Geographic – Page 99 – Digital-Lifestyles

US Wi-Fi ‘Thief’ Man Charged

US Man Charged With Stealing Wi-Fi Signal US police have arrested a Florida man for gaining illegal access on a domestic wireless Internet network.

In one of the first criminal cases involving this practice, Benjamin Smith III, 41, faces a pre-trial hearing this month after an April arrest on charges of “unauthorised access to a computer network” – a third-degree felony in the States.

Police say Smith ‘fessed up to sneakily logging on to the Wi-Fi signal after he was spotted using a laptop in his SUV outside the house of Richard Dinon.

Although it’s quite a widespread practice, the newness of the crime means that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement doesn’t even keep statistics, according to a report in the St. Petersburg Times.

With the rise of domestic Wi-Fi networks and Wi-Fi enabled PDAs, laptops and smartphones, more and more people are sniffing out unsecured networks and enjoying a free ride on other people’s connections.

US Man Charged With Stealing Wi-Fi Signal There’s not much harm in that, but the newspaper report points out the darker side of Wi-Fi pilfering, with criminals using the unsecured networks to traffic in child pornography, steal credit card information and even send death threats.

The problem is that few people bother utilising the security protection that comes with their Wi-Fi routers, even though turning on encryption or requiring passwords would make things considerably more difficult for network freeloaders.

If Smith is found guilty of the charges, the outcome could set a dangerous precedent for wireless networking and potentially criminalise tens of thousands of mobile users who regularly log on to any signal they can find.

St. Petersburg Times

YOU-WHO: You’re Never Alone

YOU-WHO: You're Never Alone Dysfunctional drunks, lurking loners and nervous nerds need no longer feel alone thanks to a new mobile phone guessing game called YOU-WHO.

YOU-WHO is a social game for mobile phones that is billed as acting as a “gentle introduction for strangers.”

The software uses the personal area networks created by Bluetooth technology to introduce players to ~~weird geeks~~, ~~desperate losers~~, ~~lonely psychopaths~~, fellow game players in their locality.

The game can be played in any public space where Bluetooth-enabled folks might lurk – train stations, airports, cafés, bars, dark alleyways etc – and supports multi-play gaming.

After two players have agreed to take part in the game, one player will take on the role of ‘mystery person’, gradually feeding clues about their appearance to the other player, who builds up an Anime-style picture on their screen using (ahem) a “million-billion character combinations”.

YOU-WHO: You're Never Alone Once a set number of clues have been given, the players’ phones ‘call’ to each other with a distinctive sound, thus revealing both players’ locations and identities, quickly followed by screams of “Aaaargh!” Get away from me you weird freakshow nerd!”

Billing their game as a “New Type of Social Network Game”, YOU-WHO claims that their game encourages “players to explore their social environment and to take risks”, and that their technology “uses Bluetooth to re-open these social spaces for new chance encounters.”

We’ve always thought that going up to interesting-looking people and just talking to them does the job for us, but no doubt some teenagers might prefer to sit in a corner slumped over their mobile phone instead.

YOU-WHO: You're Never Alone You-WHO is offered as a free 28 day time-limited demo. The cheery young developers at AgeO+ hope to have a full commercial release soon.

The software won the Submerge Graduate Awards, a cross-format competition based in the South West of England. If you’ve a penchant for tiny text, pointless animation and fiddly Flash websites, you’ll love their Website

Age0

Virtual Gleneagles G8 Protest Goes Ahead

Virtual Gleneagles G8 Protest It can be a confusing life for protesters keen to voice their opinions at the G8 meeting in Gleneagles.

First the police inform them that a march can go ahead, then they cancel it, and then – with just a few hours to go – they change their minds again and say the march can go on.

No such confusion exists in the virtual world where protesters keen to avoid a baton on the head – or those unable to attend the non-march/march – can shout at the screen, blow tuneless whistles, chant slogans and get involved with a virtual demonstration from the comfort of their own bedroom.

The “virtual rally”, put together by the ‘Make Poverty History’ campaign, allows politically agitated web surfers to choose an avatar and take part in demonstrations in a virtual Edinburgh.

Virtual Gleneagles G8 Protest

Via a slick Flash interface, surfers can mix and match the look of their virtual protester, add their own slogan to their virtual banner and then join the throng of thousands outside a virtual Gleneagles (happily with no virtual heavy-handed policemen around).

The organisers claim that over 38,000 people have so far taken part in the virtual rally.

Virtual Gleneagles G8 Protest All those signing up will have their names added to the online petition, the Live 8 list, which is being sent directly to the G8 leaders.

The Make Poverty History campaign have been quick to embrace new technology for their worthy cause, running a successful web banner campaign, SMS petitions, emails and the use of a text messaging lottery to offer tickets for Live 8.

This latest online rally is a great example of how the web can be used to mobilise protest. We like it!

www.g8rally.com
Make Poverty History

European Parliament Says Non! To Software Patents

European Parliament Says Non! To Software Patents The European Parliament has voted overwhelming against a controversial bill that might have led to software being patented.

Euro MPs voted 648 to 14 to reject the Computer Implemented Inventions Directive, declaring that that no one liked it in its current form.

The European Commission responded by saying that it would not draw up or submit any more versions of the original proposal.

Hotshot hi-tech firms insisted that the directive was essential to protect their investment in research and development, but opponents were having none of it, saying that the bill would have a detrimental effect on small firms and open source developers.

Today’s vote was on the 100+ amendments made to the original bill which was designed to give EU-wide patent protection for computerised inventions (like CAT scanners and ABS car-brake systems) as well as software when it was used to realise inventions.

European Parliament Says Non! To Software Patents The bill was supposed to get rid of individual EU nations’ patent dispute systems and replace it with a common EU procedure. Instead, the old system of patents being handled by national patent offices will continue, without any judiciary control by the European Court of Justice.

Opponents of the bill aren’t exactly whooping in the streets, with a poster on the urban75 bulletin boards astutely observing, “Don’t think that the fight is over; this was only rejected because both sides voted against it:

The anti-patent lobby just think the whole idea is ridiculous…and the pro-patent lobby feared that the amendments added to the bill would take away their power to patent everything, and thus also voted against the bill.”

With the European Parliament voting so decisively against it, small European software companies have a better chance of competing on a level playing field for now, but with big corporate interests at heart we don’t think we’ve heard the last of software patents.

It’s also worth noting that there’s now nothing to stop individual countries legislating software patents on their own.

Software patent bill thrown out [BBC]
Computer Implemented Inventions Directive

Tiscali To Webcast Reading Festival

Tiscali To Webcast Reading Festival It used to be that attending a festival was more akin to a long trek in a distant country, with festival-goers vanishing for days on end, uncontactable by the outside world.

When they returned, battle weary and hungry, they could be assured of a ready audience as they retold their tales of epic mudbaths, day-long guitar solos and beery quagmires.

Sadly, festival goers might find the folks at home a little less interested in their stories as they can now view the entire thing, live and direct, from the comfort of their home PC.

Tiscali To Webcast Reading Festival Like Glastonbury, Live 8 and several other big music festivals, band’s performances at the Reading Festival will be available to view over the Web via a streaming Webcast, with official sponsors Tiscali providing the coverage.

The streams will be available through Tiscali with further exclusive archive footage streaming after the Festival itself.

Tiscali will also launch and host exclusive Tiscali Sessions in a specially created backstage Tiscali VIP Tent during the festival, with private performance footage being made available after the Festival.

Richard Ayers, portal director of Tiscali.co.uk converged: “Already many of the Reading audience will be buying most their music online so our involvement in bringing The Carling Weekend: Reading Festival experience to millions of online viewers only serves to prove further that broadband and entertainment are excellent bedfellows.”

The festival, now corporate branded into the “Carling Weekend Reading Festival”, takes place over the August bank holiday weekend.

Reading Festival

China Opens Clinic For Internet Addicts

China Opens Clinic For Internet Addicts China has opened its first officially licensed clinic for Internet addiction as State media reports growing cases of obsessed Internet gamers whose addiction has caused them to quit school, commit suicide or even murder fellow gamers.

Dr. Tao Ran, the clinic’s director reports that his patients suffer from a series of maladies including depression, nervousness, fear, panic, agitation and an unwillingness to interact with others (to be honest, that sounds like a lot of normal teenagers we know).

Their Internet addiction also manifests itself in sleep disorders, the shakes and numbness in their hands from a surfeit of fragging, clicking and scrolling.

The government-owned clinic opened for business in March this year, and is situated within the Beijing Military Region Central Hospital, with the patients – mainly aged between 14 to 24 – looked after by a team of a dozen nurses and 11 doctors.

Most report losing sleep, weight and friends after spending countless grimly hours glued to their PCs, with one 12-year-old reported to have spent four days in an Internet cafe, barely eating or sleeping.

The Web addicts claim that their online obsession helped them to escape everyday stress, with many older kids becoming fixated by online chats with the opposite sex.

Tao estimates that up to 2.5 million Chinese suffer from Internet addiction, although Kuang Wenbo, a professor of mass media at Beijing’s Renmin University, thinks the problem is being overstated:

“As the number of the Netizens grows, the number of the addicted people will grow as well, but we should not worry about the issue too much. The young men at the age of growing up have their own problems. Even if there was no Internet they will get addicted to other things.”

Patients diagnosed as Internet-addicted by Tao’s diagnostic test are presented with a combination of therapy sessions, medication, acupuncture and sports exercise, with the courses lasting around 10 to 15 days.

Treatment is not cheap, with the daily US$48 (~£27 ~€40) charge working out at more than double the average city dweller’s weekly income in China.

Some of Tao’s treatment sounds a bit medieval with one session involving a machine that stimulates nerve impulses by delivering 30-volt charges to pressure points.

Another treatment is reported to involve a clear fluid delivered via an intravenous drip to “adjust the unbalanced status of brain secretions.” Eek!

Although Tao claims that the long-term effects of treatment are generally successful, not all patients are available to resist the temptation to log on.

Internet addicts treated at clinic in Beijing [AP]

iTunes Live8 McCartney/U2 Track Fast Release

Apple iTunes Releases Live8 McCartney/U2 Track Hot on the heels of the hugely successful Live8 concert in London, Apple’s iTunes Music Store has made the opening performance of The Beatles’s “Sergeant Pepper” (sung by McCartney with U2) available for purchase through its store.

With the Guinness Book of Records monitoring proceedings to see if the venture qualifies as the fastest-ever global release of a live track, the speedy release reveals how digital technology has vastly accelerated the distribution of content.

Straight after the live performance, the opening track was transmitted by satellite to BBC TV Centre in London and then relayed to UK radio broadcast company, Capital Radio.

A direct digital recording was captured there for Universal Music, which edited, mastered and transmitted the track to its production centre in Hanover, Germany.

The final master was forwarded on to Universal’s global electronic distribution warehouse in the US, and made available for real-time delivery to online retailers around the world, ready to be purchased as the “first Live 8 download”,

Apple iTunes Releases Live8 McCartney/U2 Track Distribution is to be exclusively digital, so there will be no physical product. All profits are to be donated to Live 8, “and the fight for the future of Africa”, according to the iTunes Website.

A further message on the site reminds users: “100 artists, a million spectators, one billion viewers, and one message: stop extreme poverty in Africa”.

Despite battling hard with unhealthy levels of cynicism all week – a feeling not helped by Apple’s self-serving publicity and the presence of Bill Gates at the Live8 show itself – I can only applaud anything that raises awareness of the obscene disparity of wealth in the world.

Let’s just hope that people don’t think that downloading the track is anywhere near enough.

iTunes
Live 8

Cardiff First For BT’s 21st Century Network (21CN)

Cardiff First For BT's 21st Century Network (21CN) Their glorious football team many not be first at anything much these days, but BT have announced that Cardiff and the surrounding area will lead the UK with the implementation of their 21st Century Network (21CN).

The £10bn investment will roll out the next generation of converged communications, including telephone calls, broadband and Ethernet services delivered through an Internet-based platform.

The investment will end BT’s dependence on telephony through on Ye Olde public switched telephone network (PSTN) and should – in theory – result in cheaper telephone bills for its customers.

What is this 21CN thing, do I hear you ask?

Here’s how BT describe the technology:

“BT’s 21st Century Network (21CN) is a global IP infrastructure, based upon multi-protocol label switching (MPLS), that carries voice, data and Internet services on a single network. The 21CN offers multiple services across a single network, rather than today’s multitude of networks offering specific services.”

“For BT, this will mean fewer network elements overall and require simpler network management. For BT’s customers, the 21CN will deliver more choice, control and accessibility, as well as increased flexibility, reliability and security.”

Cardiff First For BT's 21st Century Network (21CN) BT is expected to begin migrating around 350,000 customer lines in the area during the second half of 2006, with the 21CN programme requiring the replacement of equipment in more than 50 local exchanges along with the implementation of new IT systems to make the technology do its stuff.

Ask BT competitors what 21CN is and you’ll get quite a different answer. Their view is that it is effectively the death of meaningful competition in the UK and that once BT has it in place there will be no incentive to try and unbundle exchanges.

Three cool-sounding “metro nodes” (super telephone exchanges) are to be developed in Cardiff, Swansea and Newport, with 10 new transmission sites also being developed across the region. These will be assessed for power supply, space and logistics planning before the ‘on’ switch is pressed.

First Minister Rhodri Morgan purred, “It’s incredibly exciting for us that Wales has been selected to provide the test bed for BT’s new 21st Century Network This investment by BT clearly signifies that Cardiff and central South Wales is one of Europe’s most dynamic and progressive regions. The end result will transform our personal and business lives, and help attract high-tech industry and services to Wales.”

Matt Bross, BT group’s chief technology officer, said, “This roll-out will be the first time anywhere in the world that customers will have communications services provided over such a radical next generation network.”

“The operational experience that we gain in Cardiff and the surrounding area will enable us to move full steam ahead and deliver 21CN to everyone in the UK – migrating a total of 30 million lines – in just four years.”

“It’s an enormous technical and operational challenge, but will enable customers to benefit from compelling new services.”

How the installation and implementation of the service – and the customer feedback – works out will help BT finalise plans to roll out 21CN to customers across the UK by the end of the decade.

BT 21st Century Network

DoJ Operation Site Down: Raids In 11 Nations

DoJ Operation Site Down: Raids In 11 Nations In a pretty gung-ho move that shows a lot of seriousness, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) have announced the results of Operation Site Down. More than 20 raids occurred in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands, Portugal and the UK, as well as 70 in the USA.

Four arrests: David Fish; Nate Lovell; Chirayu Patel; and William Veyna were made in the US with them being charged with violating federal copyright protection laws.

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales was nothing if not stern, “By dismantling these networks, the Department is striking at the top of the copyright piracy supply chain—a distribution chain that provides the vast majority of the illegal digital content now available online, and by penetrating this illegal world of high-technology and intellectual property theft, we have shown that law enforcement can and will find — and we will prosecute — those who try to use the Internet to create piracy networks beyond the reach of law enforcement.”

We’d imagine there’s been a fair degree of celebration at this news in the entertainment world – dinner tables will be booked.

The DoJ reported that hundreds of computers had been seized, leading to at least eight major online distribution networks being shut down.

With the size of the seizures we’d imagine there’ll a big gap left in the world downloading. It will be interesting to see how long it takes to repair itself.

One thing the Attorney General said particularly struck us, “this illegal world of high-technology and intellectual property theft.” Let’s hope the two of these are bound together, and he’s not talking about a separate illegal world of high-technology. Now that would be worrying.

While closing down some file sharing networks for a period of time will temporarily throttle the flow of material over the Internet, we see far more direct financial loss through gangs selling DVD’s around pubs, clubs and streets of the UK, where this has reached such a level that we have seen a pub with “No DVDs” signs on the door.

File trading on the Internet is done by spending the time doing it, but it has no financial gain. The DVDs being sold in public are making someone very rich.

It does make you think that if downloading high-quality movies without seeing the head of someone getting up in the middle of the film to go to the toilet were easy, most of that fiver that people pay on the street would end up in the film company’s pocket. Sadly they’re waiting for DRM to be in place first.

US Department of Justice

Teleport, TV-on-Demand Service Launched By Telewest Broadband

Telewest Broadband Launches TV-On-Demand Service Teleport Cable company Telewest Broadband is making Teleport, its TV-on-demand service, available to over 26,000 customers in Cheltenham and Gloucester today.

As we reported last month, this forms the first stage of national roll-out which Telewest claims will “revolutionise” digital TV for more than a million customers by the beginning of next year.

The cable company’s Teleport service gives customers instant, 24 hour access to a vast library films and TV entertainment with users able to pause, fast forward and rewind the content, just like a DVD.

Sofa-loafing customers can access the service via the existing set-top box and remote control, with a simple on-screen menu serving up viewing menus.

Telewest Broadband Launches TV-On-Demand Service Teleport Teleport Movies offers around 200 current and library films from FilmFlex, with rental charges costing between £2.00 (~$3.59, ~€3) and £3.50 (~$6.28, ~€5.20) for a 24-hour rental period.

Teleport Replay lets TV addicts users catch up on popular programmes from the previous week, and will include riveting programmes such as Eastenders and Casualty (be still my beating heart!), with Teleport Life offering specialist interest programmes.

Soon to be launched is Teleport TV, which will screen classic BBC series such as Morse and Waking the Dead and music videos on a subscription basis.

Freeloaders will be pleased to learn that Telewest is promising a “substantial amount” of free content, including soaps, comedy and documentaries, along with the usual pay-per-view and subscription options.

Subscribers to the company’s premier digital TV package will get most of the new content bundled in for free, including access to the entire TV package.

Eric Tveter, president and CEO of Telewest, mused: “Teleport has arrived and it’s genuinely going to change the way people watch TV. The schedule normally dictates viewing, but our customers will have the choice and convenience of a service they can tailor – it’s TV on their terms.”

Telewest Broadband has already been scooping up secured content from a wide range of providers including Filmflex, the BBC, Flextech, Discovery Networks Europe, National Geographic Channel Europe, Nickelodeon, Jetix (ex-Fox Kids) and Playboy TV.

Such is Telewest’s determination to snaffle a chunk of the burgeoning Video On Demand market, the company is whipping out its wallet like Ron Atkinson on pay day, investing around £20 million in the development of advanced TV services in 2005.

Telewest