Chinese Authorities Order Olympic Hotels To Install Spy Gear

In an apparent mistranslation of the concept of hospitality, Chinese authorities have ordered foreign-owned hotels to install Internet monitoring equipment to spy on hotel guests during the Olympic Games, U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kansas, charged on Tuesday.

"I am very disappointed that the Chinese government will not follow through on its promise to the International Olympic Committee to maintain an environment free of government censorship during the Games," Brownback said in a statement. "The Chinese government has put in place a system to spy on and gather information about every guest at hotels where Olympic visitors are staying. This means journalists, athletes' families and other visitors will be subjected to invasive intelligence gathering by the Chinese Public Security Bureau."

According to a news release issued by the senator's office, Chinese authorities have ordered foreign-owned hotels to install a software program and a hardware device to help the Public Security Bureau spy on hotel guests. Several hotel chains have reportedly confirmed the existence of this order and provided documentation to Brownback.

A spokesperson for Brownback was not immediately available.

News service Reuters quoted one of the documents thus: "In order to ensure the smooth opening of Olympic in Beijing and the Expo in Shanghai in 2010, safeguard the security of Internet network and the information thereon in the hotels ... it is required that your company install and run the Security Management System."

Brownback said that the hotels have asked not to be named for fear of reprisals.

Chinese authorities have been accused of similar behavior before. In May, The Associated Press reported that Chinese officials may have covertly copied the contents of a U.S. government laptop computer that was left unattended during a visit by Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez.

Given that the U.S. National Security Agency has been monitoring Internet and telephone communications since warrantless wiretapping was authorized in 2001, there seems to be more resignation than outrage among potential visitors to China.

As one person commenting on Reuters' coverage remarked, "Bad enough I have the U.S. government snooping on my Internet and telephone activity. To heck with going to China to have them do it to me too. Think I'll save my money and blood pressure and just stay home and watch them on the TV."

:informationweek.com

Toshiba's Former CEO to Join IBM Board

IBM's board of directors has appointed Taizo Nishimuro, former president and CEO of Toshiba, to serve on the board from later this year.

Nishimuro served as president and CEO of Toshiba between 1996 and 2000, after which he became chairman of the company until stepping down in June 2005. Nishimuro went on serve as president and CEO of Tokyo Stock Exchange and is currently chairman of the organization, which is one of the world's largest stock exchanges. He keeps ties with Toshiba as an advisor to the company.

He will join the IBM board in September this year as its 13th member.

"He has a unique understanding of the needs of Asian markets, and his knowledge and insights will make a significant contribution to our company," said Samuel Palmisano, IBM's chairman, president and CEO in a statement.

IBM did about one fifth of its business during the first six months of this year in the Asia Pacific region. Revenues during the period totaled US$10.5 billion, a jump of 15 percent on the same period in 2007. Performance in the region was lead by China, were business jumped 22 percent on a local currency basis or 15 percent on a U.S. dollar basis, IBM said. In Japan revenue increased 12 percent on a Japanese yen bases but decreased by 2 percent when adjusted to U.S. dollars.

:pcworld.com

Google in Final Negotiations to Acquire Digg For "Around $200 Million"

Google’s and Digg have reportedly signed a letter of intent and are close to a deal that will bring Digg under the Google News property. The acquisition price is in the $200 million range, says one source.

TechCrunch first wrote about the Google-Digg negotiations in March. Despite a vigorous denial by Digg CEO Jay Adelson the negotiations continued, although Google’s Marissa Mayer reportedly cooled on the company for a period of time.

The companies are now in final negotiations according to our sources, although it could be a couple of weeks before it closes. And while the major deal points have been agreed on, the acquisition could still fall apart. Microsoft, which was previously interested in the company, may be willing to step back in at a much lower price. Most of Digg’s revenue comes from a three year ad deal with Microsoft.

Researcher offers insight into DNS flaw

On Tuesday, security researcher Dan Kaminsky of IO Active calmly explained in a conference call with security reporters how he first stumbled upon a pervasive flaw deep within the Domain Name System (DNS), a series of servers used to translate common Internet names to IP addresses. Kaminsky said he wasn't even looking for a security vulnerability. What he found, however, could explain how criminal hackers have been able to redirect DNS queries recently.[...]
:news.cnet.com

Justice Breyer Is Among Victims in Data Breach Caused by File Sharing

Sometime late last year, an employee of a McLean investment firm decided
to trade some music, or maybe a movie, with like-minded users of the
online file-sharing network LimeWire while using a company computer. In
doing so, he inadvertently opened the private files of his firm, Wagner
Resource Group, to the public.


That exposed the names, dates of birth and Social Security numbers of
about 2,000 of the firm's clients, including a number of high-powered
lawyers and Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer.


The breach was not discovered for nearly six months. A reader of
washingtonpost.com's Security Fix blog found the information while
searching LimeWire in June.[...]

:www.washingtonpost.com

Adobe - Improving Search Results For Flash Applications

Adobe announced the company is teaming up with search industry leaders to dramatically improve search results of dynamic Web content and rich Internet applications (RIAs). Adobe is providing optimized Flash Player technology to Google and Yahoo! to enhance search engine indexing of the Flash file format (SWF) and uncover information that is currently undiscoverable by search engines.

This will provide more relevant automatic search rankings of the millions of RIAs and other dynamic content that run in Adobe Flash Player. Moving forward, RIA developers and rich Web content producers won’t need to amend existing and future content to make it searchable — they can now be confident it can be found by users around the globe.

The openly published SWF specification describes the file format used to deliver rich applications and interactive content via Adobe Flash Player, which is installed on more than 98 percent of Internet-connected computers. Although search engines already index static text and links within SWF files, RIAs and dynamic Web content have been generally difficult to fully expose to search engines because of their changing states — a problem also inherent in other RIA technologies.

“Until now it has been extremely challenging to search the millions of RIAs and dynamic content on the Web, so we are leading the charge in improving search of content that runs in Adobe Flash Player,” said David Wadhwani, general manager and vice president of the Platform Business Unit at Adobe. “We are initially working with Google and Yahoo! to significantly improve search of this rich content on the Web, and we intend to broaden the availability of this capability to benefit all content publishers, developers and end users.”

Google has already begun to roll out Adobe Flash Player technology incorporated into its search engine. With Adobe’s help, Google can now better read the content on sites that use Adobe Flash technology, helping users find more relevant information when conducting searches. As a result, millions of pre-existing RIAs and dynamic Web experiences that utilize Adobe Flash technology, including content that loads at runtime, are immediately searchable without the need for companies and developers to alter them.

“Google has been working hard to improve how we can read and discover SWF files,” said Bill Coughran, senior vice president of engineering at Google. “Through our recent collaboration with Adobe, we now help Web site owners that choose to design sites with Adobe Flash software by indexing this content better. Improving how we crawl dynamic content will ultimately enhance the search experience for our users.”

Yahoo! also expects to deliver improved Web search capabilities for SWF applications in a future update to Yahoo! Search. “Yahoo! is committed to supporting webmaster needs with plans to support searchable SWF and is working with Adobe to determine the best possible implementation,” said Sean Suchter, vice president Yahoo! Search Technology Engineering.

“Designers and Web developers have long been frustrated that search engines couldn’t better access the information within their content created with Flash technology. It’s great to see Adobe and the search engines working directly together to improve the situation,” said Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief, SearchEngineLand.com. “The changes should help unlock information that’s previously been ‘invisible’ and will likely result in a better experience for searchers.”

Mozilla pitches Firefox 3.1 alpha for July release

Just a week after Mozilla shipped Firefox 3.0, the open-source developer has proposed ship dates for the next version that, if approved, would produce an alpha release next month and a final no later than early 2009.

According to a draft schedule discussed at a Tuesday meeting, Mozilla wants to have the first Firefox 3.1 developer preview, or alpha, ready by July, then move to a beta by August. The schedule slates final code delivery in the last quarter of this year or the first quarter of 2009. A month ago, when Mozilla first started discussing Firefox 3.1 internally, Mike Schroepfer, the company's vice president of engineering, said the upgrade's target ship date was the end of 2008.

If Mozilla holds to that plan, Firefox 3.1 would be its first fast-track update, with a development timeline significantly shorter than usual. Firefox 3.0, for instance, launched approximately 20 months after its predecessor, Firefox 2.0.

Previously, Mozilla said that it would be able to meet the shorter deadlines because Firefox 3.1 would be composed of features that didn't make it into Firefox 3.0, but were "nearly complete," Schroepfer said.

In the meeting notes published online Tuesday, Mozilla listed some of the improvements it hopes to slot into Firefox 3.1, including changes to the revamped bookmarking that debuted in 3.0 and modifications to the new amped-up location bar.

Several of the proposed changes, however, rely on improvements to the Gecko engine that underpins Firefox, as well as other applications, such as Mozilla Messaging's Thunderbird e-mail client. Developers are working on Gecko 1.9.1 at the same time as Firefox 3.1, and programmers on the latter project expect some of those refinements will make it into the browser's next upgrade, including additional improvements in JavaScript performance and better compliance with the Acid3 test, which checks how closely a browser follows certain Web standards.

In March, when both Apple and Opera Software ASA touted gains in matching Acid3's requirements with their Safari and Opera browsers, respectively, Mozilla called the race to a perfect score "a puzzle game" and said it wouldn't divert resources from the still-under-construction Firefox 3.0 to match its rivals.

Since the June 17 launch, more than 21.8 million copies of Firefox 3.0 have been downloaded, according to Mozilla's own counter.

Google Media Server: From the desktop to your TV

Google released Google Media Server which allows you to connect your pc
with your tv using universal plug and play devices. The Windows
application uses Google Desktop technology such as Desktop gadgets for
the administration tool and Google Desktop Search to locate media
files. All you need is a PC running Google Desktop and a UPnP-enabled device (e.g. a PlayStation 3).

At the touch of a button, you can then:

• Access videos, music, and photos stored on your PC
  
• View Picasa Web Albums
  
• Play your favorite YouTube videos

Viacom to Get YouTube User Histories

Google has been ordered to turn over the viewing history of every YouTube user...to Viacom.This is an example of a formatted note note.

As litigation continues in Viacom's $1 billion copyright infringement suit against Google, a judge has ordered (PDF) Google most turn over the usage histories of every YouTube user to Viacom. The usage logs contain each YouTube user's login ID, the IP address used to connect to YouTube, as well as a video identifier and a start time.

The court did not order the Google disclose to Viacom its search code, schemas, and other intellectual property, noting that such disclosure—even under a non-disclosure agreement—would cause Google harm since the information carries significant commercial value. The court also ruled Viacom doesn't get data on privacy videos hosted on YouTube—that is, videos that can only be seen by a user specifically authorized to view it.

Although Viacom won't get information on private videos, the ordered disclosure of user histories is being decried as a setback for online privacy. "The Court's erroneous ruling is a set-back to privacy rights," wrote the EFF's Kurt Opsahl, "and will allow Viacom to see what you are watching on YouTube. We urge Viacom to back off this overbroad request and Google to take all steps necessary to challenge this order and protect the rights of its users."

Viacom is suing Google for copyright infringement, claiming that Google's YouTube service is profiting off the illegal distribution of Viacom content (including clips from popular programs like The Daily Show and South Park). Viacom says it had identified more than 160,000 infringing clips which had been viewed a total of 1.5 billion times as of early 2007. Google maintains it offers copyright holders mechanisms to have infringing content taken down from the service. YouTube has long been promising to roll out content filtering technology that prevents infringing material from being uploaded to YouTube in the first place.