Controversial Tablet Ad Features 'Angelic' Steve Jobs Impersonator
Written by Wayne
Saturday, 04 February 2012 05:40
If Steve Jobs were still around, he would probably have some choice words for the latest unauthorized use of his image. A Taiwanese electronics company has released a commercial in which an angelic Jobs impersonator promotes its new non-Apple tablet. Playing the role of the late Apple co-founder is Taiwanese comedian Ah-Ken, who is clad in Jobs's iconic blue jeans, black turtleneck, and wire frame glasses. A glowing halo hovers atop his head and wings are affixed to his back as the impostor sings the praises of the Action Pad, a tablet that runs on Google's Android 2.3 operating system. "Introducing the new generation of the pad. It's amazing," faux Steve Jobs says in the ad, right before he pulls the Action Pad out of the back pocket of his Levi's. "Thank God I can finally play another pad," he adds. Steve Jobs, who in Walter Isaacson's biography called Android and other Google products "s**t," might be rolling over in his grave. However, Action Electronics, the maker of the tablet, doesn't see anything wrong with its unauthorized, and arguably distasteful, use of Jobs's likeness...Read more on Our Forum.
No new Xbox in 2012
Written by Administrator
Friday, 03 February 2012 07:15
The marketing director at Microsoft France just saved us from months of wild launch date speculation. The Xbox 360 is rapidly approaching middle age in cat-years, meaning this year is open season for speculative reports on the prospective existence of its successor. Several of these reports hinted that Microsoft was intending to reveal its next console at E3 this summer, with a view to launching the machine before the end of the year. However, an executive from Microsoft France has now gone on the record to silence the rumor-mills and confirm that his company will not be releasing a new Xbox in 2012. Cedrick Delmas, head of marketing at Microsoft France, described the company's position in an interview with French weekly LePoint.fr. "We're in an industry that likes to talk a lot, to tell stories. The Xbox 360's cycle is nowhere near finished. The proof of that is that we're not planning to lower its price during this year." What is the Xbox 360 going to spend the year doing,
Facebook's Timeline is coming, whether you like it or not, to Facebook accounts everywhere - including yours. I've been using Timeline for about a month now, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. On the one hand, it's a lot easier to find things -- events, wall posts, etc, because you can now search your Facebook profile by date. On the other hand, it's much easier for other people--friends, strangers, you name it -- to find things, because they can now search your Facebook profile by date. As it turns out, I've posted a lot of things -- not all of which are totally tame and/or work-appropriate -- over the past eight years that I've had Facebook. And now they're all neatly categorized by date. While it's true that you could technically see these posts before the introduction of Timeline, you would have had to do a lot more work. For example, in order to see my posts from 2006, you would have had to go to my Facebook profile, wait for the 20 or so most recent posts to
Following a flurry of criticism over its privacy policy revamp, Google is attempting to clear up misconceptions about its actions. Users still have control over what information Google sees; Google is not collecting any more data about users than it has in the past; and users can use as much or as little as they want of Google, Google Policy Manager Betsy Masiello declares in a company blog on Thursday. She explains that a number of Google services -- search, maps, and YouTube, for example -- can be used without persons identifying themselves through a login. For services that require logins, a number of tools and options are available to reduce the data being collected by Google. Google isn't collecting more data from its users under the new policy, Masiello maintains. "Our new policy simply makes it clear that we use data to refine and improve your experience on Google—whichever products or services you use," she writes. "This is something we have already been doing for a long time."..We have covered this in depth on Our Forum.
Fifth Amendment doesn't protect encrypted hard drives
Written by Administrator
Wednesday, 25 January 2012 01:40
A federal judge has ruled that a Colorado woman can be compelled to decrypt her encrypted laptop so that the police can inspect it for incriminating evidence. The woman, Ramona Fricosu, is a defendant in a mortgage scam case. She had argued that the Fifth Amednment's privilege against self-incrimination protected her from having to disclose the password to her hard drive, which was encrypted using PGP Desktop. In previous cases, judges have drawn a distinction between forcing a defendant to reveal her password and forcing her to decrypt encrypted data without disclosing the password. The courts have held that the former forces the defendant to reveal the contents of her mind, which raises Fifth Amendment issues. But Judge Robert Blackburn has now ruled that forcing a defendant to decrypt a laptop so that its contents can be inspected is little different from producing any other kind of document...We have more on this posted on Our Forum.
SOPA, PIPA Stalled: Meet the OPEN Act
Written by Wayne
Monday, 23 January 2012 05:00
SOPA and PIPA may have been put on hold -- thanks to possibly the most contentious uproar seen on Capitol Hill and in the tech world ever -- but other legislation was introduced this week to combat online piracy. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-California) introduced H.R. 3782, the Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act in the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday, the same day as an Internet protest when a number of high-profile websites such as Wikipedia went dark. Issa says the new bill delivers stronger intellectual property rights for American artists and innovators while protecting the openness of the Internet. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) has introduced the OPEN Act in the U.S. Senate. OPEN would give oversight to the International Trade Commission instead of the Justice Department, focuses on foreign-based websites, includes an appeals process, and would apply only to
Windows users can’t get enough of Internet Explorer 9. That’s the message Microsoft is driving hard, releasing statistics that show its most recent web browser is growing strong among users of Windows 7 PCs. IE9 is now the primary browser on 36.2% of Windows 7 machines, Microsoft revealed in a blog post based on statistics from Net Applications, up 2% since December. It passed IE8 back in November and has been ticking up ever since as more people make the switch to Windows 7 (IE8 is the last browser compatible with Windows XP). Microsoft attributes the rapid growth to consumer desire for a "modern browser" experience, complete with compatibility with HTML5 apps. As an example, it cited the game Cut the Rope, which Microsoft brought to the web in January via a partnership with the makers of the game. However, there are plenty of modern browsers, as Microsoft defines them...We have an entire board dedicated to IE 9 on Our Forum.
Spark tablet runs Plasma Active Linux software
Written by Wayne
Sunday, 29 January 2012 06:10
A new tablet called the Spark is on the way. At first glance it looks like most of the cheap Chinese tablets we’ve seen in the past few years, but the Spark won’t run Google Android. Instead it will run an open source Linux-based operating system with the KDE Plasma Active interface running on top. KDE Plasma Active team member Aaron Seigo unveiled the tablet on his website this weekend. It features a 1 GHz AMLogic CPU with Mali 400 graphics and a 7 inch capacitive multitouch display. The tablet has 512MB of RAM, 4GB of storage and a microSD card slot. The Spark is expected to ship "soon" and it will sell for about €200, or just under $265 US. It’s certainly not the most powerful tablet to hit the scene. We’ve seen plenty of devices with more memory or storage or faster processors. But the tablet’s software is what sets it apart. While Google tends to release the source code for most new versions of Android, the software is developed behind closed doors and released to the public only after Google decides it’s ready. Google doesn’t accept community contributions to the code and the company never released the source for Android 3.0 at all...Read more on Our Forum.
Minority Report is real
Written by Wayne
Friday, 27 January 2012 17:24
The FBI is looking into the creation of a new application that would allow them to not only monitor on-going threats, but also predict potential terrorist attacks and other crimes before they even happen. Here's everything you need to know, and why you should be concerned. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into the creation of an application that would allow it to better mine social media content, in an attempt to more accurately identify, target and fight "emerging threats" in real-time. The application could also be used to predict potential threats before they even happen. According to a Request for Information (RFI) posted to the Federal Business Opportunities website, the FBI says it hopes to "determine the capability of industry to provide an Open Source and social media alert, mapping, and analysis application solution." This tool would allow the FBI to "quickly vet, identify, and geo-locate breaking events, incidents and emerging threats" using "publicly available" information posted to social networks, like Facebook and Twitter, as well as local and national news publications...This entire article appears on Our Forum.
Anonymous Threatens Facebook Shutdown Jan. 28
Written by Wayne
Tuesday, 24 January 2012 05:33
Anonymous is planning to target Facebook in an attack Jan. 28 — at least that’s what a video uploaded to YouTube Monday is claiming in the name of the hacker network. And you thought a day without Wikipedia was bad. "An online war has begun between Anonymous, the people and the government of the United States," the video begins. "While SOPA and PIPA may be postponed from Congress, this doesn’t guarantee that our Internet rights will be upheld." Following the U.S. government shutdown of file-sharing site Megaupload Friday, Anonymous attacked the U.S. Department of Justice’s website, among others. Monday’s YouTube video calls on the American people to participate in the hack by downloading Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC), the tool that was successfully used to target the Department of Justice. LOIC crashes websites by sending thousands of information packets to their
Now you can jailbreak an iPad 2, iPhone 4S on Windows too
Written by Administrator
Sunday, 22 January 2012 18:01
A day after the first tools for jailbreaking an iPad 2 or iPhone 4S were released for Mac users, the iPhone Dev Team has updated their utility to work with Windows. The process is a bit more involved since it relies on a command-line utility that walks you through the process one step at a time for debugging purposes. But if you don’t want to wait for the Windows version of the tools to get a graphical user interface, now you don’t have to. Just download the latest CLI from the bottom of the official post at the iPhone Dev Team Blog, unzip it to a folder on your computer, open a command prompt and type "cinject -i payloads/jailbreak.mobileconfig" (without quotes) to get started. Even though apple trys to stay a step ahead of the Dec Team it is impossible, and now you can follow the step-by-step tutorial posted on Our Forum.
