Microsoft recently announced that its upcoming Xbox One would require an Internet connection every 24 hours in order to work. This, along with the $499 price tag and their stance on used games, has left the gaming community at least a little angry. For some it comes down to more… … Read More
Above The Law: Supreme Court Sides With Monsanto Over Farmers In Patent Case
In a concerning decision made by the United States Supreme Court that once again highlights the close connection between Monsanto and government, the court upheld Monsanto’s financial crusade against struggling farmers. … Read More
Internal Microsoft memo shoots down ‘always online’ Xbox concerns
We’ve been very skeptical about reports claiming the next-generation Xbox would require a persistent Internet connection to play games. Although an updated Xbox roadmap detailed by VGLeaks mostly dispelled that idea, today we’re as close as we’ll get to putting the rumors to rest short of an official announcement. … … Read More
The Pirate Bay relocates to Iceland after Greenland rejection
The Pirate Bay’s operators first moved from Sweden to Greenland after anticipating that their domain would be seized by authorities. That fear became a reality after the move to Greenland earlier this month when, just days after making the switch, Tele-Post, the company responsible for domain registrations in Greenland, revoked The Pirate Bay’s rights citing “illegal” use.The ISNIC, Iceland’s equivalent of Tele-Post, told TorrentFreak that The Pirate Bay will not be in danger of having its domain name suspended. “The short answer is no. Such an action would require a formal order from Icelandic court,” said ISNIC’s Marius Olafsson. “ISNIC is not responsible for a registrant’s usage of their domains. This policy applies equally to any .is domain.” The Pirate Bay’s decision comes after whistleblowing database WikiLeaks moved to an .is domain in 2010. Copyright owners will still be able to file complaints against the site – which is the most powerful torrent site online, providing gateways to music, movie and other downloads – but TorrentFreak speculated that such a process would be prohibitively exhausting for the complainant. “There is an article in our registration rules which states that ‘the registrant is responsible for ensuring that the use of the domain is within the limits of Icelandic law as current at any time,’” Olafsson continued. Several countries have blocked access to The Pirate Bay, and US Internet subscribers who are accused of illegally downloading something from The Pirate Bay or similar sites can have their Internet connection slowed down or even suspended. Earlier this month Gottfrid Svartholm, one of the co-founders of The Pirate Bay, was charged with hacking several Swedish companies and stealing personal data. Svartholm, 27, had previously been arrested in Cambodia after failing to report for a prison sentence in Sweden related to copyright infringement, to which the hacking accusations are unrelated. … Read More
Average broadband speed in the US up 28%, South Korea still far ahead
Akamai has published its “State of the Internet” report for the last quarter of 2012 today, offering an overview of broadband speeds per country as well as figures on denial of service attacks, among other interesting metrics. According to the report, average global connection speeds rose 5 percent to 2.9… … Read More
Chuck Woolery’s Twitter meltdown over Islam
The game show host Chuck Woolery — famous for “Wheel of Fortune,” “Love Connection,” and a latter-day career as a self-styled conservative pundit on Twitter — spent the afternoon raising insinuations about the degree to which the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings were motivated by Islamic radicalism, and the degree to which the media holds white Christians to a higher standard of scrutiny than Muslims. He concludes with a shocking but unsurprising canard about how “most, if not all terrorists are Muslims.” Next to nothing, aside from supposition and close-reading of Tweets, is known as yet about the possible motivations of the suspected bombers. [View the story "Chuck Woolery's Twitter meltdown" on Storify]Continue Reading… … Read More
AP: Boston bombing suspects ‘identified’ as brothers from Russia, near Chechnya
The man reportedly lived in Turkey before arriving legally in the US at least a year ago.The name is listed among the recipients of Cambridge scholarships in 2011.The second suspect is said to be his brother Tamerlan, 26.An NBC report claims the two immigrated at least two years ago. One of the brothers is said to have a Massachusetts drivers’ license.Dzhokhar TsarnaevThere is a page at the Russian social network VKontakte (In Contact) with the name Dzhokhar Tsarnaev living in Boston and studying at Cambridge Rindge & Latin School.The Cambridge school mentions Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as its athlete of the month for February 2011, saying that he is an athlete.The VKontakte page studied by RT mentions a school in Makhachkala, the capital of the Republic of Dagestan, as a place Tsarnaev studied between 1999 and 2001.The Tsarnaev family moved to Dagestan from Kyrgyzstan in 2001, the school spokesman told RT. Dzhokhar studied there for just one year and produced no particular impression, good or bad, on the teachers.Dzhokhar has several Chechen-related interests stated in his profile. He states that he speaks Russian, English and Chechen and holds career and money as his personal priorities. He claims he is a believer in Islam.The page has but a handful of posts, most of them jokes. The owner’s last visit of the page was from a mobile phone shortly before the shooting in Boston started.Some Russian-language comments on the page accuse Tsarnaev of being behind the bombing. They were posted after the news of a possible connection of a Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to the bombing broke. … Read More
