Apple's Galaxy Tab ban was best advertising ever - Samsung

The Register reports the saur fruit for Apple by loosing the court battle about the injunction for Samsung's Galaxy Tab. Although it took two months before the sales ban in Australia of the Tab had been lifted. Media attention did make it famous for now and has been used in advertisements from Samsung. Of course it is still absurd that Apple even succeeded to get the temporarily ban in the first place.

Modified German Galaxy Tab 10.1N passes legal muster in German court

Ars Technica reports that a German court judges the new design of Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10N as sufficiently different from Apple's Ipad. The main visual difference is the metal band around the Tab. Personally I think all those tablet looks the same and Apple should never had a injuction in the first place. But to call this design significantly different is BS too in my opinion. All those patents, design, copyright are disturbing and bad for anything but few big corporations and patenttrolls.

Mobiles forced to send premium-rate texts in new attack

The Register reports about a hack to attack the sim toolkit of gsm mobiles. When a provider does not filter those crafted messages a mobile will send a lot of sms to expensive phonenumbers. The bad news is that most providers in Europe do not filter those crafted messages at the moment. Hopefully they will start that very soon and before the crooks find out how abuse this "feature".

Voice-controlled Apple TV, other services being pitched to TV execs

Ars Technica reports talks from Apple with tv-execs about voice and movement controlled (Apple) device. Partly this concepts already exists in Apple-tv and other features are already available in IOS. Of course are tv-execs interested in Apple devices as of DRM and walled gardens are included. Those media molochs do like that because it gives them the opportunity to keep their current businessmodel alive. Learning from the e-book deal Apple made earlier a extended Apple-tv will make a big selling point for tv-execs, movie corporations and the likes. And Apple will sell lots of consumerdevices and make shiploads of money. Only those darned pirates are in the way but with SOPA and IP-ACT that will be regulated too.

Senator Wyden wants answers from DHS over domain name seizures

Ars Technica reports about questions asked to DHS about their domainname seizures last year. Especially one website who after one year has been returned to its rightfull owners because they did not infringe anything. During that year the owners were not able do anything to defend themselves and even now everything is locked up in secrecy. IP-ACT and SOPA are not going to make it any better. It is time for an alternative domainname system to beat those governments working for cartels.

First draft of SOPA alternative OPEN available.

On KeepTheWebOpen.com a first draft of OPEN has become available. For some background see also my blog of Dec 2. In the real tradition of a open web you can comment and collaborate to build a better bill. Of course this bill is not supported by the big media and software cartels so it is unlikely ever becoming law but if you do not try it surely will not happen either.

OpenDNS puts crypto in beta

The Register reports that OpenDNS are additionaly encrypting the entire DNS-traffic between clients and servers. One of the benefits is that man in the middle attacks are prevented with this technique. But is also prevents your ISP or government to block citizens’ access to a particular class of website. At the moment only Macs are supporting this future but it will not take long for the others OSes when SOPA or IP-ACT are coming along.

SOPA on the ropes? Bipartisan alternative to 'Net censorship emerges

Ars Technica has the good news that there still is some common sense in USA politics. Some senators are preparing a new proposal for protecting IP after the absurd IP-ACT and SOPA from congress and senate. And it sounds a lot better.

US Senator demands answers from Carrier IQ

The Register has the news that Al Franken, who is the chairman of the Subcommittee on Privacy Technology and the Law has demanded more information from Carrier IQ. This after the earlier released video which shows that Carrier IQ's software really is acting as a keylogger on mobile phones. The answers will be interesting because Carrier IQ claimed before the named video that they do not log keystrokes but it is proven they do. Probably they will admit that now but deny the device is phoning home on the expense of the owner. We 'll see.