Archive for the 'Internet' Category

YouTube hosts unholy war

Friday, April 11th, 2008

A Saudi blogger has made an anti-Christianity video in a direct response to an equally controversial anti-Islamic video.

On Tuesday Web User reported on the decision by ISPs in Indonesia to block access to YouTube and MySpace because of a controversial anti-islamic video posted online.
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Cheney photo causes web frenzy

Friday, April 11th, 2008

s it a fishing rod or a scantily clad woman? The internet is awash with speculation about what exactly is reflected in the sunglasses of the American vice president Dick Cheney.

The undated photo of a smiling Cheney appears on the White House website and it has been suggested that a naked woman is reflected in his sunglasses.
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Watch the US Masters online

Friday, April 11th, 2008

The second day of the US Masters 2008 in Augusta, Georgia sees Brits Justin Rose, Lee Westwood and Ian Poulter in good form.

The BBC Sport website is offering live text commentary and you can see video coverage between 2100 and 2230 on Friday night, available to surfers in the UK only.

You can also see live video from Amen Corner between 1545 and 2215 on the BBC Sport website on Friday.

Masters coverage will also be made available on the BBC iPlayer, available to watch for seven days after the tournament.

Farcebook: the anti-social network

Friday, April 11th, 2008

if you’ve tired of Facebook and are ready for the next revolution in social networking then maybe Farcebook is the site for you.

Billed as the social network for anti-social people, Farcebook parodies the world’s most popular social-networking site and is built on a whole heap of irony.
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Watch Bahrain GP online

Thursday, April 3rd, 2008

You can see all the action from this weekend’s Bahrain Grand Prix online at the ITV.com website.

The first practice session takes place at 0800GMT on Friday, followed by a second session at 1200GMT.

Qualifying is at 1200GMT on Saturday and coverage of the race will begin at 1230GMT on Sunday. All sessions will be streamed live on the site.

Britain’s Lewis Hamilton is in the lead of the championship at the moment but reigning World Champion Kimi Raikkonen is breathing down his neck having won the last race in Malaysia.

www.itv.com/f1

Storm causes 20 per cent of spam

Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008

The Storm botnet was responsible for 20 per cent of all spam email sent in the first quarter of 2008, according to research from MessageLabs.

The Storm botnet was responsible for 20 per cent of all spam email sent in the first quarter of 2008, according to research from MessageLabs.

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IFPI wants €1.6m from Pirate Bay

Tuesday, April 1st, 2008

he International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), a body that represents the music industry, has demanded €1.6m (about £1.26m) from file-sharing website The Pirate Bay.

The demands relate to a court case that is being brought in Sweden against The Pirate Bay for alleged copyright infringement.

The site tells surfers all over the world where to download content including music, videos and software for free.

The content is often subject to copyright laws and many organisations have attempted, unsuccessfully, to prosecute The Pirate Bay.

The Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde described the IFPI’s demands as “ridiculous” and said that he was confident the IFPI would not win.

“When we win the case, I’m sure that IFPI will not pay the damages that’s going to be awarded to us. And if they wanted to, chances are they might have gone bankrupt before,” Sunde wrote on his blog.

He also said that The Pirate Bay was actually making money for the music industry, not taking it away.

“Research on the area of file-sharing (especially music) shows that the economy thrives due to file-sharing. IFPI have decided not to quote any research for their claim. In a normal market environment they would actually have to pay us instead,” he wrote.

John Kennedy, chairman of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, said in January that he was optimistic that the court case could see the site closed for good.

“The operators of The Pirate Bay have always been interested in making money, not music. The Pirate Bay has managed to make Sweden, normally the most law abiding of EU countries, look like a piracy haven with intellectual property laws on a par with Russia,” he said.

The case, which is not likely to start until the autumn of this year, has already seen The Pirate Bay accuse Swedish police of a smear campaign.

Last year, The Pirate Bay tried to take legal action of its own when an email leaked from a company called MediaDefender, who had allegedly been hired to put a stop to The Pirate Bay’s operations, suggested that some record labels had been trying to sabotage its network.

The Pirate Bay also attempted to buy a man-made island off the Essex coast from which to run its operations last year.

Blu-ray copy protection ‘cracked’

Saturday, March 29th, 2008

A company claims it has cracked the anti-piracy technology on Blu-ray discs.Slysoft says the new version of its AnyDVD programme allows users to make “backup security copies” of high definition movies.

The claim is a blow to Sony which developed the Blu-ray format.

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Adobe Photoshop Express launched

Friday, March 28th, 2008

Adobe has launched a new online image-editing service with a free 2GB of storage space.

Photoshop Express from Adobe is a free online service combining photo storage and image editing and is currently in beta. It doesn’t require you to download any software to your PC.

“Photoshop Express is a convenient, single destination where you can store, edit and share photos whether you’re at home, school or on the road,” said Doug Mack, vice president of Consumer and Hosted Solutions at Adobe.

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Slow broadband annoys surfers

Friday, March 28th, 2008

low connection speeds are the biggest cause of ‘internet rage’ for broadband customers in the UK.

A survey from Broadband Genie has said that after slow services, poor customer support and faults on the line were the largest source of frustration.

“Speed and customer service have always played a huge part in causing frustration for broadband users, but one of the most interesting findings of this survey was that very few customers were annoyed by price or capped downloads,” said Ciaron Dunne of Broadband Genie.

The major issue concerning speed, according to the survey, was that ISPs weren’t delivering the speeds they advertised, an issue that has been much in the news recently.

Recent research from point topic suggests that only 15 per cent of people signed up to 8Mbps services actually get that speed, as Web User reported earlier this month.

And last December, industry regulator Ofcom said it would analysing how broadband speeds were advertised in 2008.

“It seems that if ISPs deliver their advertised service without exceptions, customers will quite happily pay the price. The trouble starts when the goods, or in this case speed, aren’t delivered,” Broadband Genie’s Dunne said.