger , Canwest News Service
Published: Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Sex with robots may sound sci-fi, but finding a silicon soulmate is closer to reality than we think, says a British researcher.

Human-like robots with all the working parts will make their way onto consumer markets in the next five years; in 20 years they will become socially accepted; and by 2050 the first human-robot marriage ceremony will take place, says David Levy, the London author of Love and Sex With Robots.

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A federal appeals court agreed Tuesday with a lower court ruling that struck down as unconstitutional a 1998 law intended to protect children from sexual material and other objectionable content on the Internet.

The decision by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia is the latest twist in a decade-long legal battle over the Child Online Protection Act, which now could head to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The law, which has not taken effect, would bar people from making harmful content available to minors over the Internet. The act was passed the year after the Supreme Court ruled that another law intended to protect children from explicit material online _ the Communications Decency Act _ was unconstitutional in the landmark case Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union.

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