 Your new post is loading...
Your new post is loading...
The last six months have seen a fierce debate in Italy over a proposal by the Italian communications watchdog Agcom to grant itself wide-ranging powers to address alleged copyright infringement online. Here's how The Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School described them:
The proposal is primarily intended to vest AGCOM with new administrative copyright enforcement powers. AGCOM would like to set up a system in which online copyright enforcement is done through administrative procedures, rather than civil or criminal actions. Additionally, the proposed enforcement system would not target direct infringers but rather Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Upon notice of alleged infringement, AGCOM may order the ISPs to selectively remove the infringing digital works, disable access to those works, or automatically redirect the users to a courtesy webpage. In case of especially serious instances of infringement, the proposal provides for an expedited procedure that drastically reduces the timeframe in which the alleged infringers and ISPs may respond to the allegations and subsequently take down the materials.
There are three key problems. First, this does not involve judicial authorities in deciding whether sites infringe and should therefore be blocked, even though that is the European norm: Agcom is granting itself a unilateral power to judge and punish. Secondly, it forces Italian ISPs to act as copyright cops. And thirdly, the timeframes involved are short, and make it hard for accused Web sites to appeal against allegations from copyright companies.
Unfortunately, despite widespread criticism from a broad spectrum of civil society, and even the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, Frank La Rue, Agcom has adopted its own proposals "unanimously" (original press release in Italian.) ZDNet explains how the new provisions will work:
Click headline to read more--
The UK's anti-porn firewall is now mostly erected. Two major ISPs have already put the opt-out-only system into use. As is to be expected, The Wall Moralizing Built has a few problems, not the least of which is its tendency to catch legitimate sites in its filtering system. This is a problem that will only get worse. The filtering in place now is a starting point. The system is built to be ratcheted up and as the government decides other search terms and websites aren't worthy of public attention, they too will be added to the blacklist.
Of course, your filtering is only as strong as your containment. And for all the tough talk from Cameron and various hand-wringers, the way past the porn filter is little more than a few clicks away.
Click headline to read more--
On Friday, judges at the Regional Court of Cologne (PDF, German) have taken the unusual step of revoking (Google Translate) at least 50 of their own court orders in a strange intellectual property dispute.
Those orders, issued over the course of the last few months, had compelled Deutsche Telekom (a major German ISP) to handover user names and addresses corresponding to over 50,000 German IP addresses that were accused violating the copyright of a handful of porn films. Each order was approved by a three-judge panel, which unanimously had to agree to send the order to Deutsche Telekom.
Those names and addresses were then used to send letters to tens of thousands of Germans, accusing them of copyright infringement of one of four porn films. The letters went on to order them to stop viewing the films on the streaming site Redtube.com (NSFW), and pay €250 ($345) to a shady Swiss company called The Archive. That money, the letter stated, would put a stop to future litigation.
At least two law firms in Cologne and Berlin have taken up the charge of representing people that they feel have been wrongly accused of copyright infringement by a Regensburg-based law firm, Urmann and Colleagues (U+C). Since the summer, U+C has requested 1,000 IP addresses in 50 different applications to the Cologne court. Neither The Archive nor U+C have responded to Ars’ request for comment.
The court appears to have erred in its judgment, believing that these cases involved file-sharing websites—such cases happen very regularly in Germany. But, as these accusations involve streaming, rather than direct infringement or downloading, the judges now say (PDF, German) that individuals cannot be held liable for what appeared on a streaming site, rather than a download or file-sharing site.
Click headline to read more--
After six months of contentious debate over U.S. National Security Agency surveillance programs, prompted by leaks from former government contractor Edward Snowden, the third week in December may have marked a major turning point.
The NSA surveillance and data collection programs -- including the bulk collection of U.S. telephone records and surveillance of overseas Internet traffic -- have had their strong defenders, including President Barack Obama's administration and members of congressional intelligence oversight committees.
U.S. intelligence officials continue to insist the programs are legal and necessary, and that there's no better way to track terrorists than bulk collection of phone records.
But the NSA took two major hits this week. U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon, in a preliminary ruling in a court case challenging the phone records collection, slammed the agency's efforts and suggested the program violates the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment.
Leon's 68-page opinion amounted to a smack down of the NSA program. "I have little doubt that the author of our Constitution, James Madison, who cautioned us to beware 'the abridgement of freedom of the people by the gradual and silent encroachments by those in power,' would be aghast," he wrote.
Two days later, the White House released a report from the Obama-appointed Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technology that questioned the need for the collection of bulk telephone records.
Offering no less than 46 recommendations on how to change U.S. government surveillance programs, the report said that the telephone metadata collection program was "not essential to preventing attacks and could readily have been obtained in a timely manner using conventional ... orders."
U.S. surveillance programs create barriers to international commerce and sour the U.S. government's relationship with other countries, the report said. "Excessive surveillance and unjustified secrecy can threaten civil liberties, public trust, and the core processes of democratic self-government," the report said. "All parts of the government, including those that protect our national security, must be subject to the rule of law."
Click headline to read more--
There has been some concern amongst the production community that Digital Europe’s ‘Beyond HD’ recommendation that their minimum standard for 4K/Ultra-HD displays should be set at an 8-bit depth for colour is simply not adequate. There was considerable argument at IBC over the proposal, with a general consensus that a colour bit-depth of 10-bit should be the industry minimum for Ultra-HD displays, or else the consumer would not experience the “wow” effect of 4K.
Now Dolby Labs has entered the debate, saying that many display manufacturers are adopting a 10-bit minimum, and which permits a wider colour gamut and higher luminance. But Dolby says it can put even more “icing on the Ultra-HD” cake by the industry adopting a higher standard than that proposed by the ITU and DigitalEurope.
Click headline to read more--
When the lights go out due to a power outage at night, you'll probably have to spend the next few minutes fumbling around in the dark hoping to lay your hands on a nearby torch or trying to remember where you put the candles and matches. If only the lights could stay on for a while after the power was cut. The SmartCharge LED bulb has been developed with the simple aim of ensuring that users are never left in the dark again. It includes technology that's able to determine whether someone has just turned off the light at the switch, or there's been an actual power failure. If the latter, the bulb will provide users with hours of continuous light.
The 5 W SmartCharge LED bulb can put out 350 lumens, with 3,000K, 4,000K and 5,000K color temperatures and a 120 degree beam angle. A built-in, patent-pending Grid & Switch Sensor is able to determine if there's been a power failure, can then detect the on/off position of the switch the light or lamp is wired to, and will either allow a bulb to illuminate a room or leave it in the dark until someone flicks the switch.
"For the first time you can control your light bulb from the same wall switch during a power failure," inventor Shailendra Suman tells Gizmag. "This was a very hard problem to solve. We saw an unfulfilled need in the market and so a big opportunity. There are many parts of world with frequent power outages. This bulb would be ideal for homes and businesses in those countries."
Click headline to read more--
UK telecoms regulator Ofcom has revealed that fixed line voice and broadband customers stand to benefit from faster line repairs and installations, following its proposal of measures which would require Openreach, the company which installs and maintains connections to BT’s network on behalf of competing telecoms providers, to meet new minimum performance standards. According to the watchdog, should Openreach fail to meet the new targets over a twelve-month period, it could face sanctions, including fines.
Under the terms outlined by the proposals, Ofcom said that ‘the large majority of consumers and businesses encountering a fault with their telephone or broadband service must see it repaired within two working days’. Meanwhile, the bulk of customers requiring a new line must receive an appointment within twelve working days. It noted that since the start of 2013 Openreach had committed to new contractual targets for services, leading to automatic payments to other telecoms companies where it misses those targets. While the infrastructure provider’s performance has since returned to pre-2012 levels, Ofcom has said that it wants to ‘ensure it remains at an acceptable standard for the benefit of consumers’.
Click headline to read more--
Fifty-one crew members of the USS Ronald Reagan say they are suffering from a variety of cancers as a direct result of their involvement in Operation Tomodachi, a U.S. rescue mission in Fukushima after the nuclear disaster in March 2011. The affected sailors are suing Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), alleging that the utility mishandled the crisis and did not adequately warn the crew of the risk of participating in the earthquake relief efforts.
Crew members, many of whom are in their 20s, have been diagnosed with conditions including thyroid cancer, testicular cancer and leukemia. The Department of Defense says the Navy took "proactive measures" in order to "mitigate the levels of Fukushima-related contamination on U.S. Navy ships and aircraft” and that crew members were not exposed to dangerous radiation levels.
Charles Bonner, attorney for the sailors, says the radiation the USS Ronald Reagan crew was exposed to extended beyond the tasks of Operation Tomodachi. Deployed ships desalinate their own water, so crew members were unknowingly drinking, cooking with, and bathing in contaminated water due to the ship's close proximity to the disaster site, according to Bonner. The USS Reagan was ultimately informed of the contamination after a month of living approximately 10 miles offshore from the affected region.
The number of plaintiffs in the case could grow significantly as 150 additional crew members are currently being medically screened to join. The sailors are seeking $40 million each in punitive damages as well as a $1 billion fund for future medical expenses for members of the USS Reagan.
Click headline to read more and watch video clip--
Just as copyright maximalists are declaring victory in claiming that there's no problem at all with having ISPs censor the internet, reports are flowing in concerning all sorts of serious problems. Over in the UK, ISPs have begun implementing the mandatory porn filtering that Prime Minister David Cameron has been pushing, and the results are about what you'd expect: all sorts of non pornographic sites are being blocked, including important sex education sites and, more troubling, rape and sexual abuse information sites (while plenty of porn is getting through).
"Among the sites TalkTalk blocked as "pornographic" was BishUK.com, an award-winning British sex education site, which receives more than a million visits each year.
TalkTalk also lists Edinburgh Women's Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre website as "pornographic."
The company also blocked a programme run by sex education experts, and taught to 81,000 American children, that has been in development for more than 20 years.
TalkTalk's filter is endorsed by Mr Cameron but it failed to block 7% of the 68 pornographic websites tested by Newsnight."
Meanwhile, blockades concerning copyright are wreaking similar havoc. Users of Sky Broadband recently discovered that the megapopular imgur image hosting site (which we use to host many of our images) was completely blocked in a moronic attempt to try to block access to a torrent site. Because both the torrent site and imgur used the same CDN (one of the most popular ones), Sky mistakenly blocked it all.
Click headline to read more--
Australia’s largest cellco by subscribers Telstra has announced a milestone in the rollout of its 4G network, revealing that, having deployed its 3,500th Long Term Evolution (LTE)-enabled base stations, its infrastructure is now available to 85% of the population. With the latest cell site inaugurated in Hamilton Island, Telstra has said that more than 300 regional towns now have access to the superfast speeds offered over its LTE network, while 1,500 base stations had reportedly been upgraded over the past six months in order to reach the self-imposed 85% target set back in June 2013; at that date population coverage stood at 66%.
Max Jennings, the company’s director of wireless network engineering noted: ‘The additional network capacity made available with the addition of 4G will help ease the network congestion previously experienced in some regional areas as family, friends and visitors flock to their favourite holiday spots,’ adding: ‘The addition of 4G in these areas also helps free up capacity in for our 3G customers may also see an improvement on past experiences. It’s important to note that even with our ongoing investment, the large surge in population in some holiday areas means some customers may still experience slower than expected data at peak times.’
Click headline to read more--
Pack your bags and bring your passport: The cloud is off to China. The cloud is a piggy-back industry: This week two heavyweights in the IaaS cloud computing market - Amazon Web Services and IBM - both announced they would offer services for customers in China.
On Wednesday morning Amazon.com announced via press release plans to work with Chinese partners ChinaNetCenter and SINNET to open up AWS cloud computing services in the country. (Foreign companies are required by Chinese law to work with China-based companies in the country.)
Within 24 hours, IBM had its own dueling press release announcing the expansion of its SmartCloudEnterprise+ cloud platform into China as well. IBM will work with Chinese Internet data center provider 21Vianet Group to host its managed private cloud service.
The moves represent a new frontier for these U.S.-based cloud computing providers to expand into a major new market. These companies have seen modest success offering IaaS cloud services in the U.S., South America and Europe, so expanding geographically into Asia is a natural course of action. OpenStack recently held its bi-annual summit in China, too.
But the other interesting part of this news is the back and forth jockeying by the vendors, each announcing an expansion of services into China within 24 hours of one another. It’s not the first time this has happened. Just this week Cisco announced a partnership with VMware and Citrix to offer a new desktop as a service (DaaS), a market that Amazon recently announced it would be entering.
Earlier this year cloud companies were engaged in price wars. In April, Google announced a price cut for its Google Compute Engine platform - which at the time was still in beta, but has since been released into general availability. Within 12 hours, Amazon Web Services countered the move with a price cut of its own. It happened again in June when AWS and Google announced price cuts within hours of each other.
It happens with features too. AWS had a clear advantage being the first provider to roll out an extensive IaaS cloud service, and because of that got a head start on competitors in terms of the features it offers in the cloud. For example, Microsoft and Google launched auto-scaling and load balancing features earlier this year, both long-time feature of AWS’s cloud.
Click headline to read more--
UNESCO has announced a new Open Access Repository making more than 300 digital reports, books and articles available to the world under the Creative Commons IGO licenses.
From UNESCO’s press release:
“Currently, the Repository contains works in some 12 languages, including major UNESCO reports and key research publications. As well as the 300 Open Access publications, UNESCO will provide on-line availability to hundreds of other important reports and titles. Covering a wide range of topics from all regions of the world, this knowledge can now be shared by the general public, professionals, researchers, students and policy-makers… under an open license.”
UNESCO will continue to expand its collection of open resources with selected past publications and all new works following its new Open Access Policy adopted in April 2013. As of 31 July 2013 all new UNESCO publications are released with one of the CC IGO licenses and will be loaded into the Open Access Repository. The majority of UNESCO resources will be openly licensed under CC BY SA.
Click headline to read more--
Ecuadorean courts awarded the damages in 2011 and 2013 after the villagers sued over 18 years of pollution of the Amazon jungle in the Lago Agrio region.
Chevron has refused to pay, arguing the judgement was obtained through bribery.
Chevron is expected to appeal against the ruling to the Supreme Court. The oil firm has also challenged the judgment under an international trade agreement between the US and Ecuador.
Tuesday's decision by the Ontario appeals court is the latest turn in the two-decade old case between Texaco, which has since been bought by Chevron, and the Lago Agrio villagers.
The unanimous decision by the three-judge panel overturns the ruling of an Ontario superior court justice, who found in May that Chevron had no assets in Canada and the plaintiffs could not gain access to the assets of Chevron's Canadian subsidiary.
Chevron was found guilty in Ecuador in 2011 of "extensively polluting" the Lago Agrio region between 1972-90. The company was ordered to pay $18bn in damages to the residents as a result of various environmental and health concerns, an amount subsequently reduced by a higher court
Click headline to read more--
|
Marginalized communities are communities in underserved areas, both urban and rural, that include the following target groups, among others: Women, Persons with Disabilities, Unemployed, Poor, Youth, Elderly, Immigrants and Micro-enterprises. Marginalization can be defined as not belonging to the mainstream culture, and thus lacking the “social capital” to partake from the benefits of a society and to have an effect on its culture. Information and communication technology provides a broad range of powerful tools to enhance both the knowledge and communication dimensions of development. There are priority areas in which ICT potential could be harnessed for the reduction of poverty, opportunity, empowerment and security, opportunity makes markets work better for the poor and expands poor people’s assets. Empowerment makes government institutions work better for poor people and removes social barriers.
Security helps poor people manage risk. The wide reach of ICT infrastructures, such as the Internet, radio and television enable the delivery of education to isolated rural areas, and information technology training is beginning to be offered at rural and disadvantaged communities.
Click headline to read more--
Concerns about U.S. surveillance are not being addressed in an ongoing trade deal between the U.S. and the European Union, negotiators said Friday.
While the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership will not touch on government collection of data, it will address private companies’ access to data, negotiators said during a Friday press conference.
This week, the EU Commission’s Civil Liberties Committee — which approved a regulation earlier this year that would fine companies for sharing data of European citizens without authorization — encouraged negotiators to keep surveillance concerns out of the trade negotiation.
The committee also advocated for a separate “EU cloud” to keep data away from U.S. intelligence agencies and asked negotiators to reconsider the “safe harbor” agreement between the EU and U.S., which allows U.S. companies to process data from European citizens.
Last week, eight major tech companies launched a campaign to reform U.S. surveillance. The companies called for international cooperation so that foreign countries don’t keep their citizens’ data from American companies that comply with U.S. surveillance requests.
The trade agreement “is not the right forum” for talks about U.S. surveillance programs, EU chief negotiator Ignacio Bercero said Friday.
However, he continued, the agreement will address private companies use of consumer data though its sections on e-commerce and cross-border data flows, which are “a very important component of a modern economy.”
Click headline to read more--
Secret documents reveal more than 1,000 targets of American and British surveillance in recent years, including the office of an Israeli prime minister, heads of international aid organizations, foreign energy companies and a European Union official involved in antitrust battles with American technology businesses.
While the names of some political and diplomatic leaders have previously emerged as targets, the newly disclosed intelligence documents provide a much fuller portrait of the spies’ sweeping interests in more than 60 countries.
Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters, working closely with the National Security Agency, monitored the communications of senior European Union officials, foreign leaders including African heads of state and sometimes their family members, directors of United Nations and other relief programs, and officials overseeing oil and finance ministries, according to the documents. In addition to Israel, some targets involved close allies like France and Germany, where tensions have already erupted over recent revelations about spying by the N.S.A.
Details of the surveillance are described in documents from the N.S.A. and Britain’s eavesdropping agency, known as GCHQ, dating from 2008 to 2011. The target lists appear in a set of GCHQ reports that sometimes identify which agency requested the surveillance, but more often do not. The documents were leaked by the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden and shared by The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel.
The reports are spare, technical bulletins produced as the spies, typically working out of British intelligence sites, systematically tapped one international communications link after another, focusing especially on satellite transmissions. The value of each link is gauged, in part, by the number of surveillance targets found to be using it for emails, text messages or phone calls. More than 1,000 targets, which also include people suspected of being terrorists or militants, are in the reports.
It is unclear what the eavesdroppers gleaned. The documents include a few fragmentary transcripts of conversations and messages, but otherwise contain only hints that further information was available elsewhere, possibly in a larger database.
Click headline to read more--
Huawei Technologies and Polish operator Exatel have tested a next-generation optical network based on WDM (Wavelength Division Multiplexing) technology and capable of 400Gbps throughput.
More data traffic and the need for greater transmission speed in both fixed and wireless networks have consequences for all parts of operator networks. While faster versions of technologies such as LTE are being rolled out at the edge of networks, vendors are working on improving WDM (Wavelength-Division Multiplexing) to help them keep up at the core.
WDM sends large amounts of data using a number different wavelengths or channels over a single optical fiber.
However, the test conducted by Huawei and Exatel only used one channel to send the data, which has its advantages, according to Huawei. It means the system only needs one optical transceiver, which is used to both send and receive data. That, in turn, results in lower power consumption and a smaller chance that something may go wrong, it said.
Huawei didn't say when it expects to include the technology in commercial products.
Click headline to read more--
Solar technology has evolved beyond just your grandpa's big, bulky photovoltaic panels on the roof. Advances in flexible, hyper-efficient and nano-scale materials of late has made it possible for solar cells to begin popping up in all kinds of shapes and places you might not expect.
Here's a quick rundown of some surprising spots where solar technology dwells – be sure to flip through the gallery to get a full grasp on the scale of the increasingly solar-powered landscape.
Click headline to read more and view pix gallery--
Claudiu Ionescu is the architect behind Romania's very first digital museum. Situated near the Mures Floodplain Natural Park in the town of Pecica, the unusual and chapel-like museum features a sweeping green roof and dramatic spire facade at its rear. When the sun hits the building, its shape, along with the surrounding courtyard, transforms the museum into a sun dial.
Apart from its unusual structure, the new museum is home to the latest 3D technologies, which allow visitors to virtually explore various museums and artifacts from around the world.
"Visitors can expect to see whatever they choose to see. It's a digital museum and that translates into a plethora of subjects that can be displayed," Claudiu Ionescu tells Gizmag. "One feature that I like the most is that you can visit any museum of the world using passive 3D technology. The 45-inch touchscreens are also an impressive way to communicate ideas."
With an area of just 125 sq m (1,345 sq ft), the museum represents an efficient use of space by presenting digital exhibitions from all over the world which would otherwise fill thousands of square meters.
"My favorite design feature of the museum is the fact that in 125 sq m you can display thousands of square meters of museums, using just a fraction of the utility and staff costs that a real museum has," says Ionescu. "I also like that fact that quite often people come here to see local history and traditions. Pecica is a very old community and they're best known for their bread so a working 250 year old bread oven is also present inside the museum."
The museum's structure was built using reinforced concrete walls and features an aluminum bonded facade. Photovoltaic panels supply the museum with its energy and gray water is collected and recycled via the roof and surrounding paved courtyards. The interior is equipped with low energy LED lighting and the orientation of the windows has been positioned to reduce overheating during the warmer months.
Click headline to read more--
The Coalition’s National Broadband Network (NBN) review report released last week attempts to provide justification for the Coalition’s NBN plan but contains more holes than swiss cheese.
Two weeks ago the Minister for Communications Malcolm Turnbull advised Australians not to believe reports written by review teams hand-picked by politicians. He is quite correct in his advice. Any NBN review designed to bolster a particular political agenda is worthless.
What we do know is that the Coalition’s ADSL, Fibre-to-the-node (FTTN), Fibre-to-the-basement (FTTB) and Hybrid Fibre Coaxial (HFC) (multi-technology) NBN approach will cost a lot more than what was promised pre-election. And the delivery timetable doesn't look that great either. The eventual cost to upgrade to Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) if the Coalition’s approach is implemented will more than treble from the cost of Labor’s approach if it is seen through to project completion.
Turnbull was told this last April when the Coalition’s NBN plan was first announced and the communications minister has been reminded many times over the past year by experts not aligned with one political party or the other.
The NBN review report was always designed to provide a smokescreen for Turnbull’s backflips and somersaults but the stench associated with the NBN review report is spreading rapidly.
Turnbull told Fairfax that he didn't "feel any shame" about the government's inaccurate pre-election forecasts.
Click headline to read more--
An environmental and economic review panel approved plans for a pipeline and port project that, if built, will move oil from Alberta’s oil sands to tankers on Canada’s Pacific Coast.
After approval stalled in Washington for the Keystone XL pipeline, which would link the oil sands to the United States Gulf Coast, the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline, which would cost about 7.9 billion Canadian dollars, or about $7.4 billion, became Canada’s backup plan for increasing oil sands production.
The current federal government in particular hopes to add Asian markets to the oil sands’ list of customers. The United States has long been Canada’s only significant export market for both oil and natural gas.
While it is an important step forward, the approval from the panel organized by the National Energy Board and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency is not the final word on the project.
The Conservative federal cabinet must give its final approval by July. While that approval is all but certain given the government’s support for the plan, widespread opposition from many native groups with land claims along the route, as well as environmental groups, may lead to legal challenges.
Like Keystone XL, the Northern Gateway pipeline has been used by some environmentalists as a stand-in for their broader concerns about the oil sands, whose development, they say, is harmful to the environment. But the plan’s potential to create an oil spill off British Columbia’s rugged and scenic coastline also prompted widespread public opposition in that province.
Click headline to read more--
Optus says it has successfully trialled Time Division Long Term Evolution Advanced (TD-LTE-A) carrier aggregation, achieving single user peak speeds of over 160Mbps on its commercial ‘4G Plus’ network earlier this month. Prior to the trials over a live network, Optus noted that it had tested the technology at its test facility in St Marys, west of Sydney, achieving a throughput of 520Mbps by combining four 20MHz channels of the 2300MHz spectrum band. Meanwhile, with regards to the live network tests which took place in Melbourne, Optus said it had joined two 20MHz channels in the 2300MHz band together, with that level of carrier aggregation said to be capable of delivering theoretical maximum speed of up to 220Mbps to a single user on compatible mobile devices.
As previously reported by CommsUpdate, in September 2013 Optus revealed that it was launching commercial services over a TD-LTE network operating using 2300MHz spectrum; at that date it had already begun offering 4G services Frequency Division LTE (FD-LTE) technology in the 1800MHz band. Today, Optus’ TD-LTE infrastructure is available in select areas of Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and Canberra and offers customers additional capacity to connect to a 4G network, as customers with compatible mobile devices can connect to either of cellco’s 1800MHz or 2300MHz infrastructures.
Click headline to read more--
Pennsylvania’s high court struck down part of a law aimed at easing natural gas development in the Marcellus Shale formation, saying provisions of the measure violate the state’s constitution.
The state Supreme Court ruled 4-2 yesterday that Act 13, signed by Governor Tom Corbett last year, unconstitutionally restricted the power of municipalities to govern gas drilling in their jurisdictions.
Pennsylvania’s Constitution guarantees citizens’ rights “to clean air and pure water, and to the preservation of natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment,” the court concluded. The fracking-regulation statute would empower state officials to “act contrary to this right,” the court’s majority said.
Click headline to read more--
Follow photojournalist James Balog to some of the most remote and beautiful places on Earth as he documents the disappearance of an icy landscape that took thousands of years to form.
An artist, scientist, explorer, and former mountain guide, Balog braves treacherous terrain to site his cameras in ideal locations to record the unfolding drama. Remarkable time-lapse footage reveals massive glaciers and ice sheets splitting apart, collapsing, and disappearing at a rate that has scientists alarmed.
This NOVA-National Geographic Television special investigates the latest evidence of a radically warming planet.
Click headline to access website to watch the video--
- Click the "Tor" button to see what data is visible to eavesdroppers when you're using Tor. The button will turn green to indicate that Tor is on.
- Click the "HTTPS" button to see what data is visible to eavesdroppers when you're using HTTPS. The button will turn green to indicate that HTTPS is on.
- When both buttons are green, you see the data that is visible to eavesdroppers when you are using both tools.
- When both buttons are grey, you see the data that is visible to eavesdroppers when you don't use either tool.
- Potentially visible data includes: the site you are visiting (SITE.COM), your username and password (USER/PW), the data you are transmitting (DATA), your IP address (LOCATION), and whether or not you are using Tor (TOR).
Click headline to access the EFF graphic so you can see what happens--
|
