The UK Home Secretary has turned into a full on foaming at the mouth lunatic. After Lords shot down her attempt to be able to keep prisoners in custody for unreal periods of time without any reason or cause, here comes her 2008 data communications act, in which she wants to be able to keep all records of all communications (telephone, email, browsing, mobile phone, text messaging – EVERYTHING) in a centralised government database. Where we know, from the UK government’s past efforts at keeping databases, the data will be kept safe. If by kept safe you mean lost on an unencrypted USB storage device. And where, of course, the data won’t be used for unlawfull purposes. Such as following around ‘political dissidents’. Or sold to third parties, like BT / Phorm.

It’s not only Apple who wants to control the content on your phone – it’s Google too! Android contains software that allows Google to delete any app they feel like on your phone. And they’re being up front about it as well.

Terrorism tracking databases are now being used in the US to track people with political leanings that the police, well, just don’t like. Such as opposing the death penalty, for example. 53 nonviolent dissidents have been found to have been inserted deliberately into the terrorist tracking databases. Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

And where is your ‘if you have done nothing wrong you have nothing to fear’ argument now?

This will be invested into creating a whopping huge database (probably unencrypted and left behind on USB sticks on the bus, if current UK standards are anything to go by) of all internet useage, mail reading and telephone conversations. Basically it’s legalised stalking. Well done the nanny state!

Spore has been getting loads of flak for publishing a game using a copy protection method that only allows you to install it on 3 user accounts. They’ve since raised the amount to 5, and say that you should be able to install it on more PCs if you give them a call.

This is why copy protection schemes such as Electronic Arts’ Spore are unnaceptable. Servers do go down. And then suddenly you can’t play your game any more at all!

Laptops and digital stuff wasn’t enough for them – no, they can photocopy anything and everything you take into the country….

We’ve covered how Apple has stolen the Ipod from a broke British bloke before (here) and how they’ve ripped the design of the new Nano from Cupertino (here) and whilst we haven’t covered that before, it turns out that the OS-X desktop launch bar (the thing on the bottom) has marked similarities to Konfabulator. Now, Apple has taken it in their head to attempts to patent a pre-existing display software idea, namely Intelliscreen’s notifier for jailbroken ipones.

Earlier in the UK, they’ve decided that in order for you to be anywhere near a child, you need to be government vetted, a useless and innefective process that only shows security theatre.

Now, park attendants have been ordered to interrogate adults spotted without children. Adults in the park must have a good explanation for being there, or otherwise they will be kicked out. By a Park attendant. Who is obviously totally trained to spot dangerous people and situations. Not. Other than the fact that they are in no way capable of this kind of security selection, aren’t parks there for the entertainment of everyone? Is everyone without kids now a suspected paedophile? Maybe we should just have everyone neutered at birth, that way there’s no way a peadophile could ever endanger a child.

Will tell on and attempt to cull the career of any (aspiring) doctor who tells them exactly what they are. Well done on proving them right.

President Lula suspended his intelligence chiefs pending an investigation in illegal phonetapping and other spying on the supreme court chief and members of congress.

Why didn’t the American gestappo get suspended like this after it turned out they’ve been doing it for years and on just about everyone there?

This map presents a satellite-based damage assessment for the city of Tskhinvali, South Ossetia, Georgia following the armed conflict between Georgian and Russian military forces in August 2008. Damaged buildings have been identified with WorldView-1 and Formosat-2 satellite imagery acquired on 19 August 2008 at a spatial resolution of 50cm and 2m respectively. An estimated total of 438 buildings within the mapped extent of Tskhinvali have been classified either as destroyed or severely damaged. An important preliminary finding of this satellite damage analysis is the observed heavy concentration of building damages within clearly defined residential areas. Please note, this is an initial damage assessment and has not yet been independently validated on the ground.

Link Location – MAP + PDF

In a bid demanding that the greatest time wasting, useless silliness at airports not come from the TSA, the FDA has ruled that it is to impound all penile sex toys due to safety concerns. We are talking about penis pumps, cock rings, etc.

Yes, this article has the mandatory OMG I can’t believe he’s on the watchlist cast of characters, but what’s more interesting is the two other points the article makes:
1) there is paperwork to get off the watchlist, but at 3 years and counting it’s still not being processed
2) people have now been on it so long, they’ve figured out some really easy ways to get around it.

The UK government has put up a site detailing what it thinks are the largest risks to the UK. Surprisingly, terrorism and other general fear mongering isn’t really up there – it’s more about natural events, which sounds realistic to me.

And in pretty astounding news, Steve Jobs has confirmed that the iphone has a kill switch for applications Apple doesn’t want you to have. The list has nothing to do with allowing access to some kernel core as some people have conjectured.

Google has released a way updated version of Google Trends, namely Google Insights for Search. Insights allows you to compare search query popularity over regions (globally, continents, countries, counties, etc), show you what each search term is used for within context and allows you to specify time ranges. It doesn’t have an export to csv functionality (whereas trends does).

The US Dept. of Homeland Security has just elucidated their policy: We can seize, keep your laptop without cause. Actually, they can seize any electronic device without cause.

In the drive for total control over the internet, ISP’s have got together to outright block any “child porn” they may find. This of course sounds like a nice plan, but the problem is that it sets a precendence in that the ISPs have the power (and the responsibilty?) – both of which should be reserved for jugdes of a court system – to block whatever content they feel like.

So who made him the global child-porn fighter then?

US Congress has been having a go at NebuAd, a company that tracks all of your web surfing habits from within the ISP, for not telling consumers that they’re being tracked or having any form of opt-in. Just like in the UK, your privacy belongs to big business.

Because the record companies insist on following a dramatically failing business model, the EU now wants to encourage their incompetence. They want to raise the period that a rightsholder has rights to their performance (of any song, not necessarily one their own) from 50 years to 95 years, like in the US.

More than that though, it props up the incompetent recording companies who we don’t really need as we can see by the increasing amount of independant production companies and the falling sales. They generally own the rights of a performance as they generally strip these rights off the happless 20 year old performer who is only too happy to be given the chance to perform at all.

I went Apple for a few months with a G4 Powerbook, but rapidly ran into the piles of proprietary junk Apple has all over the place.

Apple is Evil and no matter how cool their kit looks, Apple is an uber-Borg on the make. The FSF agrees and here’s why you should not get an iPhone 3G,

http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/5-reasons-to-avoid-iphone-3g/blogentry_view

Then they’re going to smoke outdoors. So as this looks like loitering, what do you do? Make the smokers walk up and down the streets, catching colds and littering their cigarette butts all over the place. Seriously though, what did these anti-smoking idiots really think was going to happen?

Well, they have them that heat you up and now they have them that use microwaves to install voices in your head. With high enough intensity it will kill you. This one’s called MEDUSA – Mob Excess Deterrent Using Silent Audio. This means that covering your ears won’t help against it.

And not in a good way. They want to allow companies to install malware and spyware on your PC. They also want to have an automatic three strikes out rule for downloaders: If you’re caught your ISP cuts you off.
Jawohl mein fuhrer, hier ist mein ausweiss. Sieg heil!

No idea what the why of it is, but AVG antivirus is faking Internet Explorer User Agents and is flooding the internet with it.

Ah, El Reg reports that it’s because AVG 8 vets websites / search engine results before you click on them, making nuts traffic over all our pipes!

Apparently some people are rerouting the traffic to the AVG site, which has gone down.