پاکستان: گوگل سمیت متعدد ویب سائٹس ہیک

پاکستان کے سرکاری ذرائع ابلاغ کے مطابق گوگل پاکستان سمیت ملک کی متعدد سرکاری اور نجی ویب سائٹ کو ہیک کیا گیا۔

سنیچر کو پاکستان کے سرکاری ریڈیو کے مطابق ترکی کے ہیکرز نے گوگل پاکستان کی ویب سائٹ ہیک کرنے کا دعویٰ کیا ہے۔

صرف گوگل پاکستان ویب سائٹ ہیک کی گئی اور گوگل کا انٹرنیشل پورٹل فعال 

رہا۔

ریڈیو پاکستان نے ملک میں ٹیلی کیمونیکشن اور انٹرنیٹ کے نگران ادارے پی ٹی اے کے حوالے سے بتایا ہے کہ گوگل پاکستان کی ویب سائٹ کو بحال کر دیا گیا ہے۔

BitTorrent Community Beware of CCI Hunt

By the end of 2012, the Centre for Copyright Information is planning to begin tracking down people downloading copyrighted content through BitTorrent networks. Beware of CCI, everyone!

Everyone understands that a lot of Internet users, both Americans and foreigners, prefer to download their favourite films, songs and games through BitTorrent networks. Few people are ready to give up their habits, but the chances are that the CCI will come for all of them.

In-Car Wi-Fi Predicted to Boom Soon

According to the industry experts, in-car Wi-Fi has to boom with the automotive industry getting to grip with the popularity of various mobile devices. In fact, car manufacturers have been equipping the vehicles with cutting edge technology for a while now, with more and more microchips emerging in cars.

 The recent research suggests that the number of chips sold to the automotive industry will grow at a much faster pace than the rest of the industry, and the entire market will reach $28 billion in 3 years. Taking into account that Google lives out its sci-fi fantasies of the driverless cars, the ordinary car is expected to differ very much over the coming decades.

Copyright Independent Expert Lobbied for Music Industry

The Center for Copyright Information was recently created by the Motion Picture Association of America and Recording Industry Association of America. The outfits agreed that all the collected data should be checked by an independent 3rd party. However, it turned out that the “independent expert” they chose was RIAA’s ex-lobbying group, which made no sense to regard it as an impartial analysis.

The content industry promised op all file-sharers that soon all of American Internet traffic will be monitored, according to the treaty signed between the content owners and ISPs. In addition, the industry also decided to hire an independent

Assange Has Health Problems

Ecuador is worried about Julian Assange’s health, because the latter apparently is noticed losing weight and experiencing some vision problems. The WikiLeaks founder is currently hiding in the Ecuadorian embassy in the attempt to avoid being deported to Sweden in order to be questioned of sexual abuse. Julian Assange believes that he is too important to the world to just go and deal with the accusations that were invented by the federal authorities with the only purpose to get him extradited to the United States.

Now it turns out that living in the Ecuadorian embassy is bad for his health. In result, the Foreign Minister, Ricardo Patino, had to request a meeting with his UK counterpart – William Hague.

United Nations Urge Online Anti-Terrorism Strategy

A recent report conducted by United Nations is urging governments to discuss and implement surveillance regulations in order to prevent terrorists communicating online.

The United Nations claimed that although everyone recognizes the threat posed by terrorists use of the web, there is still no strategy to address this problem. It is said that the web can be used in many ways to support terrorism, for example to post propaganda, to train, to finance, and to plan. The United Nations even mentioned the platforms used by terrorists to arrange the acts, among which there were Facebook and YouTube.

Java Bug Fixed in 30 Minutes

One of the security experts is blaming Oracle for inactivity for Java’s problems. Adam Gowdiak, a security specialist, was angry that the company has been doing nothing to develop fixes for some important software vulnerabilities. For example, one of the flaws, dubbed Issue 50, is only scheduled to be fixed next February.

Adam Gowdiak claimed that the software developer was doing wrong thing by stupidly sticking to a quarterly patch release cycle which wasn’t even understandable. The security expert wrote in Full Disclosure that the response of the software giant was that its

Facebook Profits from Mobile Adverts

Wall Street was shocked when Facebook made an outstanding amount of money from its mobile advertising. The social network confirmed that its mobile advertising revenue increased several times within the 3rd quarter. Facebook share values grew 13% following the news.

According to the statistics, Facebook has 14% of its advertising revenue coming from mobile advertisement. Hopefully, these figures will be able to reassure the potential and current investors that Facebook is starting to realize how to make money off smartphone and tablet users.

Android Apps Open System to Malware

According to the researchers from Germany’s Leibniz University of Hannover and Philips University of Marburg, Android apps which the security experts failed to properly test are now opening the OS up to malware. They have found out that over 40 apps in Google’s Play Market leak personal details while travelling between handsets that run Android and webservers for banks and other online services.

When you connect Android devices to a local area network which used a wide range of well-known exploits, some of which are found on the Internet, it is very easy to defeat the security protocols used by the above mentioned applications. All of them are quite popular and have been downloaded from up to 185

Another BitTorrent Mass Lawsuit Rejected

Around 1,000 subpoenas within a mass BitTorrent lawsuit have been rejected by the American District Judge Faith S. Hochberg. The case involved a lot of Internet users who were accused of illegal downloading of the latest album Dark Adrenaline by Italian metal band Lacuna Coil.

A few months ago, the label named Nuclear Blast Records, which signed metal band All Shall Perish, was trying to pursue eighty BitTorrent users alleged of having downloaded the latest album of All Shall Perish through BitTorrent websites. Today a similar

UK Music Outfit Blacklisted BitTorrent Portals

The British Phonographic Industry is trying to force major British Internet service providers prevent their subscribers from accessing a number of BitTorrent portals, including Kickass Torrents, Fenopy, and H33t.

The list of broadband providers which have received letters with such a request includes TalkTalk, BT, Sky, Virgin Media, and O2 – basically, all major Internet providers of the country. All of them have agreed to enforce this new anti-piracy measure, but only when a new court order is passed.

Amazon Stealing Cash from UK Citizens

Online seller Amazon has been making profits from its UK customers by making them pay 20% VAT on electronic book sales, while the seller has to pay only 3% VAT. The difference is simply pocketed by Amazon.

Newspapers claim that the Luxembourg-based bookseller is making money from a European tax anomaly, trousering the difference between what it forces customers to pay and what it really pays itself.

Windows 7 Becoming More Infected

According to official Microsoft statistics, Windows 7’s malware infection rate has increased by no less than 182% in 2012, but the operating system is still recognized to be 3 times safer than its predecessor Windows XP.

Although the figure of 182% is obviously staggering, it is still 3 times better than that of XP, which is blamed to be as insecure as letting the Anonymous hacker group look after a Greek government portal dedicated to the visit of Germany’s Angela Merkel.

The Pirate Bay Founder Kept in Solitary Confinement

One of The Pirate Bay founders, Gottfrid Svartholm, is currently locked up in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day. Gottfrid is only allowed to speak to his guards.

He was arrested by Cambodian police in Phnom Penh and immediately deported to Sweden because its government wanted him as much as to sign an aid package with Cambodia. Although he was supposed to go back to Sweden to serve his one year’s jail sentence for copyright violation, he is apparently getting some unusual treatment.

His mother, Kristina, admitted that The Pirate Bay prison term was being used to hold Svartholm for a more serious crime of conducting a hacker attack on the Swedish taxman. This case is

Google Shares Fell after Earnings Leak

The international company has seen its share prices plummet with its Chief Executive Officer being ruthlessly parodied after he somehow managed to accidentally leak the company’s 3rd-quarter earnings to the web a few days ago.

Local media suggest that the company’s financial printer has accidentally published a draft version of its third-quarter earnings online. The search giant was expected to publish its financial report only after the markets closed.

Australia Will Censor Abusive Portals

The Australian police confirmed it would prosecute Facebook hate page owners. A top copper from Victoria’s Police e-crime squad is reported to be looking at way he could catch and prosecute people who created a Facebook page which denigrated Jill Meagher. The latter was abducted, raped and killed this September.

In most cases, the police can do nothing about online crime, but Greg Dever, Detective Senior Sergeant, is studying the laws and believes he might have grounds to arrest the creators of the online pages on incitement grounds. In the meantime, there has been a

US ISP Will Start Sending Infringement Warnings

According to media reports, one of the largest US broadband providers, AT&T, is ready to start sending anti-piracy warnings next month. The company’s management has already decided how and when they will act.

Apparently, AT&T had come up with a plan to apply the “six-strikes” graduated response system. In means that the users who often visit “notorious sites” won’t be able to access them any longer, until they pass an online copyright education. The “six-strikes” regime was the idea of the entertainment industry and involved 5 largest American ISPs – together they made up the Center for Copyright Information.

Netflix Illegally Used Illegal Subtitles

As a matter of fact, it turned out that content being used in Finland by Netflix was illegally using subtitles stolen from some enthusiast group.

The Finnish subscribers using Netflix last week discovered that the content was provided along with the subtitles that had been created by some movies and TV-series enthusiast amateur outfit called DivX Finland. The group in question shares the subtitles on the Internet for free, but specifies in the license terms that the use of the texts for commercial purposes is not allowed.

White House Cleared Chinese Tech Firm of Spying Allegations

Finally, the US White House has cleared Huawei of all spying allegations. Just a week ago, the American congressional report has warned against allowing Huawei and ZTE, both based in China, to supply critical telecom infrastructure. The fears were that the use of Chinese software posed a security risk to American companies, since Huawei could transfer over sensitive information to its government.

Nevertheless, the White House reviewed the security risks posed by Huawei and ZTE to American telecommunications firms and found no evidence that they had spied for their government. It was said that there was risk about the gear of Huawei, the 2nd largest

The Pirate Bay Moved to the Cloud

The largest BitTorrent tracker has been operating for almost a decade now. Within these years, The Pirate Bay faced endless line of problems and copyright owners were doing their best to make it disappear. However, the tracker managed to not just surpass them, but also to thrive. Now The Pirate Bay has moved from physical servers to the cloud.

Earlier in October, Swedish authorities have raided PRQ – a company that used to host the servers of The Pirate Bay – and seized a few of them. Although it is still unclear who exactly had

Wireless Charging and Data Transfer

Isis Innovation has recently introduced a simple, safe and inexpensive way to power and charge various electrical devices, at the same time exchanging information without any cables.

This technology was created in Oxford and is claimed to allow people to wirelessly power and exchange information over distance through very simple and inexpensive engineering. The technology relates to magneto-inductive waves and is said to allow the rapid transfer of both power and data between devices without any wires.

Facebook Revealed Users’ “Likes” to Advertisers

Once again, the world’s largest social network has sailed into a new privacy storm, because it became known that Facebook was providing some of its advertisers with the information on members’ “likes”.

Local media confirmed that Facebook allowed its favored advertisers to use an internal instrument which shows them what other pages their own fans like. In other words, the “priority” advertising companies now know what films their fans like, which products they buy and what music they listen to. This was discovered by AdWeek which made it public that extra special business partners of the social network were allowed to access the instrument in question for now.

America Looking for a Cyber Reason to Invade Iran

Desperate to find a reason to get involved, the military establishment of the United States decided to use its latest bugbear of cyber warfare as its latest pretext. The country is now claiming that Iran is going to fire cyber weapons of mass distraction.

A week ago, the American military issued the warning, saying that they might have to take an action to stop a cyber war. In the meantime, the Defense Secretary also claimed that the country faced a risk of a so-called “cyber-Pearl Harbor”. These claims were made after the last year mutterings that cyber war might be countered with conventional weaponry.

Britain Failed to Catch up with FTTH Broadband Plan

The United Kingdom appeared to have the worst FTTH Broadband, according to a recent report. According to the FTTH Council Europe, there are 22 countries having over 1% of households with access to FTTH broadband, while Europe in a whole featured a 16% increase in subscribers. At the moment, there are over 32,000,000 homes in the region with FTTH, featuring 5,950,000 subscribers.

However, the United Kingdom wasn’t in the rankings because of its low FTTH penetration. The statistics say that the country only has 0.05% of subscribers with access to FTTH, despite the government assurance to ensure the fastest broadband in the region by 2015.

Kaspersky Discovered New Espionage Software

Kapersky Lab has recently uncovered new malware and called it “miniFlame”, because it linked directly to Flame. This piece of software, also known as SPE, was originally found by insecurity experts 4 months ago when they were analyzing the Flame virus – an application responsible for espionage attacks on the PCs running Windows in the Middle East. This July Kaspersky Lab recognized the Flame virus as the most sophisticated malware yet discovered. However, today’s discovery proves that the scale of the operation appears larger than anyone could imagine.

According to the security experts’ findings, miniFlame shares the same architecture with Flame, but can also operate by itself as a

Germany Spying on Its Citizens

Everyone knows that Germans are a bit sensitive about digital privacy, but now it appears the German government has no problems with spying on its citizens. Many Germans were very surprised to know that they are being constantly monitored.

Recently the German authorities admitted that the police monitor such communication services as Skype and Facebook chat, along with major mail services, including Yahoo Mail, Google Mail, and MSN Hotmail. According to the government, the services are monitored “as and when necessary”, but still very precisely.

UK Hacker Extradition Blocked

UK’s Home Secretary has finally announced that Gary McKinnon won’t be extradited to the United States to face charges for hacking into their military system. Speaking at the House of Commons, Theresa May announced that the hacker should stay in the United Kingdom to face charges for hacking the US computers more than a decade ago.

Janis Sharp, Gary’s mother, has been trying to argue for the last 10 years that her son, Asperger’s sufferer, would be at a very high risk of him ending his life in case of extradition. Theresa May has heard her words and said that after careful consideration she had come to a conclusion that extradition could have really caused such a high risk of suicide that extradition would be incompatible with his human rights. As a result, Home Secretary has withdrawn the extradition order against Gary McKinnon.

UK Watchdog Fined Police for Data Breach

The UK watchdog Information Commissioners Office has recently slapped the police authorities with a $200,000 penalty after they were found guilty of a serious data breach. This is how it happened.

Greater Manchester Police was called to account after an investigation carried out by the Information Commissioners Office. The investigation was prompted by the theft of a memory stick which contained sensitive personal information from an officer’s home. It turned out that the memory stick had no password protection and was carrying the information about over a thousand people, as well as the links to serious crime investigations.

ACTA to Resurrect in Europe

Entertainment industry and politicians have repackaged the controversial law to sell it as a new one. It seems that the EC thinks its elected politicians and public are all stupid. The international treaty known as the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) has been negotiated for a long time, eventually causing outrage of much of the world. After this, the politicians had to drop their support and people believed that was the end of the treaty.

The European Parliament was even reported cheering that the agreement didn't pass, lauding it as a win for democracy. Nevertheless, it seemed that the European Commission decided to make another attempt and please the content industry with recycling ACTA and introducing it as an entirely new bill.

Hacker Will Hear His Extradition Verdict

Gary McKinnon is expected to hear a verdict from the Home Office on his extradition to the United States this week, after 10 years wait. His lawyer confirmed that a ruling would finally be handed down over extraditing the UK citizen to face charges for hacking into American government networks.

Janis Sharp, the mother of the UK resident, has spent the last decade fighting the efforts to extradite McKinnon, who was alleged of breaking into US military and NASA PCs. She has repeatedly claimed that her son, Asperger’s sufferer, would be at severe risk of suicide if extradited to another country. Industry experts believe that he might face a sentence of up to sixty years for hacking.

Microsoft Launched Its Own Music Service

Microsoft started to bring into action its cunning plan to copy Apple’s iTunes. As a result, the company recently announced the launch of its own music service.

This isn’t the first time that the software giant has had a crack at copying Apple’s music service. The first attempt has failed dismally: Microsoft’s Zune entertainment system has got the thumbs down by the Tame Apple press. Now the company has decided to take advantage of Xbox console’s success as its selling

New Video Game Leaked to BitTorrent

The last few days were happy time for the gamers all over the world: they had really good reasons to become excited, because someone has shared their newly released Halo 4 through torrent portals.

The image posted on the websites and recently confirmed by the publisher revealed the two discs included in Halo 4 video game. The first disk has the full game on it, while the second one contains the install files. Despite the fact the there is almost three weeks left before the official launch of Halo 4, the 343 industries-developed Xbox 360 exclusive game has already been leaked onto peer-to-peer file-sharing portals.

US Military to Launch Cyber Strikes

The military of the United States is allowed to act preemptively in the event of detection of an imminent threat of hacker attack. Meanwhile, a presidential executive order is “while we wait for Congress to act”.

US Defense Secretary has issued a warning that some unnamed actors were trying to target computer control systems responsible for chemical, electricity and water plants in the country, as well as those operating transportation. It is not clear why China is training actors to hack American infrastructure – maybe the country wants to use the Academy Awards to cover for the attack.

Users Accidentally Like Romney on Facebook

It seems that Facebook software is now causing a lot of defriendings, because it somehow makes liberals look like they like Republican candidate Mitt Romney.

It has been for a while now that Internet users who don’t actually like the idea of being ruled by Mitt Romney were wondering why the largest social network in the world tells everyone that they like him. The largest problem is that it is causing a purge because the friends fall out. It was a surprise for many to find out that some people didn’t actually really like this person at all.

Apple Software Exposed Windows Passwords

The recent report published by insecurity experts revealed that Apple security software is perfect for exposing Windows devices. The matter is that the software in question is able to turn over Windows PCs sold by more than 15 largest manufacturers, including Dell and Asus. It exploits Apple’s fingerprint-reading software named UPEK Protector Suite.

 

 Four months ago, Apple spent $356,000,000 to acquire Authentek, which had obtained the abovementioned technology from privately held UPEK a few years ago. So, Apple isn’t actually responsible for creating the vulnerable software, but still keeps playing its security games, thus placing its customers at risk. The software giant has yet to acknowledge the vulnerability and educate the users how to work around it.

Google Was Quick to Patch a Flaw

It took Google less than a day to release a new version of its browser after a critical flaw was discovered by a young hacker. Google offered good money for discovering Chrome security holes, and one was found by a young hacker nicknamed Pinkie Pie. As a result, he got $60,000 cash prize and a free Chromebook.

Now the flaw has already been patched and the search giant announced a new version of Google Chrome for Windows, Mac, and Linux at their official website. The company confirmed that it was proof of the need of the hacker competition. In the post on its

Cloud Gaming Service Sold for Nothing

The cloud-based game service OnLive was recently sold for less than $5 million, which was recognized as one of the most embarrassing industry failures of 2012. The deal caused many of the company’s employees losing their jobs, with the investors writing off their stakes. The sale was completed almost three months ago, but for some reason was kept secret.

According to the industry reports, the experts had previously estimated OnLive’s value at as much as $1.8 billion. Indeed, the business was very promising, especially considering all that

Australian Media Giant Choose BitTorrent for Promotion

Australian Fairfax Media was unsatisfied with the cost of licensing video for its new TV website and simply chose BitTorrent for adding popular material for its audience.

Fairfax TV was recently reported to adopt a very unusual strategy to promote its content. The media giant decided to use the peer-to-peer network for searching the popular videos and find out what its audience is interested in. After this the publisher can contact the copyright holders of the popular videos to make a deal for making them officially available online.

Australia Blamed Hollywood for Absence of Concern

Australia’s Communications Alliance isn’t happy about the movie industry’s absence of concern over piracy. This organization is the dominant telecommunications industry body in Australia, whose main purpose is to regulate the solutions in a sound manner. Australia’s Communications Alliance is also trying to make use of the modern digital era by supervising the enforcement of National Broadband Network.

The CEO of the organization criticized Hollywood efforts of ending with a co-regulatory solution when the question of copyright violation is raised. Communications Alliance believes that the entertainment industry simply doesn’t want to create a precedent of being fair. The Attorney General’s Department has been arranging

US Jury Won’t Accept IP Address as Proof of Infringement

An American jury is close to making a landmark decision as to whether an IP address is sufficient to identify a software pirate. Copyright infringement cases massively launched by the entertainment industry always depend on identifying the IP address of the devices. However, industry experts have been questioning for a while now whether the IP address can be enough for evidence, since it can only identify a broadband connection, not a particular individual.

An adult video label named Malibu Media has launched about 350 mass lawsuits in 2012. Majority of the cases were settled out of court as the label had an IP address of the alleged infringers and therefore could threaten them with settlement demands. However,

Streaming Service Will Pay Musicians Directly

Rdio, the music-streaming service representing a good challenger to Spotify, decided to adopt an innovative business model. The portal has announced that it would offer payments to artists based on each fan on the site.

Rdio called this project the “Artist Program” and offered the musicians $10 for every new fan who subscribes to streaming music service through a social media channel. This innovative approach will definitely appeal to musicians and may put the portal ahead of its largest competitors, because the others are currently

McAfee Will Lay off Few Employees

McAfee has announced that it was planning to lay off only a small percentage of its 7,100 personnel. In the meantime, the local media reported that the security arm of Intel refused to disclose when the company is planning to do so and why it made this decision. Some of the news agency expressed the opinion that this decision might result from the current economic crisis, which has seen the computer software industry experience.

Industry experts believe that that McAfee might slump even more because of the upcoming Microsoft’s Windows 8, which will be released with pre-installed antivirus software when the operating system is introduced later in October.

Internet Giants to Affect Financial Industry’s Future

The recent report revealed that digital media companies could participate in creating the financial future. In the meantime they are unlikely to take over from traditional banks. The experts predict that even with the hype about digital giants like Apple or Google wiping out the largest banks, traditional banks will still continue to develop and have the edge over their rivals.

According to the report, the evolution of the web still evokes the questions about the continued viability of the companies working in retailing and financial areas. The experts explained that this is because online giants were regarded as the commercial entities of the future.

Largest Chinese Tech Giants Not Allowed into US

According to the American House of Representatives’ Intelligence Committee, they must shut Huawei out of the domestic market due to potential Chinese state influence on the companies, which may pose a security threat.

The position the United States has taken is the opposite of that in the United Kingdom, where Huawei cooperates with the UK intelligence agencies. The panel leaders of the United States have carried out an 11-month investigation of both entities due to the fears that China might spy on them.

Hackers Attacked Greek Sites

Well-known hacker collective Anonymous took down Greek government official sites right before the German Chancellor Angela Merkel was supposed to pay a visit.



It seems that Angela Merkel’s plan to visit Greece is likely to spark angry protests from the citizens who don’t approve of the way the Germany is demanding ever stronger austerity measures. Numerous news agencies were reporting yesterday of different government sites going offline late on Monday. The attacked authorities included the Ministry of Justice, the Citizens Protection Ministry, and the police.

Microsoft Demands Google to Block News Sites

The software giant appears to become censorship crazy – it is asking the search engine to remove links to news content. Microsoft has been dashing off censorship request to Google to remove BBC, Wikipedia, and CNN stories.

The number of DMCA takedown requests issued by the rights owners has rocketed within the last period and it seems that some of them are abusing the process. Actually, they may do it not on purpose: a lot of copyright owners prefer using automated systems to warn the search engine and other portals of the copyright violations, but this method doesn’t always work properly.

Facebook Can Face Legal Action in Australia

The largest social network in the world is having problems with the judicial system of Australia. The troubles flared after the arrest of the individual charged with the murder and rape of Melbourne woman.

The social network was accused of stuffing up the chances of a successful prosecution and the defendant's right to a fair trial. The matter is that Facebook hosted pages inciting hatred against the accused individual. This is why Victoria’s Attorney-General had to notify Facebook that the service could face legal action in the event of failure to remove content which could jeopardize legal trials.

WikiLeaks Founder to Sue Australian Prime Minister

Julian Assange, currently under investigation after two women claimed they were sexually assaulted by him, has decided to pay back and drag another woman into court with claims that she defamed him.

Although Julian Assange believes that it’s too dangerous to face criminal charges in court, he at the same time reckons that it’s absolutely safe for him to launch a lawsuit against Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard for defamation.

Fate of the MegaUpload’s Users’ Data

Apparently, the judge is asking for more evidence to make a right decision on the question of what should happen to the data seized by the authorities from MegaUpload’s users. Fortunately, before making a final decision over the large amount of information that belongs to the former users of the cyberlocker MegaUpload, an American federal judge has requested more details in order to help him resolve the problem.

Actually, judge Liam O’Grady decided to hold another hearing in a bid to help him make a final decision because of The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), who filled a motion seven months ago on behalf of Kyle Goodwin. The latter is a sports reporter from

Microsoft Co-Founder Baffled by New Windows OS

One of Microsoft’s founders, Paul Allen, had to admit that he was baffled by Windows 8, but later sorted the things out.

The man known for co-founding Microsoft along with Bill Gates admitted he found new Windows OS not easy to manage when first tried it. Paul Allen explained that he had been running Windows 8 Release Preview on his desktop and a Samsung 700T tablet when he faced a number of puzzling aspects of the operating system, including the dual, and sometimes dueling user interfaces.

Nokia Will Sell Its Finnish Headquarters

Nokia suddenly decided to sell its HQ in Espoo, Finland. Media reports say that this decision was part of the intention to get rid of non-core assets. Nokia’s representatives confirmed that their company is considering various options for non-core assets, including real estate holdings like headquarters.

The experts from the estate agency believe that Nokia’s well appointed glass and steel building which features its own hot and cold running water can be sold for up to $390,000,000. The only problem here is that it is unclear where Nokia’s employees, including the accountants and executives, will be able to gather and have meetings to practice their use of buzzwords. The joke of

Cloud Storage Appeared Not Profitable At All

Although many experts in the industry claim that cloud services, management software, and storage are literally a license to make money even during a recession, it looks like the company named BMC Software believes into the opposite.

BMC Software, Inc. is a US-based entity with headquarters in Houston, Texas, which specializes in business service management software. The company is developing, marketing and selling software that the businesses can use for different functions – for instance, IT service management, information center automation,

YouTube Improving Its Takedown Requests Process

The most popular streaming service across the globe has been using Content ID – a kind of software that contributes to the website’s attempts to stay within the legal boundaries and remove illegal content under takedown requests.

The portal has been using Content ID for 4 years now, and it figured out that it’s time for a change. The service made a decision to improve the appeals process in order to help the users who upload content fight gratuitous requests. In addition, YouTube believes that this software should be able to detect false takedown requests, which would help minimize the risk of massive takedowns.

US Politicians Spy on Each Other in WoW

The US Democratic Party was noticed doing crazy things recently – it went as far as to start a witch hunt into how the candidates play the World of Warcraft.

In the State of Maine, one of the Democratic candidates was told she can’t be stand for office only because she played an Orc assassination rogue. She was attacked for a “bizarre double life”, since in World of Warcraft her character is “Santiaga” – an “orc assassination rogue” that features green skin, fangs, a Mohawk and pointy ears.

Online Killer – a 77-Year-Old Woman

A 77-year-old pensioner, known for using Internet dating agencies in order to lure rich men into marriage contracts and killing them, was arrested once again.

Nova Scotia police dubbed Millie Weeks “Black Widow” not without a cause. The woman, also known as Melissa Friedrich, was arrested again and accused of the attempted murder of her husband of a fortnight.

Music Star Violated Children’s Privacy

Justin Bieber was accused of violating the privacy of the girls who visited his official site. Actually, all of his victims wouldn’t mind to hand over their personal data, especially those who believed that Justin might really know who they were. However, the privacy watchdogs were furious.

The local newspapers report that the firm involved into making official fan websites for Justin and his representatives have reached an agreement with the authorities to pay $1,000,000 in order to settle charges that they illegally collected personal details about over 100,000 kids.

Swedish Police Seized WikiLeaks’ Hosting Company Servers

PeRiQuito AB, better known as PRQ, hosts some of WikiLeaks’ servers and also offered its hosting services to the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker The Pirate Bay. A few days ago the Swedish police showed up to seize its servers.

This Monday, Stockholm police came to PRQ to seize 4 of its servers. At the same day, PRQ’s own official site and The Pirate Bay’s website went down. However, the company’s representatives denied that these events had anything to do with the raid. PRQ insisted that the power shortages were due to some technical problems.

Virgin Media Misinformed Its Clients

Eighteen people have submitted complaints with the Advertising Standards Authority that a TV advertisement claiming that the ISP offered a broadband service without buffering was misleading.

The complainants claimed that they could still experience buffering. In response, the service provider argued that although there was a technical definition of the term “buffering”, the consumers misunderstood it and believed it was synonymous with terms “interruptions” and “delays” accompanied by the buffering symbol appearing on the screen.

Foreign Music Sites Scoped by Music Industry

The RIAA was granted subpoenas in the case involving 3 foreign file-sharing portals. The next step of the outfit will be to get the IP addresses and personal data of the websites’ operators.

Despite the fact that the budget of Recording Industry Association of America has suffered dramatic changes recently, it had no impact on the outfit’s intention to stop piracy. This September, for example, it has sent more than 800,000 takedown requests to Google.

Google Won't Allow the Author to Give Away His Book

Industry observers often call Google’s customer service a “massive failure”, and now they can say the same about the company’s overzealous attempts to fight piracy. The experts point to an example of Cody Jackson – an author who decided to make his book available for free.

Jackson’s book is titled “Start Programming with Python”, and he decided to give it away for free in consideration of all the benefits offered by the open-source community. Internet users could find links to download this work for free, but the writer also asked everyone to support his work through donations. Cody Jackson

Phone Snooping Law Vetoed in California

Jerry Brown, a Californian governor, believes that people are better off with the law enforcement authorities knowing what they are doing all the time.

The Californian governor vetoed SB 1434 – the bill which required police to apply for a search warrant to obtain location tracking data. The governor is expected to explain his decision, because the bill passed through the state legislature with overwhelming bipartisan support. Even the local media believed that it was a great idea and there was extensive support for the bill.

Private Data Traded Online

Almost 20,000,000 pieces of private data have been illegally bought and sold on the Internet in the beginning of 2012, which allowed fraudsters opening new accounts.

The statistics was provided by the latest results of Experian’s “Life in a Box” experiment. The latter has found that almost 20 million pieces of private data were traded illegitimately in the first 6 months of 2012. This is more than in the whole of 2011.