RIAA Wants Gov. to Delete Your Illegal Downloads

By Kevin Parrish - Source : Tom's Guide US

Copyright holders are now lobbying to be allowed access to your computer to delete content they deem bad.
Big Brother is watching you. Actually, it's the RIAA and the MPAA, especially if you're parked on a BitTorrent client. The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports that both organizations--along with a few others--want to take the file-monitoring process a huge step further by infiltrating consumer PCs and deleting the infringing content off their hard drives. How? Through "anti-infringement" spyware developed and enforced by the government.

This is no joke.

"There are several technologies and methods that can be used by network administrators and providers...these include [consumer] tools for managing copyright infringement from the home (based on tools used to protect consumers from viruses and malware)," reads a caption in a joint comment (pdf) filed by the MPAA and RIAA.

The joint comment goes on to suggest other means of copyright enforcement including a mandatory scan on all internet connections to interdict transfers of illegal content, physical searches at all borders of personal media players, laptops, and USB sticks. There's even an indication that the parties want to enforce international bullying to force other countries to put similar policies in place.

But there's more. The comment said that the copyright holders want the FBI and Department of Homeland Security to fork over agents--at the taxpayer's expense--so that they can guard the media prior to distribution.

"The planned release of a blockbuster motion picture should be acknowledged as an event that attracts the focused efforts of copyright thieves, who will seek to obtain and distribute pre-release versions and/or to undermine legitimate release by unauthorized distribution through other channels," the statement reads. "Enforcement agencies (notably within DOJ and DHS) should plan a similarly focused preventive and responsive strategy. An inter-agency task force should work with industry to coordinate and make advance plans to try to interdict these most damaging forms of copyright theft, and to react swiftly with enforcement actions where necessary."

How far will they go?

Palm for Sale? Any Takers?

Daniel Ionescu
Apr 12, 2010 6:28 am
Palm for sale? That's the latest report from Bloomberg news, which says the struggling maker of the Pre and Pixi phones is looking for offers. Up for the highest bid is also Palm's WebOS, the company's promising mobile operating system that never really took off with consumers.

Whether the sale of Palm would be a death knell for the company or a smart move to revitalize the brand and technology is anybody's guess. Palm's WebOS is a potentially strong contender in the smartphone arena, and if the right buyer puts the OS on the right device, they might be on to a winner.

Apple against the world

From Adobe to Google, the company is taking aim at its competitors

by Jason Snell, Macworld.com

Apple’s iPhone OS unveiling on Thursday was not the kind of Apple Event where the company shows off a brand-new product, exclaims how it’s the best product the company has ever made, and waits for the oohs and ahs of the invited guests.

Yes, iPhone OS 4.0 was the reason Apple invited the crowd to the company’s Cupertino campus, and that new version of the operating system that runs the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad has some promising new features. But Thursday’s event was a bit less about shiny-product Apple and a bit more about strategic technology company Apple.

Google CEO says Apple helped AdMob deal

(Reuters) - Apple's plunge into the advertising market announced this past week gave Google a big boost in arguing for regulators to approve its acquisition of mobile advertising leader AdMob, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said on Sunday.

10 Apps We’re Excited to Try on iPad Launch Day Read More http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/04/10-apps-were-excited-to-try-on-ipad-launch-day/?utm_

Apple fans have two time-sucking activities to look forward to this weekend: playing with the iPad for the very first time and trying out brand-new tablet apps.

The first wave of iPad reviews describe a device that is simple, easy to use and visually stunning. But for our part, what we’re looking forward to most is the apps. In that, we’re not alone: Many developers are equally excited.

“We’re on the verge of a major milestone in computing,” said Marco Arment, lead developer at Tumblr. Arment’s iPad app, Instapaper, is coming out Saturday. “We’re going to look back on this week the same way we look back at the week before the iPhone launched, when we were all using awful flip-phones. This week is the end of the dark age of mainstream computing, and Saturday begins the enlightenment.”

What follows is a list of 10 of the most intriguing iPad apps and games that we’ve scouted out,and which will be releasing with Apple’s tablet on Saturday.

The Elements

Sure, the iPad has its iBooks app, and that’s fine if you like words — plain, poorly formatted, non–graphically enhanced EPUB words — but book publishers like Touch Press are inventing the future of books through their own apps. The Elements is a guide to the periodic table that’s been enhanced with 3-D objects, video clips and live data from Wolfram Alpha. “This is the version you check out from the Hogwarts library,” creator Theo Gray told BoingBoing. “Everything in it is alive in some way.” Or, if you’re a Neal Stephenson fan, it’s like the Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer from The Diamond Age. Books like this are a geek’s dream, and we hope we see a lot more like it. The Elements costs $14 (and uses up 2 GB of storage). Download Link

Top photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

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Words With Friends HD

The Scrabble game Words With Friends was a huge hit on the iPhone, and it makes even more sense for the iPad’s bigger form factor. Words With Friends HD for the iPad will more closely resemble in size an actual Scrabble board, and the game will have the same online-chat capabilities as its predecessor. We can’t wait to try it out. It costs 5 bucks in the App Store

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PRODUCT REVIEWS

Apple iPad

Reviewed by Steven Levy

Apple's iPad: One Small Step for Tablets, One Giant Leap for Personal Computers

On the eve of the launch of Apple's iPad, I am thinking of Ed Roberts. He never became a household name, but as the man behind the Altair computer — a kit for lunatic tech hobbyists released in 1975 — he was responsible for launching the microcomputer era.

When nearly everyone in technology thought that computers would forever be restricted to big institutions, Roberts envisioned the machines as tools of empowerment. "If I were to give you an army of 10,000 people, could you build a pyramid?" he said. "A computer gives the average person, a high school freshman, the power to do things in a week that all the mathematicians who ever lived until 30 years ago couldn't do."

Roberts hired two obscure young would-be entrepreneurs to write a version of the BASIC computer language for the Altair. Recently I was talking to one of them — Bill Gates, who managed to turn that adventure into a company called Microsoft — about Roberts. "He's not doing that well," Gates said. "So I wrote a letter to him about what a great guy he is, and I hope he's doing well."

Ed Roberts died April 1, just as the revolution he kicked off was about to enter its next phase. On Saturday, Apple will begin selling the iPad, a book-sized tablet dominated by a bright LCD touch-controlled screen.

The zeitgeist excitement needle on this gadget has moved past Hula Hoop and Lady Gaga levels, and is approaching zones previously occupied only by the Beatles and the birth-control pill. Can a one-and-a-half-pound slab possibly live up to this massive hype?

From my first bit of exposure, the answer is almost — and that's pretty great. The first visual impression (it's just a big iPod Touch!) is seriously misleading. Until you actually hold it and interact with it, you can't appreciate how its scale makes the iPad a different animal from the iPhone and the Touch. There's something about the size and interface that engages you almost primally in reading, viewing video, web browsing, playing Scrabble and other activities. The iPad points to a Third Way — sitting in between the phone and the laptop — of interacting with information.

The other constant is speed. Like other mobile devices, there's no waiting time to get up and running; it's virtually instant-on. And with its custom-designed A4 chip powering things, iPad apps run much zippier than what you'd see with the iPhone.

Like everyone else, I rushed to see how the iPad would perform some specific tasks.

First, browsing. Steve Jobs promised that Safari on the iPad would be the best browsing experience ever. It's hard to give it that distinction when it doesn't run Flash, the technology behind a lot of web video and animation. I also miss tabs. That said, the techniques that work well to allow the iPhone to smoothly surf the Web really shine on the bigger screen here.

Watching video is terrific. Settling on the couch with a good movie in your lap is now as natural as nestling in with a book. (Though by the end of a two-hour movie, the iPad — even at a pound-and-a-half — begins to feel a bit heavy.) I can't wait to take this on a plane loaded with movies. Even better if the plane has Wi-Fi, since the iPad NetFlix app provides customers with a library of great instant movies. I watched The September Issue using that app last night, and was impressed that it ran smoothly even with a relatively weak Wi-Fi signal.

As a Kindle aficionado I was curious to see how the iPad stacked up to Amazon's device as an e-reader. The answer: Pretty well. Newspapers, of course, are a natural, and the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Reuters and USA Today are all taking a step toward Minority Report–style living newspapers, where a touch expands a story or starts up video. (That's much better than Kindle's clunky newspaper navigation.) Using the familiar conventions of the iTunes store, the iBooks store made it easy to buy a virtual book, though many best-sellers cost more on Apple's store than Amazon's.

Apple has added some welcome innovations to the reading process, like a scroll bar that makes it easier to zip through chapters. Pages turn really fast. And the backlit screen makes the pages themselves clearer. But I'm not sure whether the backlighting is a plus — I found it easier to read with the brightness turned halfway down. After a bunch of long novels I'll figure out whether or not backlighting in "ludic reading" situations (intense, lengthy sessions) really does strain the eyes more than the Kindle's screen does, as some have claimed.

It's also clear that the iPad is well-positioned as a game platform. So far, some of the strongest games are those that use the touch functions and the accelerometers to bring traditional games into the digital world. I quickly got hooked on Labyrinth 2, which makes the iPad into a virtual wooden box that you balance to keep marbles from falling into holes in a maze.

In some ways it is just a larger iPhone, and apps on the former work on the iPad, but can be blurry when blown up to full size. But by expanding iPhone-sized applications, it creates a new paradigm: paper that's alive. A good example of this is the iPad Maps application. It's revelatory to see how much better Google-powered and Apple-enhanced Maps work when you don't have to squint (as with a phone) or hold a clunky laptop.

Of course there are quibbles with iPad version 1. It's too bad that some portion of iPad's lovely screen real estate can't be used for gadgets to keep us updated on Twitter, or connecting us with IM buddies. Multitasking, please! And GPS comes only with the 3G-equipped version.

Also, the virtual keyboard takes some getting used to. (I'm far from there yet.) You can use a slightly undersized actual keyboard (a $70 option that docks with the iPad's connector port). But it's not the kind of thing you want to drag around with you.

I wish Apple had built-in voice recognition like Google offers with the Nexus One. That said, using the dock, I'm having no problems using the iPad's word-processing app, Pages, to write this post. I have also successfully loaded a complicated Excel spreadsheet with fantasy-baseball calculations into Numbers, and have toyed around with the Keynote app enough to see that for editing presentations on a plane or a car while en route to the site of a talk, this Third Way will be a boon.

A lot of the iPad's shortcomings will be addressed as the category evolves. None of them significantly detract from its key virtues, which all work to make it into a computer that people won't think of as a computer. At its best the iPad puts no space between you and the thing you want to do, whether it's reading, watching video, or editing a presentation.

Sidelight to those wondering whether to get the Wi-Fi version now or wait for the 3G version, which costs $130 more and requires a month-to-month contract of $15 or $30 to get 3G data service from AT&T. At first I thought the Wi-Fi version was the hands-down way to go, figuring that the slower 3G connection would just be annoying. But testing the iPad with a 3G Mi-Fi setup, I found it surprisingly speedy, and it was able to stream video much better than my MacBook could through the same connection. So maybe it's a tossup for those who can afford the monthly tariff.

If the iPhone is any example, the best is yet to come. It took months for a healthy app market to emerge on the iPhone, but for the last couple of days the iTunes store has been piling up with apps customized or originally created for iPad. There will be well over 3,400 at launch. Yes, there are some genuine concerns about the App Store model, which puts Apple in control of what goes on your iPad, but I won't deal with those issues here.

I was pretty much sold on the idea that the time was right for an iPad-like tablet to bring us to the next step in computing, and using the actual iPad has only strengthened my view.

Despite what looks like a big initial wave of buyers, this shift won't happen overnight. Lots of people will balk at paying between $500 and $830 for something that they think is an unnecessary complement to what they already have.

But eventually, as prices come down, power and connectivity increase and developers create unexpected and wonderful apps, I think this format will find its way into people's hands as ubiquitously as smartphones. And though Apple has thrust itself into an early lead, there will be competition for the Third Way, and we'll all be better for it.

Back in 1975, Ed Roberts's Altair cost $397, only a bit less than the iPad does today. But it had no screen, no web, no apps and you had to assemble it yourself. We've come a long way since then. And as of Saturday, we're a little way further.

WIRED Compact, cool-running, speedy — and a groundbreaking new way to consume media. You already know how to use it. Thousands of apps will make it more useful and fun.

TIRED No multitasking means no gadgets or widgets: Does IM really need a full screen? Virtual typing is tricky when holding iPad upright. No way to print directly. Apps are only available from Apple's App Store.

• Style: Combo, E-Book Readers, WiFi enabled
• Storage: Flash
• Capacity: 15.1 GB to 30 GB, 30.1 GB to 60 GB, 60.1 GB to 120 GB
• Screen Size: 6.1 in and over
• Manufacturer: Apple
• Price: $500
Release Date: April 03, 2010

6 Steps to Protect Your Facebook Privacy

by Rosemary Hattersley, PC Advisor

Whether you're a committed telephone addict, a tabloid aficionado, or a web surfer extraordinaire, we're sure you can't help but notice that every couple of days seems to bring another security scare. Scare stories make for good headlines, of course, but some affect you more than others. Such is the case with privacy -- something we're increasingly expected to manage for ourselves.

There are plenty of straightforward ways to claw back some peace of mind. As we outlined in our in-depth look at the latest online security threats, the little bits of information with which we furnish web apps can be collectively turned against us.

A good example is the Facebook app that asks what single topped the charts the day you were born. I don't mind admitting that my answer to this is one of those dated comedy tracks. But I'm not about to amuse Facebook's entire London network (several million-strong and counting) with its details, particularly when doing so narrows down my date of birth to a seven-day period. How many guesses does a hacker need to correctly ascertain and make use of my date of birth (DOB) on an official form, such as applying for a credit card? Not many, given those odds.

Changes to Facebook's interface now promote the idea of searching, Friends Reunited-style, for old acquaintances based on school years. Again, you're semi-publicly drilling down into the detail and then proudly displaying the results.

If you and five of your friends all went to the same school, it takes only one person to list their DOB for a snoop to reasonably deduce that you were all in the same school year.

Don't even get me started on the dangers of posting your full address, phone numbers, and myriad other details that only true friends should be privy to. And it's no better if you have a blog and post the information there. Web crawlers will happily serve it all up on a platter to anyone who knows how to use a search engine skilfully.

It's great to share; it's even better to check first who you're sharing it with.

Plug Facebook information leaks

Step 1. Click Account at the top right and choose Account Settings from the drop-down menu. From here, you can swap your existing password for a stronger alphanumeric one. It's also a good idea to remove your maiden or middle names if you included them at registration.

Step 2. Click the Networks tab to check you're happy with the sharing settings for any network you may have joined. You're no longer required to join a network, however, so you may prefer to remove yourself from it altogether. Also consider unlinking your Twitter and MySpace accounts, your personal blog and so on.

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Step 3. The Privacy Settings are equally important; they're also under the Account menu. Facebook has tightened up some of its defaults, but it's wise to check what you're sharing with whom. In particular, don't let third parties use your profile picture in their advertising, which may fool some of your less tech-savvy friends.

Step 4. If you log into Facebook with a mobile phone number, have signed up for Facebook texts or listed your number at sign-up, be aware that your phone number will be available for all your 'friends' to see (plus networks such as Foursquare). If you don't want them to call you or send you text spam, alter your settings on the Mobile tab.

Step 5. Hackers often seek out a weak link, such as someone who appears to accept friends willy-nilly. Having been accepted, they try to become friends with that person's friends, who assume the newcomer must be kosher. Go to Accounts, Edit friends for a list from which you can purge anyone you don't actively know.

Step 6. You'd be surprised what you can learn about people based on their answers to Facebook's quizzes. Most apps request permission to post your answers to the Live Feed and to your Wall but, even if you ignore such requests, commenting on someone else's results could reveal more than you intended to.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DIE TO YOUR ONLINE LIFE

Thanks to Caroline Mc Carthy for the story

With over 300 million active users around the world, it's a legitimate concern for social network Facebook to come up with a solution for what happens when members die. The company has now spelled out the process on its official blog (in a post that's a little bit awkwardly close to Halloween, considering the sensitivity of the subject matter).

Facebook's Max Kelly explains in the blog post: "Obviously, we wanted to be able to model people's relationships on Facebook, but how do you deal with an interaction with someone who is no longer able to log on? When someone leaves us, they don't leave our memories or our social network. To reflect that reality, we created the idea of 'memorialized' profiles as a place where people can save and share their memories of those who've passed."

READ MORE CLICK ON TITLE FOR THE LINK TO NEWS STORY.

LUXEED 5

Amazing Customizable Keyboard Illumination

Sure we've seen illuminated keyboards before, but then we saw the Luxeed Dynamic Pixel LED Keyboard and stopped looking. With 430 LEDs the Luxeed is capable of individually lighting each key in your choice of color. What's more it can do some amazing tricks like an animated rainbow across all the keys, or make each key light when you press it. You get four "preset" buttons above the arrow keys you can use to instantly choose between different customizable lit skin presets. Set-up a glowing skin for your favorite game with different colors to indicate each key action... or create illuminated patterns and designs. Hey, the Luxeed doesn't have a tiny screen on each key like the legendary Optimus Maximus, but it's a hell of a lot cheaper.

Pick your Luxeed flavor of black or white. The keys of the white Luxeed have a semi-transparent look and light up more brightly than the black. However the black Luxeed has a stylish treatment with only the letters being illuminated. Both keyboards look the best in dim lighting of course.

The new U5 model of the Luxeed requires no driver software and works with any OS. All the controls for setting the color of keys, modes and storing key presets is built into the hardware.

Luxeed Dynamic Pixel LED Keyboard In Action

Product Features Amazing illuminated keyboard features 430 LEDs and can dynamically change the color of each key Set each key to any color, or turn the light off on that key Create custom illuminated key layouts and quickly switch between them with 4 preset buttons Features animated rainbow effect, or animated random key colors "Spark" mode allows keys to illuminate only when pressed Standard USB connection Keyboard Dimensions: 15" x 7.5" x 1" No Software required

eSATA USB to SATA External HDD Dock

This dual drive SATA HDD Dock provides fast, convenient access to 2.5" (up to 500Gb) or 3.5" SATA or SATA II (SATA /300) hard drives (up to 2TB each) through either USB or eSATA, without ever having to open a computer case or mount hard drives in an enclosure. Supporting one or two drives, SATADOCK22UE can be connected to the host computer through either USB 2.0 or eSATA - then, it's just a matter of inserting the desired 2.5" or 3.5" SATA/SATA II hard drives (or combination of both) into one of the two (or both) docking station slots for instant access.
The docking station supports Plug-and-Play installation on most operating systems, making it a perfect solution for data recovery, drive imaging, software testing, or any environment that requires fast access to massive amounts of data (uninstalled or archived hard drives etc.). Plus, SATADOCK22UE features a small form factor design that requires minimal desk space for permanent connection to the host computer and provides enough hard drive surface exposure to optimize dissipation of operating heat