IT Certification Forum

(ISC)²® now Offers Computer Based Testing for C...

Sat, 19 May 2012 20:52:57 +0000

Computer Based Testing (CBT)

(ISC)² is pleased to provide the opportunity for candidates to take computerized examinations via Computer-Based Testing (CBT) at local testing centers worldwide. This new testing method provides candidates with top-of-the-line security measures and a comfortable testing environment. Further, candidates are able to take their examination closer to home, saving both time and money.

Advantages to the Candidate

Conveniently located testing centers closer to home

Less travel to testing site means less time and money spent
Top-of-the line security measures:
- Extensive encryption
- No outside materials allowed inside testing rooms
- Strict candidate identification standards
A comfortable and consistent testing environment in all examination centers
Images on the computer screen provide maximum readability

Answers are recorded directly into the computer, therefore eliminating possible transcription errors from scanning format answer sheets.
Programs available via CBT:

Facebook Stock Finishes Flat In Debut

Sat, 19 May 2012 09:58:04 +0000

NEW YORK (AP) — In the hours before Facebook's stock began trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market for the first time, CEO Mark Zuckerberg reminded the company's 3,500 employees not to get caught up in the hoopla surrounding its long-awaited initial public offering.
"Right now this all seems like a big deal," Zuckerberg said before he pushed a button that rang Nasdaq's opening bell from company headquarters at 1 Hacker Way in Menlo Park, California. "Going public is an important milestone in our history. But here's the thing, our mission isn't to be a public company. Our mission is to make the world more open and connected."
Facebook's IPO, it turns out, wasn't as big a deal as expected.
One of the most anticipated IPOs in Wall Street history ended on a flat note Friday, with Facebook's stock closing at $38.23, up 23 cents from Thursday night's pricing.
That means the company founded in 2004 in a Harvard dorm room has a market value of about $105 billion, more than Amazon.com, McDonald's and Silicon Valley icons Hewlett-Packard and Cisco.
It also gave 28-year-old Zuckerberg a stake worth $19,252,698,725.50.
But for many seeking a big first-day pop in Facebook's share price, the increase of six-tenths of one percent was a letdown.
"This is like kissing your sister," said John Fitzgibbon, founder of IPO Scoop, a research firm. "With all the drumbeats and hype, I don't think there'll be barroom bragging tonight."
Added Nick Einhorn, an analyst with IPO advisory firm Renaissance Capital: "It wasn't quite as exciting as it could have been. But I don't think we should view it as a failure."
Indeed, the small jump in price could be seen as an indication that Facebook and the investment banks that arranged the IPO priced the stock in an appropriate range.
It was also good for ordinary investors, who are mostly shut out from the IPO price and have to buy the stock in the open market on day one. They got a chance to buy all day at a price not much above $38.
And it was good for early investors in the company, who owned more than half the 421 million shares made available in the IPO. Had the stock shot to $60 Friday morning, those early investors would have felt they hadn't gotten enough money for their stakes.
The 421 million shares that were sold fetched $16 billion and represented 15 percent of the company's stock. Facebook got $7 billion, and the early investors $9 billion. The other 85 percent of Facebook's stock is owned by Zuckerberg and other Facebook executives, employees and early investors. In comparison, Google offered just 7.2 percent of its stock when it went public in 2004. Its stock rose 18 percent on day one.
Here was Facebook's "timeline" Friday, trading under the symbol "FB" on the Nasdaq Stock Market:
The stock opened at 11:30 a.m. at $42.05, but soon dipped to $38.01. It briefly traded as high as $45 and by noon was at $40.40. It fluttered throughout the afternoon and hugged the $38 mark for much of the final hour, before closing at $38.23.
By the end of the day, about 570 million shares had changed hands, a huge trading volume for any company.
TD Ameritrade reported that in the first 45 minutes of trading, Facebook accounted for a record 24 percent of trades executed by its customers.
By comparison, on its first day back on the stock market, in November 2010, General Motors represented 7 percent of trades on the online brokerage.
Steve Quirk, who oversees trading strategy at TD Ameritrade, said that about 60,000 orders were lined up before Facebook opened.
Technical glitches delayed the start of Facebook's trading by a half-hour. The Securities and Exchange Commission also is investigating problems traders encountered in changing and canceling their orders.
Other social media companies, most of which have gone public in the last year, saw their shares plummet when it became clear what kind of reception Facebook was getting in the public market. Shares of game-maker Zynga Inc. and reviews site Yelp Inc. both hit all-time lows.
The stock market will now begin assigning a dollar value to Facebook based primarily on its financial performance. If Facebook can continue to increase its revenue and profit at the rate it has the past few years, the stock should rise. Google reported strong earnings after it became a public company, and its stock price more than tripled the first year, from $85 to $280.
Facebook's stock price will also depend somewhat on broad economic forces, as well as the whims of investors.
Facebook is one of those rare companies whose IPO transcends Wall Street's money lust. Since its start as a scrappy network for college students, Facebook has come to define social networking by getting its 900 million users around the world to share everything from photos of their pets to their deepest thoughts.
Most tech companies going public want a big rise in their debut to show they're "strong, dynamic companies standing out in the crowd," said Francis Gaskins, president of researcher IPOdesktop, but Facebook already has that image, and so may not care.
Few of the Internet companies to go public recently have been profitable. But Facebook had net income of $205 million in the first three months of 2012, on revenue of $1.06 billion. In 2011, it earned $1 billion on revenue of $3.7 billion, up from earnings of $606 million and revenue of $2 billion a year earlier.
That's a far cry from 2007, when it posted a net loss of $138 million and had revenue of $153 million. The company makes most of its money from advertising. It also takes a cut from the money people spend on virtual items in Facebook games such as "FarmVille."
Facebook's public debut marked a milestone in the history of the Internet. In 1995, Netscape Communications' IPO gave people their first chance to invest in a company whose graphical Web browser made the Internet more engaging and easier to navigate. Its hotly anticipated IPO lit the fuse that ignited the dot-com boom. That explosion of entrepreneurial activity and investment culminated five years later in a devastating bust that obliterated the notion that the Internet had hatched a "new economy."
It took Google Inc.'s IPO in 2004 to prove that an Internet company with a revolutionary idea could be profitable. In the process, the Internet search leader is forcing other industries to adapt to a new order where people have come to expect to be able to find just about anything they want by entering a few words into a box on any device with an Internet connection.
Facebook's IPO almost certainly will enrich other up-and-coming entrepreneurs as Zuckerberg uses the company's cash and stock to buy other startups in an effort to bring in other talented engineers and promising technology. That's what Google has been doing for years. Since it went public in 2004, Google has spent $10.2 billion buying nearly 200 other companies. Those figures don't include Google's pending $12.5 billion acquisition of cellphone maker Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc., which is still awaiting regulatory approval in China.
Zuckerberg's biggest deal so far came when he agreed to buy Instagram, a maker of a popular mobile app for photos, for $1 billion in April. Because most of the deal is being paid for in stock, Instagram is already getting richer. Based on Facebook's current share price, Instagram is in line to receive about $1.2 billion.
Friday's debut, though, resulted in deals worth much less.
Alper Aydinoglu, a DePaul University student who got 50 shares via Etrade at $38, said he was "disappointed with the first day of trading."
His gain on paper: $11.50, but that was before Etrade's standard commission of $9.99.
Aydinoglu still called it an excellent learning opportunity.
"On top of everything, I now have the bragging rights that I participated in one of the most popular IPOs of all time."

Met Police to extract suspects' mobile phon...

Sat, 19 May 2012 09:56:20 +0000

By Dave Lee Technology Reporter, BBC News

The Metropolitan Police has implemented a system to extract mobile phone data from suspects held in custody.
The data includes call history, texts and contacts, and the BBC has learned that it will be retained regardless of whether any charges are brought.
The technology is being used in 16 London boroughs, and could potentially be used by police across the UK.
Campaign group Privacy International described the move as a "possible breach of human rights law".
Until now, officers had to send mobiles off for forensic examination in order to gather and store data, a process which took several weeks.
Under the new system, content will be extracted using purpose built terminals in police stations.
It will allow officers to connect a suspect's mobile and produce a print out of data from the device, as well as saving digital records of the content.
'Retained and handled'
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote

Mobile phones and other devices are increasingly being used in all levels of criminal activity”

Stephen KavanaghDeputy Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service
A Met Police spokesman told the BBC that when a suspect was released, "data received from the handsets is retained and handled in accordance with other data held by the MPS [Metropolitan Police Service]" - regardless of whether charges had been brought.
Guidelines given to officers state that data extraction can happen only if there is sufficient suspicion the mobile phone was used for criminal activity.
"Mobile phones and other devices are increasingly being used in all levels of criminal activity," said Stephen Kavanagh, Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service.
"When a suspect is arrested and found with a mobile phone that we suspect may have been used in crime, traditionally we submit it to our digital forensic laboratory for analysis.
"Therefore, a solution located within the boroughs that enables trained officers to examine devices and gives immediate access to the data in that handset is welcomed."
'Illegal'
Over 300 London officers will be trained in using the "intuitive, fully-guided touchscreen desktop data acquisition tool", created by mobile forensic firm Radio Tactics.
The cost of leasing the 16 terminals for 12 months and training the officers will be £50,000, the Met said.
Privacy International has warned against the possibility of such tech eventually be used on the streets
Privacy International has expressed serious concern over the system.
"We are looking at a possible breach of human rights law," spokeswoman Emma Draper told the BBC.
"It is illegal to indefinitely retain the DNA profiles of individuals after they are acquitted or released without charge, and the communications, photos and location data contained in most people's smartphones is at least as valuable and as personal as DNA."
Ms Draper added that while the Met's current plans were limited to fixed extraction terminals in stations, portable technology was readily available.
"Examining suspects' mobile phones after they are arrested is one thing, but if this technology was to be taken out onto the streets and used in stop-and-searches, that would be a significant and disturbing expansion of police powers."

Memristors in silicon promising for dense, fast...

Sat, 19 May 2012 09:54:52 +0000

By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News

Researchers have revealed details of a promising way to make a fundamentally different kind of computer memory chip.
The device is a "memristor", a long-hypothesised but only recently demonstrated electronic component.
A memristor's electronic properties make it suitable for both for computing and for far faster, denser memory.
Researchers at the European Materials Research Society meeting now say it can be made much more cheaply, using current semiconductor techniques.
There has been significant interest in memristors since the first prototype was unveiled in 2008, not least because it took 37 years for the device to make it from theoretical proposition to reality.
The name is a portmanteau of memory and resistor, because its resistance changes depending on how much current has passed through it; it "remembers" that value even after power is turned off.
In a flash
The history-dependent nature of their electrical properties would make them able to carry out calculations, but most interest has focused on developing them for memory applications, to replace the widespread "flash" solid-state memory of USB sticks and memory cards.
"We're reaching the limits of what we can do with flash memory in terms of increasing the storage density, and it's also relatively high power and not as fast as we would like," said Anthony Kenyon of University College London, UK.
However, researchers are still working to get memristor devices out of the laboratory and into consumer electronics. Hewlett-Packard, whose engineers demonstrated the first working memristor, already have plans to bring early memristor designs to market.
Current designs employ expensive or exotic materials, but a real memristor revolution could hinge on making them compatible with existing semiconductor technology, based overwhelmingly on silicon.
Memristors employing more "exotic" materials will probably make it into devices first
That would make them easy and cheap to integrate into existing manufacturing techniques.
Such attempts have been made before, butprevious devices reported in a 2010 paper in Nano Letters were fairly delicate and worked only under vacuum.
Now, Dr Kenyon, his student Adnan Mehonic, and his colleagues from UCL, France and Spain have stumbled across a better way to make silicon memristors.
The team was working on silicon devices for LEDs when they accidentally discovered that a film of silicon oxide on their devices - which forms naturally when silicon is left out in air - behaved as memristors.
Mr Mehonic went on to study just what was going on inside the films, and the team recently published details of their findings in the Journal of Applied Physics.
What they have found is that their devices appear to significantly outperform existing solid-state "flash" memory.
As they described at this week's conference, the energy required to switch the state of their devices - the energy it would take to store or retrieve a bit of information - is just a hundredth of that in existing flash memory, and significantly faster.
"Flash memory devices switch at 10,000 nanoseconds (billionths of a second) or so, and in our device we can't measure how fast it is," Dr Kenyon said.
"Our equipment only goes down to 90 nanoseconds. It's at least as fast as that and probably faster."
Though the team's idea is a bit behind other more well developed memristor recipes, Dr Kenyon is hopeful the cheap and simple nature of their devices will make them industrially attractive.
"Discussions are at a early stage but we are talking to some fairly major names in the industry about taking this and commercialising it," he said.

Twitter backs browser privacy project

Sat, 19 May 2012 09:53:23 +0000

Micro-blogging service Twitter has declared its support for an initiative that lets people browse the web without being monitored.
The "Do Not Track" initiative stops firms tracking people as they visit several different websites.
The monitoring is done to help advertisers craft ads to a user's preferences and lifestyle.
Blocking the tracking depends on websites honouring requests from users to browse anonymously.
Do Not Track (DNT) has been brokered by the US Federal Trade Commission which wants people to be able to tell websites to stop gathering and sharing data when they visit.
Sites that decide to ignore users' requests to stop tracking them could be subject to FTC action.
A DNT option is available in the recent versions of the Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari browsers. Turning on Do Not Track in Google's Chrome involves installing an add-on.

For DNT to work, websites have to agree to discard any data they would otherwise collect and share about what people do when they visit a site.
In a help document, Twitter said it would now respect the Do Not Track option in all the browsers that supported it.
However, it said that those that turn on DNT would notice a change in the information Twitter presented to them.
"We stop collecting the information that allows us to tailor Twitter based on your recent visits to websites that have integrated our buttons or widgets," it said in its help document.
A survey carried out by Mozilla, which makes the Firefox web browser, found that 8.6% of the users of its desktop browser and 19% of mobile browser users were opted in to Do Not Track.

Browsers backing Do Not Track

Firefox 5+
IE 9+
Safari 5.1+
Chrome 17 (with add-on)

Anonymous attacks Indian government websites

Sat, 19 May 2012 09:50:50 +0000

The hacker group Anonymous has carried out a series of attacks against websites in India.
Websites for government departments, India's Supreme Court and two political parties all came under attack.
Anonymous said the attacks were carried out in retaliation against blocks imposed on well-known video and file-sharing sites.
The Indian anti-piracy firm behind the blocking of Vimeo, DailyMotion and The Pirate Bay was also attacked.
In late March, Chennai-based Copyrightlabs won a restraining orderthat made Indian ISPs and phone firms stop their customers reaching sites that were illegally sharing copies of Bollywood films called 3 and Dhammu.
As the the blocks started to come into force in mid-May, Anonymous launched attacks against 14 separate government and political sites. Hit hardest were the Indian telecoms department, electronics and IT ministry, supreme court and sites used by the BJP and INC political parties which were all knocked offline.
The website of Copyrightlabs was also "down for maintenance" during the attacks.
In tweets documenting its ongoing hack attacks, Anonymous said they were being carried out in retaliation for "internet censorship" in India.
To knock out the sites, Anonymous bombarded them with data, a tactic known as a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack.
The tactic had only partial success as most of the sites targeted soon recovered and were only offline intermittently.
The disabling of the websites was the first tangible result actions of the OpIndia campaign announced by Anonymous on 9 May in a message posted to YouTube.

Computer game helps rehabilitate stroke victims

Sat, 19 May 2012 09:48:52 +0000

Scientists at Newcastle University have developed a computer game designed to help stroke victims recuperate.
The Circus Challenge game, created with a computer game studio, aims to help patients recover motor functions.
Players use wireless controllers to perform virtual circus acts such as lion taming and plate spinning.
It is hoped the PC-based game will serve as a cheaper and more effective alternative to existing treatments, with patients able to play at home.
The project received a £1.5m grant from the Health Innovation Challenge Fund, a partnership between the Wellcome Trust and the Department of Health, to allow further development.
'Trapeze artist'
One patient, who suffered a stroke in February, said the game was "something different which encourages me to keep going with my therapy".
Danny Mann, 68, from Dudley, Northumberland, said the game compared favourably with the "dull" exercises he had previously been instructed to complete.
"This is the first time I've ever played a video game - I mean, I don't even own a computer.

The BBC's Sharon Barbour reports on the computer game for stroke patients
"When I got the controllers I tried being a trapeze artist - something I never expected to try at my time of life," he said.
Mr Mann said he was looking forward to furthering his recovery by playing the game with his grandchildren.
Janet Eyre, Professor of Paediatric Neuroscience at Newcastle University, said the game would help meet the shortfall of trained therapists who stroke victims must normally work with on a frequent basis as part of their rehabilitation.
"With our video game, people get engrossed in the competition and action of the circus characters and forget that the purpose of the game is for therapy."
Professor Dame Sally Davies, chief medical officer and chief medical adviser at the the Department of Health, said the newly-developed technology was a "remarkable innovation in the NHS".
"The government is committed to supporting such work and bringing breakthroughs from every area - even video gaming - to the front line of patient care," she said.
Circus Challenge becomes more difficult as players gain more strength as their recovery progresses. The tasks require both gross and fine motor skills and can be performed by people in wheelchairs.
About 80% of stroke patients do not fully regain their arm and hand functions, however it is hoped there will be some improvement on this figure as patients are able to continue their rehabilitation at home.
In the UK, 150,000 people suffer a stroke every year, costing the economy an estimated £4bn in care and loss of income.

China Mobile 'in talks' with Apple to o...

Sat, 19 May 2012 09:46:53 +0000

The world's biggest mobile phone network, China Mobile, could soon offer its customers Apple's iPhone.
The Chinese carrier's chairman has confirmed the two firms are in talks.
Compatibility issues between the iPhone and China Mobile's 3G network mean that currently Apple's handsets only work on the much slower 2G service.
The problem could be resolved with the launch of the next iPhone, rumoured to happen this summer, and when China adopts the 4G standard, analysts say.
China Mobile is the country's biggest mobile phone network, and in terms of users the world's largest, with more than 660 million customers.
Even though the iPhone is not yet in China Mobile's official product line-up, about 15 million of the company's customers are thought to be iPhone users already, having bought the phone through different channels.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote

We've been actively talking to Apple on how we can cooperate”

Xi GuohuaChina Mobile chairman
Despite being the biggest telecoms provider, China Mobile is the country's only operator that does not support the iPhone.
China Mobile's market share is about 67% - a lot more than its two rivals China Unicom and China Telecom - but it has been slipping steadily in the past few years.
Officially offering the iPhone to its subscribers could help China Mobile to get back the consumers it has lost to other carriers.
China Mobile chairman Xi Guohua mentioned the ongoing discussions between the two firms at a shareholders meeting in Beijing.
"We've been actively talking to Apple on how we can cooperate," he said.
"I can't give you too many details, but I'd like to repeat that both sides do hope to boost our cooperation."
Apple did not respond to BBC requests for comment.
Different network
Both of China Mobile's rivals offer the iPhone to their subscribers
The operator has been in talks with the US giant for years.
"The reason China Mobile hasn't been able to offer iPhones is that it was 'anointed' by the government with the dubious prize of having to deploy China's own attempt at a 3G standard," Duncan Clark, chairman of BDA China, a consultancy firm in Beijing, told BBC News.
This standard, called TD-SCDMA, is unique to China and different from what many international operators use.
It is also different from China Mobile's smaller rivals, China Unicom and China Telecom.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote

China Mobile's own path has been a nightmare for the company”

Duncan ClarkBDA
"China Mobile's own path has been a nightmare for the company," said Mr Clark.
"It has had to rely on 2.5 or 2.75G connections and subsidise heavily phones with TD-SCDMA chipsets which are rarely used in fact," said Mr Clark.
"China Mobile has invested heavily in wi-fi hotspots too as a defensive measure - to access faster speeds.
"So they have lost many high-end customers who want the iPhone or some other smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy II to China Unicom and to a lesser extent China Telecom."
Move to 4G
But once the Chinese authorities approve the new LTE (Long Term Evolution) standard, a flavour of 4G, the incompatibility issue could be resolved, said Mr Clark.
"The only catch is when the government here will approve LTE; right now we see trial deployments but don't expect LTE to be deployed here until 2014 at the earliest," he said.

Google makes search 'more human' with K...

Sat, 19 May 2012 09:45:48 +0000

Google has revamped its search engine in an attempt to offer instant answers to search questions.
A new function, the Knowledge Graph, will make the site's algorithms act "more human", the sitesaid in a blog post.
The feature will at first be available to US-based users, but will be rolled out globally in due course.
It follows similar efforts by rival Bing to provide added search content beyond the typical list of links.
Microsoft's search engine launched its "snapshot" column last week as part of a wider site redesign.
Google's senior vice-president of engineering, Amit Singhal, explained that, until now, the search engine had been able only to match keywords, rather than understand context.
Mr Singhal said the words "Taj Mahal" could mean different things to different people.
"You might think of one of the world's most beautiful monuments, or a Grammy Award-winning musician, or possibly even a casino in Atlantic City, NJ. Or, depending on when you last ate, the nearest Indian restaurant," he said.
Key information
Google said the Knowledge Graph has been programmed to use around 3.5 billion different attributes to organise results, meaning it could now group results according to those various alternative interpretations.
For some searches, such as on prominent people, Google will automatically pull up a summary box with key information on that topic.
The next step, Mr Singhal said, is to look at how the site can answer more complex questions, such as "What are the 10 deepest lakes in Africa?"
In doing so the search engine would need to draw on multiple sources and factor in many different criteria.
This kind of computational, intelligent search is currently pioneered by the likes of Wolfram Alpha - a site that gathers verified data, such as from the World Health Organization, to provide statistical results.
It has long been a technological goal to produce search engines that could react entirely naturally to human-like queries.
One such effort includes the search engine Ask Jeeves, where users can ask a stereotypically English butler for help.

The Pirate Bay hit by DDoS attack

Sat, 19 May 2012 09:44:39 +0000

File-sharing website The Pirate Bay (TPB) has been hit by a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack.
The site has been largely inaccessible for the last 24 hours, and the service is intermittent in the UK.
The Pirate Bay has confirmed the attack on its Facebook page, saying that it did not know who was behind it, although it "had its suspicions".
A provider of DDoS defence systems said that it was unlikely that the attack came from hacking group Anonymous.
"There will be further attacks, but what's significant about this whole story is that people think that it is the Anonymous attacking a site which is typically a type of site that they defend," said Andre Stewart of Corero Network Security.
"It could be the record labels, or a government somewhere that has had enough of not being able to catch The Pirate Bay, it could be just one person who had rented some cloud power from Amazon and is sitting in a cafe, and is able to launch an attack."
Continue reading the main story
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Don't freak out. You'll get your TPB fix tomorrow”

The Pirate Bay
Although some users may have attempted to access the site using proxies, TPB itself warned them against doing so.
Illegal file sharing
"Use proxies at own risk. Don't login unless you trust the proxy supplier. Don't freak out. You'll get your TPB fix tomorrow," said the site.
TPB allows users to illegally obtain copyrighted songs, films and other content for free.
Copyright holders argue this causes a significant loss in revenue.
However, others say that it is very difficult to assess the impact of downloading on sales.
Virgin Media users trying to access The Pirate Bay are shown a message explaining why it is blocked
"If they're losing money and seeing that the government is not being able to stop it, there's a real monetary value reason for them to try and bring it down," said Mr Stewart.
"And if they can do it in the name of Anonymous then it's great for them.
"Equally the governments that protect these industries are frustrated as well because they haven't been able to see it close down, unlike a number of other torrent sites."
Open and free
Virgin Media began preventing access to the file-sharing site following a High Court order last week.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote

Governments could be frustrated because they haven't been able to see TPB close down”

André StewartCorero Network Security
Some time later the Virgin Media website suffered a hack attack that many thought was organised to protest against efforts to block access to TPB.
Twitter feeds associated with the Anonymous collective wrote: "Virgin Media - Tango Down #OpTPB".
But TPB criticised Anonymous for the attack, writing on its Facebook page that it did not "encourage these actions".
"We believe in the open and free internets, where anyone can express their views," wrote TPB.
"Even if we strongly disagree with them and even if they hate us. So don't fight them using their ugly methods. DDoS and blocks are both forms of censorship."

ORG: Mobile filters censor innocent content

Tue, 15 May 2012 19:35:56 +0000

Pornography filters on mobile phones are "censoring" normal web content, according to the Open Rights Group.
Its report found that 60 websites were incorrectly blocked by mobile filters designed to prevent children viewing adult content.
The affected sites included political commentaries, personal blogs and community websites.
The government is considering whether to apply similar blocks to fixed-line broadband services.
Peter Bradwell of the Open Rights Group, author of the report, said the study proved such tools were ineffective.
Automatic block
"Child protection filters can actually affect many more users than intended and block many more sites than they should. These blunt blocks effectively add up to a system of censorship across UK networks," he said.
In a response published on the ORG website, Hamish MacLeod, chairman of the Mobile Broadband Group, denied this.
"Even allowing for the ORG missing a few, 60 misclassified websites does not amount to anything that could reasonably be described as 'censorship', particularly when mobile operators are happy to remove the filters when customers show they are over 18 and will re-classify websites when misclassifications are pointed out to them," he said.
"This is how the small handful of websites that get referred to mobile operators each year are already dealt with," he added.
MPs campaigning
In 2004, the UK's mobile operators, under the auspices of the Mobile Broadband Group, published a code of practice about how to offer a safe browsing experience for children.
At that time, few children accessed the internet via mobiles.
The result was that filters were automatically put on all pay-as-you-go handsets, regardless of the age of the user. In order to remove the filters, users needed either to ring up customer services or go into a mobile shop with proof of age. With its contract phones, Orange and Three customers need to ask if they want filters put on the handsets.
A group of MPs led by Conservative Claire Perry is campaigning to introduce similar filters to fixed line broadband services.
Mr Bradwell called on the government to reject automatic network filtering and instead give parents the option of whether they want such filters turned on.
"Default-on blocks can have significant harmful and unintended consequences for everybody's access to information," he said.

Nokia accuses Apple of Siri bias over smartphon...

Tue, 15 May 2012 19:33:38 +0000

The debate over "what is the best smartphone ever?" took an unexpected twist after Apple's voice-activated assistant Siri appeared to favour the iPhone's rival.
Over the weekend, users of Siri were told the answer was Nokia's Lumia 900.
But Siri now responds to the same question with a jovial: "Wait... there are other phones?"
Nokia has accused Apple of "overriding the software" after the quirk was noticed.
Apple would not confirm that a change had been made.
The Siri software, which is featured on Apple's iPhone 4S, uses the computational search engine Wolfram Alpha to serve answers to some questions.
'Flattered'
For a question such as "what is the best smartphone ever?", Wolfram Alpha would pool available reviews and comment in order to come up with what it feels is the right result.
In this instance, the "best" result was determined by reviews on the website of US retailer Best Buy.

Nokia's Lumia 900 - which launched in the UK this month - came out on top.
However, when asked the same question, the software no longer attempts to search Wolfram Alpha to find its answer, instead producing a default answer.
Nokia spokeswoman Tracey Postill told the Sydney Morning Herald: "Apple position Siri as the intelligent system that's there to help, but clearly if they don't like the answer, they override the software."
However, when contacted by the BBC, Nokia said Ms Postill's comments were "lighthearted" and "taken out of context".
"We were certainly flattered and honoured," Nokia spokesman Doug Dawson added.

Diablo III: Long-awaited video game sequel laun...

Tue, 15 May 2012 19:31:52 +0000

Long-awaited video game Diablo III has launched, causing servers to struggle under huge volumes of traffic.
Blizzard Entertainment said it would launch more servers to cope with the traffic levels.
Around 1,500 fans gathered at a shopping centre close to the developer's Californian headquarters to witness the midnight launch.
They have had a long wait as the previous game was released 12 years ago.
The mood was celebratory as fans gathered to see Blizzard artists sketch characters, watch new footage and take part in quizzes.
Five classes
Attendee Ian Noble summed up the mood of the fans.
"There's nowhere I'd rather be tonight," he said.

Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote

We were just goofing off mostly!”

Jay WilsonLead designer, Blizzard

The PC and Mac-only game has developed a cult following among gamers.
The third chapter of the fantasy action role-playing game sees player choose from five classes of character - barbarian, demon hunter, monk, witch doctor or wizard.
Analysts expected the game to sell more than 4 million copies. Diablo II sold that amount in the year after it was released.
Goofing about
Lead designer Jay Wilson said he hoped fans would be excited by the new version.
Joking about the long delay between games he told fans: "We were just goofing off mostly."
Mr Wilson added, more seriously: "It takes a long time to make a Blizzard game.
"We're very focused on quality. If we think something is not good enough, we make it better. We redo things, which is really uncommon in game development. If we build a level and don't like it, we'll throw it out," he added.
Gamers have already uncovered a bug in the game which can disconnect demon hunters from the game's servers.
Blizzard said that it was working on a fix.

China's search giant Baidu releases low-cos...

Tue, 15 May 2012 19:30:45 +0000

Baidu, China's search giant, has announced the launch of its first smartphone.
It is the firm's first move into the mass smartphone market.
Built by Foxconn, the low-cost Changhong H5018 is powered by Baidu's own mobile operating system, Cloud.
Analysts say it is extremely important for the company to secure significant presence in the booming mobile industry in China, which has the largest number of smartphone users in the world.
The phone will be the first mobile device to run on Baidu's Cloud Smart terminal platform and will come with 100GB of cloud storage on Wangpan, the local equivalent of Dropbox and Google Drive.
With a price tag of less than 1,000 yuan ($158; £99), it will face fierce competition at the Chinese low-end smartphone market.
Customers currently have a choice between low-cost handsets made by firms such as Huawei Technologies, ZTE Corp, HTC, Lenovo and Xiaomi.
But Baidu's director of international communications, Kaiser Kuo, said he believed that H5018 would do well.

Baidu is China's main search engine

"It's a terrific market opportunity for us, and Baidu is constantly adjusting, understanding what users are interested in," Mr Kuo told BBC News.
"The new handset is integrated with the cloud - and with our 100GB offering, I think that no one will be able to match that."
Baidu's mobile OS
Earlier this year, Baidu said it had to develop a stronger presence in China's rapidly expanding mobile space.
With its Cloud Smart terminal platform, it hopes to attract the interest of hardware manufacturers.

Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote

Baidu is recreating itself - we used to be a product-focused company, but now we are becoming a platform-focused company”

Kaiser KuoBaidu

"Baidu is recreating itself - we used to be a product-focused company, but now we are becoming a platform-focused company," said Mr Kuo.
It was important for internet companies to secure presence in the mobile industry, said Beijing-based digital media analyst Bill Bishop.
"Mobile internet usage is booming. If Baidu doesn't have a significant presence, they risk challenges to their business, and they [could] miss out on a new frontier," he said.
"That said, they also risk alienating other handset partners who might use them as the search partner, but now see them as competitors."
The new smartphone is primarily aimed at the Chinese market.
"Access to cloud-based services is a critical piece of the technology, and since they are tailored for China, it doesn't make sense to push outside to other markets right now," said Mr Kuo.
With access to Google's search hampered by the Chinese government's internet regulations known as the Great Firewall of China, Baidu dominates the country's search traffic.

The new smartphone will compete with a multitude of other low-cost handsets in China

Facebook raises share price range after strong...

Tue, 15 May 2012 19:29:16 +0000

Facebook has raised the price at which it hopes to sell its shares from $28-$35 to $34-$38, potentially putting its total value above $100bn (£62.2bn).
The company said strong demand had pushed up the price. Trading in the shares is expected to begin on Friday.
A valuation at this level would make it worth more than the US corporate giants Disney, Ford and Kraft Foods.
The eight-year-old social network has 900 million users worldwide and made a profit of $1bn last year.
If investors buy the shares at the mid-point of $36, Facebook would raise $12.1bn through its planned sale of 337.4 million shares.
Despite the strong interest, a Facebook team is continuing to tour the US with an investor road show, a move undertaken by companies to drum up demand ahead of a sale of new shares.
Facebook is set to list on the Nasdaq and its value will rival Amazon's current worth of $100bn.Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote

The Facebook IPO is a bet on the shape of our digital future”

Rory Cellan-JonesTechnology correspondent

Read more from Rory

Facebook founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg will remain in control of the company even after the flotation, controlling more than 57.3% of the voting power through shares he holds and through voting agreements with other shareholders.
The intense interest in the share issue comes despite doubts about the company's ability to make steady profits from social networking.
Although Facebook makes money, profits are currently just 1% of the market value implied by the forthcoming flotation.
Last month, Facebook reported its first drop in revenue between quarters for two years.
It has sought to allay those concerns, pointing to mobile as an area for growth that the company will invest heavily in.
Facebook is in the process of buying the fast-growing mobile phone photo sharing app Instagram for $1bn, its largest purchase ever.
The BBC's technology correspondent, Rory Cellan-Jones, says it is unclear how the company can make money from mobile apps.
Small shareholders
Many private investors are unlikely to be able to buy as many shares as they want.
Major stock market listings of private companies generally have only a small allocation of shares for private investors of up to 20%.
Individuals hoping to buy ahead of open trading must register with a broker, if they do not already have one, and put in a formal request.
The brokers themselves have to wait to see how many shares they will be allocated from one of the leading investment companies underwriting the issue.
In the US, online broker Fidelity, which will be getting its shares from one of the underwriters, Deutsche Bank, says customers should have $500,000 (£312,000) in their accounts and have made 36 trades in the past year to be eligible.
Other companies' account requirements are a bit less onerous, but still require customers to have made a number of trades and have a substantial sum of money in their accounts.
Even if a customer meets the requirements, there is no guarantee they will get any shares.

Apple releases Flashback patch for older OS

Tue, 15 May 2012 19:27:54 +0000

Apple has released a software update, designed to protect users of its Leopard operating system from malware attacks.
The firm had already been forced to rush out security updates for machines working on its newer Snow Leopard and Lion operating systems.
It follows the Flashback trojan attack which security experts believe infected up to half a million Macs.
Apple has faced criticism for the time it has taken to react to the threat.
Disabling Flash
The Flashback malware targeted a vulnerability in the Java software that is used in Windows machines, Apple computers and many others.
Macs were the biggest victims because Apple did not patch the loophole in its version of Java for several weeks after the vulnerability became known.
Of its latest patch Apple said: "The update removes the most common variants of the Flashback malware. If the Flashback malware is found, a dialog will notify you that malware was removed. In some cases, the update may need to restart your computer in order to completely remove the Flashback malware."
For added security, the patch also disables versions of Adobe Flash Player that do not include the latest security updates, and encourages users to get the latest version directly from Adobe's website.
"This additional level of protection when it comes to Safari users running Flash is good to see - as Adobe's software is so frequently exploited by malware authors and malicious hackers to infect web surfers," said Graham Cluley, senior consultant at security firm Sophos in his blog.
Tiger vulnerability
It shows, he added, that the firm is keen to cover all bases.
"It's encouraging to see Apple has not left users of this older version of the Mac OS X operating system completely out in the cold when it comes to protecting against the latest threats. Clearly they realise that it's not good for the Apple Mac's image if older computers connected to the internet are harbouring malware," said Mr Cluley.
But he added that more may still need to be done.
"Of course, there are still users of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger out there - they don't have the benefit of these security updates and are effectively playing a dangerous game with their systems as the malware threat on the Mac platform increases."
Apple is due to release its latest OS - Mountain Lion - in late summer 2012.

Twitter embraces UK's policymakers after ev...

Tue, 15 May 2012 19:26:27 +0000

By Dave Lee Technology reporter, BBC News

Twitter has told the BBC it now wants to work closer with government and policymakers in the UK.
The site has revealed that there are over 10 million active tweeters across the nation.
The site's UK general manager Tony Wang said it is a priority to "protect and defend" the voice of those users.
It has been a year since Twitter opened its UK operations. It has faced tough questions over privacy and regulation.
The network said it now has over 140 million active users worldwide. In the UK, 80% of active users access the site through their mobile, compared to 55% globally.
Now, Mr Wang said the company is looking to work closer in the public sector. As part of a massive worldwide recruiting push, the company is hiring a public policy manager.
Mr Wang said the new recruit would work with "the government, various ministries, members of parliament as well as law enforcement".
"There are a number of different needs that they have - and there's a lot of very unique ways that they're using Twitter," he added.

Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote

Things on Twitter happen and change very quickly”

Alberto NardelliTweetminster

Since launching its UK presence on 1 June 2011, Twitter has head the headlines during high-profile events such as the London riots and the outing of footballer Ryan Giggs' involvement in a privacy injunction.
Despite his identity being protected from being publicised in the press, Mr Giggs was named in Parliament by Lib Dem MP John Hemming - after already being called by more than 75,000 individuals on Twitter.
It prompted a call from the prime minister for a new body to look at privacy orders and their effectiveness.
Twitter was also cited by some as being a method of communication for those involved in the English riots - however, one subsequent study suggested the network was in fact a "force for good" during the trouble.
'People on the ground'
Mr Wang told the BBC that both incidents stressed the need for Twitter to not take a one-size-fits-all approach to its international operations.
"It emphasised the importance of being a global company," he said.
Mr Wang would not be drawn on Twitter's view on the controversial government plans to extend surveillance measures online.
Mr Wang said Twitter's views on the plans, which are still in the early stages, would be "conjecture".
"If we're building our business and aligning ourself to our core values, I think these things will play themselves out," he said.
"One of the things we've worked very hard on over the last years is making sure we have the operations as well as the resources to continue to build a business that's not just in the US but global.

The naming of Ryan Giggs in parliament raised questions over the enforcement of privacy injunctions

"That basically means engineers working on the product and getting people on the ground as well."
Twitter's first foray into the UK was largely focused on sales and public relations. It based its European communications team in London.
'Playing catch-up'
Alberto Nardelli is co-founder and chief executive of Tweetminster, an independent site that tracks politicians use of the network.
He said Twitter has in the past year become a fundamental part of political discourse in the UK, with over 340 MPs using the service, up from around 100 at the time of the last election.
He told the BBC that being closer to policymakers will be of benefit to Twitter, particularly when it comes to dealing with issues like injunctions and other privacy matters.
"The principles behind an injunction on Twitter is a harder thing for policy makers and for people who write laws because they tend to be very slow processes, whereas things on Twitter happen and change very quickly.
"The law and policy is always playing catch-up."

AMD unveils Trinity chipsets to challenge Ivy B...

Tue, 15 May 2012 19:23:43 +0000

By Leo Kelion Technology reporter

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has launched its new Trinity processor family boasting "twice the performance per watt" of its earlier Llano chips.
Like Intel's rival Ivy Bridge release, the update includes up to four CPU (central processing unit) cores and a single GPU (graphics processing unit).
AMD claims its product offers gamers a superior experience.
The first computers using the chips go on sale in June, with the US launch of a Hewlett Packard "Sleekbook".
AMD's focus on low power requirements reflects manufacturers' desire to offer thinner laptops and slimmer all-in-one desktop models.
Trinity can be set to run off as low as 17 watts, half the minimum amount possible using Llano.
The move should also allow traditional-sized laptops to run off their batteries for longer. The firm says systems could last up to 12 hours, although the figure cannot be verified until models utilising the chips are released.
Recycled power
While Intel has shifted to a new manufacturing process - radically changing the design of its transistors - to make gains, AMD has opted for an alternative innovation.
The "Piledriver" architecture of its CPU cores introduces an energy-saving technique called "resonant clock mesh technology" which allows it to "recycle" some of the energy consumed as it carries out calculations.
"Over the past decade, several test chips successfully demonstrated a variety of resonant clocking implementations," AMD's chief technology officer Joe Macri told the BBC.

"None however, has achieved integration into a commercial processor due to various practicality or cost issues. AMD has managed to overcome these challenges.
"[It] results in a reduction in total core power consumption of up to 10%."
GPU-powered gaming
Further power savings will be achieved by running more processes on the chipset's GPU which is the same "Northern Islands" design used in its standalone Radeon graphics cards.
AMD claims that the component and the accompanying software drivers are superior to the equivalent products from Intel.
Third-party software including Photoshop, the media-player VLC, Adobe's Flash plug-in and many of the leading web browsers have undergone recent updates to take advantage of GPU's skill at handling "parallisable" tasks - processes that are split into different parts and then run simultaneously.
This ability is also particularly suited for handling computer graphics, and AMD is keen to promote Trinity's ability to handle high definition games on systems not fitted with discrete graphics cards.
"Thirty frames per second is the industry standard for smooth gaming," Sasa Markinkovic, AMD's head of desktop and software product marketing, told the BBC.
"What we are able to do with Trinity is offer HD, 1080p resolution, gaming and deliver 30 frames per second.
"When you look at Ivy Bridge it is a step forward for Intel in terms of graphics performance, but it's still not good enough for HD gaming - and that makes the difference between playable and not playable."

AMD says Trinity offers about 25% higher CPU performance and 50% more GPU performance than its earlier Llano chips

'Intel's advantage'
Computers using Trinity will also offer AMD's "Steady Video" feature which automatically stabilises playback of shaky videos posted to sites such as YouTube; and "Quick Stream", a setting which ensures PCs prioritise streaming video when downloading several files from the internet at once.
Despite its advantages, one analyst said AMD might still find itself at a disadvantage against its long-term rival.
"Trinity is a compelling product from a graphics performance and power consumption perspective," said Sergis Mushell, processor expert at the tech analysis firm Gartner.
"But Intel's advantage is that it has a bigger ecosystem - there will be 10 to 15 times the number of systems using its chips than AMD's.
"This gives it better economies of scale and the ability to offer its chips at more price points, ultimately putting it in a strong position to challenge Trinity."

Resonant clock mesh technology

AMD has licensed the energy saving technique from Cyclos Semiconductor, a firm created by researchers at the University of Michigan.
Their innovation is based on the idea that chips can reclaim and recycle electrical energy.
It addresses an engineering problem involved with "clocks" - the timing signal used to orchestrate all the data movements and processing done by the various blocks of a chip, ensuring tasks happen in the right order.
When manufacturers talk of a chip operating at GHz speeds, it means there are more than one billion clock cycles per second.
The faster the speed, the greater the challenge to build in mechanisms to minimise the difference, or "skew", in the amount of time it takes each pulse to arrive at different parts of the circuitry.
If clock skew is ignored performance suffers.
An effective solution to the problem is to to use clock meshes - metal grids laid across the chip - to distribute the clock signals.
However, they have one major flaw that has discouraged their use: they dramatically increase power consumption when distributing pulses created by traditional clock generators .
Cyclos got round this problem by using a new type of clock signal.
It found a way to create an "electric pendulum" which reuses most of the energy needed to generate each clock cycle.
It says the technique requires only "a small nudge" to keep going.
More details can be found on its white paper "It's time to change the clocks".

Pirate Pay torrent 'blocker' backed by...

Tue, 15 May 2012 19:20:29 +0000

A Russian company has developed software it says can disrupt and prevent people from downloading pirated content.
Pirate Pay has been backed by Microsoft and has so far worked with Walt Disney Studios and Sony Pictures to stop "thousands" of downloads.
The tool poses as real bit torrent users but then "confuses" peer-to-peer networks, causing disconnections.
Critics argue that the method will be ineffective in the long term.
The entertainment industry claims that the downloading of pirated material costs copyright holders billions of pounds in lost revenue every year.
Last month, the British Phonographic Industry won a court battle to force UK internet service providers to block its customers from accessing high-profile piracy site The Pirate Bay.
However, the true extent of the financial impact is strongly questioned by internet rights campaigners.
Swamping
Bit torrent blog Torrent Freak reported that Pirate Pay began life as traffic management software for internet service providers.
From here they discovered it could be used to swamp peer-to-peer networks - which are used to share the files - with false information.
"After creating the prototype, we realised we could more generally prevent files from being downloaded, which meant that the program had great promise in combating the spread of pirated content," said Andrei Klimenko, the company's chief executive, in an interview with Russia Beyond the Headlines.
The technology has received high-profile praise from the president of Microsoft Russia - Pirate Pay was awarded one million rubles (£62,000, $100,000) from a seed investment fund set up by the company behind Windows.

Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote

You don't solve social issues with technical fixes”

Richard ClaytonUniversity of Cambridge

A recent campaign saw Pirate Pay "protect" recent Russian film Vysotsky. Thanks to God, I am Alive, made by Walt Disney Studios.
Pirate Pay said it blocked 44,845 attempted illegal downloads of the film.
However, as the Torrent Freak blog pointed out, the blocked downloaders might have simply just tried again later.
'Social issues'
Although exact details on how the system operates are not known outside of the company, security researcher Richard Clayton from the University of Cambridge told the BBC it was a process that could work, if only in the short term.
"If you flood the network with lots of lies, then you will be short of real things.
"[But] the networks are robust about this in the long term because you will say to your peer 'please give me this data', and when it gives you the data it will say 'this doesn't match' and throw it away."
Mr Clayton, who blogs about such issues, said peer-to-peer networks would eventually adapt, sharing information about "bogus" peers such as those reportedly utilised by companies like Pirate Pay.
Mr Clayton added: "You don't solve social issues with technical fixes.
"The social issue here is that a lot of people think that the legal offerings are too expensive and don't provide what they want.
"Once you solve that, nobody's going to want to mess around with complicated bits of software to get what they need."

Yahoo chief executive Scott Thompson steps down

Tue, 15 May 2012 19:18:27 +0000

The chief executive of tech firm Yahoo has stepped down amid accusations he included a fake computer science degree on his CV.
Scott Thompson was replaced by Yahoo's global media head Ross Levinsohn.
Yahoo shares rose 1.7% on Monday morning as news of the changes hit the trading floor.
The firm is also reportedly close to agreeing a truce with activist shareholder Daniel Loeb, who discovered Mr Thompson's mistake.
Mr Loeb, a hedge fund manager who lobbied for Mr Thompson's dismissal, is set to be appointed a company director.
He will also be able to appoint two other new directors, while Yahoo has named Fred Amoroso as the new chairman of its board.
On Monday the Wall Street Journal reported that Mr Thompson, 54, told Yahoo's board late last week he had been diagnosed with thyroid cancer.
Mr Thompson was diagnosed in recent days and is due to begin treatment, the newspaper said, adding that discovery of the illness had influenced Mr Thompson's decision to resign.
No confirmation of the report was available.
Cost-cutting
Yahoo has already acknowledged that Mr Thompson, who took up his post in January, does not have a computer science degree.
When the news emerged Yahoo initially defended its chief executive, calling the discrepancy on his resume an "inadvertent error". But it then came under mounting pressure from shareholders, employees and corporate governance experts to investigate the matter.
Mr Thompson's exit comes amid broader reorganisation within the troubled internet giant, which has seen four full-time chief executives over the last five years.
The chairman of the board, Roy Bostock, and four other directors are leaving the company immediately. All of them had approved the hiring of Mr Thompson.
In addition to the three seats allocated to Mr Loeb and his board appointees, Michael Wolf, a former executive at MTV Networks, and Harry Wilson, a restructuring expert, are to join the board.
Mr Levinsohn, who takes over as interim head of Yahoo, acknowledged the disruption in an internal letter to employees.
"This may seem like a great deal of news to digest, but as you are all keenly aware, Yahoo is a dynamic, global company in a dynamic, global industry, so change - sometimes unexpected and sometimes at lightning speed - is something we will continue to live with and something we should embrace," he wrote.
Upheaval
Mr Levinsohn is expected to address Yahoo employees at a meeting on Monday afternoon.
In April the company announced plans to make 2,000 employees redundant, a cutback of about 14% of staff, in an effort to save $375m (£233m) a year.
Mr Thompson also had plans to shut down or sell off about 50 of Yahoo's products and services.
Before joining Yahoo Mr Thompson served as president of online payments firm PayPal from 2008.
He took over as chief executive from Tim Morse, who had held the Yahoo role on an interim basis after Carol Bartz was sacked in September 2011.
Besides its search engine, Yahoo's key products include Yahoo News, photo-sharing site Flickr and a webmail platform.
But the company has struggled to match the advertising revenue generated by rivals Google and Facebook.
Yahoo's stock has languished since it passed up a $44bn takeover bid from Microsoft in 2008.