Techno Babble
Created | Updated Jul 25, 2002
Copyright
The name Ranger Online will fill some of us with dread, others won't have heard of them. Basically the company have some software that trawls file swapping networks like Grokster, searching out the IP addresses of people who are hosting ripped off copyrighted material. So, for those of us that have a minor grudge against them... prepare to laugh.
This week Ranger Online were caught hosting pirated copyrighted material. Well slap their wrists. They run a news section that let's people know what's going on in the industry, but... er... they didn't write the articles. The news articles that they were hosting were direct rip offs from other news sites including The Guardian, The New York Times and ZD-Net. All without permission. How smug we feel when the self proclaimed
protectors of civilisation are found to be cheating the system like the rest of us.
Open Source
Ah, the joys of having a government that likes to make its own way, to forge ahead breaking trails, making decisions that over countries hadn't thought off, and not in any way copying Norway. Honest. But yes, the British Government have cautiously decided that open source is the way to go. Good on you, I give it less than a year before they change their mind. Not that I'm being cynical or anything, it just seems that they like to change their minds about publicly favourable policy according to the current public favour.
Mobile Computing
Microsoft have released photos of their new Canary phone, and nice it looks too. Actually it looks very nice. Similar in design to your standard handset, no flip screen of anything poncy, but it does have a longer colour screen that has the look and feel of the Windows XP platforms. What may be considered a downside though is that it doesn't have a qwerty keyboard, just your normal press 1 three times for a C. Oh, and even Microsoft have admitted that the software for it might not be good enough, yet.
Now, onto something more fun.
You've got yourself a palmtop or laptop fitted with a wireless network card, but the cost of connecting to the internet with it in the street is a little prohibitive to say the least. Er.. it was. In the early days of wireless networks curious hackers would drive around with their laptops and see which corporations were using a wireless network, and didn't have their security in tip top condition. Now someone, well a lot of someone’s to be precise, have come up with a better idea. Called Warchalking, they wander around seeing where they can gain free internet access, then mark the spaces with a set of symbols up to let others know the type of connection and bandwidth available. This is global. Not just in some Silicon Valley district, but every street on the planet. So, go along to www.warchalking.org and get involved. Oh, and they're looking for someone to organise it all.
Forward Thinking Luddites
Okay, a bit different but it seems that the Hollywood tycoons are really pressuring for a bill that will allow 'a safe harbour from liability for copyright owners that use technological means to prevent the unauthorized distribution of their copyrighted works.' In English, if you think someone's got your copyrighted material on their computer, you can legally hack into their computer.
Great, because it allows people to stop their work being distributed without their permission, but only someone capable of hacking can actually do it. Not so Great, because if you're ever up in court for hacking you just have to say you thought they had some of your code on their machine. So, a legal loop hole for hackers, created by the people who hate hackers the most.
