Yahoo pulls the plug, users in denial

Long before MySpace and its godawful layouts were popularized, there was Geocities, a web host started up in 1994 that provided anyone with a computer and an IQ of 5 or more with the ability to create their own site. Used Angelfire myself, where I first learned how to link a page ("it's <a herf=>", right?), but it's the same story.

Before its purchase by Yahoo, Geocities was the #3 site on the web, so for some it's sad news to learn the company has just yesterday shut down the service, integrating it with Yahoo Web Hosting.

However. A group of fans going by the name of Archive Team heard the news months in advance and have spent much of their time since then downloading pages for the purposes of preservation. If you just can't let go, head to geociti.es once the project sees completion.

Tweet from the comfort of your sofa, on the big screen

Fans of social networking sites who own an Xbox 360 will be happy to hear the next dashboard update scheduled for Microsoft's hit console will supply music functionality (Last.fm), hyper-tweeting (Twitter), and  "friend" stalking (Facebook). Facebook on Xbox LIVE will not support videos or apps, but you will be able to invite people on FB to your XBL friends list.

Entertainment Manager for Xbox Jennifer Puzio-Brookes modeled the update for a select few in a behind-closed-doors session today. After her performance, Ms. Brookes announced the beta will go live "middle-towards-end of October" -- exciting news for those who were disappointed by the Felicia Day demo.

Like the last public beta, this one will be offered via invite to certain members of the Xbox LIVE community, likely Gold members as before.

Apple remaining Flash-independent

G1, Symbian, and BlackBerry owners will be happy to know their devices will soon be more Flash compatible than ever. With support from the Open Screen Project, an industry-wide initiative led by Adobe, many smart-phone owners will receive complete access to all Flash content right from their device's built-in web browser.

The project touts itself as "[enabling] consumers to engage with rich Internet experiences seamlessly across any device, anywhere", with the additional aim of providing a consistent runtime environment for people on the go, and removing barriers for publishing content and applications across a wide array of consumer electronics.

Adobe believes removing said "barriers" will entice more people to take advantage of Flash utilities, but it seems that not all companies agree. Apple looks to be missing out on the promise of a richer, friendlier Flash environment, by sticking to their policy of avoiding technology that offers little value.

So what does this mean for all of you Apple aficionados? The iPhone will not be receiving the Flash 10.1 support, which means iPhone owners will not be shooting ducks for cash prizes while they wait for the page to load (at least not anytime soon).

Is Apple making a smart move by steering clear of the attempt to bring mobile devices and Flash closer? Could this mean no more YouTube support for iPhone owners? Oh wait, we have an app for that.

It's all like, "Pew pew pew!"

Ah Half-Life, you've inspired so many amazing mods since your conception.  The advent of Garry's Mod has made this pastime more accessible to the gaming community.

Some mods are better than others, obviously.  But how exactly do you compare these fan-made nuggets of joy objectively?  Who knows, but we have discovered the best Half-Life 2 mod ever... ever.

What, you think we're joking?  Here's proof.  Not long ago, a Half-Life fan called "-Trase-" (aka "Patcher" or "Tr45e") has released an awesome mod in which nearly all SFX are replaced by his own voice.  In total, -Trase- had dubbed over 1327 sound files. 

Here are further details posted by the creator, along with installation instructions:

Replaces almost all the sounds in the game with my voice
(i did not edit any of them, its fresh from the microphone)

What i did NOT replace:
-Ambient noises like wind.
-some zombie voices.
-character voices (it would sound dumb).
-maybe i missed some minor physics like a trap door hidden somewhere in ravenholm and no one ever opens it.
Totally i replaced 1327 sound files.

You can not change/add anything and redistribute without my agree. You can contact me via Steam - RomaZroddomaADMIN

To install simpli put the "Sound" folder in the game you want

• Steam/steamapps/youraccountname/Half-Life 2/hl2 - for half-life
• Steam/steamapps/youraccountname/Garrysmod/garrysmod - for Garrysmod

In case you're interested in playing the best Half-Life 2 mod of ALL TIME (maybe), it's available for download at the source link below the video.

Creature creating mini-game goes Flash, and free

       (The sins of tekmosis' DARK PAST gets it in the nads)

To prepare for the launch of the new Wii and DS editions of Spore later this October 6th, Electronic Arts releases the new online "Spore Creature Creator 2D".  It's essentially a Flash mini-game version of their original Spore Creature Creator, but free and in (surprise!) 2D.

In addition to allowing users to create their own atrocities from the ground up online, Spore Creature Creator 2D links to the user-contributed Sporepedia database so users can import existing Spore critters for their own twisted desires.  Seeing how your 3D Spore creations (assuming you have any left after the great copyright culling at the hands of EA) translate into 2D flash is probably half the fun, though be prepared to be charged with nightmare fuel in the process.

The Spore Creature Creator 2D includes 250 different body parts (ewww) for budding Spore enthusiasts to play with, and users can then put their creations to the test in the Creature Trainer mini-game.

Controversial 'three strikes' becomes law

The citizens of France suffered a great blow to their personal rights and freedoms today, as a new controversial ruling has been passed into law.

The bill passed is commonly referred to as a 'three strikes' law. It has been an idea that lobbyists representing media conglomerates have been pushing to pass in most countries of the West. Basically, if anyone is suspected of pirating anything, they are served a warning. If they are suspected three times, then the person suspected is banned from using the Internet for one year, in addition to the possibility of fines and a two year prison sentence. To make matters worse, the person suspected of piracy is not able to fully defend themselves legally -- there is no burden of proof that needs to be shown to indict the possible pirate.

In France's situation, the law also states that it is the burden of the user to secure their Internet connection. So, say for example you have an unsecured WiFi router in your home. If your neighbor accessed your router, and downloaded Britney Spears tracks from it, legally speaking, this would be your fault. This aspect of the situation invites the specter of abuse, unfortunately. Besides the case of your grandma's Internet cafe being unable to secure her WiFi connection correctly, and than maybe be charged with fines (without having any chance of legal defense), you could also really mess up someone's life by breaking into their WiFi router, and then transferring some Britney Spears songs, and then report them, causing them to be banned from the Internet, if it was their third suspected offense.

A slightly altered version of this law -- also championed as necessary by the representatives of the music and film industry -- was passed earlier this year. However the rule was challenged in the highest courts of France, and proved to be unconstitutional. Certainly the law will be challenged again. 

Generally it accepted that citizens should have the right to defend themselves in court. But here it is the mere suspicion of privately run corporate-sponsored entities that will be deciding who stays on the Internet, and who stays off. Lobbyists are working hard to have similar three-strike bills passed here in North America, and other democracies.

While lobbyists earn their livings by representing the corporations that hire them, those that challenge the legality of these laws will be people fighting not for pay, but instead, for what they believe in -- for what they believe is right. Public entities such as France's La Quadrature du Net support themselves by donations of time and money from concerned citizens. In North America, we have organizations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation. As it has always been, if fairness and rights are not fought for, they will be lost. 

Update: Earlier this news story erroneously reported that you could be banned from the Internet for life. Actually, the maximum amount of time you could be banned in France is one year. Sorry for the error.

Find pics of Dirty Dancing, Roadhouse, and viruses, all on one website

Malware-makers are an ever-crafty bunch. Constantly, many of them are seeking out new ways to trick people into running their nasty, nasty programs.

In the past week, malware researchers from Sophos have been detecting a rise in the use of news stories as lures to infected websites. Particularly makers of 'scareware' -- programs that pretend to be virus scanners, but that are malware-delivery programs -- have been taking advantage of late breaking news to attract Google'rs. From Michael Jackson's death, to Serena William's blow-up at a ref, to Kayne West making more of an ass of himself, some scareware-loaded sites are able to get high Googling rankings for their web pages by quickly referencing late breaking news.

In the video below, Graham Cluely, a malware researcher employed by Sophos, shows how yesterday's death of Patrick Swayze was quickly exploited by some bad folks. Surprisingly, the malware-makers were able to get their scareware-filled website into the first page of results for the search "death of actor Patrick Swayze." You can imagine that similar bad websites may also be made for uncommon phrases describing the death, or maybe to take advantage of spelling errors, such as "patrick swazye death" or something like that. 

For the younger of you out there who may not yet be really web savvy, keep in mind that most websites that tell you have a virus, and seem to load up a virus scanner, quickly, without you having much choice -- most of these websites are bad news. You'll never come across a legitimate anti-viral website that will try to hijack your browser, or that will run a virus scanner of a website out of the blue. If you are looking for anti-viral software and aren't familiar with the programs out there, stick to the big names like Sophos, AVG, Trend Micro and Norton Anti-Virus. Personally I recommend Malwarebytes Anti-Malware scanner, and Dr.Web's anti-virus -- two excellent, and free, malware scanners.  

Adds direct upload capability to Facebook, DivX and MJPEG AVI formats

If you shoot home videos sometimes your results are less than stellar and you find yourself wishing for a way to improves the quality. Motion DSP has such a product with its vReveal software that is designed to make it extremely easy to improve the quality of flawed videos. vReveal is an amazingly easy, one-click application for quickly fixing dark, shaky, noisy, pixilated, or blurry video clips. While vReveal can run on any GPU, it was especially written to take advantage of the power of CUDA-enabled Nvidia processors.

The latest release of the software, version 1.1, offers several new features:

• NVIDIA "G80" models now supported for GPU acceleration (GeForce 8800 Ultra, 8800 GTX, 8800 GTS 640, 8800 GTS 320; Quadro 4600 and 5600)
• Even more powerful video stabilization, plus auto-cropping of black bars from around stabilized videos
• New output formats including DivX and MJPEG AVI. (Joins the previous output options of WMV and uncompressed AVI)
• Japanese localization. (Full set is now English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Japanese)
• Integrated Facebook video uploader -- the first of its kind in a desktop application

The software retails for $49.99 and you can try it out by downloading a 30-day free trial from the company's web site.

With the ability to disconnect privately owned networks

A proposed new bill in the U.S. Senate would give the president's office potent new powers over Intenet access in times declared as "cyberspace emergencies." Bill S.773 would grant the president authority to disconnect any privately-owned network from the Internet, at the president's discretion. You can read an excerpt of the bill here. 

The emergency powers clause is only a small part of Bill S.773 -- in its entirety, the bill is an effort to begin to improve the U.S government's fortification of the 'cyberspace' assets and infrastructure in the United States.

Many experts in network security have publicly stated that the U.S government was lagging behind other countries' grasp of the new world of information warfare. As key elements of infrastructure and communication are now controlled by computer networks, increasingly, in the 21st century the Internet will be seen as another potential battleground -- someday, perhaps one as important as the sea, the sky, or over land.

In particular, Russia and China are generally believed to have spent more time and money coordinating offense and defense assets to be deployed online, in comparison with the U.S and Europe. For example, about this time last year, Russia began a massive Internet disruption campaign against Georgia and Estonia, shutting down many government-run websites; while in Canada, researchers discovered a massive Chinese-run spy-ring, dubbed the 'Ghostnet', which had access to 1295 computers across 103 countries around the world. 

But as in the case with many Bills granting emergency powers, critics of the new legislation worry that some of the wording is too vague and ambiguous -- which could lead to abuse, where the government shuts down networks needlessly, without sufficient cause. "The designation of what is a critical infrastructure system or network as far as I can tell has no specific process. There's no provision for any administrative process or review. That's where the problems seem to start," Lee Tien, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, was quoted as saying.

Web browser hosts new design, faster engine, auto-updates, Turbo functionality, and more

Opera Software today releases version 10 of its acclaimed browser, bringing plenty of new features in tow, and improving on old ones.

Some highlights of the new release include an auto-update ability, an improved rendering engine which boasts higher stability and security, and Opera Turbo, a very handy function for those on slow connections -- this one offers a variety of options to suit your needs.

Apart from that, lots of improvements have been made to old features like Opera Mail, bugs have been fixed, and a new design is yours to enjoy. The release notes are massive, so head here if you wish to get a deeper look, and to the source below to download.

Corp. donating meals to Feeding America for every download

Microsoft has been running a program with the Feeding America charity since early June, whereby users who download Internet Explorer 8 will see eight meals donated to starving Americans.

As the charity has designated September Hunger Action month, Microsoft has kicked things into even higher gear, offering to donate 16 meals per download for those who are still on Internet Explorer 6.

Not sure how they work it, but under the program, called "Browser for the Better", eight meals can be had for just $1.15; up to $1 million worth will be donated before it ends June 30, 2010.

Note you don't have to actually install the browser, you simply need to download it through the website below. Even for staunch Firefox, Chrome, Opera or Safari users, we encourage you to give it a whirl.

42 different languages under wing

Internet giant Google continues to support multiple languages, with Google Docs its latest foray; the corporation's translation system currently supports up to 42 different languages.

The feature automatically figures out what language is curently being used, and when you choose to translate the document through the settings menu, the translated copy is opened in a new window.  If you like how it looks, you can choose to replace the document, or save a new copy.

As time goes on, expect more of Google's features to support the translation feature.

Who likes porn? Not me!

The Mozilla Foundation had an interesting, reoccurring answer appear on recent user surveys. 

The surveys were submitted from users who chose to decline an update of Firefox from version 2, to version 3. The survey aimed to figure out why people would choose not to download the new update, when it brought all sorts of cool features and such.

Well, as it turned out, the answer was not one that they had anticipated.

The top reason people chose not to update was that the new Firefox 3 had the unwelcome feature of uncovering websites the users liked -- but would prefer to remain hidden.

With Firefox 3, when typing URLs in the location bar, the program searches through both your browsing history, and thanks to the update, also now your bookmarked sites. It turns out many users had a certain explict flavor of websites hidden deep within their bookmark files. The kind of websites that commonly have naked people doing naughty stuff (also known as 'porno').

In fact, a large amount of users filling out the survey said that they had updated to Firefox 3, and then chose to rollback the update to Firefox version 2, because this new URL-suggesting feature was causing potential (or real) embarrassment.

“In some cases users had intentionally hidden these bookmarks in deep hierarchies of folders, somewhat similar to how one might hide a physical object. Having something from your previous browsing displayed to someone else who is using your computer (or even worse) to a large audience of people as you are giving a presentation, is really one of the most embarrassing things that Firefox can do to you,” lead Firefox designer Alex Faaborg was quoted as saying.

Surveys like this are probably a big reason why Firefox choose to create the new 'Private Browsing' mode for the browser (also known as the 'You'll never guess just how much I love  porno' mode).

Valve and 4chan founders took top spots, kicked

Bet you never thought you'd see Valve's Gabe Newell, 4chan's moot, and Victoria's Secret all in one story, huh? Well it's happening.

The lingerie company is currently hosting an Internet contest whereby candidates upload a picture of themselves to the Victoria's Secret website and tell the world why they love their body. The person who receives the most votes wins a 3-day "pampering getaway" for two to New York City.

The Internet being the Internet, managed to get imageboard/black hole of the web 4chan's leader 'moot' in the number one spot, and Valve's Gabe Newell at number two. The discriminating folks at Victoria's Secret weren't keen on this and have been removed from the contest, it seems, though their pages still exist with votes intact. Newell currently boasts 37,127 votes, up about 6,000 from yesterday alone, with moot not too far ahead.

Since the latter has already ranked as TIME Magazine's World's Most Influential Person (the irony), we say vote for Gabe.

Poking fun at themselves, journalists, and the old-fashioned

Sony says they're set to change the fate of the console this year, and to help convince people further, they're rolling out a series of ads from now until the holidays are over. Today, we get an early look at the first two of nine TV spots.

I have no vested interest in giving Sony more ad time, and I'm not particularly fond of advertising in general, but these two new ads -- one for the company's new PlayStation 3 "Slim", the other for the PlayStation Network (PSN) -- are hilarious. In fact, I haven't laughed this hard at an advertisement in awhile. Plus, I think they're actually effective!

The first one pokes fun at journalists as much as it does Sony themselves. Perhaps you recall the long-running rumours surrounding the PSPGo? These went on forever, and when they finally announced it at this year's E3, it wasn't exactly met with fervor as it would've been. This angered some executives at Sony, and the same thing was repeated with the PS3 "Slim", but it appears they've lightened up and found their sense of humour since then, as you'll see in the first ad below.

The second is in an effort to promote the PlayStation Network, and is probably even funnier than the first. Sony knows a lot of gamers out there are still old-fashioned and haven't figured out the whole online functionality thing for the latest generation of consoles, so this one's for them.

You like? Feel free to head to the source and let Sony know what you think of the new ads.

Photoshopped so bad, looks like it was done in Paint

If you have been paying attention to Twitter, a few other social sites, or even a thread in our own forums, you will notice that Microsoft has provoked some controversy.

On the United States version of the Microsoft Business website, there is a friendly picture of a white lady, an African-American man, and an Asian man.  Very diverse, very politically correct.  But on the Polish version of the site (picture before fix shown below), the African-American man’s head was replaced with a head of a white man.  Not only is that bad enough, but it was Photoshopped horribly, and the hand wasn’t even replaced.

Microsoft quickly stepped in, and replaced the race-swap picture.  A Microsoft representative said, “We are looking into the details of this situation. We apologize and are in the process of pulling down the image.”

Here is a screenshot of the US site, followed by one of the Polish site:

Really, whoever did that needs to take a class on Photoshop.

Finally your dancing hamster video might make you rich

YouTube is planning to extend their 'YouTube Partnership Program', it turns out. Perhaps in only a few months, that chick who was crying about Britney Spears, that guy who made that big-hit, the Show Me Your Gentials song, and the otters over here, might have wish they held off on 'making it big' until this new ad-revenue sharing program was implemented.

As it stands now, the Youtube Partnership Program selects some of the most popular videos on YouTube, and gives them a bit of the dosh collected from the ads that appear around the video. YouTube is now planning to get a bit more proactive with this program. 

Starting at an unspecified time in the future, YouTube employees will be approaching people who posted some of the more popular vids on the popular site. So say you made a really funny video of yourself impersonating Darth Vadar having tea with his mom, on the Death Star. If the video really took off, and collected millions and millions of views, YouTube might get a hold of you to share some of their money stacks with you.

At least for now, YouTube is not saying how popular a video has to be in order to get noticed by them, or what percentage of ad revenue they will be sharing with video makers.

Pretty much any video will be eligible for this new Partnership Program, just as long as it conforms with YouTube's Terms of Service agreement, isn't stolen, and doesn't feature anything of terribly bad taste.

While most people approached (via email) for membership in the program won't make all that much money, YouTube claims that those that make the popular of the popular videos will generate enough cash to take a vacation on them -- or if you are really, really, skilled at making stupid videos, you might be able to live off of your meme-making skills alone.

You are also more likely to be approached if you make a steady stream of success vids -- not just one giant and stupid video that is popular for a fleeting moment of time.

The goal of YouTube's program is probably to encourage people to make more dumb videos, and watch them on YouTube. Certainly a noble cause, if there ever was one.

How about one more dumb YouTube video to finish off this news item with?

Talking about new media in old media

While a Facebook-focused movie has been rumored for sometime now, you can never be to sure when it comes to Hollywood. But now it is official. Columbia Pictures has green-lighted The Social Network, a movie about the birth of Facebook.

Director David Fincher has been pegged to man the helm. If you are not familiar with his name, he is a talented guy, with some big directing credits under his belt, including Seven, Fight Club, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

The script will be penned by Aaron Sorkin. He's been responsible for A Few Good Men, and some of television's The West Wing.

Filming is scheduled to start in October with a budget of around $50 million smackeroos.

Perhaps the Facebook page for the Facebook movie will go up soon... but will there be a Twitter page for it? What about Myspace!

Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission not in best interests of ISP customers, says public

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), the country's governing body for Internet-related matters, has been taking a lot of flak from the public in recent years for not having customers best interests in mind, despite what then industry minister Maxime Bernier had to say in 2006 about a new "light regulatory touch":

"Canada's new government has again furthered its ambitious policy agenda for the telecommunications sector by issuing the policy direction to the CRTC. Our plan will increase competition in the marketplace, which ultimately will have a positive effect on the consumer who will benefit from greater choices and improved products and services."

The customers it seems have had enough, with one Ottawa software employee, Mike Lerner, starting a petition to outright dissolve the organization; Lerner began his march after being frustrated by Bell's recent decision to implement usage-based billing (the more you download, the more you pay) on wholesale customers, like his company.

Other reasons for the public outlash include impositions on independent ISPs like the highly-rated TekSavvy and also Acanac; these providers rent parts of Bell's network in order to supply their own services, and as a result are now being forced to charge customers based on how much data they download per month. The changes are expected to roll out within three months, and once they do, they'll be virtually identical to Bells, 50GB limit and all, according to the independents -- a bearish approach, and one directly aimed at endangering fair competition.

According to Scott Oosterom, an east coast-based customer and teacher, who encountered the recent 1.5 percent rate hike on his Bell satellite programming and promptly complained, Bell blame the CRTC, and the CRTC blames Bell.

Amusingly, Virgin Media, who just launched a very attractive customer-minded set of Internet rates, and are set to put out a DRM-free subscription-based digital music service, are owned by Bell.

Since the CRTC is apparently on Bell's side, Lerner writes in his petition it has "become a burden on the Canadian public and are failing to perform their duties in the interest of the Canadian public and that of a fair and unbiased telecom policy." His belief is the government needs to instate a new body which is on the level with new technology and the competition models the Internet has brought with it.

Lerner's aim is to acquire 10,000 signatures, then present them to Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore; as of the time of writing, 2,638 is the count, up from just a few hundred yesterday. An anti-CRTC rally on Parliament Hill is also planned. The petition can be signed below.

Update: Michael Hennessy, senior vice-president of regulatory and government affairs for another popular Canadian ISP, Telus, has written a rather frank blog post on the issue, stating the opposition is irrational, and this kind of regulation is standard in industry.  His stance shouldn't be taken lightly either, as he notes: "I measure my effectiveness from various cuts and bruises received from regulators. That's why on bad days I yell like some corporate anarchist about blowing up the CRTC, Industry Canada or whatever government body has upset me." He does feel a better system is indeed desirable, but this petition and its propositions are simply not the best way to achieve it.

Only 8.7% of tweets are considered "valuable"

Ah, Twitter, a way to keep in touch with friends, network with industry reps, and pretend people care what your favorite cereal is.

It goes without saying this Internet phenom has grown more quickly than any experts could have predicted.  But as anyone who uses Twitter knows, there's a whole lot of useless crap on there -- and it's not just spam.  At the other end of the spectrum, we have a political movement, with individuals formerly stifled by their governments now speaking freely to a worldwide audience. 

So U.S. market research firm Pear Analytics got curious and did some brief research on the subject.  For a taste, they poked around Twitter every 30 minutes between 11:00 am and 5:00 pm on weekdays for 14 days.  They categorized 2,000 messages into six groups: news, spam, self-promotion, pointless babble, conversational (back-and-forth exchanges between users), and pass-along value.

What they found was that only 8.7 percent of these tweets held "value."  40.5 percent, on the other hand, could be categorized as "pointless babble," which would be tweets like, "I enjoy cat food."  37.5 percent were conversational, 8.7 had pass-along value, while self-promotion and spam took up 5.85 and 3.75 percent of the Twitter-sphere, respectively.

This is just a glimpse of Pear Analytics' work; the firm plans to repeat this process every quarter to track Twitter usage trends.

"With the new face of Twitter, it will be interesting to see if they take a heavier role in news, or continue to be a source for people to share their current activities that have little to do with everyone else," said Ryan Kelly, founder of Pear Analytics.

Restructuring begins following fibre-optic roll-out

When reading ISP news, it's not often you see something about one lowering their prices; typically it's all higher costs, traffic shaping, and so on. Virgin Media is apparently an exception, "putting their money where their mouth is" following a recent upgrade to a fibre-optic network, meaning much faster speeds for customers with no extra fees for anybody -- less for you, in fact. This, they say, is in an effort to "banish unrealistic marketing speed claims", something watchdog Ofcom found was all too prevalent in the industry -- many have been delivering less than half of what they advertise.

“Many consumers are confused by speed claims that are, at best, misleading and, at worst, disingenuous," observes CEO Neil Berkett. "I hope our National Broadband Speed Promise will help people choose the product that’s right for them and set a new standard of transparency for the whole industry.”

The new pricing goes like this: for the 50MB fibre optic package, you pay $46 USD/mo. versus the old $82, assuming you have a phone line with them, as well. If not, the new price is $63. For those that prefer cheaper for lesser speeds, a new set of brackets -- shown below -- has been rolled out too, and with ADSL2+ technology, meaning the fastest speeds you can acquire on a standard phone line.

Same yet different

Google decided to really mix things up. Instead of a new app that does your laundry, calculates your body mass index, or sets you up on dates, Google has released a search engine (of all things!) for public testing.

While the new engine looks the same as regular ole Google, and seems to return many of the same results as regular ole Google, apparently there is some new stuff going on under the hood. The "next-generation architecture of Google" will "push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions," Google claims. "Web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences," they go on to say. 

We ran a few test runs, and in our searches, results turned up slightly different, but not drastically so. According to Google, the new bits of the search engine infrastructure sit "under the hood."

What will Google come up with next?

Artists, technology companies, educators and more offer suggestions going forward

Canada at least is in a bit of a state of flux regarding its copyright laws. For example, currently it's technically illegal to record television programming for later viewing, and yet the sale of personal video recorders (PVRs) is perfectly legal. Odd, no?

With notions like this in mind, the federal government met with artists, tech companies, educators and many other kinds of organizations in public consultations which began July 20. The government, which has been typically known for progressive-mindedness when it comes to these matters (excepting a few slimy political types, of course), stated its goal is to achieve a balance between the interests of copyright holders and users of copyrighted material. The consensus among groups was in tune with this, though they have many different ideas as to what should be included in the updated laws. Naturally, some of these ideas conflict strongly with each other, though most seem to have the best interests of the people in mind.

Seven organizations were present, representing everything from TV, radio, actors, and puppeteers to librarians, video games, technology and hardware, to consumers themselves; we'll highlight the most notable suggestions from each.

First we have the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists, who put forth an idea we fully support: imposing a levy (an extra fee) on digital recorders are music players. This worked very well back when everyone was pirating music and burning it to CDs, and it seems overdue to these fellows for it to applied to the more popular technology nowadays. Assuming you shop around and research, you can get a great music player for cheap these days, so a minor extra fee shouldn't be a big deal, and most won't even notice the change, particularly with prices fluctuating as fast as they do in the industry. This allows artists, labels and the like to not lose as much money from pirated copies of records, films, etc.

The Canadian Association of Internet Providers, meanwhile, calls for ISPs to be less intrusive when it comes to pirated content, that is, not to require them to take it down, or cut off service of their customers for acquiring it. Chairman Tom Copeland says, "I don't think Canadians want their ISPs to become agents of law enforcement," adding traditionally they would pass on notices of violation from the rights holder, but that's it. He added that traditionally, ISPs have passed on notices of copyright violation from the rights holder, but that is where their obligations ended.

The Canadian Association of University Teachers is apparently in support of digital lockbreaking, at least under conditions of "fair dealing and use" (which the Canadian Library Association, or CLA, need to be clarified); they're also in favour of Canadian copyright law taking precedent over individual product law, and most interestingly, reduce the amount of time a copyright is in effect for. As it stands, an author's work is protected for his lifetime plus 50 years, which seems a bit unreasonable, really.

The CLA has the interests of the disabled in mind, too. For them, permissions are allowed so materials can be converted, for say, the deaf or blind, however other disabilities are not covered, and this needs remedying. Further, they'd prefer if such materials were allowed freely to cross between Canada and the US before the ban in 2004.

On the topic of video games, which is likely what you're most interested in, the Entertainment Software Association of Canada isn't so progressive. In fact, they directly oppose pretty well all the above mentioned suggestions, and push for protection of protection (i.e. make it illegal to crack disk checks, mod your console, break parental locks, etc.), albeit "supporting some exceptions" like allowing the visually impaired to make copies of a game manual, for instance. On the piracy front, their stance is ISPs should be required to remove illegal content following a notice from the rights holder, though the poster of the content could appeal. At present, an ISP is free to ignore these notices, and a court injunction is necessary to see its removal. Under the previous and dreaded C-61 bill (more information in the link posted at top), ISPs had to pass on the notice, but no further action was required. The suggestions largely stem from "zero day piracy", or piracy which occurs before a street date, or shortly thereafter, when a game makes its strongest sales.

Second last is the Information Technology Association of Canada, who we're fully behind as well. These guys have three main points: let research break digital locks (necessary for advancing security), focus punishment on those who profit directly from violating copyrights instead of pirates, and allow more freedom with technology purchases (e.g. usage on multiple devices or networks, allow "tinkering" for compatibility purposes with networks, older software, etc.).

Lastly is the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC), which as you may guess, has you specifically in mind. They support most of the stuff already mentioned -- breaking of digital locks, more flexibility in fair dealing (i.e. remixing music), and more flexibility in media usage too, like legalizing recording of broadcasts, conversion of content to other media (i.e. making a digital copy of a book), and moving of content to other media (i.e. ripping a CD and putting the MP3s on your music player).

As for the results, we'll just have to wait and see, but right now, things sound quite reasonable; even the worst of it isn't so bad compared to what some rights vendors communicated at the Federal Trade Commission's town hall meeting (i.e. "buy the game again if your activations expire").

To end this off, here's a quote from the PIAC's counselman John Lawford we can surely all agree upon:

"I don't think you need to have protection of the protection."

16-year-old boy dies after being beaten by supervisors

The Internet is a virtually unstoppable force, often utilized by the masses to report injustices that would otherwise go unnoticed.  One such topic is emergence of government-funded Internet addiction clinics.

Earlier this month, a clinic in northern China was forced to stop using electroshock therapy on its patients following worldwide attention, thanks to the efforts of China's netizens.  The Chinese government even declared there is no medically sound reason to use electroshock in any sort of treatment, and has yet to diagnose Internet addiction as a treatable condition.  Regardless, these clinics continue to thrive.

On Monday, August 3, a teenage boy died at a treatment center in Nanning after he was beaten by supervisors.  The three adults responsible have since been arrested by police, and the 16-year-old's father told the media their family is planning to protest at local government offices.  They are demanding a full investigation into the matter and want the facility shut down.

The clinic in question advertised its tough boot camp environment but said in a statement that torture and "other methods that might damage a child's health" are not practiced.  Needless to say, the Internet is not pleased. 

“Internet addiction? It’s a term made up by some so-called ‘experts’, how come these parents believe what they’ve said?” commented one netizen in particular on a Chinese website.

This is the first reported death at an Internet addiction treatment center.

Many thanks to Ashley for this tip.

Feeding the social networking craze

Social networking has been creeping its way into gaming, and now the Nintendo DSi is on the bandwagon. 

Starting today after 5:00 pm PST, DSi owners will be able to upload their photos from their portable platform to Facebook.  The downloadable system update this evening will add a Facebook icon to the Nintendo DSi Camera album, which will let users transmit photos to their Facebook profile with a tap of the stylus.

"Facebook and Nintendo DSi build on the trend of personalization that is so important to consumers," said Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America's executive VP of Sales & Marketing -- a.k.a. the most out-of-touch rep in the video game industry. "We're giving people the tools to express themselves in creative new ways and show off the results to their friends and family on Facebook."

Nintendo would also like to remind you that the DSi has sold over 1.7 million units in the States alone.  Yay?