Cutting the cord: how the world's engineers built Wi-Fi : Wireless networking has exploded over the last 15 years, but how do our computers and routers work their invisible magic? This deep dive into Wi-Fi lays it all out. [......]
Archive for the ‘Policy & Law’ Category
Samsung and Apple were in federal court in California on Thursday to argue over Apple's request for a preliminary injunction barring sales of Galaxy Tab and Galaxy S devices in the US. US District Judge Lucy Koh suggested that Samsung's devices do appear to infringe on Apple's design patents , though her final decision, expected soon, has yet to be issued. Meanwhile, Samsung's efforts to leverage standards-essential 3G patents to ban sales of Apple's newest iPhone 4S have fallen flat in The Netherlands[......]
Samsung and Apple were in federal court in California on Thursday to argue over Apple's request for a preliminary injunction barring sales of Galaxy Tab and Galaxy S devices in the US. [......]
Congress is trying to wrap its collective head around Amazon's new Silk Web browser . At a privacy hearing yesterday, Rep[......]
Congress is trying to wrap its collective head around Amazon's new Silk Web browser . At a privacy hearing yesterday, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) expressed outrage at the way Silk's "split" design can funnel all user browsing data through Amazon's backend servers[......]
Top-ranking Obama administration officials, including the US copyright czar, played an active role in secret negotiations between Hollywood, the recording industry and ISPs to disrupt internet access for users suspected of violating copyright law, according to internal White House e-mails. The e-mails, obtained via the Freedom of Information Act , (.pdf) show the administration’s cozy relationship with Hollywood and the music industry’s lobbying arms, and its early support for the copyright-violation crackdown system publicly announced in July. Read the comments on this post [......]
Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), opened his remarks on Internet privacy today with a colorful analogy—companies who use your personal Internet information without first obtaining consent are like the Redcoats, quartering in your home against your will. "I'm going to read the Third Amendment to the Constitution of the United States," Barton began. [......]
Sen. [......]
If you watch crime dramas, you'll be forgiven for the impression that DNA evidence makes an airtight case. And if you do have that impression, you might be confused about the internationally famous case of American Amanda Knox, convicted of murdering her British roommate in Perugia, Italy in 2007. After all, the prosecution's case was based on DNA evidence; Knox's genetic fingerprints were found by Italian police on the handle of a kitchen knife, which also had the victim's DNA on the blade.[......]
In a request made yesterday to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, Verisign outlined a new “anti-abuse” policy that would allow the company to terminate, lock, or transfer any domain under its registration jurisdiction under a number of circumstances. And one of those circumstances listed was “requests of law enforcement.” The request , submitted through ICANN's Registry Services Evaluation Process on October 10, proposes a new malware scanning service for domains as well as a new Verisign Anti-Abuse Domain Use Policy[......]
Officials at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada knew for two weeks about a virus infecting the drone “cockpits” there. But they kept the information about the infection to themselves—keeping the unit that’s supposed to serve as the Air Force’s cybersecurity specialists in the dark[......]
The Federal Trade Commission has decided that certain default software settings can violate the law against “unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce.” The agency recently went after the peer-to-peer filesharing program FrostWire for sharing too many user files by default, something that could easily lead to identity theft, copyright infringement, and the loss of “intimate photographs.” That's right: the federal government now goes to court to protect the privacy of your nude smartphone pics. FrostWire settled the charges today and agreed to numerous changes to its default settings[......]
The standard line that Digital Rights Management (DRM) functions as a bulwark against online music piracy is being challenged by a trio of economists from Rice and Duke Universities. Their game theory research sides with a growing sentiment that DRM technologies which restrict music file copying and moving sometimes encourage illegal file sharing instead. "In many cases, DRM restrictions prevent legal users from doing something as normal as making backup copies of their music," contends one of the researchers , Dinahy Vernik, assistant professor of marketing at Rice's Jones Graduate School of Business[......]
Public libraries have long lived by the "Blockbuster model": require people to drive to a physical location, pick up a physical book, then drive home, only to repeat the driving a few weeks later when the book is due. [......]
