The cool thing about Mozilla's rapid release schedule for Firefox is that you never have to wait long for the next version to come out, which is a real boon if you want to play with the latest and greatest but aren't real keen on the thought of mucking around with beta code. And if you've been waiting around for Firefox 9 to go gold, your day has come. On the flip side, having a rapid release schedule inevitably leads to less dramatic changes in between most builds[......]
Joi Ito This article forms part of Wired.co.uk's Creative Commons Week , which sees a range of articles published on the topics of CC licensing, as well as the past, present and future of the Creative Commons movement. Creative Commons is like a social network, claims Joi Ito , the organisation's former CEO and current chairman of the board, "once enough people start to use it, it will start to spread" and spread exponentially[......]
Starting next month, Microsoft will begin automatically upgrading some Windows users to the latest version of Internet Explorer available for their PCs, the Redmond software juggernaut announced in a blog post today. [......]
Nobody likes malware. Correction: nobody with a soul likes malware, which effectively excludes malware writers and script kiddies who find it monetarily beneficial (the former) or just plain amusing (the latter) to spread infected files. Microsoft certainly isn't amused by malware and has built a tool to help restore systems ravaged by rootkits and other cruft. [......]
In addition to publishing original research, Science runs a series of Policy Forums that examine the interface between research and governance. [......]
The Senate's PROTECT IP Act and the House's Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) are so noxious that even the Business Software Alliance has serious reservations , and SOPA's main backer had to take to the virtual pages of National Review today to quell a growing revolt among his conservative colleagues about "regulating the Internet." Whatever you think of the legislation, it unquestionably represents a sea change in the US approach to the Internet, one which explicitly contemplates widespread website blocking and search engine de-listing. [......]
London Bridge (Tower Bridge) : Reflection on the River Thames On Friday, the UK government released its " Cyber Security Strategy ," acknowledging the importance of the Internet to modern life, but also the risks it poses from criminals, terrorists, and nation states. Over the next four years, and at a cost of £650 million ($1 billion), the National Cyber Security Programme (NCSP) has four objectives: "tackle cyber crime," make the UK more resilient to "cyber attacks," create an open and stable "cyberspace," and ensure that the UK has the skills and knowledge to provide all "cyber security" needs. In a document that unironically uses the word "cyber" more often than a mid-90s AOL chatroom, a wide range of future actions are described[......]
Last Thursday, the European Parliament adopted a resolution ahead of a forthcoming summit between Europe and the United States. It included a section on "the need to protect the integrity of the global Internet and freedom of communication by refraining from unilateral measures to revoke IP addresses or domain names." That provision was added at the urging of the civil liberties organization European Digital Rights (EDRi). In a presentation to the Parliament's Civil Liberties Committee, EDRi's Joe McNamee noted that "the United States has, up until recently, never sought to exploit its theoretical jurisdiction over the companies and infrastructure that are at the core of the Internet." Obviously, that is changing[......]
Uh-oh. Samsung and Google are still in talks regarding its upcoming Google TV offering. [......]
After initially coming out in favor of the Stop Online Piracy Act , the controversial and sweeping copyright protection measure now moving through Congress, the Business Software Alliance now seems to be reversing itself as the legislation progresses. [......]
Change! It's everywhere! It's in the streets! It's in the air! It's in Asda! Not the most obvious source of tech wisdom, we know, but things are afoot in your local supermarket: according to Asda, Blu-Ray has reached the tipping point where it's finally outselling DVD. Or at least, it will until the government closes the VAT loophole that means UK retailers are competing with cheapo imports and the prices go up. It's a victory, certainly, but we think that Blu-ray is beginning to resemble those puzzled soldiers found in jungles years after wars end: it's triumphed just as the optical disc starts to die[......]
A study by an international research team has shown a correlation between frequent gaming and a greater volume of grey matter in a part of the brain linked to an internal reward system associated with addiction. Take a few minutes to parse that sentence, I’ll wait[......]
Serving as a stark reminder that there are people on the Internet who are way, way too damned clever, the guys over at the iPhone design/development house Applidium claim to have cracked open Siri to take an unsanctioned look at its ( her? his? [......]
By now you must have heard of the ongoing havoc being caused by flooding in Thailand. It’s claimed a few product launches already; Nikon and Sony have both had to delay shipment of new cameras, among others[......]
Jacob Appelbaum speaks on behalf of WikiLeaks at The Next Hope conference in New York City in July 2010 The Justice Department is entitled to records of the Twitter accounts used by three current and former WikiLeaks associates, a federal judge ruled Thursday, dealing a victory to prosecutors in a routine records demand that turned into a fierce court battle over online privacy and free speech. In a 60-page opinion (PDF), US District Court Judge Liam O’Grady in Alexandria, Virginia upheld a magistrate’s decision earlier this year allowing prosecutors to obtain information on the accounts, including records showing when they sent direct messages to one another, and from what Internet IP addresses. The ruling does not expose the content of the messages, nor information on other Twitter users who follow the accounts[......]
