The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) didn’t exactly point fingers and do any name calling, but the results of its broadband penetration study shined like red badge on the US’s broadband shortcomings. When compared to the rest of the world, Uncle Sam comes up short.

By the end of 2007, the US had slipped from 12th place in the world in terms of broadband penetration to 15th place, due mainly to consumers paying higher prices for slower speeds and poor rural access.

Despite that the US comprised nearly 70 million broadband subscribers, or about 30% of the total subscribers in the 30 countries studied, only seven countries were paying more for broadband access: Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, Mexico, Iceland, Hungary, Poland and Norway.

Not exactly a who’s-who among developed nations. With 40% of Japan and 34% of Korea wired up to fiber connections, that busts the US down the ranks even further in terms of broadband speed. Twenty-six countries had faster advertised DSL speeds, putting the US just ahead of Mexico, Turkey, and Poland.

That’s good news for all the immigrants coming across the Rio Grande; they can count on slightly better Internet speeds. The fastest advertised download speed in the US was 50 Mbps, half of what is available in Finland, France, South Korea and Sweden, and dwarfed by 1Gbps available in Japan.

While we sourly remember a $200 billion good-faith payment the US government made to the telecommunications industry 12 years ago, the OECD gives recommendations for today’s government for improving available access. The recommendations are as follows:

• Governments need to promote competition and give consumers more choices. They should encourage new networks, particularly upgrades to fibre-optic lines.

• Governments providing money to fund broadband rollouts should avoid creating new monopolies. Any new infrastructure built using government funds should be open access – meaning that access to that network is provided on non-discriminatory terms to other market participants.

• Governments should discourage harmful business conduct and practices such as misleading advertising and unjustifiably long consumer lock-in periods.

Can you find which things the US forgot to do in the past 20 years?

“The fact is that the countries outperforming the United States have something we lack — a coherent national broadband policy,” said S. Derek Turner, research director of Free Press. “Policymakers who are serious about America’s economic and social well-being should focus on the open access policies that bring the benefits of broadband to all Americans.”

According to an analysis by Free Press, countries with open access policies had nearly twice the level of broadband penetration as those that did not.

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Google Earth has always been educational, letting people learn about the landscapes of places and countries they’ve never seen in person. Thanks to the addition of a Google News layer, Google Earth will now also let its users keep up with current events.

Last month, a collaboration with The New York Times was unveiled, but this new development should go well beyond it. Never mind quarter-hour updates from a single source; on the LatLong Blog, Brandon Badger writes, “By spatially locating the Google News’ constantly updating index of stories from more than 4,500 news sources, Google Earth now shows an ever-changing world of human activity as chronicled by reporters worldwide.

Clicking on “Layers” and then “Gallery” within Google Earth will lead you to the Google News addition. From there, use of the “Zoom” button should bring up stories concerning as broad or narrow an area as you please.

Frank Taylor notes, “What’s really interesting here is that Google is using new advanced search techniques to determine whether a story applies to that specific location. For example, I don’t see any Paris, France stories appearing over Paris, Texas (or vice versa).”

It seems Google is conquering all sorts of issues with this release. The only possible problem is that learning about the average news story’s subject is likely to take some of the fun out of using Google Earth.

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YouTomb, a site focused on tracking all the videos that have been removed from YouTube for copyright violation, is a research project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The people who created the site are the MIT Free Culture student group. YouTomb says it,”Continually monitors the most popular videos on YouTube for copyright-related takedowns. Any information available in the metadata is retained, including who issued the complaint and how long the video was up before takedown.” “The goal of the project is to identify how YouTube recognizes potential copyright violations as well as to aggregate mistakes made by the algorithm.” YouTomb records the title of each video that is removed from YouTube along with a description of the video, who uploaded it, when it was taken down and a few screen shots. There are no actual videos that visitors to the site can watch. The site is currently monitoring 223,246 videos and has flagged 4,396 videos that have been taken down for alleged copyright violation. The companies that have removed the most videos include, TV Tokyo Corporation, Viacom International Inc, Warner Bros. Entertainment, and World Wrestling Entertainment. YouTomb says its initial focus is on videos hosted by YouTube, but it is also interested in other video collections. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Web sites are protected from legal action if they remove infringing content after receiving a takedown notice from the copyright holder.

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Sony has confirmed that it is planning to “integrate YouTube functionality in upcoming or existing PlayStation 3 games” and that developers are currently working on such integration.

The new integration will enable gamers to stream capture and upload footage they have recorded while playing games.

“This YouTube upload functionality can be incorporated not only into new PS3 game titles, but also existing PS3 titles that have the ability to receive network updates,” explained a YouTube statement.

“Gamers will now be able to upload their in-game video captures to YouTube. We’re excited at the opportunity this presents and look forward to more and more games to be enhanced with YouTube,” the statement added.

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The Fedora project today released a new version of its completely free and redistributable Linux distribution. Showcasing lots of next-generation Red Hat features, Fedora 9 also boasts new features of its own aimed at making the distribution appeal more to newer Linux users.

Fedora 9’s more salient new features include:

• USB drive booting with user data persisting across reboots
• A nifty graphical Windows utility for creating USB boot drives
• Installer now supports partition resizing, to better support dual-booting, and LUKS encryption
• First distribution with KDE 4.0 (though Gnome still default UI)
• FreeIPA, a new user rights administration tool
• Sun’s OpenJDK
• GVFS, a next-generation successor to gnome-vfs
• GDM (GNOME Display Manager) improvements
• OneSecondX, aimed at faster X Window System launches
• Network Manager (network setup GUI) now supports static IPs as well as GSM and CDMA network cards
• GCC 4.3 (4.2 series was leapfrogged)
• PackageKit, a new backend-agnostic (RPMs or Debs) software installer GUI
• Firefox 3
• Ext4 filesystem option (though not default, and no e2fsprogs yet)
• Lots more

Luke Macken’s LiveUSB-creator v2.0

Fedora backgrounder

Many people mistakenly believe that Red Hat started Fedora. In fact, the project began independently in 2003, as a “community” version of the popular Linux distribution. The idea was to emulate the “freeness” and community involvement of the Debian distribution, while still leveraging Red Hat’s testing and integration work — not to mention its more regular release cycle schedule.

It was an idea whose time had come, and it did not take Red Hat long to see that. Later that same year, Red Hat decided to create a Fedora Foundation around the project. It next decided to discontinue Red Hat Linux, the freely available, community supported distribution it had maintained in parallel with its commercial products ever since starting out. Suggesting that Red Hat Linux users adopt Fedora instead, Red Hat said at the time that it just made sense for a community-supported distribution to be governed by a community, not a company. It proved to be sound reasoning.

Red Hat’s 2003 decision instantly catapulted Fedora into place among the world’s most popular Linux distributions, where it arguably remains today. True, Ubuntu’s rocket-ship trajectory catches the eye of more Linux newbies. And, those simply looking for a free version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux may turn to CentOS, positioned as a no-cost “re-build” that still complies with Red Hat redistribution licensing. Yet, for developers and others looking for a more modern, up-to-date, fully redistributable RPM-based Linux distribution, Fedora is still the biggest, pardon the analogy, hat in the ring.

Mini-interview: Fedora project leader Paul Frields

The “redistributable” part is key, explained Fedora project leader Paul Frields, pictured at right. He noted that developers can create embedded appliances or enterprise desktop Linux images with Fedora in confidence that they are not accidentally redistributing proprietary software. Users can be confident of not violating any license agreements. The flip-side is that users will have to install any proprietary bits like browser plug-ins themselves (though Fedora 9 actually includes an open source Flash plugin).

Midway through its fifth year, the Fedora project has dutifully cranked out two releases per year, earning it a reputation as one of the better-run open source projects. Once criticized for being too heavily influenced by Red Hat, which continues to support the project, Fedora has about 2,000 active developers and package maintainers today, according to Frields. Asked about overlap of maintainers with the Debian project, he assented, stating, “The ideals we have are highly compatible with Debian, and our package maintainers are very similar.”

Both distributions benefit enormously from the work of younger programmers, who are motivated largely by an interest in learning to build and package free software, and to contribute to a dynamic, exciting, high-profile project. Debian’s is the larger community — very nearly every significant open source application is available pre-built, typically for several different architectures. Fedora, meanwhile, may enjoy more contributions from professional programmers, many Red Hat employees. Thus, many Red Hat features make their initial debut in Fedora, and graduate to RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) once they have been hammered on by Fedora users. Frields admitted that Fedora serves as a kind of “technology preview” for Red Hat. Each release is maintained for a shorter term, but the pay-off is a chance to use today the software that others won’t get until tomorrow.

And what’s next for Frields and the Fedora project? “We’ve reduced the barriers to joining the project. You don’t have to send in a GPG key, if you’re an artist or documentation contributor. It’s easier to have a project membership account now.”

Frields adds, “In the 35-45 days ahead, we’ll be rolling out new web properties, including a wiki based on MediaWiki. We hope to implement a single sign-on across all the web properties. And we’re putting in place other collaboration tools, including Gobby, and Asterisk servers. So contributors can log into the web app, and request a teleconference, and instantly get a conversation going. And, it’s all done with open source software.”

Frields concludes, “We want to create a culture of contribution. Our purpose is to push forward open source and free software. Our mission has always been about open source, and making it easier for developers, enthusiasts, and remixers to succeed.”

The Fedora sites are currently unavailable, due to high traffic levels, but the Fedora 9 distribution should soon be available here. A “how-to” document on creating a live USB installation can be found here.

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A Bank of Ireland laptop with thousands of customers’ details was stolen seven years ago in Co Kildare and clients were not informed.

Bank of Ireland says it is investigating an allegation that a laptop was stolen.

The development comes as the bank faces two separate investigations following the disclosure that laptops containing the details of 31,000 customers were stolen last year.

The theft happened in Bank of Ireland’s Newbridge branch in 2001.

The laptop was used by an official from Bank of Ireland’s life assurance division.

But the computer contained details of life assurance customers from branches in Newbridge, Kilcullen and Athy.

The laptop was not encrypted so the information could be easily accessed by hackers.

Sources have told RTÉ News that its theft was reported to line management in the bank. But customers were not informed.

The laptop had details of up to 4,000 Bank of Ireland customers.

These included dates of birth, addresses, bank account details, medical histories and investments held by customers.

In a statement issued this afternoon to RTÉ News, Bank of Ireland said it was investigating an allegation of a stolen laptop dating back to 2001.

A spokesman said the level of risk of fraud from information dating back seven years was remote.

Separately, the bank is currently sending letters to 31,500 customers who were affected by the theft of four laptops last year.

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A Chilean hacker posted sensitive information about six million of his compatriots on the Internet, apparently in an act of protest against the government’s lax data security.

According to Chilean newspaper El Mercurio, details including people’s address’, phone numbers, ID numbers, email addresses and even academic records were all laid bare for the world to see on a popular technology blog called FayerWayer. Links to additional information was also posted on a website called “ElAntro”.

The information was mined from various different Chilean government and military sites, including the Ministry of Education, state telephone firms and the Electoral Service website. “Nobody bothers protecting that information”, the hacker allegedly wrote in explanation of why he felt the urge to expose six million of his countrymen to identity theft.

Chilean Police commissioner Jaime Jara told El Mercurio that the police were investigating, however, the fact that it took the slow poke Chilean authorities hours to twig what had happened, and then several more hours to get round to removing the private data, goes quite a way to proving the hacker’s point. µ

L’Inq AFP

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Opera Software has released Opera Mini 4.1, the latest version of itsfree, Java-based web browser that works on nearly every mobile phone.

According to Opera, the new version is up to 50% faster than the current one.

New features include:

• Will automatically suggest URL completions, making address input easier
• Web pages can be saved for later off-line viewing
  Can search for a word or phrase in Web pages
• Images, ringtones and other content can be downloaded without leaving the application

“We have actively talked to our community members in order to build the best Web browser for mobile phones,” says Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera.

It is available now, free of charge, at operamini.com .

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Here’s a little story for you: An Apple Store employee had a party in her apartment. A couple weeks later her place was cleared out to the tune of about $5,000 worth of electronics, including her new Mac. Days later, a friend sees that she’s online and alerts the Mac’s rightful owner. Since she was running Leopard with Back to My Mac, owner-girl logged in remotely and activated Photo Booth via the screen-share function. And what do you know, it turned out that the thieves were some “friends” who were at the party a few weeks back. She took the photos to the cops and — voila — busted! The thieves, Edmon Shahikian, 23, and Ian Frias, 20, both of the Bronx, have been charged with second-degree burglary and fourth-degree criminal possession of stolen property. Go go crafty nerdy girl!

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A New York Times article purporting that Microsoft is working with NBC Universal to create a “copyright cop” — or anti-piracy filter — for the Zune that will prevent playback of unauthorized videos, was refuted by Microsoft today.

In the article which appeared on a Times blog, Saul Hansell, a Times reporter, quotes J.B. Perrette, president of digital distribution for the movie studio, as saying there are two reasons why NBC chose Microsoft’s Zune over Apple’s iTunes for content distribution.
One reason given by Perrette is that Apple insists on paying the same wholesale price for all videos, so that Apple can charge $1.99 for each film. The other is that Apple presented NBC with a flat out refusal on a request to include filters in the iPod.”Microsoft, by contrast, will accept NBC’s pricing scheme and will work with it to try to develop a copyright ‘cop’ to be installed on its devices,” according to Hansell’s story.

Hansell also said that Adam Sohn, a spokesman for Microsoft, declined comment on the issue except to say that the software company is exploring anti-piracy measures with NBC.

But in a blog post on the Zune site yesterday, Cesar Menendez, a member of Microsoft’s Zune team, responded by denying that content filtering is part of its content distribution deal with NBC.

“We have no plans or commitments to implement any new type of content filtering in the Zune devices as part of our content distribution deal with NBC,” Menendez wrote. “We think some folks in the industry were expressing hopes for how the entire industry, not just Microsoft, would come to look at content distribution, and some speculation has ensued. Again, no plans are in place toward this end.”

This morning, Hansell updated his NYT article with a link to Microsoft’s blog post, along with some new commentary of his own.

“It’s worth noting that Mr. Perrette told me that Microsoft committed to explore filtering; he didn’t say it committed to implementing those filters,” according to Hansell’s update.

“Here is what Mr. Sohn, the Microsoft spokesman, told me yesterday when I asked him about what Mr. Perrette said: ‘I don’t think they are wrong, but we are not going to characterize those discussions.’ Later he added, ‘We have agreed to work with NBC across a range of topics, and protection of copyrighted material is certainly one of them,’” Hansell wrote.

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