China warns Google to comply with censorship laws

China's top internet official has warned that Google will "pay the consequences" if it continues to go against Chinese law.
Google announced in January that it would no longer comply with China's internet censorship laws.
It warned that it may shut down google.cn because of censorship and a hacking attack on the portal.
Minister of Industry and Information Technology Li Yizhong was speaking at China's annual legislation session.
"We need to preserve our nation's interest, our people's interest, we cannot be relaxed with any information that will cause harm to the stability of our society, to our system, and to the health of our under-age young people," he said.
"So, of course, what needs to be shut down will be shut down, what needs to be blocked will be blocked."
'Up to them'
Google began operations in China in 2006 to widespread criticism. While many argued Google was complicit in the censorship imposed by Chinese government, Google insisted it was nevertheless serving the public interest even though it was furnishing censored results.
Relations between China and Google cooled in January after what Google described as a sophisticated cyber attack in which the webmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists were targeted.
Since then, the firm has been in talks with Chinese officials about how to provide an unfiltered service but still remain within the law. Google chief executive Eric Schmidt said this week that he hoped the results of those consultations would be revealed soon.
Mr Li said that whether the firm quits China or not is "up to them", saying the internet would flourish in China regardless.
"I hope that Google will abide and respect the Chinese government's laws and regulations," he said.
"But, if you betray Chinese laws and regulations... it means that you are unfriendly, irresponsible, and you will have to pay the consequences."
Google is a distant second in search engine stakes in China, holding less than a third of the market; rival Baidu has about 60%

Dotcom web address celebrates silver anniversary

The internet celebrates a landmark event on the 15 March - the 25th birthday of the day the first dotcom name was registered.
In March 1985, Symbolics computers of Cambridge, Massachusetts entered the history books with an internet address ending in dotcom.
That same year another five companies jumped on a very slow bandwagon.
It took until 1997, well into the internet boom, before the one millionth dotcom was registered.
"This birthday is really significant because what we are celebrating here is the internet and dotcom is a good, well known placeholder for the rest of the internet," said Mark Mclaughlin, chief executive officer of Verisign the company that is responsible for looking after the dotcom domain.
"Who would have guessed 25 years ago where the internet would be today. This really was a groundbreaking event," he said.
Commercialisation
For most of the late 1980s and early 1990s hardly anyone knew what a dotcom was. Scholars generally agree that a turning point was the introduction of the Mosaic web browser by Netscape that brought mainstream consumers on to the web.With 668,000 dotcom sites registered every month, they have become part of the fabric of our lives.
Today people go to dotcom sites to shop, connect with friends, book holidays, be entertained, learn new things and exchange ideas.
"Dotcoms have touched us in a way we could not have imagined," Robert Atkinson of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) told.
"It used to be, 10 years ago you could live an okay life if you weren't engaged on a dot com site on a daily basis. You could get what you needed.
"But today we see how dotcoms have enriched our lives that if you are not engaged you would be fine but much further behind than the rest of us."
Proof of that Mr Atkinson said can be seen with how dotcoms have commercialised the internet "bringing consumers choice and value and businesses greater customer reach and profits".A study by the ITIF claims that "the average profitability of companies using the internet increased by 2.7%".
The research also found that the economic benefits equal $1.5 trillion, which it says is "more than the global sales of medicine, investment in renewable energy and government investment in research and development combined".
By 2020 the internet should add $3.8 trillion (£2.5trillion) to the global economy, exceeding the gross domestic product of Germany, it found.
The future
An estimated 1.7 billion people - one quarter of the world's population - now use the internet.
Verisign's Mr McLaughlin only sees that figure growing over the next quarter of a century.
"I think that the way we access information today, mostly still through PCs and laptops is highly likely to change; that the voice will be more important than text input.
"I think the whole fabric of how we access, search, find and get information is going to be radically different."
At the moment Verisign logs 53 billion requests for websites - not just dotcoms - every day, about the same number handled for all of 1995.
"We expect that to grow in 2020 to somewhere between three and four quadrillion," Mr McLaughlin told.
One quadrillion is 1,000 billion.
It is a phenomenal pace of growth that would have been very difficult to predict 25 years ago when a small computer firm took the first pioneering steps into the connected world.

Tories may 'lose broadband vote'

The Conservative policy on rural broadband could see its own voters miss out on fast services, research has shown.
Analysis from research firm Point Topic suggests some of the Tories' key rural constituencies could suffer most from its decision to hold back on subsidising rural super-fast broadband.
The Tories have vowed to scrap Labour's 50p per month tax on landlines, designed to fund rural broadband.
It favours a "wait and see" approach.
But research from Point Topic suggests that likely Conservative seats will be in the most need of public money because of their rural location.
It looked at the 253 seats with the highest needs for subsidy - those in areas where firms such as BT and Virgin Media are unlikely to offer services.
Fibre options
Based on election results from 2005 it found that the Conservatives could expect to hold 138 of them, compared to 63 for Labour.
"All the main parties agree that Britain needs superfast broadband. Where they differ is about how to deliver it to the rest of the country," said chief analyst Tim Johnson.
"With Britain struggling to emerge from recession I believe the benefits from extending and speeding the spread of superband could make it one of the government's best choices for investment," he said.
Most experts agree that next-generation broadband will be necessary to keep pace with new services that require a lot of bandwidth, such as video and the increasing demand for high definition (HD).
It is generally accepted that the best way to deliver this will be via fibre-optic cables which are expensive to lay, especially in rural areas.
The Labour government decided to tax all homes with a landline to the tune of 50p a month in order to create more funds for next-generation rural broadband for the final third of the country likely to be bypassed by commercial rollouts.
Last month the cross-party Business Innovation and Skills committee tax, branded the tax "unfair" because the majority of those paying it will gain no benefit.
The Conservative's plans for nationwide superfast broadband were detailed recently and hinge on stimulating private investment through a variety of methods including easing planning rules and opening up BT's infrastructure to competitors.
If that fails, it will use a proportion of licence fee, currently used to fund digital switchover, to finance rural super-fast broadband.
That decision will not be made until 2012.
Any Conservative administration would immediately be at odds with a new national broadband campaign - Final Third First, dedicated to getting broadband to rural areas.
Launched at the beginning of March, the Country Land and Business Association is a key member.
It has been particularly vocal in calling for action on rural broadband and its campaign is backed by leading Conservative MP Alan Duncan.

Climate change 'makes birds shrink' in North America

Songbirds in the US are getting smaller, and climate change is suspected as the cause.
A study of almost half a million birds, belonging to over 100 species, shows that many are gradually becoming lighter and growing shorter wings.
This shrinkage has occurred within just half a century, with the birds thought to be evolving into a smaller size in response to warmer temperatures.
However, there is little evidence that the change is harmful to the birds.
Details of the discovery are published in the journal Oikos.In biology, there is a general rule of thumb that animals tend to become smaller in warmer climates: an idea known as Bergman's Rule.
Usually this trend can be seen among animal species that live over a range of latitude or altitude, with individuals living at more northern latitudes or higher up cooler mountains being slightly larger than those below, for example.
Quite why this happens is not clear, but it prompted one group of scientists to ask the question: would animals respond in the same way to climate change?
To find out, Dr Josh Van Buskirk of the University of Zurich, Switzerland and colleagues Mr Robert Mulvihill and Mr Robert Leberman of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Rector, Pennsylvania, US decided to evaluate the sizes of hundreds of thousands of birds that pass through the Carnegie Museum's Powdermill ringing station, also in Pennsylvania.They examined the records of 486,000 individual birds that had been caught and measured at the ringing station from 1961 to 2007.
These birds belonged to 102 species, arriving over different seasons. Each was weighed. It also had the length of its wings measured, recorded as wing chord length, or the distance between the bird's wrist to the tip of the longest primary feather.
Their sample included local resident bird species, overwintering species, and even long distance migrants arriving from the Neotropics.
What they found was striking.
Of 83 species caught during spring migration, 60 have become smaller over the 46 year study period, weighing less and having shorter wings.
Of the 75 species migrating in autumn, 66 have become smaller.In summer, 51 of 65 breeding species have similarly reduced in size, as have 20 out of 26 wintering species.
The differences in size are not big.
"On average, the decline in mass of spring migrants over the 46 year study was just 1.3%," says Dr Buskirk.
"For a 10g warbler that's a loss of just 130mg."
But some species are losing more weight.
For example, the rose-breasted grosbeak has declined in mass by about 4%, while the Kentucky warbler has dropped 3.3% in weight and the scarlet tanager 2.3%.
The trend is particularly noticeable among those birds that winter in the New World tropics of the Caribbean, Central America and South America.
"The headline finding is that the body sizes of many species of North American birds, mostly songbirds, are gradually becoming smaller," says Dr Buskirk.
However, their populations are not dwindling."So many of these species are apparently doing just fine, but the individual birds are becoming gradually smaller nonetheless," says Dr Buskirk.
That suggests that bird species in North America are obeying Berman's rule, by evolving into a smaller size as temperatures increase.
Though this change appears quick, it has taken place over at least 20 generations of birds.
"There are plenty examples of rapid contemporary evolution over much shorter time periods," says Dr Buskirk.
Whether the trend will cause the birds any long-term consequences is unclear.
"In one obvious sense, the consequences are positive," says Dr Buskirk.
"That is, as temperatures become warmer, the optimal body size is becoming smaller."
However, even though the species appear to be adapting to the new climatic conditions, it could still be that their average "fitness" in evolutionary terms, is going down."Evidence from other studies is that some species will benefit and others will be harmed, and it's not always the species we like that will be harmed," says Dr Buskirk.
The jury is still out as to why any species responds to warmer temperatures by becoming smaller.
Originally, biologists proposed that having a larger body surface to volume might help in warmer climates.
But more recent ideas suggest that animals might actually be responding instead to something else that correlates with temperature, such as the availability of food, or metabolic rate.
"It looks like it might take a while before we know," says Dr Buskirk.
His team says much more data is now needed to confirm this trend and to see if it is happening in animals other than birds.
For example, it took an avalanche of data before people became convinced that climate change is already altering when birds start migrating.

Obama Nasa plans 'catastrophic' say Moon astronauts

Former Nasa astronauts who went to the Moon have told of their dismay at President Barack Obama's decision to push back further Moon missions.
Jim Lovell, commander of the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission, said Mr Obama's decision would have "catastrophic consequences" for US space exploration.
The last man on the Moon, Eugene Cernan, said it was "disappointing".
Last month Mr Obama cancelled Nasa's Constellation Moon landings programme, approved by ex-President George W Bush.
Nasa still aims to send astronauts back to the Moon, but it is likely to take decades and some believe that it will never happen again.
'Moral leadership'
The astronauts spoke at a private event at the Royal Society in London on Friday organised by the Foundation for Science and Technology.They were joined there by the first man on the Moon, Neil Armstrong.
As the last astronaut to return to the Apollo 17 lunar module in 1972, Cernan was the last man to set foot on the Moon.
"I'm quite disappointed that I'm still the last man on the Moon," he said. "I thought we'd have gone back long before now."
So why does he believe Americans should go back to the Moon?"I think America has a responsibility to maintain its leadership in technology and its moral leadership... to seek knowledge. Curiosity's the essence of human existence."
It is a view shared by fellow Apollo Astronaut Jim Lovell, the heroic commander of Apollo 13.
"Personally I think it will have catastrophic consequences in our ability to explore space and the spin-offs we get from space technology," he said.
"They haven't thought through the consequences."
Lunar dream alive
Although Cernan and Lovell expressed their dismay with President Obama's decision, Mr Armstrong tactfully avoided the subject.
When he set foot on the Moon in July 1969, it seemed as if humanity would soon colonise other worlds.
By 1994, when I interviewed him for the first time, he said: "The reality may have faded. But the dream is still there and it will come back in time."
But with the cancellation of Nasa's Constellation programme to return Americans to the moon by 2020, who is to inspire the next generation?
Nasa still aims to send astronauts back to the Moon, using Nasa to provide incentives and oversight to the private sector for launch services.
It is likely to take some time, however.
Until then we will have the epic tales of Armstrong, Lovell, Cernan and the rest of the Apollo astronaut corps to remind us that all things are possible - and despite the current pause in human spaceflight to other worlds, the dream is still there.

HSBC admits huge Swiss bank data theft

About 24,000 clients of HSBC's private banking operation in Switzerland had personal details stolen by a former employee, the company has admitted.
In December, HSBC said that just 10 account holders were affected by the theft, which happened three years ago.
The information stolen concerns 15,000 accounts that are still active. Another 9,000 accounts have been closed since the theft.
HSBC says that it does not think the data can be used to access accounts.
"We deeply regret this situation and unreservedly apologise to our clients for this threat to their privacy," said Alexandre Zeller, chief executive of HSBC Private Bank (Suisse).
"We are determined to protect our clients' interests and are taking every necessary measure to do so, actively contacting all our clients with Swiss-based accounts," he said.
The former employee, Herve Falciani, who worked in HSBC's IT division, fled to France while under investigation in Switzerland.
French authorities subsequently seized the data, and then passed it to the Swiss Federal Prosecutor.
Switzerland's financial and banking regulator said it had launched "formal administrative proceedings against HSBC" over the security breach, adding that the stolen data was "extensive".
HSBC, which first learnt of a data breach in December 2008, said it had since invested 100m Swiss francs ($93.3m; £62.3m) to upgrade and improve the security of its data systems.
Mr Zeller said, however, that it was "still unclear how Falciani managed to steal the information".
He said that HSBC had only become aware of the extent of the leak after Swiss authorities received the information from France and then alerted the bank on 3 March.
HSBC said that the account holders were based in several European countries, including Britain.
Tax evasion
News of the theft comes as the US and some countries in Europe try to crack down on tax evasion through the use of overseas accounts.
In recent years there has been pressure on Switzerland and Liechtenstein to become more transparent about accounts held there.
This is thought to have led to some bank employees stealing account data and passing it to tax authorities.
In Germany, an anonymous informer has offered to sell data stolen from an unnamed Swiss bank to tax officials.
Previously, Germany bought similar stolen data about clients of a bank in Liechtenstein. Some of this information was handed to tax authorities in the UK, which is also thought to have paid for the data.
French tax authorities are thought to be investigating up to 3,000 of its nationals using bank accounts outside the country.
Government authorities have defended paying for stolen data as in the public interest. However, the practice has been strongly criticised.
The UK's Revenue & Customs (HMRC) office paid around £100,000 for information about its taxpayers with bank accounts in Liechtenstein, according to accountants UHY Hacker Young.
"Paying criminals for data stolen from banks is highly questionable," said the firm's tax partner, Roy Maugham.
"If people know that there is a market for this data, they will steal it in expectation that HMRC or another tax authority will hand over a six figure sum," he said.

China warns Google to comply with censorship laws

China's top internet official has warned that Google will "pay the consequences" if it continues to go against Chinese law.
Google announced in January that it would no longer comply with China's internet censorship laws.
It warned that it may shut down google.cn because of censorship and a hacking attack on the portal.
Minister of Industry and Information Technology Li Yizhong was speaking at China's annual legislation session.
"We need to preserve our nation's interest, our people's interest, we cannot be relaxed with any information that will cause harm to the stability of our society, to our system, and to the health of our under-age young people," he said.
"So, of course, what needs to be shut down will be shut down, what needs to be blocked will be blocked."
'Up to them'
Google began operations in China in 2006 to widespread criticism. While many argued Google was complicit in the censorship imposed by Chinese government, Google insisted it was nevertheless serving the public interest even though it was furnishing censored results.
Relations between China and Google cooled in January after what Google described as a sophisticated cyber attack in which the webmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists were targeted.
Since then, the firm has been in talks with Chinese officials about how to provide an unfiltered service but still remain within the law. Google chief executive Eric Schmidt said this week that he hoped the results of those consultations would be revealed soon.
Mr Li said that whether the firm quits China or not is "up to them", saying the internet would flourish in China regardless.
"I hope that Google will abide and respect the Chinese government's laws and regulations," he said.
"But, if you betray Chinese laws and regulations... it means that you are unfriendly, irresponsible, and you will have to pay the consequences."
Google is a distant second in search engine stakes in China, holding less than a third of the market; rival Baidu has about 60%.

Net clash for web police projects

Social media activists are up in arms over plans by the UK's police watchdog for a project with the same name as an existing web initiative.
MyPolice.org was set up in mid-2009 to funnel feedback from victims of crime and others to police forces.
But Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) has unveiled plans for a project based around a site called Mypolice.org.uk.
The MyPolice.org founders say they may change their name to avoid confusion.
Force feedback
"This came completely out of the blue," said Lauren Currie, one of the founders of MyPolice.org.
Ms Currie said she and co-founder Sarah Drummond have been working on MyPolice.org since the summer of 2009 and were now getting close to launch.
The idea is to use the website as a central point through which to route messages to police forces about the job they are doing. It will also gather information about local issues and pass them on to UK forces.
"We are about giving feedback and we want that to result in change," said Ms Currie. "That's why it's called MyPolice. We are empowering people to make changes and make their voice heard."
"We have a lot of forces itching to be the pilot," she said adding that people were bound to be puzzled by a the HMIC launching a different service with the same name and very similar website.
Confusion was evident even before the HMIC site formally launched.
"It's causing a huge problem," said Ms Currie. Many supporters had got in touch in reaction to media reports about the launch of MyPolice, she said, only to find out that the reports were about the HMIC project.
One disgruntled supporter of MyPolice.org has set up a parody website called My HMIC.org to collect comments about the clash. Many others have vented their feelings on micro-blogging service Twitter.
HMIC said its mypolice.org.uk website would be used by members of the public to find out information about how their local force is performing.
In a statement an HMIC spokesman said: "We spoke with the owners of www.mypolice.org, and it is clear that we offer very different online products. Both however aim to improve engagement between the public and their police; and this is to be applauded.
"We remain very happy to work with www.mypolice.org to offer the best possible service to the public."
A spokeswoman for HMIC declined a chance to expand on its statement.
Ms Currie said the two projects have discussed the domain name confusion. The HMIC said it has no plans to change the name of its project nor move it to another site.
Legal action by MyPolice.org has been ruled out, said Ms Currie. "We don't want to go down that route," she told.
A spokesman for Nominet, which oversees the .uk domain, said Mypolice.org may have a case under its dispute resolution system. Although MyPolice.org does not own the .uk version it may be able to take it over as HMIC's action could be rule as "unfair".
However, he warned, each case was judged on its merits and the dispute resolution might mean HMIC keeps its claim to the .uk domain.

Lip reading mobile promises end to noisy phone calls

Technology that could see an end to the bane of many commuters - people talking loudly on their mobile phones - has been shown off by researchers.

The prototype device could allow people to conduct silent phone conversations.

The technology measures the tiny electrical signals produced by muscles used when someone speaks.

The device can record these pulses even when a person does not audibly utter any words and use them to generate synthesised speech in another handset.

"I was taking the train and the person sitting next to me was constantly chatting and I thought 'I need to change this'," Professor Tanja Shultz of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology told.

"We call it silent communication."

Translation system

The device, on show at the Cebit electronics fair in Germany, relies on a technique called electromyography which detects the electrical signals from muscles. It is commonly used to diagnose certain diseases, including those that involve nerve damage.

The prototype that is on display in Germany uses nine electrodes that are stuck to a user's face."These capture the electrical potentials that result from you moving your articulatory muscles," explained Professor Shultz. "Those are the muscles that you need in order to produce speech."

The electrical pulses are then passed to a device which records and amplifies them before transmitting the signal via Bluetooth to a laptop.

There, software translates the signals into text, which can then be spoken by a synthesiser.

In the future, said Professor Shultz, the technology could be packed in a mobile phone for instantaneous communication.

"We know this is not appealing for mass market use at the moment."

However, she added, it could be initially used to help people who have lost their voice due to illness or accident.

It could also form the basis of an instant translation system, she said.

"You could speak in your mother tongue and the text could be translated into another language," she said.

"The person that you are communicating with would then hear the synthesised voice in the other language."

It is not the first time that electromyography has been explored for silent communication.

The US space agency Nasa has investigated the technique for communicating in noisy environments such as the Space Station. It has also used the technique to explore advanced flight control systems that do away with joysticks and other interfaces.

Nasa, she said, explored the technique to understand simple commands.

"The difference with our system is that we can record and recognise continually spoken sentences," said Professor Shultz.