Belarusian authorities harass online opposition groups

As elections in Belarus approach, independent or pro-opposition journalists and Internet users are harassed by the Belarusian authorities, pressured and even put to jail. The mobile phone company BelCel blocked access to the pro-opposition news websites Charter97 and BelPartizan.

Reporters Without Borders:

"The call for an election boycott by some opposition figures has joined the long list of subjects that are off limits. Those who mention the boycott, such as opposition groups on social networks, are immediately sanctioned. It is illusory to talk of free elections in such a media environment."

A Fanboy Defends Apple's Neo-Mercantilist Course

Apple was once a technology company, but instead of continuing to innovate, Apple is now more and more becoming dependent on the government to help keep its competitors out of the market. Apple's neo-mercantilist moves against Samsung are a good example of this.

Where Steve jobs once said:

We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas

Apple now uses patents to keep its competitors from selling and developing products.

In his article "From Innovation to Rent Seeking", Doug French comments on the madness that is Patents And Copyright:

Instead of spurring innovation, IP [Intellectual Property] appears to be a rat's nest of litigation. For example, Google's chief legal officer, David C. Drummond, estimates that a modern smartphone might be susceptible to as many as 250,000 potential patent claims.

Today, Apple Fanboy Jason D. O'Grady, entirely misses the point and tries to defend Apple's despicable tactics in an article that looks more like an advertisement for Apple than the work of someone with at least a tiny bit of journalistic integrity.

What is OUYA?

The Ouya is an upcoming game console built on the Android mobile OS. Julie Uhrman (CEO of Boxer8) founded the project. She brought in designer Yves Béhar to collaborate on the design of the project, and Muffi Ghadiali as product manager. The console is slated for release in March 2013. Boxer8 is expected to provide their own OUYA store for apps and games:

OUYA is a new game console for the TV, powered by Android. We've packed this little box full of power. Developers will have access to OUYA's open design so they can produce their games for the living room, taking advantage of everything the TV has to offer.

Hardware specifications (2012 prototype):

• Nvidia Tegra 3 (T33) quad-core ARM processor
• 1 GB RAM
• 8 GB of internal flash storage
• HDMI connection to the TV (with support for up to 1080p HD)
• WiFi (802.11 b/g/n)
• Bluetooth LE 4.0
• Ethernet port
• 1 USB 2.0 port
• Wireless controller sporting two analog sticks, d-pad, eight action buttons, a system button, and 3" touchpad
• Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich" (modified version)

The physical dimensions of the OUYA console are expected to be around the size of a Rubik's cube.

Hepting vs AT&T

Hepting v. AT&T is a United States class action lawsuit filed in January 2006 by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) against the telecommunications company AT&T over the installation of NarusInsight, a supercomputer system used by the NSA to record and monitor internet traffic, in AT&T's San Francisco Internet backbone.

In 2002-2003, AT&T permitted and assisted the NSA to install a NarusInsight system in its San Francisco switching center, which was capable of monitoring billions of bits of Internet traffic a second, including the playback of telephone calls routed on the Internet, and thus in effect spying upon the entirety of the communication of many or all American citizens and businesses who use the Internet.

A former AT&T engineer, Mark Klein, attested that a supercomputer built by Narus was installed for the purpose, and that similar systems were also installed in at least Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego.

Mark Klein:

Despite what we are hearing, and considering the public track record of this administration, I simply do not believe their claims that the NSA's spying program is really limited to foreign communications or is otherwise consistent with the NSA's charter or with FISA [...] And unlike the controversy over targeted wiretaps of individuals' phone calls, this potential spying appears to be applied wholesale to all sorts of Internet communications of countless citizens.

The EFF alleges in the suit that AT&T also allowed the NSA to data-mine hundreds of terabytes of client records which included detailed transaction records such as domestic numbers dialed since 2001, and all Internet addresses visited, as well as other content. The EFF's attorney Kevin Bankston states:

Our goal is to go after the people who are making the government's illegal surveillance possible [...] They could not do what they are doing without the help of companies like AT&T. We want to make it clear to AT&T that it is not in their legal or economic interests to violate the law whenever the president asks them to.