Experiments in Cyberspace

German government is trying to push a law that will prevent employers to check their prospective employees' Facebook data. The draft presented by Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere is a lame -still positive, though, attempt to address surmounting problems created by social networks: It will be illegal to become a Facebook friend with an applicant in order to check out private details as some people seem to be indiscriminate about whom they accept as a friend. If an employer turns down an application based on the Facebook postings, a rejected job applicant could take the company to court and claim damages. The new law also aims to limit video surveillance in the workplace like lavatories and locker rooms after a public outrage when it was discovered that some corporations have been checking on employee e-mails and filming sales clerks during coffee breaks. However, de Maiziere continues, Employers will still be allowed to run a search on the web on their applicants. Anything ...

Swine flu has finally spread to cyberspace. Shocking as it may seem, visitors to INMI, the Japanese infectious disease center, have begun receiving mails titled "Information about Swine Flu," which reportedly contain computer viruses. No explanation has been given as to how the virus harms PCs. I usually take virus news light heartedly and always with a smile. Despite the harm they cause, they are also a symbol of human ingenuity for me. But this time, I have to say it is plain wicked, unnecessary and evil. We are on the verge of a serious epidemic and people are just trying to be a little more informed. Would it not be better if we tried to help them instead? Short URL for this post

"After careful consideration, we have decided to close GeoCities later this year. We'll share more details this summer. For now, please sign in or visit the help center for more information." Those are the words that welcome you if you visit GeoCities main page . Established in 1994, the free hosting service helped many to take their first steps in the cyber world. Yahoo bought it for $3.6 billion in 2001. I still have a few accounts there. Many incomplete pages, trials, experiments, some stuff I like to keep on-line but not want them easily found reside in GeoCities. I even remember using the service for image hosting. There are legendary sites disguised as innocent personal pages there. From mirrors of once popular cracking tutorials to +ORC's secret gateway, GeoCities helped the dream, the dream of a place where people and information will flow free, regardless of which sex, race or religious affiliation they belong to. Curtain falls, an era ends. Short U...

It will shortly, if ICANN's new proposal holds up, that is. According to Paul Levins, VP corporate affairs, any domain name will be possible, subject to your imagination, The familiar .com, .net, .org and 18 other suffixes — officially "generic top-level domains" — could be joined by a seemingly endless stream of new ones next year under a landmark change approved last summer by the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers, the entity that oversees the Web's address system. Tourists might find information about the Liberty Bell, for example, at a site ending in .philly. A rapper might apply for a web address ending in .hiphop. [...] To beat a competitor to the punch, a company might decide it needs to control a new generic domain, such as .cereal or .detergent, but it would be costly. The currently proposed application fee is $185,000, plus an annual "continuance" fee of $25,000. If more than one company wants a suffix, there could be a bidding w...

Renown auto maker Mercedes-Benz will start offering hybrid buses under the brand of "Citaro" soon. The bus will be be manufactured under the initiative of Daimler's "Shaping Future Transportation" with an aggressive target of zero emission. The initiative started in the mid 90s first with diesel-electric hybrids and continued with today's fuel celled ones (lithium-ion) as part of a research project called NEBUS. The reason I am interested in this technology is because I favor hybrids more than hydrogen-based vehicles where food supplies are at stake. It seems to me using plants or crops to generate energy is a bad idea. They are scarce or will be so in the near future. I am not into car tech and I could get it all wrong. So, take it with a grain of salt.

For whom you would ask. Well, definitely not for the so called copyright holders. Riyaz Jariwalla a solicitor who specialises in contentious matters sums up the trial nicely, Swedish filesharing providers Pirate Bay yesterday celebrated a victory in only its second day of its trial for allegedly assisting copyright infringement. The rights holders were unable to prove to the satisfaction of the court that files which were illegally distributed had been used on Pirate Bay. The prosecution which represented Warner Bros, MGM, Universal and EMI had to abandon the majority of the claims. Even if the case unfolds differently, the big labels lose ground on the public relations front. There is a growing dislike towards them thanks to ridiculous I should say charges pressed to individuals in the USA and I witnessed a fair amount of people who stopped buying any product from those big corporations. I am aware that making such a generalization is often wrong but that is what it is. Riyaz put...

The ever notorious bit-torrent tracker The Pirate Bay trial begins in Stockholm, Sweden. Three years ago the police raided the Bay's headquarters and seized their servers on the grounds that the Pirate Bay helped distribute copyrighted material. The popularity of the site steadily increased from then on and there is even a political party (The Pirate Party) defending alternative copyright laws. The accusations have been summed up in a 4,000 page paper. One particular note worth mentioning is Jim Keyzer, one of the police officers raided the peer to peer tracker three years ago is now an employee of Warner Bros. The curious may check the Pirate Bay blog . I am sure they will give some details about the progress of the trial from time to time.

Burhan was a phenomenon, to say the least. He was the most successful "on board" marketer doing business on the ferries crossing the Bosphorus. He was so popular that people deliberately delayed their purchases to see what he would be selling  on that day's voyage. His secret? quality merchandise money back guarantee and above all, an interesting combination of goods. Last item on the list was particularly important. He never sold a single item alone. There was first the prime product of the day, the flagship so to speak, and a secondary one, which was definitely intriguing. It was hard to resist the temptation. The bargain was there, together with the trust which was earned over the course of years Burhan conducted his business, a track record hard to beat. He refused all offers to build a company, saying he was making more than enough. He really was. Microsoft is planning a campaign or so I have heard, a free update to Windows 7 for buyers of Vista, which reminded...

Obviously the Conficker virus is going stronger than I thought. 20 technology firms including Microsoft, Verisign, Symantec and F-Secure have joined forces to find the source and/or the developer of the virus also known as Downadup, Sasser and Kido. They are offering $250,000 to anyone who can provide the information needed. Conficker is still spreading at an alarming rate of 2.2 million computers a day. Those who are running Windows operating system are strongly encouraged to apply the patch Microsoft released late October. It is also worth noting that the algorithm of the worm (this is the correct term) is still a mystery in spite of all the efforts by anti-virus companies.

The authorities from Los Alamos National Laboratory, a nuclear arms reasearch facility in New Mexico, USA have finally admmitted 69 of their computers are missing. Leaving aside the significance of the number 69, the lab spokesperson Kevin Roarke has said that there was no important information stored in the computers. Surely, I am not in a position to dispute Roarke's claim until I am finished with all the files (this is the joke part). All in all, I feel much safer now. I know that researchers in Los Alamos are simple souls just like me, surfing internet with their PC's. What a relief!

Cuba is soon to get into the list of countries with a national Linux distribution. The interesting government of Cuba, which until last year did not allow her citizens to own a PC or a cellular phone, has made a quantum leap according to our man in Havana. The distro has been introduced in 13. International Technology Fair to the enthusiastic spectators. Hector Rodriguez, Dean of Faculty of Open Source Software at University of Havana said: "Linux is ideologically more convenient for us." Closed sourced commercial  operating systems like Microsoft are not allowed into Cuba because of U.S. embargo.

Gods must be hungry as they are looking for more pain and misery. Nine Iranian bloggers (five of them ethnic Azeris ) will be jailed and whipped for good measure to satisfy and feed the ever starving Gods so that stormy weathers will cease, crops will flourish and harvests will yield record levels of produce. What did these bloggers do? I really can't tell as my Persian is rusty and the damn alphabet is not Latin, but apparently they upset a few religious figures with colorful turbans with their articles in their blog, which is usually blocked or temporarily closed so that they will behave. Go Gods!

Protection is not confined to your bedroom or another convenient place as this year's Valentine's Day approaches. Those old, sorry mature enough to remember the havoc caused by the cute "I Love You" and "Love Letter" viruses will sadly remember. How time flies, doesn't it? The damages had exceeded 6 billion dollars, then. You can of course say "it's worth it," or a similar cliche but better be protected rather than sorry. Possible names for these lovely bugs to reappear on or around this naughty day of February might be "You are beautiful", "From me to you", "I wanna hold your hand", "Only you", "Love at first sight", "I am addicted to you", "Our song", "Save the last dance for me", "Helter Skelter" (O.K., this one's a joke)... But you get the drill. Be vewy vewy careful!

  Tomorrow we shall witness a penumbral (not full) lunar eclipse. It will be visible in Eastern Europe, Middle East, Western Africa while the Moon is rising, and in North America while the Moon is setting. In places to the east of Iran, the event can be observed all night. As you may know 2009 is World Astronomy Year and I invite everyone to participate the observation.

Here is the only known picture of the so called 500 Rupee / 10 dollar laptop , the Indian Sakshat . Unfortunately it is anything but a PC. It can connect to a network, has limited disk space and can make a calculation or two. Apparently, the digital divide is to stay with us for some time.

Four Google executives in Italy is facing trial over a video shown in that country. If found guilty, they will be sentenced up to three years in jail. This is an interesting case. Let me sum up: The video recorded by a cell phone was about four male high school students in Turin harassing a 17-year-old boy with Down syndrome. Google removed the video in 24 hours after receiving the complaint. All four offenders were caught, possibly with the help of the video. The lawsuit is not against Google but the people working for Google. As you might have guessed it, what makes this interesting is the last item in the list above. Apparently, it is getting riskier to work for Internet companies as you can all of a sudden find yourself looking at the judge because, a co-worker slipped and some unwanted content is uploaded; some may think you deliberately allow the content be distributed; you did not remove the content right away and spent some time with your family instead; this will ...

Too good to be true? Well, after 100 thousand rupee (2000 usd) car Tata Nano, 800 rupee (15 usd) L10 mobile phone, apparently India managed to make a 10 dollar laptop, in spite of criticism by many experts. The concept of cheap laptops which will abridge the big digital divide between rich and poor, is the dream child of Prof. Nicholas Negraponte of MIT with his OLPC, One Laptop Per Child Project. The OLPC's XO PC costs roughly 200 dollars and has been sort of a huge success in South American countries. The Sakshat laptop PC, if true can really be a dream come true for many living in undeveloped countries. Like in every wonderful story, there is a catch. I have seen some sources citing the price of Sakshat as 5000 rupees or 100 dollars. We shall see the actual price tomorrow at the press conference. Still, even a hundred dollar price tag is good enough.

Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim will invest $250 million in the New York Times. "Slim's money will be used in critical pay-backs that are due late Spring this year," Janet Robinson of Times has said. So far, so good. I am glad for the newspaper but who on earth is Carlos Slim? Reportedly, he is the owner of Banco Inbursa and Inmobiliaria Carso among other companies. And he suddenly felt the need to invest in a troubled industry, media; not in a TV, a dot com or an initially shining technology co. Call me a skeptic but I attribute the erosion of trust in journalism to mostly such deals. A newspaper is only as good as it is critical, the more the better, and my experience with such financing methods in this part of the world is not very pleasant. Such money is poured into media to provide leverage for creditors against competition, their competition, not the newspaper's. Let us hope this one does not turn sour.

Jake Wall's software AnimalLink uses SMS and GPS technology to prevent elephants hoarding the farms in Kenya. So far, 44 of these lovely and big creatures have been tagged with the software that reports their current position to authorities. Wall estimates thousands of dollars of damage have been avoided after the elephants were tagged. AnimalLink sends the exact position of the elephants to a server in Nairobi and if the animals are getting close to a farm, rangers are dispatched to prevent the incident. The software cannot unfortunately do much against illegal hunters and poachers, however, Wall is upgrading it so that AnimalLink will send a text message if an elephant does not make a move for more than five hours. Image: Save the Elephants

Sun Sentinel reports that January 2009 marks the first-ever celebration of National Drag History Month! This month-long event salutes the richness of drag culture and pays tribute to the courageous queens & kings who have fought for equality while inspiring, educating & entertaining us all. More Gay & Lesbian Video Taking this opportunity, let me recommend you a movie, if you have not watched it before of course: The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert [B&N]. Directed by Stephan Elliot, with Terence Stamp, Hugo Weaving, Guy Pearce and Bill Hunter in leading roles, it is a beautiful road movie across Australia. The performances of Stamp and Pearce are not easily forgettable. The film received a best costume award in Oscars if I am not wrong.