Posts Tagged ‘technology’
Piracy: How do you block the unblockable
When DARPA came up with the idea of an interlinked network of computers, the whole reasoning behind it was that a Soviet attack on one part of the system should not prevent communication. Now governments are putting themselves into the Soviet commander’s seats to play war games. Tecnobitsdeclares, we’ll be the Russians.
When an earthquake ruptured the main physical connection between Taiwan and the rest of the world, it was a bad day for BIOS downloaders. Any connection to Taiwan’s main technology companies dropped to a trickle almost instantly.
But there was a trickle.
Right now, the war against piracy over the web is at a critical stage, with governments press-ganging ISPs into the fight (often against their will, with court orders and the like) – determined to cut off the supply of TV shows, films and music that some people get for free.
But the internet, by its very nature, is all about ‘resilience’. It’s all about ‘OK, so there is a block here, no problem, I will route around it’. And with modern networks/data transmission rates, it’s not like the Taiwan cable rupture – because the ‘fall back’ networks are also amazingly fast.
So what happens next?
Well, first up, it seems that Pirate Bay has declared itself to be some kind of political party, standing for various rights and freedoms. Tecnobitsis no legal expert, but that has to create some new challenges/tensions/difficulties for the governments that wish to battle the pirates.
The first of these is that, it seems, in most of these legal hearings in Holland, the loser would have some kind of right to lodge a statement. That looks to have been denied to Pirate Bay – but maybe as a political party, they would have more rights and it would be illegal to censure their speech in most countries outside of North Korea, Saudi Arabia and <insert name of your favourite dictatorship here>.
What also seems clear is that if Pirate Bay had been allowed to broadcast a message to the world, then it would have started with “Oh, by the way, here’s the fastest way around the block” and the court would have been obliged to print those instructions.
If we use a real world analogy, a government has decided that Scotland is an illegal place to visit – and it has shut the main motorway. However, there are several ‘A roads’ which allow you to drive to Scotland and back quite quickly. The court has decided that publishing an alternative map to Scotland is not legal. They have not managed to nuke Scotland, just trying to block people in England from knowing that you can drive there – in the hope that English people will, instead, visit Scottish stores (run by the UK government) and buy ‘approved’ Scottish products’.
The truth is that people who wanted to buy ‘Scottish goods’ would have already been getting them from the most conveniently located store – and those who were making the trip to Scotland and back had no intention of buying locally anyway – so it’s hard to know if this is a genuine win.
In fact, there is a strong argument to say that it was the constant influx of Scottish goods – from Scotland – that encouraged locals to buy more from the government-approved Scottish shops.
OK, we has stretched that analogy to breaking point – so we’ll leave it there.
Pirate Bay rebrands as a political party, Queen Elizabeth and her love of piracy – alongside a dubious graphic for the copyright defenders people (who 'borrowed' the design in the middle – ooops)
Comment below or in the Tecnobitsforums.
Users label Apple OS download dumb
Tecnobitsis in love with the Japanese idea of maximum efficiency with minimum effort. It’s something that permeates not only the universe as a whole, but the world if technology in particular. One of the first things that any computer science student learns is that, in life, remove repeating groups. Why doesn’t this apply to the iPad?
Way back on 11th May, we ran a story about Apple’s new iPad software update. Earlier, we were contacted by a reader to ask if their experience with the update was (a) normal or (b) totally bizarre.
Having seen our story, she had updated one of her iPads. The second iPad was being used by her kid, so she left it.
This morning, when she attached the second iPad to her PC, Apple not only told her that she needed a software update to 5.1.1 (which she had figured out already, when the same PC said the same thing the day before) – but it also insisted that she download a copy.
When you speak with Apple, they insist that the intelligence has been built into the iPad in such a way as to make it, well, friendly to all users. Maybe, but the download team works in another building.
Both of the iPads are ‘synched’ in the sense that they both install software with the same user name and password – so why the double download?
The use of the same user name and password, means that Apple automatically duplicated all of the software/purchases on both tablets – so the Jobs legacy knows that more than one tablet will need updating… so why not keep the download instead of pressuring the interwibble for a second batch of around 770MB of data.
Surely this has to be viewed as a kind of ‘really dumb and totally unnecessary kind of spam’ ?
It’s possible that we’ll now be contacted by an Apple guru to say that if only she’s sacrificed a rabbit with a granite blade, thrown potassium iodide over her left shoulder and chanted the phrase Steve Krishna seventeen times in a row, then a copy would have been saved – but it would be nice to be asked.
It's Deja Vu all over again
Comment below or in the Tecnobitsforums.
On Strength of Kepler, Nvidia Eyes $1.05 Billion in Revenue for Fiscal 2013
Nvidia President and Chief Financial Officer Jen-Hsun Huang gleefully indicated that “Kepler GPUs are accelerating our business” when reporting revenue of $924.9 million for the company’s first quarter of fiscal 2013 ended April 29, 2012. The irony there is that Kepler cards are in short supply and extremely difficult to find in stock, save for the GeForce GTX 670, which just went on sale yesterday. But despite GPU shortages (courtesy of TSMC’s inability to produce chips fast enough), Nvidia was able to best analysts’ expectations.
Looking ahead to the full year, Nvidia forecasts revenue to be between $990 and $1.05 billion.
“Our newly launched desktop products are winning some of the best reviews we’ve ever had. Notebook GPUs had a record quarter. And Tegra is on a growth track again, driven by great mobile device wins and the upcoming Windows on ARM launch,” Huang said. “Graphics is more important than ever. Look for exciting news next week at the GPU Technology Conference as we reveal new ways that the GPU will enhance mobile and cloud computing.”
Even though Nvidia’s Kepler launch has been hampered by short supply, the entire family of GPUs (GTX 670, 680, and 690) are receiving mostly positive reviews and should end up selling well once they’re actually available. If that’s the case, Nvidia can look forward to a strong year from a financial standpoint.
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Asus Introduces Two New Zenbook Ultrabooks with Ivy Bridge
Asus used a relatively low-key press event in Taipei to introduce the world to a pair of new Zenbook models built around Intel’s recently launched Ivy Bridge platform. The first of the two Ultrabooks is the Zenbook UX32A , an $800 machine with integrated graphics. For $300 more, the UX32Vd ups the pixel pushing ante with a GeForce GT 620M GPU with 1GB of onboard memory.
According to Netbooknews.com, which attended the event and snapped a handful of photos, both the $800 UX32A and $1,100 UX32Vd are 13.3-inch Ultrabooks with a handful of premium upgrade options, such as a Full HD 1080p IPS (In-Plane Switching) display, Intel WiDi technology, and dedicated SSD options rather than the stock 500GB hard drive + 24GB SSD cache.
Both models come equipped with either 2GB or 4GB of RAM. According to DigiTimes, the UX32Vd rocks an Intel Core i5 3317U processor, which likely serves as the foundation of the UX32A as well.
Image Credit: Asus
Facebook Co-Founder Renounces Citizenship, Will Avoid Massive IPO Tax Bill
According to a BBC News report, Saverin has been living in Singapore since 2009, and that’s where he’ll become an official citizen. As his spokesman succinctly put it, Saverin “found it more practical to become a resident of Singapore since he plans to live there for an indefinite period of time.” The allure of not having to pay $600 million in taxes undoubtedly played a role in that decision as well, as it’s been long known that Mark Zuckerberg and Co. planned to take Facebook public.
When Facebook does file an IPO, it will attempt to raise $10.6 billion, which would be the most ever for a technology firm. It would also value the site at almost $100 billion. Saverin currently holds a 4 percent stake in Facebook, according to BBC News.