GLENN’S SHOWNOTES
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Yesterday, Twitter user MuscleNerd posted a video and picture of what appears to be a jailbroken iPad, credited to hacker Comex. Comex is a member of the iPhone Dev team, who have also said that a jailbreak is possible but have yet to release it.
Both attacks appear to depend on the use of a variant of the Spirit application that is used to crack iPhones.
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Warner Bros programs such as Two and a Half Men and The Mentalist will be available to be streamed on the site after they have been broadcast, along with Nine programs including Getaway and The Block.
Deals have also been signed with BBC Worldwide and British-based Digital Rights Group, enabling FixPlay to offer back-catalogue episodes of Doctor Who, Little Britain, Spooks and Father Ted among other shows.
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Two bills for excess internet usage referred to TIO were for $55,000 and $215,000 respectively.
Another of “close to $50,000” was for mobile data downloads, Cleary said.
Cleary said that under new rules to come into effect next month, the TIO could now make legal determinations on disputes involving sums of money up to $30,000, up from $10,000.
It could also make recommendations on disputes involving up to $85,000, rather than the current $50,000 limit, and try to help resolve claims above that.
The new limits will be reviewed again within 12 months. It is the first time the limits have been altered since the TIO’s inception in 1993.
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However, the web giant did concede that site speed will not be taken into consideration as much as, say, relevance, when evaluating the search rankings of a particular site.
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THE Australian has confirmed it will launch a dedicated iPad application to coincide with the arrival of the device in Australia later this month
Nick Leeder, deputy chief executive of The Australian, said pricing would be announced with the launch of the application.
“We are not yet in a position to talk about pricing,” Mr Leeder said. “We are very likely to charge and will choose to carry advertising.”
so no word on whether it will also carry a subsciption model or not
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Microsoft’s Windows 7 Team blog discusses the forthcoming update
For Windows 7, SP1 includes only minor updates, among which are previous updates that are already delivered through Windows Update. SP1 for Windows 7 will, however, deliver an updated Remote Desktop client that takes advantage of RemoteFX introduced in the server-side with SP1 for Windows Server 2008 R2.”
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today’s announcement of a hook-up between Sony and the ABC TV’s iView service
iView channel, which currently has over 175 shows on the menu
Sony will built iView access into its new Bravia Internet-connected tellies as well as its Net-friendly Blu-ray players set for launch in the middle of next month
The ABC says that ‘formatting issues’ will mean the main drawcards for iView as a catchup service – such as the 7pm News, The 7.30 Report, Four Corners, Lateline, Lateline Business, The Midday Report and Foreign Correspondent – will be missing at launch and won’t be available until the ABC’s boffins have sorted things out.
Another drawback is that even if your ISP offers unmetered access to iView (as is the case with Internode, iiNet and iPrimus, among others), iView content streamed onto your TV set will still be counted against your monthly data allowance.
According to Gizmodo, the reason for this is “none of the (Bravia) TV applications are browser based, so the iView team has had to craft the application with TV manufacturers.”
That means a different serving protocol, “which in turn affects how the data is sent” explains Gizmodo’s Nick Broughall. “The content itself is mirrored on two different servers now – one for browsers and one for applications.” The server with the browser content is free for the ABC’s iView partner ISPs but the one streaming the application content isn’t.
http://apcmag.c
New plans sit between prepaid and contract deals, starting at $15/month for 1GB with BYO modem, but they’re not for everyone…
The new plans deals are aimed at users who find their mobile broadband needs vary widely and wildly from one month to the next, because the plans can be paused, stepped up or stepped down each month without cost.
Sometimes you need a lot of Internet data. And sometimes you hardly need any at all. With a new Vodafone Month by Month Mobile Broadband Plan, you get the generous data benefits of a 12 month Plan and the freedom of Prepaid. So now, you have the control to go up, down, stop and start your Month by Month Mobile Broadband Plan as it suits you.
Prices and data allowances are exactly the same as the 12 month contract schemes: $15 per month for 1GB, $29 for 3GB, $39 for 6GB and $49 for 8GB.
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Apple has taken the unprecedented step of banning apps created with Adobe’s new Flash-to-iPhone Compiler in the forthcoming Creative Suite 5
The move appears to be aimed directly at the iPhone Packager tool in Flash Professional CS5 – a flagship feature in Creative Suite 5 family which Adobe is set to launch next week. The tool allows developers to create apps in Flash and then translate the code into an iPhone app.
It seems that if your discovered to have loaded an app by using the adobe tool then you might find your app banned
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Hackers yesterday shut down one of the most popular porn sites on the internet..Redtube.com is in the top 100 most visited websites, and was temporarily shut down by a ‘Turkish cyber-terrorist’ group calling itself ‘Hacked Netdevilz’.
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NEWS Corporation chairman and chief executive Rupert Murdoch said today he expected online content aggregators such as Google would soon halt the practice of posting content produced by others without paying to do so.
“We’re going to stop Google and others from taking our content” and using it for free, Mr Murdoch said at a “Kalb Report” forum at the National Press Club.
He suggested that readers won’t baulk at paying since “no one’s going to ask for a lot of money”.
“I think most newspapers in this country are going to be putting up a pay wall,” for online content, he added.
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LG has announced that its 2010 range of flatscreen panels will come with preloaded access to Telstra’s BigPond Movies service, which lets customers download movies over a broadband connection rather than trot to the local DVD store. The only caveat is that your Internet pipe needs a minimum speed of 3.5Mbps.
BigPond subscribers can also watch unmetered content from the ISP including news, sports and music videos. LG’s Netcast system also supports YouTube playback on the big screen.
A lot of people on Twitter are stupid. Many of these people follow celebrities and try to send them messages. But which celebrity’s fans are most stupid? It’s time to find out.
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Malicious software scans a hard drive for .torrent files, fires up a “copyright violation alert” and stings innocent users for an on-the-spot US$4,000 fine.
Scammers are creative, if nothing else. Their latest trick? Malware which targets users of BitTorrent file-sharing networks and attempts to bluff them into paying an on-the-spot US$4,000 fine for for breaching copyright rules.The ‘scareware’ scam, spotted by TorrentFreak.com, lodges a sneaky piece of software which scans the user’s hard drive for any .torrent files used to download (and upload) content via BitTorrent.
Once .torrent files are located the software throws a “copyright violation alert” message onto the screen, which locks the PC and redirects users to the Web site of the “ICPP Foundation” – a fake body which purports to be a copyright watchdog with affiliations to the RIAA and MPAA, which represent US recording and movie industries respectively and are often cited in legal actions against pirates and illegal downloaders.
However, as TorrentFreak reports, “the whole thing is a scam to extort cash and obtain credit card details.”
A rather official-looking screen (shown above) informs users they have been caught infringing copyright and given a choice between a (fake) court case, with the warning that “their offenses could result in five years in prison and a US$250,000 fine”; or to “settle the case pre-trial” by paying an on the spot ‘fine’ of US$400.
“Victims are also prompted to give their name, address and full credit card details”, warns TorrentFreak.com.
http://www.news
A VIDEO game addict clocked up a new high score on arcade classic “Asteroids” – smashing the previous record set 28 years ago.
Locksmith John McAllister, 41, played the simple joystick-controlled shooting game for 58 hours straight to rack up 41,338,740 points, The Sun reported.
The marathon gaming session was even broadcast live over the internet from his pal’s basement in Portland, Oregon.
“The Asteroids high score record is considered a holy grail. It’s a title that a lot of people would want, and I wanted it,” he told KGW-TV.
The previous high score of 41,336,440 was set by 15-year-old Scott Safran in 1982 – the longest-held high score of all time.
McAllister went without sleep during his game, which could not be paused, and racked up enough extra lives to dash to the toilet without getting a game over.
MARK’S SHOWNOTES
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A prominent US physicist is warning that an Australian laser invention poses a significant threat to nuclear security.
The revolutionary process is called ‘separation of isotopes by laser excitation’, or SILEX.
It provides a way of enriching uranium using pulsed lasers that was invented by two Australian scientists – Dr Michael Goldsworthy and Dr Horst Struve – at Lucas Heights in Sydney.
The pair won an award for their work and a grant from the Federal Government.
But Dr Francis Slakey, from Georgetown University in Washington DC, says while he admires their work, the invention has the potential to make it much easier for rogue countries or terrorist organisations to conceal any nuclear program.
‘It’s a significant advance from a physics point of view because they were able to accomplish what 20 other countries were unable to,’ he said.
‘(But) this next generation technology is so efficient and so small that we would no longer be able to see it with our satellites and we would no longer be able to detect whether there was some power source going into it, because it uses so little power.’
Development of the technology was transferred to the US, and General Electric Hitachi wants a licence to build the first SILEX plant.
But Dr Slakey says it’s far too dangerous.
‘From everything I’ve heard about this plant, it’s too risky to proceed,’ he said.
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Sharp plans to launch 3D televisions |
Japanese electronics giant Sharp says it will begin selling 3D televisions before the summer, as competition in the sector intensifies.
‘We will unveil our 3D Aquos models in May, and launch them before the summer shopping season,’ executive vice president Masafumi Matsumoto told a press conference on Monday.
In doing so Sharp will join rivals Samsung Electronics and Sony Corp. in a sector the industry hopes will help revive profits, as strong competition and falling prices force a reevaluation of the liquid crystal display (LCD) business.
Sharp says its new sets will incorporate the world’s first four primary-colour 3D displays, adding a yellow component to the traditional standard of red, green and blue to create brighter and more defined images.
As with existing 3D TVs, the Sharp sets will require the viewer to wear special glasses, the company said.
An exact launch date is yet to be decided, but the company said it will begin selling the new models in time for the summer bonus season at Japanese companies, which usually starts in June, before looking to the US and Europe.
It will soon start mass-producing large 3D LCD panels, but is yet to decide on whether to supply them to other TV makers, it added.
Earlier this month Sharp unveiled an LCD touchscreen that shows 3D images without requiring special glasses, for potential use in mobile phones, digital cameras, digital photo frames and games consoles.
The company sold around 10 million LCD TVs worldwide between April 2009 and March 2010.
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Viewers in the UK have been left completely bemused as their televisions began regularly changing channel at random.
Engineers tracked the interference to energy saving light bulbs.
The frequency of the flicker of the bulbs interferes with the infra-red sensors on remote control receivers.
Emma Clements and her husband Alistair were intrigued to find their Virgin Media box switching channels at random as well as turning on and off.
They were astonished to find a replacement box did exactly the same thing.
‘At first we thought it was the children’s sticky fingers on the remote control and that the buttons were sticking,’ Emma told Guardian Money.
‘But the novelty soon began to wear off. With the new box it was worse, if anything.’
A Virgin Media engineer suggested it could be related to a Philips energy saving bulb that was in a lamp about 12ft away from the television.
The hunch proved a good one when removing the bulb solved the problem.
A Philips Electronics spokeswoman said the company was surprised that users of the bulbs still experienced the interference.
‘Some very early compact fluorescent lamps, shortly after starting, could cause interference with TV controls due to the frequency of operation of the bulb and when placed near a TV,’ she said.
‘The frequency was quickly changed many years ago and we have had no recent reported incidents.’
The company said it hopes to examine the bulb that caused the Clements’ problems.
Traditional filament bulbs were banned by the EU in 2008 in favour of the more efficient low energy bulbs.
Shoppers rushed to stockpile the old style bulbs as they were phased out, while health campaigners complained the flicker of the efficient bulbs can cause migraines and dizziness.
http://bigpondn
Microsoft has unveiled a new line of Windows-powered mobile phones called Kin aimed at young users which emphasise social networking.
The Kin one’ and Kin two’ phones, which feature touchscreens and slideout keyboards, are being made by Japan’s Sharp and will be available in the United States through US telecom carrier Verizon Wireless in May.
The phones will be available in Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain in the northern autumn in partnership with Vodafone.
‘Social’s part of the DNA of this phone,’ Derek Snyder, a product manager at Windows Mobile, said at an unveiling event for the new phones in San Francisco.
‘Social networks are the cornerstone of this experience,’ Snyder said.
‘Working closely with our partners, we saw an opportunity to design a mobile experience just for this social generation – a phone that makes it easy to share your life moment to moment,’ said Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices Division.
‘We built Kin for people who live to be connected, share, express and relate to their friends and family,’ he said.
The home screen of the phone remains always on as the Kin brings together feeds from social networks such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.
Videos, photos, text messages, web pages and location and status updates can be shared by dragging them to a place on the phone called the Spot.
http://www.reut
Apple Inc has accepted distribution of Opera Software’s Internet browser for its iPhone after a long review, opening a new and potentially lucrative market it has so far closely guarded.
There are numerous versions of Apple’s own browser on App Store, but Norway-based Opera is the first rival to get access to iPhone.
Shares in Opera rose 5.7 percent at the open, to 26.2 crowns.
Opera applied on March 23 for its mobile browser to be distributed on iPhone, and it was available for downloading to consumers early on Tuesday, three weeks later. Usually the review process takes up to one week, developers say.
Analysts have said the decision was difficult for Apple — whose application store is the only way to distribute software for iPhone users — as its Internet browsing function is key to the success of the iPhone.
“In this world you have to be careful in picking your fights,” said John Strand, chief executive of Strand Consult. “Apple has to know Opera is the company that won the big legal battle against the Microsoft browser and probably didn’t want to fight against Opera,” Strand said.
Opera led the battle in Brussels against Microsoft bundling its Windows software and Internet Explorer, which eventually saw Microsoft sending a browser choice screen to some 200 million computers in Europe.
Opera’s browser promises up to six times faster download speeds than Apple’s own browser, and to cut data traffic by up to 90 percent.
Massive data traffic from iPhone mobile phones has caused problems for many operators’ networks.
Analysts said iPhone access should have little direct business impact for Opera, but was important for branding.
“Opera’s Mini browser already has some 50 million users and this could give them a couple or more million … but it is important to bear in mind that they don’t make money on users that download Opera Mini for free,” analyst Peder Strand at SEB Enskilda said.
Opera’s browser, free to consumers, was among the top downloaded items on iPhone on Tuesday.
“We have the same business model on Opera Mini as on our other consumer products, which is revenue share and affiliate deals on search and speed dials,” Opera’s Chief Development Officer Cristen Krogh told Reuters.
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CHILD pornographers can be captured and prosecuted without having to resort to mandatory internet filters, says Barack Obama confidante and US Ambassador to Australia Jeff Bleich.
The Rudd government has said the mandatory filters are crucial in its arsenal of online weapons aimed at stamping out child pornography and other forms of illegal material.
Asked on ABC TV’s Q&A program last night whether the proposed internet filter threatened both the US-Australia relationship, Mr Bleich expressed confidence both governments would be able to find “the path forward”.
Australia had been made aware of his government’s no internet censorship stance, he said, adding that the US has had “healthy discussions” with its Australian counterparts on the matter.
“On the issue of the internet we have been very clear. The internet needs to be free,” Mr Bleich said. “It needs to be free the way we have said skies have to be free, outer space has to be free, the polar caps have to be free, the oceans have to be free. They’re shared resources of all the people in the world.
“To the extent that there are disagreements (about) trying to find the right balance between law enforcement and respecting that general principle, we work with our friends, and so we’ve been working with Australia on this issue, we’ve had healthy discussions and … I’m sure we’ll be able to find the path forward.”
The US had told Australia child pornographers could be nabbed without the use of internet filters, Mr Bleich said.
“What we’ve said is we have been able to accomplish the goals that Australia has described, which is to capture and prosecute child pornographers and others who use the internet for terrible purposes, without having to use internet filters,” he said.
“We have other means and we are willing to share our efforts with them in order to allow them to at least look at a range of choices as opposed to moving in one particular direction … It’s an ongoing conversation.”
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