Author Archives: Robin

Buma / Stemra goes nuts and wins in NL

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The Dutch version of the RIAA is called BUMA / STEMRA and they hunt down people for their own personal gain in about the same way RIAA does.
They’ve sued a company for allowing their workers to listen to their own ipods. In NL companies apparently need to pay BUMA / STEMRA if they allow their employees to listen to the public radio. How this is possible is beyond me, as the singers are paid by the radio station when the songs are played. It’s got something to do with making the music available publicly, even though an office is not a public setting.
Anyway, even though the music on an ipod is private (or may be an audiobook) and can only be heard by one person and is presumably owned by that person, the court has decided that this falls under the public display of music and that the company should pay.
There is unfortunately no path to the court of appeals, as the company has let the deadline expire.
The country is up in arms about it – no-one can really understand this ruling and many consider it a miscarriage of justice. Now I don’t know the judge, but he must have been 90 years old and never have touched a computer in his life in order to come to conclusions like this.

Google starts using your search history for contextual advertising

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Thus they can use adsense equipped sites to mainly show you the stuff they think you’re interested in. Privacy? Anonymous web surfing? No thank you! Fortunately they have a page where you can see what categories Google thinks you’re interested in and you can opt out of interests or opt in to new categories. The system is cookie based, so you have to do this on each and every browser you use.

Chinese hackers crack iTunes Store gift codes, sell certificates | iLounge News

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A group of Chinese hackers has succeeded in cracking Apple%u2019s algorithm for encoding iTunes Store Gift Certificates92, and are creating discounted certificates using a key generator. Outdustry reports that a number of the codes are available on the site Taobao, with $200 cards selling for as little as $2.60. The owner of the Taobao shop offering the cards admitted that the codes are created using key generators, and that he paid to use the hackers%u2019 service. He also said that while the price of the codes has dropped steadily, store owners make more money as the number of customers grows.

Chinese hackers crack iTunes Store gift codes, sell certificates | iLounge News

UK Government Really hates freedom

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As if privacy isn’t enough of a bother for the people of the UK, the government now wants to kill net neutrality: ie the choice to connect wherever you like to on the internet. This bill would allow ISPs to say which sites you can and can’t connect to, a bit like TV stations. One of the reasons TV lost to internet is because you can choose your own content. People are adult enough to make their own choices and don’t need them spoonfed to them, thanks.

UK home secretary thinks violence agains men fine

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SS general Jaqui Smith has found that violence against women is unnaccaptable at any time and is shocked to find that 1 in 5 men find it acceptable if there is sufficient cause for it. She is also surprised to find that 40% of British men think that if a woman has been flirting heavily she’s asking for sex.
Violence against men, however, is so inconsequential, she doesn’t find it worth spending her time on.
Sexist bitch.

NL Zonefile wants to kill small registrars

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The SIDN – the Dutch .nl zonefile owners – have decided they want only large registrars and have decided to give owners of > 100.000 domain names up to 8% discount.
Becoming a registrant is subject to an annual fee, which is the same for all registrars, so the smaller registrars, that have to make more costs due to them not being able to afford automated systems, are being pushed out pricewise.
Basically SIDN is saying “screw you” to all it’s smaller registrars.
Fortunately there is a protest. After unsuccessful negotiations with SIDN, group of registrars has protested to trade standards, complaining that SIDN is a monopoly and is taking advantage of its position for no real reason.
Come on SIDN, you’re one of the largest zones in the world, thanks in large part to small registrars. Stop kicking them in the face!

In the UK only the MPs have privacy

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This has just been put into law, without any debate whatsoever, in response to a high court judge’s ruling that MP’s adresses should be published.
This from the house that pushes the wide eyed innocent “but if you haven’t done anything wrong, you have nothing to fear” argument all over the place. Are they afraid, because they’re hiding something? Or do they really know, deep in their hearts, that this is a total bullshit irrellevant argument.

SPOT Europe, The World’s First Satellite Messenger

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Introducing SPOT %u2013 The World%u2019s First Satellite Messenger
Whether you%u2019re just checking in, allowing others to track your progress, or calling for help %u2013 SPOT gives you a vital line of communication with friends and family when you want it, and emergency assistance when and where you need it. And since it utilizes 100% satellite technology, SPOT works around the world %u2013 even where cell phones don%u2019t.

Shop SPOT Europe, The World’s First Satellite Messenger

It’s fairly affordable (EUR. 200) and links in to Google Maps, so other people can track you.

UK Government Wants To Kill Data Protection Act

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“Clause 152 of the Coroners and Justice Bill, currently being debated by the UK Parliament, would allow any Minister by order to take from anywhere any information gathered for one purpose, and use it for any other purpose64. Personal information arbitrarily used without consent or even knowledge: the very opposite of ‘Data Protection.’ An ‘Information Sharing Order’, as defined in Clause 152, would permit personal information to be trafficked and abused, not only all across government and the public sector %u2014 it would also reach into the private sector. And it would even allow transfer of information across international borders.

Slashdot | UK Government Wants To Bypass Data Protection Act

I sense the evil hand of J Smith in this.

Mind reading with MRI

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By hooking up an MRI and looking at the visual cortex whilst the subject looks at an object creates a pattern. When the subject recalls that object in short term memory, you can recognise that pattern and tell what object the subject is thinking of.

This has 2 implications:
1) We can read a specific person’s mind; if we build up a library of their memory patterns
2) The part of the brain used to recall memories is the same as the part used when we are looking at something directly. This is important: it means that we really are living in a world created by our imaginations 🙂

OneSwarm: Privacy preserving P2P

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Although widely used, currently popular peer-to-peer (P2P) applications are limited by a lack of user privacy. By design, services like BitTorrent and Gnutella share data with anyone that asks for it, allowing a third-party to systematically monitor8 user behavior. As a result, P2P networks can only be safely used by those comfortable with wholly public knowledge of their activity.

OneSwarm is a new P2P data sharing application we’re building to provide users with explicit control over their privacy by enabling fine-grained control over how data is shared. Instead of sharing data indiscriminately, data shared with OneSwarm can be made public, it can be shared with friends, shared with some friends but not others, and so forth. We call this friend-to-friend (F2F) data sharing.

Eyewitness identification severly unreliable

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It’s been known for some time that eyewitnesses to an unpredictable and violent event have differing and even conflicting memories and testimonials of the event. Interestingly they also suffer from a deep need to conform: eyewitnesses put before a line-up will point out a person if they’ve been told that one of the line-up has confessed, even if the perpetrator is not in the line. If an eyewitness had fingered another person first and then heard about the confession of another, they’d usually change their accusation to another.

Get your car to agree to the EULA

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This is so simple, it’s absolutely brilliant! If you don’t want to agree with something you’re not going to read, you can use the fravia method to hack the software to switch the buttons, so you press the ‘disagree’ button. But this takes time and effort.
Alternatively, you could use a bit of cardboard and get your pet to agree of it’s own free will 🙂

The Agreeable Cat by Anne Loucks