Touted by an odd coalition, ICANN’s .xxx domain money grab has fallen flat on its face. The expected land rush of defensive buys to avoid stigma never materialized and the smut peddlers are happy with the way things are.
The engineers who warned Lightsquared’s service would disrupt GPS are vindicated. This proves that while you can buy influence by backing corrupt pols, you can’t change the laws of physics. The idea could still work, but investment in engineering instead of elections will be required.
Assuming Lightsquared does solve it’s interference problems, you could score some free wireless access via Freedompop. I expect AT&T and Verizon to spend large with pols to keep that from happening.
More Fourth Amendment abuse in the Senate: SOPA and Protect IP morph into the slightly less abusive OPEN bill. While it promises more due process, it still enables rogue agencies to violate the supreme law of the land. Meanwhile, Senator Wyden does some call out the DHS for going rogue showboating.
How to harass the competition without tarnishing your highbrow image. Wage war on rivals by proxy: Apple Gives mobile patents to a troll.
Comic Louis CK’s latest film goes direct to download for $5. Chances are he’ll make far more from self distribution then releasing through one of the big studios. Look for more big name entertainers to follow.
Another sign the patent system is broken: Google wants to patent the cloud as a print server.
I’ve mentioned more than once that elitists have traditionally derived most of their power from the control of information. The balance has been derived from the brute force of the military and law enforcement. The Internet continues to democratize information at light speed. Knowledge has gained its own right of freedom, and the seeker of knowledge is fining it at will with increasing ease. That spells big trouble for the ruling class. It also reveals the the true class warfare that is underway, but unreported. That is a war against the freedom of knowledge. Government agencies has been quick to criminalize activities of common citizens that pose little or no threat to anything other than the unchecked power of the status quo.
Cries that we are not ready for a Cyber War have been growing among pols and fed contractors over the last couple of years. For anyone who was been paying attention, so called Cyber Wars have been underway for some time. Potential for foreign based assaults plague the realm of every single Internet user, as they have for decades. This has grown largely thanks to rogue nations sponsoring these activities to others simply ignoring them. Private citizens and most businesses effected by them have found very little sympathy of aid from the feds. A entire industry has grown to protect against and mitigate these threats. That industry has largely kept threats in check, even with abundant interference from our very own feds. (more…)
More disruption in the music industry? #1 streaming service Rhapsody acquires download service Napster.
Facebook patents tracking its members on non-Facebook sites. A bad patent awarded to the company that insists it isn’t interested in tracking its users.
Do you use WiFi? Patent trolls have you in the crosshairs. Isn’t about time to end the patent protection racket business?
On to Copyright trolling: Former Hollywood PI reveals some big media’s twisted ploys to influence lawmaking and enforcement.
The market goes cold for IPO’s. That means VC’s will be investing less too. Want to improve the odds for recovery? Repeal Sarbanes-Oxley.
Yahoo and ABC combine news organizations. That means even less diversity of viewpoints in big media. It also means Yahoo news will suck even more.
I think social is destined to go tribal. To that end gamers get their own network.
Crowdsourcing astronomy: New planet discoveries come from home based amateurs.
Google’s long rumored cloud drive gets closer to reality. Will it be monetized with ads the are eerily relevant to the files stored?
Big label music introduces a bargain priced shake down fine for file sharers. With free to cheap subscriptions dominating low sample rate music distribution, does this make any sense at all?
Dish wants in on wireless. If T Mobile really needs a buyer, here is a match that is far less anti-competitive. Regulators please take note.
Everything you need to know about the current handset patent mess.
Android everywhere: Boeing’s new flying plastic cattle car uses Android to power its entertainment systems.
Defending Android: Google buys 1023 patents from IBM.
Juniper pushes edge router speeds to 3.8TB, promises even more soon. Backhaul capacity for 1GB broadbend connections was really never a problem after all.
AT&T powers up LTE Sunday. Pretty much a non event unless you are willing to pay large for a small bucket of bits.
Time to switch on the BIOS virus protection / write protect: Rootkit for BIOS found in the wild.
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