Microsoft Tries To Flatten Competition With Surface (Part 4)

Years ago, those who wanted to create incredibly restrictive laws on Internet freedoms figured (correctly) that if people found out what they were doing, the people would throw a fit. So instead of negotiating the Anti-counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) at the World Intellectual Property Organization, as these things were usu­ally done, they created the ACTA in secret meetings.

Trade Representative Ron Kirk

People did find out about ACTA any­way and threw said fit. The next genera­tion of horrific Internet restrictions – the IP chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partner­ship – was created in even deeper se­crecy. All we know for sure about the cur­rent text of TPP is that, like a Lovecraftian Tome of Elder Gods, it must be hidden from the eyes of sane men.

It's so secretive that the U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk has gone rogue and won't let his boss, the U.S. Congress, see the text. While it's valid to ask why IP agreements should ever be negotiated in secret, the idea that the elected repre­sentatives in charge of trade agreements are being barred from seeing those trade agreements while industry and their groups (MPAA, RIAA, PhRMA, etc.) have full access to them is extra insane.

Ron Wyden

Ron Wyden (D), Senator from the Inter­net (also Oregon), keeps trying to sneak a peek at the text of the TPP and keeps getting turned away. Some people ex­press themselves through painting, oth­ers through interpretive dance. Senators work out their feelings through legisla­tion. Wyden is proposing the Congressio­nal Oversight Over Trade Negotiations Act, which would require USTR to let Congress see the damned TPP. While it's ridiculous that it's come to this, the bill is a way of saying to USTR that no, really, govern­ment should get the same access to nego­tiations of sovereign law that Disney does. And if they can't, it gets ever-so-slightly harder to call this a democracy.

Web Full of Baddies, Says Google

If your guard wasn't already up when surfing the web, it should be now after Google revealed in a blog post just how many badware-peddling sites are online. A lot. As Niels Provos of Google’s security team put it: ‘We find about 9,500 new malicious websites every day. These are either innocent web­sites that have been compromised by malware authors, or others that are built specifically for mal­ware distribution or phishing.’ Google's doing its part to try to protect users via its various warn­ing systems. Provos says that 12 to 14 million search results carry Google's ‘This site may be com­promised’ warning each and ev­ery day, with an additional 300,000 downloads being flagged as mali­cious by Chrome's download pro­tection service.

Web Full of Baddies, Says Google

Verizon Intros Flippin'-Fast 300Mb/s FiOS

Remember when 56.6K dial-up modems were the cat's meow? My, how we've grown up in the past couple of decades. So has Verizon, which just unveiled new FiOS Internet tiers and pricing, culminating in FiOS Quantum with blistering-fast downloads (up to 300Mb/s) and scorch­ing uploads (up to 65Mb/s), which will set you back $210 per month, or $205 per month with a two-year contract. To put the new speed in perspective, Verizon says it would take 1.4 seconds to download 10 songs (50MB each) at 300Mb/s. And to download a 5GB movie or up­load 200 photos (250MB each), it would take 2.2 minutes and 31 seconds, respectively, on FiOS Quantum.

To download a 5GB movie or up­load 200 photos (250MB each), it would take 2.2 minutes and 31 seconds, respectively, on FiOS Quantum.