We are Anonymous. 

                                           We are Legion.
                                                              We do not forgive.
                                                                                       We do not forget.
                                                                       Expect us

Blackout for Hungary

On the 21st of December the party holding the majority of the Hungarian parliament voted in favor of a new media law that is a collection of some of the most oppressive and undemocratic laws from all over Europe including some worrying additions.

To show our concern for fundamental rights and free speech we black out our online presence on the 5th January 2011 for 24 hours.

The Digital Economy Act 2010

The Digital Economy Act 2010
What is the Digital Economy Act?

The Digital Economy Act is a newly passed piece of British legislation that is meant to protect copyright online and increase regulation and control of the way people use the Internet.
How did it happen?

* The entertainment industry is refusing to adapt to new models, clinging to obsolete 20th Century thinking.
* The Bill was drafted by unelected officials after lobbying from the entertainment industry.
* It was passed in a hurry during the Parliamentary "wash up" process without full scrutiny.

Why should you be worried?

* Websites will be blocked for alleged copyright infringement.
* Families accused of sharing copyrighted files will be disconnected without trial. They will have to pay to appeal.
* Even if you don't live in the UK, it sets a worrying precedent for other countries to follow suit.

Disconnection or "technical measures" like bandwidth throttling will kick in if file sharing does not drop by an incredible 70%. There are no alternative punishments to disconnection, no matter what the damage it will cause, and there is no statutory limit on the length of these disconnections, called, in the weasel words of the Act, "temporary account suspension".

Despite thousands of letters of concern and a petition with over 35,000 signatures of protest, the Bill was rushed through in the final days of parliament during the "wash up process" - it was not given the full scrutiny that it deserved.

This is a piece of legislation that gives potentially unlimited power to unelected officials, and assumes guilt on the part of those accused of copyright infringement. We can expect the industry lobbies to be out in force to roll back our human right to freedom of expression in the name of copyright very, very soon.

What's happening now?

Now that the Bill has been passed and the election is underway, candidates from all the main parties are keen to distance themselves from it. They admit that there are serious concerns and that the Bill did not receive the scrutiny and debate it deserves.

Dan Bull / Songwriter

Response to Legal threats against The Pirate Bay from EA games

From anakata_anakata.hack.se Mon Sep 13 07:20:31 2004
Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2004 07:19:36 -0100 (GMT)
From: anakata
To: Piracy - Online
Subject: Re: Copyright Infringement

On Tue, 14 Sep 2004, Piracy - Online wrote:

> September 14, 2004
>
> SENT VIA E-MAIL
>
> Fredrik Neij
> PRQ
> Box 1206
> Stockholm, Sweden 11479
> Re: Electronic Arts Trademark and Copyright
> Infringement Notice
>
> Dear Mr. Neij:
>
> It has been brought to the attention of Electronic Arts Inc. ("EA") that
> the website http://www.piratebay.org with the IP addresses of
> 217.75.120.115, 217.75.120.116, 217.75.120.118 is conducting
> unauthorized activities with respect to EA's copyrighted software, The
> Sims 2. The aforementioned website is offering and distributing
> bittorrent seeds for an unauthorized downloadable version of this EA
> game
> The infringing material may be found at:
> http://www.piratebay.org/download.php/3238103/Sims%202.torrent
>
> http://www.piratebay.org/download.php/3238222/The_Sims2_AlcoholClone-CLO
> NEGAME_Full.Release_%28exclusive_for_trackerwww.prq.to%29.torrent
_____________________________________________________________________________Hello and thank you for contacting us. We have shut down the website in
question.
Oh wait, just kidding. We haven't, since the site in question is fully
legal. Unlike certain other countries, such as the one you're in, we have
sane copyright laws here. But we also have polar bears roaming the
streets and attacking people :-(.
______________________________________________________________________________

This unauthorized activity with respect to the distribution of EA's
> software products constitutes infringement of EA's intellectual property
> rights. EA enforces its intellectual property rights very aggressively
> by using every legal option available.
____________________________________________________________________________
Please don't sue us right now, our lawyer is passed out in an alley from
too much moonshine, so please atleast wait until he's found and doesn't
have a huge hangover...
___________________________________________________________________________
> As you are listed as the registrant for this website, EA demands that
> you immediately and permanently disable access to the aforementioned
> bittorrent seeds for The Sims 2 and any in the future.
___________________________________________________________________________
You're free to demand anything you want. So are we. We demand that you
cease and desist sending letters like this, since they're frivolous and
meaningless. Where should I send the bill for the consumed diskspace and
bandwidth?
__________________________________________________________________________
> Thank you for your cooperation. If you have any questions concerning
> this matter, please contact us via e-mail at:
> piracy-online@ea.com.
>
> Regards,
> EA Law - IP Enforcement
> Electronic Arts Inc.
> piracy-online@ea.com
____________________________________________________________________________
Thank you for your entertainment. As with all other threats, we will
publish this one on http://static.thepiratebay.org/legal/

//anakata

Give Your Laptop Battery a Longer Lease on Life

Rick Broida


http://www.pcworld.com/article/160379/give_your_laptop_battery_a_longer_lease_on_life.html

Does your laptop spend more time on your desk that your lap? If so, you're probably causing your battery to wear out much sooner than it needs to.


See, it's a sad (and expensive) fact of life: You're lucky to get 18-24 months from a battery before it loses a good chunk of its charge capacity (meaning it no longer powers your laptop for as long as it used to).

And you're accelerating this unfortunate timeframe if you leave your laptop plugged in 24/7, which is common for most folks who work at a desk. Because the battery rarely (if ever) gets a chance to discharge, it loses its capacity to hold a charge.

The simple solution: Pull the battery out of the laptop and leave it out when you're deskbound. Most laptops can run on straight AC power, so there's no need for the battery. And it's easy enough to pop back in when you hit the road (though obviously you'll want to make sure it's charged, so plan ahead a bit).

It's a hassle, sure, but consider the price of a replacement battery: usually $100 or more. What's more, old, discarded batteries wreak havoc on landfills. Sooner or later, they'll leak acid into the ground. So it's in your best interests to keep your battery as long as possible, and to keep it from dying a premature death.
See more like this: batteries, laptop accessories, power

Computer Majic

A program is a spell cast over a computer, turning input into error messages.

—Anonymous

The truth about RAM

" RAM : Rarely Adequate Memory, because the more memory a computer has, the faster it can produce error messages."

-Anonymous

MacBook Pro

You can find a cheaper laptop, but not a better one. Every Apple MacBook Pro is carved from a single block of aluminum, making it strong and light (4.5 lb.; 2 kg). A revolutionary pair of graphic chips lets you play Call of Duty 2 until your five-hour battery dies. 
Price:$1,999
More info: apple.com/macbookpro

Dell Inspiron Mini 9

By JEREMY CAPLAN, LEV GROSSMAN, ANITA HAMILTON AND JOSH QUITTNER

Small enough to fit in a pocketbook, this 2.3-lb. (1 kg) ultraportable comes in two flavors: Windows XP ($399-$449) or, for maximum open-source coolness, Ubuntu Linux ($349). You can stick your camera's SD card right into its media reader, and the bright 8.9-in. (23 cm) screen will show off your family photos (or YouTube faves). Tiny as it is, you don't have to scroll around to see full Web pages as you would on a phone, though the compact keyboard does take a little getting used to.
More info: Dell Inspiron Mini 9

The Tesla Roadster

Electric cars were always environmentally friendly, quiet, clean — but definitely not sexy. The Tesla Roadster has changed all that. A battery-powered sports car that sells for $100,000 and has a top speed of 125 m.p.h. (200 km/h), the Roadster has excited the clean-tech crowd since it was announced in 2003. Celebrities like George Clooney joined a long waiting list for the Roadster; magazines like Wired drooled over it. After years of setbacks and shake-ups, the first Tesla Roadsters were delivered to customers this year. Reviews have been ecstatic, but Tesla Motors has been hit hard by the financial crisis. Plans to develop an affordable electric sedan have been put on hold, and Tesla is laying off employees. But even if the Roadster turns out to be a one-hit wonder, it's been a hell of an (electric) ride.

Google unveils customised search

By Maggie Shiels Technology reporter, BBC News, Silicon Valley

Users have to be logged in to their Google account to use SearchWiki

Google has unveiled a tool that will allow users to customise and refine their search queries.

The company's SearchWiki lets users re-order, remove or add specific web search results.

This means the next time they perform the same search, the personalised version will pop up.

"I would call this revolutionary. It's a huge step, not a baby step in the world of search," Google's product manager, Cedric Dupont, told the BBC.

"This is part of an obvious movement of the web to become more participatory, so Google search is adapting to this movement," he said.

"The SearchWiki is about giving users more control over their search results and increasing user happiness," Mr Dupont added.

But industry watchers predict one huge problem with the effort.

"Most people are not going to engage with it and think about where the results should be - if it's above this one or below that one," said Greg Sterling, an editor with SearchEngineLand.com.

"This is really for a motivated or elite core of user who really wants to participate in the process."

"Social search"

As well as ranking results, SearchWiki allows users who have logged in to their Google account to write comments which will have a dialogue balloon next to the result when they return for any further searches.

These will also be public so that others using SearchWiki can view them and get feedback on a website.

It is hoped "people powered" tools like SearchWiki will benefit overall search

Mr Dupont stressed that SearchWiki would not affect the way websites were ranked by Google.

At the bottom of the page, there will be a link to take users to a page showing what search results others have re-ranked, deleted or added.

Mr Sterling said that if Google managed to get a great number of people re-ranking results, it could improve the overall search experience.

"Lots of people have tried so-called 'social search', combining algorithmic search with human editorial input, because the perception is that humans have the ability to craft a better result in any given situation because they can make distinctions machines can't," he said.

"So this could be quite dramatic if they get a lot of people participating because it could improve the algorithms of the process and serve up better search results."

Matthew Humphries of geek.com would like to see the tool available to the public at large and not just to account holders. He said that even among SearchWiki users, search would be improved.

"You always see posts on forums for different subjects asking for the best resources to help with X. With SearchWiki the responses won't be a bunch of links, they will be a single link to an annotated Google search page," he added.

Flawed AVG antivirus update cripples Windows XP PCs

By GREGG KEIZER, IDG

Published: November 11, 2008

A flawed signature update to AVG Technologies' antivirus software over the weekend crippled some Windows XP PCs by mistakenly deleting a critical system file, the company has confirmed.

Skip to next paragraph

More News From IDG

• Thousands hit in broad Web hack

According to messages on AVG's support forums and its own support site, an update released late Saturday for the company's security software fingered the "user32.dll" file as a Trojan horse. As per the program's settings, the AVG software, including the newest version 8.0 and its predecessor 7.5, shut the .dll away in quarantine. The result: A crippled computer.

"If you have chosen 'heal' or 'quarantine,' your PC will no longer restart," said a panicked user named "pa3bar" in a message Sunday. "It shows a blue screen at start up and tells you it cannot find winsvr, error c0000135. System recovery has no effect."

AVG, best known for its free Antivirus, confirmed the error in a FAQ on its support site. "In case you are not able to run your Windows XP operating system after AVG 8.0 virus definition update, it may be caused by a false positive on a specific 'user32.dll' system file," the company said. "The file was moved to the AVG Virus Vault and deleted. Therefore it is not possible to start Windows."

Although some systems refused to boot, others rebooted endlessly instead.

On its support site, AVG posted instructions for affected users that involved running Windows XP's Recovery Console, disabling several AVG services and restoring the user32.dll file by copying it from the operating system's install CD. For users unable to locate their installation disc, AVG offered a utility that fixed the problem; those users also needed to create a bootable CD or USB drive.

The utility work-around was for AVG Antivirus 8.0 only; a similar utility for AVG Antivirus 7.5 will be available "soon," according to a message posted by a support forum moderator Tuesday.

An AVG technical support representative provided more detail on the snafu. "We can confirm that it was a false alarm," said Zbynek Paulen, who identified himself as an AVG employee. "We have immediately released a new virus update (270.9.0/1778) that removes the false positive detection on this file. Please update your AVG and check your files again."

That suggestion, however, only worked if the user had not turned off his or her PC, or rebooted it, in the meantime.

"We are sorry for the inconvenience," Paulen added.

AVG did not publicize the problem on the front page of its Web site and did not immediately respond to several questions, including how the flawed signature slipped through internal checks.

This wasn't the first time that AVG has been in the spotlight. Last summer, the LinkScanner Search-Shield component of its antivirus software triggered a flood of bogus traffic to Web sites, angering site operators.

Nor is AVG the only security vendor to issue a damaging update. Only last September, a Trend Micro Inc. signature mistook several critical Windows XP and Vista system files for malware, blocking the PCs from booting.

Copyright 2008 IDG. All Rights Reserved.

D truth about Programming

"Every program has at least one bug and can be shortened by at least one instruction-from which, by induction, one can deduce that every program can be reduced to one instruction which doesn't work."

-Anonymous