Thursday, December 31, 2009
Happy New Year
I haven't posted in a while, but I just wanted to share well wishes to everyone out there. May 2010 bring you greater certainty, happiness and fulfilment in the New Year.
Domain name disputes with Google
Here's an interesting article looking at how two domain operators stopped Google from shutting them down: www.froogles.com and www.groovle.com
However, Google does win the majority of cases.
Source: Ars
However, Google does win the majority of cases.
Source: Ars
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Autonomous TTS coupe to compete at 2010 Pikes Peak
A remote control car that can drive itself will take part in one of the world's most challenging - and treacherous - motor races.
Using advanced electronics and a sophisticated internet link the driverless Audi TT is set to compete as a technological showcase in motorsport races next year, including America's renowned Pikes Peak Hill Climb.
The Autonomous Audi is currently controlled by a computer fitted inside its boot, and from 2010 will run using Java real-time programming updates received via telemetry from up to 32km away.
Source: Drive.com.au
Using advanced electronics and a sophisticated internet link the driverless Audi TT is set to compete as a technological showcase in motorsport races next year, including America's renowned Pikes Peak Hill Climb.
The Autonomous Audi is currently controlled by a computer fitted inside its boot, and from 2010 will run using Java real-time programming updates received via telemetry from up to 32km away.
Source: Drive.com.au
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Google proposes new transfer protocol for the web
Addressing the inherent limitations of HTTP protocol, Google researchers are proposing a new transfer protocol. SPDY uses a single SSL-encrypted session between a browser and a client, and then compresses all the request/response overhead. The requests, responses, and data are all put into frames that are multiplexed over the one connection. This makes it possible to send a higher-priority small file without waiting for the transfer of a large file that's already in progress to terminate. Compressing the requests is helpful in typical ADSL/cable setups, where uplink speed is limited. For good measure, unnecessary and duplicated headers in requests and responses are done away with. SPDY also includes real server push and a "server hint" feature.
Long established protocols like HTTP are resistant to change, but the ideas proposed are a good way forward in terms of making the web more secure and faster for everyone.
Source: Ars
Long established protocols like HTTP are resistant to change, but the ideas proposed are a good way forward in terms of making the web more secure and faster for everyone.
Source: Ars
Friday, November 13, 2009
AMD "Bulldozer" architecture to sport 8 cores and 128 bit floating point unit
Advanced Micro Devices this week disclosed the first details about its next-generation Bulldozer processor that is due in 2011. Although specifications of the chip seem to be rather promising at this point of time, in about one and a half years from now the central processing unit (CPU) may face a too strong rival and repeat the history of its predecessors.
Based on the information provided by AMD during its annual Analyst Day in November, the first Bulldozer chip code-named Zambezi (which belongs to Orochi family, according to the firm) will feature eight x86 processing engines with multithreading technology, two 128-bit FMAC floating point units, shared L2 cache, shared L3 cache as well as integrated memory controller. AMD also states that the new CPU will feature “extensive new power management innovations”.
The implementation of 128-bit FMAC is quite logical: AMD’s SSE5 set of extensions do feature 128-bit multimedia instructions as well as 128-bit three-operant instructions. In fact, there is a trend of increasing of precision of floating point instructions, as we can observe from the last decade.
What is important to note is that Intel Corp.’s forthcoming Sandy Bridge processor features Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX), which support 256-bit FP operations, something very progressive. Both AMD and Intel have already released documentation regarding AVX and SSE5 for developers, but Intel managed to unleash a new compiler supporting AVX in June ’09, whereas AMD has not managed to roll-out an SSE5-supporting tool. As a result, the vast majority of developers are already capable of creating AVX-capable software; however, almost no designers can make SSE5-capable programs at the moment.
Nevertheless, based on the diagram that AMD demonstrated, the company intends to dramatically improve multithreading performance of its CPUs: two INT schedulers, an FP scheduler and separate data caches for each of four cores should do the job very well.
AMD has not released any data regarding performance of Bulldozer chip, unfortunately, but since the chip designer positions the unit as a solution for desktop and server solutions in 2011, it does expect this 32nm SOI with high-k metal gate power-house to be a high-performer.
Friday, October 30, 2009
US Judge Rules Metadata Public Record
The Arizona Supreme Court has ruled that the metadata attached to public records is itself a public record. Given the frequency with which metadata outs lobbyists' and corporations' efforts to mask their own contributions to public debates, this is a good thing.
Source: Ars Technica
Source: Ars Technica
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Want 50Mbps Internet in your town? Threaten to roll out your own
A town in the USA has decided to roll out its own 50 Mbps broadband network with positive results.
Source: Ars
Source: Ars
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Model confronts 'skank' blogger
The Vogue Australia covergirl who successfully sued Google to reveal the identity of a blogger who called her a "skank" has phoned and forgiven her online nemesis.
Source: The Age
Source: The Age
PayPal's recent fee hikes revealed
PayPal made some policy changes in June, but it's likely that you haven't heard much about them until very recently. That's because the company quietly slid in extra fees that will affect nearly all users but failed to be transparent about the changes. Now, the Internet is slowly discovering what happened, and no one is happy about it.
Source: Ars Technica
Source: Ars Technica
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Google working on response to Binghoo! threat
Recently announced that Microsoft's new Bing search engine will be powering Yahoo websites, that brings the balance to approx 30 / 70 of the search market (in the USA) with the majority to Google.
But we all know too well how quickly the landscape can change in the web world, Google has announced changes to its search algorithms. Most of the changes are under-the-bonnet and should bring better search experience to users.
You can experiment with the new Google search: www2.sandbox.google.com
Please comment your thoughts and ideas below.
But we all know too well how quickly the landscape can change in the web world, Google has announced changes to its search algorithms. Most of the changes are under-the-bonnet and should bring better search experience to users.
You can experiment with the new Google search: www2.sandbox.google.com
Please comment your thoughts and ideas below.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Chinese teenager beaten to death at internet addiction boot camp
A teenager was reportedly beaten to death by trainers at a rehabilitation camp in China where his parents had sent him to cure his internet addiction.
Deng Fei said he paid 7000 yuan ($A1190) to give his son a month's training at the Guangxi Qihuang Survival Training Camp to rid him of his addiction to the internet.
But instead, the boy's father alleges, that the boy was put in solitary confinement shortly after his arrival and then beaten to death by his trainers who scolded him for running too slowly.
"My son was very healthy and was not a criminal. He just had an internet addiction when I left him at the camp," Deng Fei told the paper. "We can't believe our only son was beaten to death."
China has the world's largest number of internet users with 338 million - more than the entire population of the United States.
More than 10 million of the country's 100 million teenage web surfers are internet addicts, the China Daily said, citing a survey by the China Youth internet Association last year.
There is controversy over the treatments for internet addiction and how it is diagnosed. The health ministry last month banned the use of electroshock therapy to treat internet addiction, the China Daily said.
Source: The Age
Deng Fei said he paid 7000 yuan ($A1190) to give his son a month's training at the Guangxi Qihuang Survival Training Camp to rid him of his addiction to the internet.
But instead, the boy's father alleges, that the boy was put in solitary confinement shortly after his arrival and then beaten to death by his trainers who scolded him for running too slowly.
"My son was very healthy and was not a criminal. He just had an internet addiction when I left him at the camp," Deng Fei told the paper. "We can't believe our only son was beaten to death."
China has the world's largest number of internet users with 338 million - more than the entire population of the United States.
More than 10 million of the country's 100 million teenage web surfers are internet addicts, the China Daily said, citing a survey by the China Youth internet Association last year.
There is controversy over the treatments for internet addiction and how it is diagnosed. The health ministry last month banned the use of electroshock therapy to treat internet addiction, the China Daily said.
Source: The Age
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Tenenbaum case: jury awards RIAA $675k (or $22k per song)
Boston student Joel Tenenbaum was found guilty of infringement for illegal file-sharing and was ordered to pay $22,500 per song for a total of $675K. Even the defense presented by Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson, who joined Tenenbaum’s legal team early in the case, wasn’t enough and the verdict came down from the jury after less than 3 hours’ deliberation.
"I'm disappointed, but not surprised, but I'm thankful that it wasn't much bigger, that it wasn't millions," Tenenbaum told Ars after the verdict was announced. We asked him if he regrets not settling earlier on in the process. "Ask me in a couple of months," Tenenbaum replied. He also told Ars that he doesn't have the ability to pay the judgment and said that he'd be filing for bankruptcy if the award stands.
Source: Ars Technica
"I'm disappointed, but not surprised, but I'm thankful that it wasn't much bigger, that it wasn't millions," Tenenbaum told Ars after the verdict was announced. We asked him if he regrets not settling earlier on in the process. "Ask me in a couple of months," Tenenbaum replied. He also told Ars that he doesn't have the ability to pay the judgment and said that he'd be filing for bankruptcy if the award stands.
Source: Ars Technica
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Chinese stop building Green Dam
The PRoC has apparently listened to the voice of its workers and decided to rethink its cunning plan to impose censorship on PCs.
The regime has announced it will delay the requirement that all computers sold in the country carry a specific software application known as "Green Dam Youth Escort".
The Green Dam software works like an Internet filter and spyware and is said to be capable of blocking access to any sites or information that the Chinese government doesn't like.
However the move has been about as popular in China as forgiving the late Japanese Emperor for war crimes. There were considerable objections voiced to the Chinese government by manufacturers and internal groups.
Part of the problem might have been that the software did not actually work all that well, and the part that did was nicked from a US company.
This reduced its ability to be spun to the public as a national effort to protect China's children and workers.
Source: L'Inq
The regime has announced it will delay the requirement that all computers sold in the country carry a specific software application known as "Green Dam Youth Escort".
The Green Dam software works like an Internet filter and spyware and is said to be capable of blocking access to any sites or information that the Chinese government doesn't like.
However the move has been about as popular in China as forgiving the late Japanese Emperor for war crimes. There were considerable objections voiced to the Chinese government by manufacturers and internal groups.
Part of the problem might have been that the software did not actually work all that well, and the part that did was nicked from a US company.
This reduced its ability to be spun to the public as a national effort to protect China's children and workers.
Source: L'Inq
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Microsoft and Yahoo! for search alliance: powered by Bing
Microsoft and Yahoo have reportedly signed a new deal, which will give the pair a third of the search market. Microsoft's Bing search engine will power Yahoo's search, reportedly, while Yahoo will switch to a supporting role, deploying Microsoft's advertising technology.
Source: TG Daily
Source: TG Daily
Friday, July 24, 2009
OLPC: "Sugar was a mistake" - Negroponte
The noble goal of a $100 laptop for developing nations has come to fruition -- but of course at a higher cost and later date than expected. One Laptop Per Child has succeeded in delivering 900,000 XO laptops into the hands of kids, but that's a far cry from the many millions expected and Chairman Nicholas Negroponte is pulling no punches in describing what went wrong. He's still bitter at Intel, claiming it worked to "spoil the market," and angry about many nations cutting back on large deals. But, he isn't just lashing outwardly, calling the custom Linux-based operating system that runs the XO, a "mistake," saying "Sugar should have been an application" of the sort it has now morphed to be with Sugar on a Stick. Too little too late? OLPC has already made massive staff cuts and sales from the Give One, Get One program dropped 90 percent last year. With machines like the EduBook selling for $160 to institutions and able to run common operating systems, we're not seeing the future get any more bright for this little green guy.
Source: ZDNet
Source: ZDNet
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Google announces Google Chrome OS
Designed for x86 and ARM architectures, Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year Google will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available in the second half of 2010.
Google Blog
Google Blog
Jammie Thomas challenges "monstrous" $1.92M P2P verdict
It was only a matter of time: Jammie Thomas-Rasset has asked the federal judge overseeing her file-sharing lawsuit to toss the $1.92 million damage award, reduce it to the statutory minimum of $18,000, or grant her a new trial.
The motion, filed today in Minnesota federal court, is blunt. "The verdict in this case was shocking," it begins. "For 24 songs, available for $1.29 on iTunes, the jury assessed statutory damages of $80,000 per song—a ratio of 1:62,015. For 24 albums, available for no more than $15 at the store, the jury assessed statutory damages of $80,000 per album—a ratio of 1:5,333. For a single mother's noncommercial use of KaZaA, and upon neither finding nor evidence of actual injury to the plaintiffs, the judgment fines Jammie Thomas $1.92 million. Such a judgment is grossly excessive and, therefore, subject to remittitur as a matter of federal common law."
Source: Ars Technica
The motion, filed today in Minnesota federal court, is blunt. "The verdict in this case was shocking," it begins. "For 24 songs, available for $1.29 on iTunes, the jury assessed statutory damages of $80,000 per song—a ratio of 1:62,015. For 24 albums, available for no more than $15 at the store, the jury assessed statutory damages of $80,000 per album—a ratio of 1:5,333. For a single mother's noncommercial use of KaZaA, and upon neither finding nor evidence of actual injury to the plaintiffs, the judgment fines Jammie Thomas $1.92 million. Such a judgment is grossly excessive and, therefore, subject to remittitur as a matter of federal common law."
Source: Ars Technica
Goldman's black box trading source code is out
A Russian programmer named Sergey Aleynikov was picked up this past Friday by the FBI for allegedly stealing and passing along code that, if circulating out in the wild, could expose US markets to manipulation and cost Aleynikov's former employer, Goldman Sachs, millions.
If you have your hands on the code that runs on Goldman's trading platform—again, one of the largest in the world—then you know with 100 percent accuracy which trades Goldman's computers are going to make in response to a given set of inputs. All you need then is even faster hardware so that you can get to those trades just a few milliseconds before Goldman, and you'll always beat the bank and therefore be able to sell to Goldman at a slight premium. Goldman will therefore make less on every trade, since you'll essentially be usurping their place in the pecking order.
The NYSE puts out a weekly list of the top program traders by volume, and Goldman typically tops this list by a country mile. Then last week's list came out, and Goldman's name was shockingly absent. And today, now that the code theft story is out, the NYSE has put out a statement claiming that Goldman's absence on the list was the result of a "system error;" it has also released a revised list showing Goldman once again dominating program trading activity.
Source: Ars Technica
If you have your hands on the code that runs on Goldman's trading platform—again, one of the largest in the world—then you know with 100 percent accuracy which trades Goldman's computers are going to make in response to a given set of inputs. All you need then is even faster hardware so that you can get to those trades just a few milliseconds before Goldman, and you'll always beat the bank and therefore be able to sell to Goldman at a slight premium. Goldman will therefore make less on every trade, since you'll essentially be usurping their place in the pecking order.
The NYSE puts out a weekly list of the top program traders by volume, and Goldman typically tops this list by a country mile. Then last week's list came out, and Goldman's name was shockingly absent. And today, now that the code theft story is out, the NYSE has put out a statement claiming that Goldman's absence on the list was the result of a "system error;" it has also released a revised list showing Goldman once again dominating program trading activity.
Source: Ars Technica
Monday, July 6, 2009
CompuServe Classic shut down
Another chapter in internet history closed on 30 June, 2009.
Online shopping? Stock quotes? Worldwide weather forecasts? CompuServe was providing all of that in the 1980s. Who needs color graphics, music and streaming videos? CompuServe could provide users with what they needed with plain text on a slow dial-up connection.
Source: Paper PC
Online shopping? Stock quotes? Worldwide weather forecasts? CompuServe was providing all of that in the 1980s. Who needs color graphics, music and streaming videos? CompuServe could provide users with what they needed with plain text on a slow dial-up connection.
Source: Paper PC
Australian gamer blackballed over virtual world 'fraud'
Facing real world debts, a trusted figure in a popular online game stole money from the virtual bank he ran and exchanged it for cash through the black market.
It happened in EVE Online, where more than 300,000 subscribers pay $US15 a month to play. They gain wealth through hard work, manipulating the market, or killing rivals in a distant future where humans have colonised the stars in an online game similar to World of Warcraft and Second Life.
"I'm not proud of it at all, that's why I didn't brag about it. But you know, if I had to do it again, I probably would've chosen the same path based on the same situation," he said. EBank survived the crisis. But Richard will not be returning to EVE anytime soon.
Source: The Age
Just goes to show human nature reflects similarly in the virtual world (EVE) as it does in the real (Wall St). Perhaps the problem is not just people but also the governing systems, the "game rules", which create unbalanced power and incentives which does not deter its abuse. Trust cannot exist in a monetary society therefore we need another solution - any comments?
It happened in EVE Online, where more than 300,000 subscribers pay $US15 a month to play. They gain wealth through hard work, manipulating the market, or killing rivals in a distant future where humans have colonised the stars in an online game similar to World of Warcraft and Second Life.
"I'm not proud of it at all, that's why I didn't brag about it. But you know, if I had to do it again, I probably would've chosen the same path based on the same situation," he said. EBank survived the crisis. But Richard will not be returning to EVE anytime soon.
Source: The Age
Just goes to show human nature reflects similarly in the virtual world (EVE) as it does in the real (Wall St). Perhaps the problem is not just people but also the governing systems, the "game rules", which create unbalanced power and incentives which does not deter its abuse. Trust cannot exist in a monetary society therefore we need another solution - any comments?
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Palm Pre Spoofs iPhone
The new Palm Pre cellphone has a “media sync” feature which lets the device sync with iTunes in a fashion identical to an iPod. The Palm Pre reports its Product ID as iPod and Vendor ID as Apple with a few other changes. With Palm already pulling tricks like this presumably through software we wonder if this will become a full-on arms race.
Source: Hack a Day
Update: Chinese security software now optional
China's latest attempt at mass censorship has taken another turn. Reports that the "Green Dam" software can allow hackers to easily control the host PC, as well as accusations from US-based security company (Solid Oak) that Green Dam software stole their IP. Chinese government announced on 16 June 2009 that Green Dam will now be optional.
Source: Toms Guide
Source: Toms Guide
Friday, June 12, 2009
Update: Chinese security software full of security bugs
Every PC in China could be at risk of being taken over by malicious hackers because of flaws in compulsory government software. The potential faults were brought to light by Chinese computer experts who said the flaw could lead to a “large-scale disaster”.
Source: ZitZot
Source: ZitZot
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Chinese government requires all new PCs to include censorship software
China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has ordered that all personal computers, whether made in China or imported from abroad, must include specific software to filter inappropriate information. Rebecca MacKinnon, assistant professor at the Journalism & Media Studies Center at the University of Hong Kong, has posted a copy of the Chinese government order on her Web site.
According to her translation, Web filtering software called Green Dam Youth Escort must be installed on all PCs sold in China as of July 1. The software also must be included on a hard-drive partition or on a CD included with the computer to allow for reinstallation.
Source: ZitZot
According to her translation, Web filtering software called Green Dam Youth Escort must be installed on all PCs sold in China as of July 1. The software also must be included on a hard-drive partition or on a CD included with the computer to allow for reinstallation.
Source: ZitZot
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Dell Bans E-waste Export to Developing Countries
Dell - which scored pretty poorly in the latest Greenpeace report - has just officially adopted a ban of the export of e-waste as part of its policy. The company, which also has a recycling program, says it's been holding its partners to high standards for several years, but has revised its policy to conform to the Basel Convention, an international treaty that governs e-waste handling. E-waste is growing, toxic problem in developing countries like China and Ghana.
Source: Engadget
Oracle Only Interested in Java, What to do with Sun Hardware?
The Financial Times today reports that when Oracle planned to buy Sun it was more interested in the software part of the company. Remember back in April, when the deal was announced, Oracle made a huge deal about Java? Well, apparently, that’s because initially that was all the company wanted!
Source: Financial Times
Source: Financial Times
Eu Fines Intel For Anticompetitive Practices
The European Commission has imposed a fine of €1.06 billion on Intel Corp. for violating EC Treaty antitrust rules on the abuse of a dominant market position by engaging in illegal anticompetitive practices to exclude competitors from the market for x86 central processing units (CPUs).
Rebates such as those applied by Intel are recognized in many jurisdictions around the world as anti-competitive and unlawful because the effect in practice is to deny consumers a choice of products.
Update: Intel is appealing the decision. Russia recently initiated anti-trust enquiries against Intel.
Source: X-bit Labs
Rebates such as those applied by Intel are recognized in many jurisdictions around the world as anti-competitive and unlawful because the effect in practice is to deny consumers a choice of products.
Update: Intel is appealing the decision. Russia recently initiated anti-trust enquiries against Intel.
Source: X-bit Labs
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Hackers Holding Database Data for Ransom
The Virginia Prescription Monitoring Program has reportedly been compromised, with those responsible deleting records and now wanting $10 million before the records are restored.
Hacker's message: “I have your [expletive] In *my* possession, right now, are 8,257,378 patient records and a total of 35,548,087 prescriptions,” the hacker said in a ransom note. “Also, I made an encrypted backup and deleted the original. Unfortunately for Virginia, their backups seem to have gone missing, too. Uhoh :(For $10 million, I will gladly send along the password.”
The Virginia Prescription Monitoring Program website is used to help pharmacists track prescription drug abuse, and has the records of 8 million state residents available through the network. The network, along with other portals connected to the Virginia Department of Health Professions, is still unavailable at the moment.
Source: Zitzot
Hacker's message: “I have your [expletive] In *my* possession, right now, are 8,257,378 patient records and a total of 35,548,087 prescriptions,” the hacker said in a ransom note. “Also, I made an encrypted backup and deleted the original. Unfortunately for Virginia, their backups seem to have gone missing, too. Uhoh :(For $10 million, I will gladly send along the password.”
The Virginia Prescription Monitoring Program website is used to help pharmacists track prescription drug abuse, and has the records of 8 million state residents available through the network. The network, along with other portals connected to the Virginia Department of Health Professions, is still unavailable at the moment.
Source: Zitzot
Monday, April 27, 2009
Goodbye Geocities
Another chapter in the history of the web.
Yahoo announced Thursday that it will shut down GeoCities, the Web site building business it acquired a decade ago. “We have decided to discontinue the process of allowing new customers to sign up for GeoCities accounts as we focus on helping our customers explore and build new relationships online in other ways,” Yahoo said in a statement. “We will be closing GeoCities later this year.” The closure is part of an effort to streamline operations at Yahoo, a plan that chief executive Carol Bartz outlined in more detail during the company’s Tuesday earnings call. “We are increasing investment in some areas while scaling back in others,” according to a spokeswoman. “For example, after careful consideration, we recently discontinued products such as Yahoo Briefcase, Farechase, My Web, Yahoo Audio Search, RSS ads, Yahoo Pets, Yahoo Live, Kickstart and Yahoo For Teachers, and outsourced Launchcast radio to CBS. We continue to evaluate our portfolio of products and services on a regular basis, and plan to share details of further changes with our consumers and partners in the months ahead.”
People with existing Geocities Web sites can still access and add content to their sites, but they will be shut down by the end of the year. “You don’t need to change a thing right now — we just wanted you to let you know about the closure as soon as possible,” Yahoo said in a FAQ on the Geocities site. “We’ll provide more details about closing GeoCities and how to save your site data this summer, and we will update the help center with more details at that time.” The company urged users to upgrade to Yahoo Web Hosting service. Yahoo purchased GeoCities in January 1999 for $5 billion.
Source: PC Magazine
Yahoo announced Thursday that it will shut down GeoCities, the Web site building business it acquired a decade ago. “We have decided to discontinue the process of allowing new customers to sign up for GeoCities accounts as we focus on helping our customers explore and build new relationships online in other ways,” Yahoo said in a statement. “We will be closing GeoCities later this year.” The closure is part of an effort to streamline operations at Yahoo, a plan that chief executive Carol Bartz outlined in more detail during the company’s Tuesday earnings call. “We are increasing investment in some areas while scaling back in others,” according to a spokeswoman. “For example, after careful consideration, we recently discontinued products such as Yahoo Briefcase, Farechase, My Web, Yahoo Audio Search, RSS ads, Yahoo Pets, Yahoo Live, Kickstart and Yahoo For Teachers, and outsourced Launchcast radio to CBS. We continue to evaluate our portfolio of products and services on a regular basis, and plan to share details of further changes with our consumers and partners in the months ahead.”
People with existing Geocities Web sites can still access and add content to their sites, but they will be shut down by the end of the year. “You don’t need to change a thing right now — we just wanted you to let you know about the closure as soon as possible,” Yahoo said in a FAQ on the Geocities site. “We’ll provide more details about closing GeoCities and how to save your site data this summer, and we will update the help center with more details at that time.” The company urged users to upgrade to Yahoo Web Hosting service. Yahoo purchased GeoCities in January 1999 for $5 billion.
Source: PC Magazine
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Landmark Pirate Bay Case : 4 Found Guilty
Four men behind a Swedish file-sharing Web site used by millions to exchange movies and music have been found guilty of collaborating to violate copyright law in a landmark court verdict in Stockholm.
The four defendants — Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi and Carl Lundstrom, three founders and one patron of The Pirate Bay — were sentenced to one year in jail and also ordered to pay 30 million kronor ($3.6 million) in damages to several major media companies including Warner Brothers, Columbia, Twentieth Century Fox, Sony BMG and EMI.
The Pirate Bay allows users to exchange files including movies, music, games and software, but does not host the files itself. It claims more than 3.5 million registered users.
The court case, which involved both a criminal case and a civil claim brought by the media companies, marks a key victory for anti-piracy campaigners, who had long targeted the Web site. Should the perpetrators of Internet piracy be punished? Have your say
The year-long prison terms are for violating Swedish law, while the damages are compensation to the media giants in the civil case — though the court ordered the men to pay just one-third of the 110 million kronor ($13 million) which the companies had asked for.
Friday’s verdict did not include an order to shut down The Pirate Bay site.
Its owners have consistently shrugged off legal threats and police raids, posting letters from entertainment industry lawyers on their Web site with mocking responses.
When Dreamworks studio demanded that the site act over file-sharing of Dreamworks’ movie “Shrek 2,” The Pirate Bay threatened to sue for harassment and lodge a formal complaint “for sending frivolous legal threats.”
“It is the opinion of us and our lawyers that you are … morons,” the response continued, suggesting that studio representatives perform a sexual act. The response closed with an obscenity.
Site owners dismissed the effects of a police raid in 2006, saying the site had been down longer on other occasions due to illness or drunkenness than when “the U.S. and Swedish government forces the police to steal our servers … yawn.”
But Magnus Eriksson, who in 2003 co-founded the “loosely formed group of theorists, artists and programmers” that spawned The Pirate Bay, says there are serious issues at stake.
He does not think copyrighted material should be free for everyone, “but that it already is.”
“The control over what people communicate is lost and we have to adapt to this new state of things,” he said via e-mail. “To monitor all communications, fight all new digital technologies and spread a culture of fear in what should be a free and open communication network is not a desirable option.”
Entertainment companies claim The Pirate Bay has hurt their box office profits, part of an annual loss the Motion Picture Association of America claims to be about $6 billion a year worldwide.
“Hollywood studios are businesses. They’re there to make money,” said association lawyer Thomas Dillon. “It costs $100 million to make a feature film, so of course they’re quite keen to get some back. So I don’t accept this argument that there’s some benefit to culture in allowing people to make copies of commercial films and getting them for free.”
Monique Wadsted, a Swedish lawyer for the MPAA, said The Pirate Bay was also harming individual artists.
A victory for the entertainment companies “will, of course, be for all authors all around the world, some kind of redress… because what is going on now is actually a plundering of the author’s works,” she said via e-mail.
“If some authors find it good to market their products using file-sharing or whatever, they are free to do that,” she added. “But that is not what is happening at the moment. What’s happening at the moment is that authors’ and rights holders’ works are file-shared against their will and that is not acceptable.”
She argued that The Pirate Bay “is specifically tailored for copyright infringement.”
The prosecution claims the site provides a search engine that helps people find and download copyrighted material including movies, music and games — in effect, enabling copyright theft.
The site’s supporters say they’re doing nothing wrong under Swedish law because the site doesn’t actually put the copyrighted material on the Web site.
Internet piracy and illegal downloading from peer-to-peer systems are some of the biggest piracy problems in Europe, the MPAA argues.
Internet piracy is growing at a faster rate in Europe than anywhere else in the world, the MPAA says, because of increased broadband use, weak laws, and lenient public perceptions.
Sweden’s official efforts to battle online piracy have been weak, the MPAA says.
Eriksson, the co-founder of the group that led to The Pirate Bay, says the MPAA’s argument that file-sharing hurts movie studio revenues is “nonsense.”
“Cinema is doing better than ever,” he said by e-mail. “They only claim this because they calculate losses by looking at the number of downloads and imagining that all of them would have been a purchase if they hadn’t been downloaded first.”
Eriksson said what was at stake in the Swedish courtroom was the future of the Internet itself.
“The Internet revolution meant that we created a global network where any digital entity could connect and exchange information with any other,” he said. “Anti-piracy efforts must be seen in the light of a counter-revolution against this that goes all the way to the very infrastructure of the net.”
He suggested that even if The Pirate Bay is convicted of facilitating making works public through its indexing service, which he does not expect, Internet piracy will not stop.
“The prosecution can’t understand that The Pirate Bay is just one stratification of a social and technological change that is decentralized,” he said.
“Piracy does not have a head that you can cut off, and The Pirate Bay is just a technology allowing communication, a part of the Internet infrastructure.”
Source: CNN
The four defendants — Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi and Carl Lundstrom, three founders and one patron of The Pirate Bay — were sentenced to one year in jail and also ordered to pay 30 million kronor ($3.6 million) in damages to several major media companies including Warner Brothers, Columbia, Twentieth Century Fox, Sony BMG and EMI.
The Pirate Bay allows users to exchange files including movies, music, games and software, but does not host the files itself. It claims more than 3.5 million registered users.
The court case, which involved both a criminal case and a civil claim brought by the media companies, marks a key victory for anti-piracy campaigners, who had long targeted the Web site. Should the perpetrators of Internet piracy be punished? Have your say
The year-long prison terms are for violating Swedish law, while the damages are compensation to the media giants in the civil case — though the court ordered the men to pay just one-third of the 110 million kronor ($13 million) which the companies had asked for.
Friday’s verdict did not include an order to shut down The Pirate Bay site.
Its owners have consistently shrugged off legal threats and police raids, posting letters from entertainment industry lawyers on their Web site with mocking responses.
When Dreamworks studio demanded that the site act over file-sharing of Dreamworks’ movie “Shrek 2,” The Pirate Bay threatened to sue for harassment and lodge a formal complaint “for sending frivolous legal threats.”
“It is the opinion of us and our lawyers that you are … morons,” the response continued, suggesting that studio representatives perform a sexual act. The response closed with an obscenity.
Site owners dismissed the effects of a police raid in 2006, saying the site had been down longer on other occasions due to illness or drunkenness than when “the U.S. and Swedish government forces the police to steal our servers … yawn.”
But Magnus Eriksson, who in 2003 co-founded the “loosely formed group of theorists, artists and programmers” that spawned The Pirate Bay, says there are serious issues at stake.
He does not think copyrighted material should be free for everyone, “but that it already is.”
“The control over what people communicate is lost and we have to adapt to this new state of things,” he said via e-mail. “To monitor all communications, fight all new digital technologies and spread a culture of fear in what should be a free and open communication network is not a desirable option.”
Entertainment companies claim The Pirate Bay has hurt their box office profits, part of an annual loss the Motion Picture Association of America claims to be about $6 billion a year worldwide.
“Hollywood studios are businesses. They’re there to make money,” said association lawyer Thomas Dillon. “It costs $100 million to make a feature film, so of course they’re quite keen to get some back. So I don’t accept this argument that there’s some benefit to culture in allowing people to make copies of commercial films and getting them for free.”
Monique Wadsted, a Swedish lawyer for the MPAA, said The Pirate Bay was also harming individual artists.
A victory for the entertainment companies “will, of course, be for all authors all around the world, some kind of redress… because what is going on now is actually a plundering of the author’s works,” she said via e-mail.
“If some authors find it good to market their products using file-sharing or whatever, they are free to do that,” she added. “But that is not what is happening at the moment. What’s happening at the moment is that authors’ and rights holders’ works are file-shared against their will and that is not acceptable.”
She argued that The Pirate Bay “is specifically tailored for copyright infringement.”
The prosecution claims the site provides a search engine that helps people find and download copyrighted material including movies, music and games — in effect, enabling copyright theft.
The site’s supporters say they’re doing nothing wrong under Swedish law because the site doesn’t actually put the copyrighted material on the Web site.
Internet piracy and illegal downloading from peer-to-peer systems are some of the biggest piracy problems in Europe, the MPAA argues.
Internet piracy is growing at a faster rate in Europe than anywhere else in the world, the MPAA says, because of increased broadband use, weak laws, and lenient public perceptions.
Sweden’s official efforts to battle online piracy have been weak, the MPAA says.
Eriksson, the co-founder of the group that led to The Pirate Bay, says the MPAA’s argument that file-sharing hurts movie studio revenues is “nonsense.”
“Cinema is doing better than ever,” he said by e-mail. “They only claim this because they calculate losses by looking at the number of downloads and imagining that all of them would have been a purchase if they hadn’t been downloaded first.”
Eriksson said what was at stake in the Swedish courtroom was the future of the Internet itself.
“The Internet revolution meant that we created a global network where any digital entity could connect and exchange information with any other,” he said. “Anti-piracy efforts must be seen in the light of a counter-revolution against this that goes all the way to the very infrastructure of the net.”
He suggested that even if The Pirate Bay is convicted of facilitating making works public through its indexing service, which he does not expect, Internet piracy will not stop.
“The prosecution can’t understand that The Pirate Bay is just one stratification of a social and technological change that is decentralized,” he said.
“Piracy does not have a head that you can cut off, and The Pirate Bay is just a technology allowing communication, a part of the Internet infrastructure.”
Source: CNN
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Microsoft to Discontinue Encarta Encyclopedia
Microsoft is shutting down its Encarta encyclopedia Web sites and will also discontinue its Student and Premium Encarta software products. Microsoft says “The category of traditional encyclopedias and reference material has changed ... People today seek and consume information in considerably different ways than in years past.” The Encarta Web sites worldwide will shut down on Oct. 31 and Microsoft will stop selling the software products by June this year. One exception is the Encarta Japan Web site, which will stay live until the last day of this year.
A win to Wikipedia.
Source: Encarta
Monday, March 23, 2009
UK Govt Databases Slammed as Illegal
The report entitled Database State was prompted by the catastrophic incompetence of a number government departments which lost huge amounts of data, including the entire child benefit database in October 2007.
Of the 46 databases investigated, only six were found to conform to current human rights and data protection laws. Nearly twice as many are described as: "Almost certainly illegal under human rights or data protection law and should be scrapped or substantially redesigned." The remaining 29 databases all have significant problems.
Major cock-ups were found in the NHS summary care record, the national childhood obesity database, the national pupil database, and the automatic number-plate recognition system.
The report estimates that £16 billion a year is being spent on IT projects, of which only a third end up being of any use.
Source: Inquirer
Thursday, March 19, 2009
ISOHunt in Pivotal Lawsuit - Could Make Google / Other Search Engines Illegal
The owner of the ISOHunt search engine website (used specifically to find Bittorents submitted by users) is fighting the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) in court against claims that his site pirates music. The company’s president, Gary Fung, wants Canada’s Supreme Court to rule on the legality of search engines being used to identify material which may ultimately be used illegally to determine if they, too, are culpable.
Fung has reported receiving numerous legal threats from the CRIA, the Canadian equivalent of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). In response, he is fighting back in court, launching a lawsuit of his own.
The ruling could have very significant implications. Google, for example, can be used today to find pornography very easily — as can Yahoo, MSN, etc. In most states, viewing pornography below a certain age (typically 18) is illegal, yet it is very easy to bypass those kinds of security features on websites linked directly from Google searches. So is Google culpable for presenting material which may be used illegally? That’s essentially the very question Fung wants addressed.
Fung believes that using ISOHunt in a similar way to find Bittorrent sites (which may or may not carry materials that could be used illegally, and which may or may not ultimately result in illegal materials use) is no different. And his argument is that a search engine capable of finding potentially illegal material does not a crime make. In this way, he is forcing the issue to be resolved by the highest court in Canada.
Fung’s argument is very straight-forward — that his website never touches any of the files exchanged via Bittorrent applications, which are peer-to-peer and must be setup or launched externally to his page’s search results. And while his site is used to find the files, his participation in the experience ends there. A similar comparison could be drawn from asking some guy down the street where to buy drugs. That person might know, might even tell you, but until you actually go and buy drugs there no crime has been committed because having information is not illegal.
Fung is currently engaged in lawsuits with the Motion Picture Association of America, with court proceedings there lasting over a year.
Source: TGDaily
Fung has reported receiving numerous legal threats from the CRIA, the Canadian equivalent of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). In response, he is fighting back in court, launching a lawsuit of his own.
The ruling could have very significant implications. Google, for example, can be used today to find pornography very easily — as can Yahoo, MSN, etc. In most states, viewing pornography below a certain age (typically 18) is illegal, yet it is very easy to bypass those kinds of security features on websites linked directly from Google searches. So is Google culpable for presenting material which may be used illegally? That’s essentially the very question Fung wants addressed.
Fung believes that using ISOHunt in a similar way to find Bittorrent sites (which may or may not carry materials that could be used illegally, and which may or may not ultimately result in illegal materials use) is no different. And his argument is that a search engine capable of finding potentially illegal material does not a crime make. In this way, he is forcing the issue to be resolved by the highest court in Canada.
Fung’s argument is very straight-forward — that his website never touches any of the files exchanged via Bittorrent applications, which are peer-to-peer and must be setup or launched externally to his page’s search results. And while his site is used to find the files, his participation in the experience ends there. A similar comparison could be drawn from asking some guy down the street where to buy drugs. That person might know, might even tell you, but until you actually go and buy drugs there no crime has been committed because having information is not illegal.
Fung is currently engaged in lawsuits with the Motion Picture Association of America, with court proceedings there lasting over a year.
Source: TGDaily
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Google to Serve Targeted Personalised Ads
Google has entered the sometimes controversial arena of behaviour-based advertising. It has launched a system that will serve up ads to web users based on their previous online activities. The search giant is offering users the chance to see and edit their profiles and it will also offer them the choice to opt out of the service. But privacy campaigners are outraged by the move, with Privacy International calling for a parliamentary enquiry. The trial service launches on YouTube and Google from 11 March but advertisers will not be able to display advertisements until April. Initially a handful of advertisers will be invited to take part. The system uses a cookie - a small piece of text that lives inside a web browser - to track users as they visit different websites that show ads through its AdSense program. Users will be assigned to categories based on the content of the pages they visit.
“If a user is a keen traveller and visits lots of travel sites, Google could show them more travel-related ads,” the search giant said in a statement. “We believe that ads are a valuable source of information that can connect people to products, services and ideas that interest them. By making ads more relevant and improving the connection between advertisers and our users, we can create more value,” it said. But Simon Davies, head of Privacy International, has his doubts. “Google might well hype their targeting system as a boon to pet owners, but the reality is that the service will track just about everything you do and everything you’re interested in, no matter how personal or sensitive. Some privacy campaigners believe Google should have offered its advertising service on an opt-in rather than an opt-out basis. “The cookie doesn’t show up any personally identifiable information so that is why we think opt-out is the right way to go,” said a Google spokesman. Information on YouTube , such as the videos people have been watching, will “be factored into” the system, said the spokesman.
Source: BBC
“If a user is a keen traveller and visits lots of travel sites, Google could show them more travel-related ads,” the search giant said in a statement. “We believe that ads are a valuable source of information that can connect people to products, services and ideas that interest them. By making ads more relevant and improving the connection between advertisers and our users, we can create more value,” it said. But Simon Davies, head of Privacy International, has his doubts. “Google might well hype their targeting system as a boon to pet owners, but the reality is that the service will track just about everything you do and everything you’re interested in, no matter how personal or sensitive. Some privacy campaigners believe Google should have offered its advertising service on an opt-in rather than an opt-out basis. “The cookie doesn’t show up any personally identifiable information so that is why we think opt-out is the right way to go,” said a Google spokesman. Information on YouTube , such as the videos people have been watching, will “be factored into” the system, said the spokesman.
Source: BBC
Sunday, March 8, 2009
100 Oldest .com Domains
Below list of domains ever first registered, the first some 24 years ago at the birth of the internet. List also shows current ranking:
Ranking / Registered / Current Ranking
001 symbolics.com 03/15/85 288052
002 bbn.com 04/24/85 210628
003 think.com 05/24/85 n/a
004 mcc.com 07/11/85 423261
005 dec.com 09/30/85 n/a
006 northrop.com 11/07/85 n/a
007 xerox.com 01/09/86 9561
008 sri.com 01/17/86 100494
009 hp.com 03/03/86 191
010 bellcore.com 03/05/86 n/a
011 ibm.com 03/19/86 411
012 sun.com 03/19/86 484
013 intel.com 03/25/86 1018
014 ti.com 03/25/86 11757
015 att.com 04/25/86 336
016 gmr.com 05/08/86 n/a
017 tek.com 05/08/86 71044
018 fmc.com 07/10/86 688877
019 ub.com 07/10/86 n/a
020 bell-atl.com 08/05/86 n/a
021 ge.com 08/05/86 11629
022 grebyn.com 08/05/86 n/a
023 isc.com 08/05/86 n/a
024 nsc.com 08/05/86 n/a
025 stargate.com 08/05/86 183064
026 boeing.com 09/02/86 15882
027 itcorp.com 09/18/86 n/a
028 siemens.com 09/29/86 4802
029 pyramid.com 10/18/86 804133
030 alphacdc.com 10/27/86 n/a
031 bdm.com 10/27/86 503674
032 fluke.com 10/27/86 113826
033 inmet.com 10/27/86 n/a
034 kesmai.com 10/27/86 n/a
035 mentor.com 10/27/86 86074
036 nec.com 10/27/86 38938
037 ray.com 10/27/86 n/a
038 rosemount.com 10/27/86 n/a
039 vortex.com 10/27/86 502710
040 alcoa.com 11/05/86 104909
041 gte.com 11/05/86 n/a
042 adobe.com 11/17/86 56
043 amd.com 11/17/86 2001
044 das.com 11/17/86 n/a
045 data-io.com 11/17/86 n/a
046 octopus.com 11/17/86 775704
047 portal.com 11/17/86 n/a
048 teltone.com 11/17/86 n/a
049 3com.com 12/11/86 33649
050 amdahl.com 12/11/86 n/a
051 ccur.com 12/11/86 n/a
052 ci.com 12/11/86 196502
053 convergent.com 12/11/86 n/a
054 dg.com 12/11/86 n/a
055 peregrine.com 12/11/86 n/a
056 quad.com 12/11/86 n/a
057 sq.com 12/11/86 n/a
058 tandy.com 12/11/86 n/a
059 tti.com 12/11/86 n/a
060 unisys.com 12/11/86 23969
061 cgi.com 01/19/87 102209
062 cts.com 01/19/87 n/a
063 spdcc.com 01/19/87 n/a
064 apple.com 02/19/87 66
065 nma.com 03/04/87 n/a
066 prime.com 03/04/87 n/a
067 philips.com 04/04/87 2810
068 datacube.com 04/23/87 n/a
069 kai.com 04/23/87 n/a
070 tic.com 04/23/87 n/a
071 vine.com 04/23/87 n/a
072 ncr.com 04/30/87 46207
073 cisco.com 05/14/87 1329
074 rdl.com 05/14/87 n/a
075 slb.com 05/20/87 11557
076 parcplace.com 05/27/87 n/a
077 utc.com 05/27/87 135686
078 ide.com 06/26/87 n/a
079 trw.com 07/09/87 224218
080 unipress.com 07/13/87 n/a
081 dupont.com 07/27/87 24676
082 lockheed.com 07/27/87 n/a
083 rosetta.com 07/28/87 266032
084 toad.com 08/18/87 n/a
085 quick.com 08/31/87 n/a
086 allied.com 09/03/87 111176
087 dsc.com 09/03/87 351550
088 sco.com 09/03/87 76724
089 gene.com 09/22/87 108440
090 kccs.com 09/22/87 n/a
091 spectra.com 09/22/87 776373
092 wlk.com 09/22/87 n/a
093 mentat.com 09/30/87 n/a
094 wyse.com 10/14/87 313648
095 cfg.com 11/02/87 n/a
096 marble.com 11/09/87 113962
097 cayman.com 11/16/87 n/a
098 entity.com 11/16/87 n/a
099 ksr.com 11/24/87 n/a
100 nynexst.com 11/30/87 n/a
Ranking / Registered / Current Ranking
001 symbolics.com 03/15/85 288052
002 bbn.com 04/24/85 210628
003 think.com 05/24/85 n/a
004 mcc.com 07/11/85 423261
005 dec.com 09/30/85 n/a
006 northrop.com 11/07/85 n/a
007 xerox.com 01/09/86 9561
008 sri.com 01/17/86 100494
009 hp.com 03/03/86 191
010 bellcore.com 03/05/86 n/a
011 ibm.com 03/19/86 411
012 sun.com 03/19/86 484
013 intel.com 03/25/86 1018
014 ti.com 03/25/86 11757
015 att.com 04/25/86 336
016 gmr.com 05/08/86 n/a
017 tek.com 05/08/86 71044
018 fmc.com 07/10/86 688877
019 ub.com 07/10/86 n/a
020 bell-atl.com 08/05/86 n/a
021 ge.com 08/05/86 11629
022 grebyn.com 08/05/86 n/a
023 isc.com 08/05/86 n/a
024 nsc.com 08/05/86 n/a
025 stargate.com 08/05/86 183064
026 boeing.com 09/02/86 15882
027 itcorp.com 09/18/86 n/a
028 siemens.com 09/29/86 4802
029 pyramid.com 10/18/86 804133
030 alphacdc.com 10/27/86 n/a
031 bdm.com 10/27/86 503674
032 fluke.com 10/27/86 113826
033 inmet.com 10/27/86 n/a
034 kesmai.com 10/27/86 n/a
035 mentor.com 10/27/86 86074
036 nec.com 10/27/86 38938
037 ray.com 10/27/86 n/a
038 rosemount.com 10/27/86 n/a
039 vortex.com 10/27/86 502710
040 alcoa.com 11/05/86 104909
041 gte.com 11/05/86 n/a
042 adobe.com 11/17/86 56
043 amd.com 11/17/86 2001
044 das.com 11/17/86 n/a
045 data-io.com 11/17/86 n/a
046 octopus.com 11/17/86 775704
047 portal.com 11/17/86 n/a
048 teltone.com 11/17/86 n/a
049 3com.com 12/11/86 33649
050 amdahl.com 12/11/86 n/a
051 ccur.com 12/11/86 n/a
052 ci.com 12/11/86 196502
053 convergent.com 12/11/86 n/a
054 dg.com 12/11/86 n/a
055 peregrine.com 12/11/86 n/a
056 quad.com 12/11/86 n/a
057 sq.com 12/11/86 n/a
058 tandy.com 12/11/86 n/a
059 tti.com 12/11/86 n/a
060 unisys.com 12/11/86 23969
061 cgi.com 01/19/87 102209
062 cts.com 01/19/87 n/a
063 spdcc.com 01/19/87 n/a
064 apple.com 02/19/87 66
065 nma.com 03/04/87 n/a
066 prime.com 03/04/87 n/a
067 philips.com 04/04/87 2810
068 datacube.com 04/23/87 n/a
069 kai.com 04/23/87 n/a
070 tic.com 04/23/87 n/a
071 vine.com 04/23/87 n/a
072 ncr.com 04/30/87 46207
073 cisco.com 05/14/87 1329
074 rdl.com 05/14/87 n/a
075 slb.com 05/20/87 11557
076 parcplace.com 05/27/87 n/a
077 utc.com 05/27/87 135686
078 ide.com 06/26/87 n/a
079 trw.com 07/09/87 224218
080 unipress.com 07/13/87 n/a
081 dupont.com 07/27/87 24676
082 lockheed.com 07/27/87 n/a
083 rosetta.com 07/28/87 266032
084 toad.com 08/18/87 n/a
085 quick.com 08/31/87 n/a
086 allied.com 09/03/87 111176
087 dsc.com 09/03/87 351550
088 sco.com 09/03/87 76724
089 gene.com 09/22/87 108440
090 kccs.com 09/22/87 n/a
091 spectra.com 09/22/87 776373
092 wlk.com 09/22/87 n/a
093 mentat.com 09/30/87 n/a
094 wyse.com 10/14/87 313648
095 cfg.com 11/02/87 n/a
096 marble.com 11/09/87 113962
097 cayman.com 11/16/87 n/a
098 entity.com 11/16/87 n/a
099 ksr.com 11/24/87 n/a
100 nynexst.com 11/30/87 n/a
Saturday, February 28, 2009
20 Tips for Getting Started in e-Commerce
Credit goes to Actinic Software for posting this sobering article, replicated below. Although EU-centric, principles apply equally if you are wishing to engage e-Commerce Down Under.
The wild west of the internet has been largely tamed and lots of people are succeeding online these days. Sadly, there have been numerous casualties, but the good news is that you don't have to follow in their footsteps. Here are some of the good practices that have been extracted from the last few years of turmoil.
1. It's not the technology
Internet technology has enabled the whole ecommerce revolution to happen. But if we focus on technology, we will never succeed commercially. The rules of ecommerce are like those for any other business. You have to have something that customers want, at a price that they can afford and where you can make money. Then you have to let your prospects know about it. It's as simple as that.
2. Marketing, marketing, marketing
If your great idea is ever to be profitable, people have to know about it. You need to find out how people search on the internet. What are the key words that they use for your type of product? What other ways do they look online? Talk to lots of people and try to understand a bit more about it all. Here are some sites that can help: www.searchenginewatch.com, www.overture.com, and www.webmasterworld.com (look under 'Ecommerce' and 'The Marketing World').
3. Market offline
It's true that all of your prospects are online, but it also true that they are all offline more of the time. Some very successful internet companies built initial awareness almost exclusively offline. You need to ask whether traditional marketing like advertising, PR or direct mail can help.
4. Remember your existing customers
Once you are up and running, remember that existing customers are your best customers. Make sure that you encourage them to return by making special offers and letting them know what you are doing at your store.
5. Use stuff that already works
Use technology that works, not stuff that’s a masterpiece in progress. Why bother debugging software from some start-up or paying thousands for a bespoke solution that leaves you reliant on the designer ever after, when you could be using stuff that is already working on thousands of online stores.
6. Sell from the second they arrive
Once someone arrives at your site, marketing is over and selling begins. So leave the smooth talk out, and make it easy to find your products. Have a clear link like "Shop Here". And don't ask them to register before they can look at your catalogue. There will be plenty of time to get their name and address once they have decided to buy.
7. Make sure your site works for you, not your designer
Don’t let a fantastic design spoil your business because, for instance, the design stuff takes so long to load that everyone just clicks away. Make everything the servant of the business objective, which is to make sales.
8. Get a good online payment provider
You need to be able to take payments online, and it makes sense to team up with a good one.
9. Sign up with a good hosting company
Your online store needs to be hosted somewhere, and there are plenty of great deals around for good, low cost web hosting. Look for a company that is a hosting specialist, rather than one trying to be a jack of all trades.
10. Make arrangements for the shipping of orders
Arranging for shipping is not so daunting as you might think, because there are many specialist firms to help. Many ecommerce merchants ship abroad without any problems. The big boys are UPS, Fedex, DHL and ParcelForce, but there are many others. Ask for advice from other local businesses that already ship their goods.
11. Don't miss opportunities abroad
Surprisingly, it's fairly straightforward. If you're eating out in France and you pay by credit card then the restaurant will be paid in euros. The opposite is also true, so when foreign buyers visit your site you can be paid in pounds and they will be charged in their local currency.
12. Be legal and decent
Like every area of business these days, ecommerce is surrounded by a maze of red tape, rules and regulations. In fact, selling online tends to be worse because of the international dimension. And any slip-ups you make are there for the world to see, so it's doubly important to be legal and decent. The following five tips try to pull together some of the areas that you need to think about and understand. They shouldn't be taken as definitive – it's your job to comply with the law – but they are a good place to start.
13. Comply with the EU Distance Selling Directive
Under the EU Distance Selling Directive, you must make clear who you are by providing full contact details including an address and phone number. This is also good practice for building trust.
Under the same Directive, you must accept goods for return within 7 working days. Why not make this a selling point?
14. Get your tax right
As of 1 April 2006, you must be VAT registered if your annual sales exceed £61,000. If you're not VAT registered, you don't have to worry about charging VAT and it would actually be against the law to do so.
Selling to the EU, you should charge VAT at your usual rate. But there are some exceptions. If you exceed the individual VAT threshold for Germany, France, etc. then you should charge VAT at the appropriate country VAT rate when selling into that country, not the usual UK 17.5% rate. Also, if your customer is a non-UK business in the EU and is registered for VAT in its own country, the buyer is allowed to quote their VAT registration number to you in order to be exempted from tax.
Finally, you don’t have to charge VAT when selling outside the EU, such as to the US.
15. Allow for disabled visitors it's the law!
Make sure that you comply with the disability law which is effective from late 2004. The key requirement is that you have to take "reasonable" steps to provide access to people with disabilities, and this includes your online store. One way of doing that is to make sure that all images have alternate text tags so visually impaired people can still navigate your site.
16. Privacy matters
You will probably need to register with the Information Commissioner's Office at www.ico.gov.uk. Registering takes just a few hours of careful thought and work.
17. Comply with the rules on sending email
You are only allowed to send direct email marketing to individuals who have agreed to receive it from you by directly opting in. It is not sufficient simply to provide an opt out.
However, if you obtained their details in the course of making a sale, or in the course of a sales enquiry, the rules are different. You are allowed to continue communicating with them provided there is a free method of opting out each time you send them an email. This can be by email.
18. Turn burdens into a benefit
Assuming that you are legal and decent, let the world know. Anything that adds to your credibility will help online. So why not list all of the things that you have done under the heading "We comply with the following legal and tax regulations"?
19. Avoid Fraud
One potential problem when selling online is fraud. Don’t get things out of proportion, there are problems with any business and no one has managed to entirely eliminate shoplifting yet. Unfortunately it's true that foreign orders from some countries seem to be much more likely to be fraudulent than others. If in doubt, stick to ones from Western Europe and North America.
To help avoid fraudulent orders look out for these indicators:
They tend to use the most expensive shipping method available
They tend to choose the most expensive products
They tend to use free email addresses such as Yahoo or Hotmail.
In addition you can check whether an order is fraudulent by asking for a fax of a copy of the back strip of the credit card; asking for proof of name and address to be faxed; or you can telephone to make sure that the number is genuine. Most fraudsters give up at the first hurdle and you don't hear from them again.
20. Go for it
Finally, you may have been wondering for a while whether ecommerce would be worth it. Well the results are now firmly in, and it’s very clear. Ecommerce is really on the rise, while conventional retail is relatively static. In the UK, around 6% of all retail sales are made across the web. What’s stopping you getting your share of this growing pie?
Source: Actinic Software
The wild west of the internet has been largely tamed and lots of people are succeeding online these days. Sadly, there have been numerous casualties, but the good news is that you don't have to follow in their footsteps. Here are some of the good practices that have been extracted from the last few years of turmoil.
1. It's not the technology
Internet technology has enabled the whole ecommerce revolution to happen. But if we focus on technology, we will never succeed commercially. The rules of ecommerce are like those for any other business. You have to have something that customers want, at a price that they can afford and where you can make money. Then you have to let your prospects know about it. It's as simple as that.
2. Marketing, marketing, marketing
If your great idea is ever to be profitable, people have to know about it. You need to find out how people search on the internet. What are the key words that they use for your type of product? What other ways do they look online? Talk to lots of people and try to understand a bit more about it all. Here are some sites that can help: www.searchenginewatch.com, www.overture.com, and www.webmasterworld.com (look under 'Ecommerce' and 'The Marketing World').
3. Market offline
It's true that all of your prospects are online, but it also true that they are all offline more of the time. Some very successful internet companies built initial awareness almost exclusively offline. You need to ask whether traditional marketing like advertising, PR or direct mail can help.
4. Remember your existing customers
Once you are up and running, remember that existing customers are your best customers. Make sure that you encourage them to return by making special offers and letting them know what you are doing at your store.
5. Use stuff that already works
Use technology that works, not stuff that’s a masterpiece in progress. Why bother debugging software from some start-up or paying thousands for a bespoke solution that leaves you reliant on the designer ever after, when you could be using stuff that is already working on thousands of online stores.
6. Sell from the second they arrive
Once someone arrives at your site, marketing is over and selling begins. So leave the smooth talk out, and make it easy to find your products. Have a clear link like "Shop Here". And don't ask them to register before they can look at your catalogue. There will be plenty of time to get their name and address once they have decided to buy.
7. Make sure your site works for you, not your designer
Don’t let a fantastic design spoil your business because, for instance, the design stuff takes so long to load that everyone just clicks away. Make everything the servant of the business objective, which is to make sales.
8. Get a good online payment provider
You need to be able to take payments online, and it makes sense to team up with a good one.
9. Sign up with a good hosting company
Your online store needs to be hosted somewhere, and there are plenty of great deals around for good, low cost web hosting. Look for a company that is a hosting specialist, rather than one trying to be a jack of all trades.
10. Make arrangements for the shipping of orders
Arranging for shipping is not so daunting as you might think, because there are many specialist firms to help. Many ecommerce merchants ship abroad without any problems. The big boys are UPS, Fedex, DHL and ParcelForce, but there are many others. Ask for advice from other local businesses that already ship their goods.
11. Don't miss opportunities abroad
Surprisingly, it's fairly straightforward. If you're eating out in France and you pay by credit card then the restaurant will be paid in euros. The opposite is also true, so when foreign buyers visit your site you can be paid in pounds and they will be charged in their local currency.
12. Be legal and decent
Like every area of business these days, ecommerce is surrounded by a maze of red tape, rules and regulations. In fact, selling online tends to be worse because of the international dimension. And any slip-ups you make are there for the world to see, so it's doubly important to be legal and decent. The following five tips try to pull together some of the areas that you need to think about and understand. They shouldn't be taken as definitive – it's your job to comply with the law – but they are a good place to start.
13. Comply with the EU Distance Selling Directive
Under the EU Distance Selling Directive, you must make clear who you are by providing full contact details including an address and phone number. This is also good practice for building trust.
Under the same Directive, you must accept goods for return within 7 working days. Why not make this a selling point?
14. Get your tax right
As of 1 April 2006, you must be VAT registered if your annual sales exceed £61,000. If you're not VAT registered, you don't have to worry about charging VAT and it would actually be against the law to do so.
Selling to the EU, you should charge VAT at your usual rate. But there are some exceptions. If you exceed the individual VAT threshold for Germany, France, etc. then you should charge VAT at the appropriate country VAT rate when selling into that country, not the usual UK 17.5% rate. Also, if your customer is a non-UK business in the EU and is registered for VAT in its own country, the buyer is allowed to quote their VAT registration number to you in order to be exempted from tax.
Finally, you don’t have to charge VAT when selling outside the EU, such as to the US.
15. Allow for disabled visitors it's the law!
Make sure that you comply with the disability law which is effective from late 2004. The key requirement is that you have to take "reasonable" steps to provide access to people with disabilities, and this includes your online store. One way of doing that is to make sure that all images have alternate text tags so visually impaired people can still navigate your site.
16. Privacy matters
You will probably need to register with the Information Commissioner's Office at www.ico.gov.uk. Registering takes just a few hours of careful thought and work.
17. Comply with the rules on sending email
You are only allowed to send direct email marketing to individuals who have agreed to receive it from you by directly opting in. It is not sufficient simply to provide an opt out.
However, if you obtained their details in the course of making a sale, or in the course of a sales enquiry, the rules are different. You are allowed to continue communicating with them provided there is a free method of opting out each time you send them an email. This can be by email.
18. Turn burdens into a benefit
Assuming that you are legal and decent, let the world know. Anything that adds to your credibility will help online. So why not list all of the things that you have done under the heading "We comply with the following legal and tax regulations"?
19. Avoid Fraud
One potential problem when selling online is fraud. Don’t get things out of proportion, there are problems with any business and no one has managed to entirely eliminate shoplifting yet. Unfortunately it's true that foreign orders from some countries seem to be much more likely to be fraudulent than others. If in doubt, stick to ones from Western Europe and North America.
To help avoid fraudulent orders look out for these indicators:
They tend to use the most expensive shipping method available
They tend to choose the most expensive products
They tend to use free email addresses such as Yahoo or Hotmail.
In addition you can check whether an order is fraudulent by asking for a fax of a copy of the back strip of the credit card; asking for proof of name and address to be faxed; or you can telephone to make sure that the number is genuine. Most fraudsters give up at the first hurdle and you don't hear from them again.
20. Go for it
Finally, you may have been wondering for a while whether ecommerce would be worth it. Well the results are now firmly in, and it’s very clear. Ecommerce is really on the rise, while conventional retail is relatively static. In the UK, around 6% of all retail sales are made across the web. What’s stopping you getting your share of this growing pie?
Source: Actinic Software
Friday, February 13, 2009
Living in a (Mis)information Society
As reported on Slashdot:
Germany has a new minister of economic affairs. Mr. von und zu Guttenberg is descended from an old and noble lineage, so his official name is very long: Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg. When first there were rumors that he would be appointed to the post, someone changed his Wikipedia entry and added the name 'Wilhelm,' so Wikipedia stated his full name as: Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Wilhelm Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg.
What resulted from this edit points up a big problem for our information society (in German; Google translation). The German and international press picked up the wrong name from Wikipedia — including well-known newspapers, Internet sites, and TV news such as spiegel.de, Bild, heute.de, TAZ, or Süddeutsche Zeitung. In the meantime, the change on Wikipedia was reverted, with a request for proof of the name. The proof was quickly found. On spiegel.de an article cites Mr. von und zu Guttenberg using his 'full name'; however, while the quote might have been real, the full name seems to have been looked up on Wikipedia while the false edit was in place. So the circle was closed: Wikipedia states a false fact, a reputable media outlet copies the false fact, and this outlet is then used as the source to prove the false fact to Wikipedia.
Source: Slashdot
Germany has a new minister of economic affairs. Mr. von und zu Guttenberg is descended from an old and noble lineage, so his official name is very long: Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg. When first there were rumors that he would be appointed to the post, someone changed his Wikipedia entry and added the name 'Wilhelm,' so Wikipedia stated his full name as: Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Wilhelm Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg.
What resulted from this edit points up a big problem for our information society (in German; Google translation). The German and international press picked up the wrong name from Wikipedia — including well-known newspapers, Internet sites, and TV news such as spiegel.de, Bild, heute.de, TAZ, or Süddeutsche Zeitung. In the meantime, the change on Wikipedia was reverted, with a request for proof of the name. The proof was quickly found. On spiegel.de an article cites Mr. von und zu Guttenberg using his 'full name'; however, while the quote might have been real, the full name seems to have been looked up on Wikipedia while the false edit was in place. So the circle was closed: Wikipedia states a false fact, a reputable media outlet copies the false fact, and this outlet is then used as the source to prove the false fact to Wikipedia.
Source: Slashdot
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Intel 32nm Process, a Hint of Good Things to Come
The new 32nm lithography process allows smaller, more highly integrated chips. The next generation due late 09 / early 10 include CPU (dual core), graphics processor and memory controller (dual channel) in a single package. The new chips are codenamed Clarkdale and Arrandale.
Benefits include reduced power consumption and heat dissipation thereby allowing portable devices with relatively high levels of performance, longer battery life and thinner / light weight designs. Can't wait to see these in laptops!
Source: Xbit Labs
Thursday, February 5, 2009
India's "$10 Laptop" Huge Disappointment
The news no doubt had Nicholas Negroponte and the lads over at the OLPC foundation quaking in their boots. The XO Laptop was already getting its ass kicked by the barrage of netbooks that hit the market shortly after its launch and Intel’s rival educational notebook, the Classmate PC was winning over governments and filling more classrooms than the OLPC’s laptop.
Fortunately for the OLPC and unfortunately for everyone else, it seems like there’s less to the $10/$20 laptop than we originally thought--considerably less. With "megabytes" of onboard memory and wi-fi capabilities we (rather optimistically, we’ll admit) pictured something that resembled the netbooks we’re seeing now but a little more primitive. What we saw, was not a laptop, nor was it $10, or even $20. And why it was being touted as a laptop still remains a mystery
Times of India reports that the Sakshat is a 10-inch by 5-inch plastic box which, despite an official unveiling at India's Sri Venkateswara University yesterday, still contains only mystery parts. It appeared more like a storage device than anything else. As for the $10 price, the expected price is closer to thirty bucks. Bummer. It feels like being promised a car and getting a single rollerskate.
Source: TG Daily
Fortunately for the OLPC and unfortunately for everyone else, it seems like there’s less to the $10/$20 laptop than we originally thought--considerably less. With "megabytes" of onboard memory and wi-fi capabilities we (rather optimistically, we’ll admit) pictured something that resembled the netbooks we’re seeing now but a little more primitive. What we saw, was not a laptop, nor was it $10, or even $20. And why it was being touted as a laptop still remains a mystery
Times of India reports that the Sakshat is a 10-inch by 5-inch plastic box which, despite an official unveiling at India's Sri Venkateswara University yesterday, still contains only mystery parts. It appeared more like a storage device than anything else. As for the $10 price, the expected price is closer to thirty bucks. Bummer. It feels like being promised a car and getting a single rollerskate.
Source: TG Daily
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Monday, February 2, 2009
HD Playback Experience on Modern Graphics Cards
For those of you who are considering a HTPC (Home Theatre Personal Computer) the graphics processor will be one of your most crucial decisions. Not only does it affect visual quality, overall system noise and performance levels, it also determines audio capabilities of your setup.
Check out the Xbit Labs article.
Check out the Xbit Labs article.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Mr. Putin Angry at Mr. Dell
I guess Dell irked Russia’s prime minister Vladimir Putin. How did Dell piss off the PM? What did he say that was so insulting? Mr. Dell simply offer help with IT expansion.
Putin went off saying: "We don't need help. We are not invalids. We don't have limited mental capacity." The slapdown took many of the people in the audience by surprise.
Source: CNN Money
Putin went off saying: "We don't need help. We are not invalids. We don't have limited mental capacity." The slapdown took many of the people in the audience by surprise.
Source: CNN Money
US Supreme Courts Declined to Extend Software Patents to Cover Algorithms
Read further in the recent Ars article.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Google's Gdrive Arriving in 2009
The service has the potential to eclipse even Gmail, Google’s second best-known product after their google.com search engine. That said, it’s no wonder users have been ripe with anticipation for years - yes, that’s how long the rumors have persisted. Gdrive is basically online storage where Google servers have enough capacity to hold the entire contents of your hard drive. It will likely also come with enough brains to do cool tricks now with bigger things down the road - like booting your computer from online drive to load the Google operating system.
Gdrive is basically a cloud-based storage that should have two faces: A desktop client that keeps local and online files and folders in two-directional sync via a web interface for accessing your desktop files anywhere and anytime, using any network-enabled computer. In addition, it will come tightly integrated with other Google services to enable editing of supported document types, like spreadsheets and presentations via Google Docs, email via Gmail, images via Picasa Web Albums, etc.
This opens powerful possibilities. For instance, you could start working on a spreadsheet at home and continue via Gdrive web interface accessed in an Internet cafe. When you arrive back home, changes to the spreadsheet have already trickled down from the cloud to your desktop. The idea, of course, is all but revolutionary, but Google’s execution could set it apart.
Source: TG Daily
Gdrive is basically a cloud-based storage that should have two faces: A desktop client that keeps local and online files and folders in two-directional sync via a web interface for accessing your desktop files anywhere and anytime, using any network-enabled computer. In addition, it will come tightly integrated with other Google services to enable editing of supported document types, like spreadsheets and presentations via Google Docs, email via Gmail, images via Picasa Web Albums, etc.
This opens powerful possibilities. For instance, you could start working on a spreadsheet at home and continue via Gdrive web interface accessed in an Internet cafe. When you arrive back home, changes to the spreadsheet have already trickled down from the cloud to your desktop. The idea, of course, is all but revolutionary, but Google’s execution could set it apart.
Source: TG Daily
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Study: Filesharing Creates Positive Economic Effect
In a study conducted by TNO for the Dutch government the economic effects of filesharing are found to be positive. According to the 146 page report, filesharing is good for the prosperity of the Dutch: with filesharing more media are available, even though this costs the media industry some profit.
One of the most noticeable conclusions is that downloading and buying are not mutually exclusive: downloaders on average buy just as much music as non-downloaders, but they buy more DVD's and games then people who don't download. They also tend to visit more concerts and buy more merchandise.
Source: TNO (Translated Dutch -> English)
One of the most noticeable conclusions is that downloading and buying are not mutually exclusive: downloaders on average buy just as much music as non-downloaders, but they buy more DVD's and games then people who don't download. They also tend to visit more concerts and buy more merchandise.
Source: TNO (Translated Dutch -> English)
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
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