First, we have what is probably the biggest news of the year for digital freedom and rights of users on the Web: The European Parliament gave him a real beating ACTA, an action that virtually destroys the possibility implement the treaty around the globe. And secondly, we have to Megaupload. Do you remember Megaupload? Your manager Kim Dotcom not only celebrated the defeat suffered by ACT in Parliament, but also predicted the return of a Mega platform, and is bigger and faster, as well as completely free.
It was dirty from the start. There were secret meetings, and agreements behind closed doors. Any request for transparency in their treatment was ignored. The Council of the European Union had "hidden" in a meeting of Agriculture and Fisheries. Removed legal protections for both providers and users, forcing ISPs to turn against their own customers at the slightest claim. Attacked legal exchange methods, and open and free software at various levels. But there was something worse, criminalized the generic concept, undermining health worldwide. However, is history: ACTA, an acronym for Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is liquidated, and the place of his fall was the European Parliament. On 4 July, the Parliament refused to ACT in a vote of 478 to 39 (21 of them from French representatives), and 165 abstentions. Six months were difficult, for a moment that showed a favorable outlook for the treaty. However, the protests and activism (both web and beyond) eventually led to many members of Parliament and representatives of other states that initially expressed support for ACTA, to reconsider its position. The result is in sight.
To take effect, ACTA must be ratified by six states, but no one has done so far. We can count the United States in such confirmation, but being in an election year, the goals seem to be others. They are also more and more countries are moving away. The Mexican Senate refused to ACT in June 2011. Switzerland and Australia did their thing in May and June this year. And among all this, a name that emerges is that of Kim Dotcom responsible for Megaupload. His extradition to the United States is in check, and a judge in New Zealand outlawed the raid on his mansion because a significant number of irregularities in the process. With this in mind, and with the recent drop in Europe ACTA, Dotcom held in its own way on Twitter, announcing that Soup, PIPA and ACTA are dead, and what is your platform again Mega: "Bigger. Best. Faster. Free and protected from attacks. Evolution! "Was the expression of Dotcom on the social network.
The situation will be resolved Dotcom (in one form or another) in August, meanwhile, the fact that ACT has become dust in the European Parliament does not mean that their original advocates the same thing has happened to them. Seek ways to reintroduce the same mistakes, the same follies. The banknotes circulate, courtesy of unscrupulous giants of different markets. And probably have to leave the crossroads once again. Members of Parliament gave a lesson, and ironically was a day like July 4th, but do not give up. If you try to implement mechanisms to protect copyright destroy other rights in the process, the protest will not end easily.
Seems to be a way that everything that is successful must inevitably go over their existence. There is no doubt that the use of the vast and growing network of mobile Android is raging at the security and privacy, and if you needed proof to be believed, a researcher at Microsoft has just discovered a botnet of Android devices Yahoo! Mail uses to take advantage and make money and then sending spam SMS from mobiles affected.
The most pernicious Internet, with its nooks and malicious criminals know a little more computer niches and to detect the focus of their attacks on what is growing and it provides enough facilities to take advantage. In this sense, the explosion of attacks on Android phones and the constant barrage of spam is not an accident but the result of an unlawful activity as mounting an international botnet Android devices that today are making much money sitting on misinformation and ingenuity of millions.
Suspicions were expressed on the table of strategies, but only recently, and after investigation he called exhaustive, Terry Zink, Microsoft engineer, has discovered a complete and international botnet is attacking over and through Android devices. The owners of the phones and tablets are taken through the creation of thousands of false applications for Android, or have failed when a link is going to acquire or seem to work properly but in fact you are taking credit for sending expensive SMS from the phone to "collected all the trouble." That is, the devices are used to send and receive spam that not only cost money to those who suffer, but also endangers their safety and their data.
The details revealed in the MSDN blog talk about a method that has as main objective to make money from users' mobile after reaching the user spam from Yahoo Mail boxes funny thing is that from the same subject in the mail written information is as follows: "Sent from Yahoo! Mail on Android" would seem to indicate the hackers devised a malware that can take Yahoo! Mail accounts and use them to send these messages to large scale using a botnet of Android devices interconnected. The location of the botnet was easy, yet not so much. Is that Yahoo! Mail provides the sender's IP, the problem is that the addresses come from different countries such as Chile, Thailand, Ukraine, Oman, Lebanon, Indonesia, Russia, among others
According to him, many of these conditions are given by the free and illegal downloading of Yahoo! Mail and other services that usually are extra. What he proposes as a first solution is that users only use Googe Android Play to download applications and so have security on it.
The phrase "crime prevention" may seem removed from the speech of any political campaign, but the truth is that it is very difficult to perform. Not all crimes are equal, despite efforts, there's a crime that initially go unnoticed. However, technology has become one of the most important allies of the authorities in recent years. Some time ago we talked about the IBM System Blue Crush, but now, an algorithm developed by the company PredPol demonstrated excellent capacity in anticipating which areas are most likely to record a crime.
"The best way to prevent crime is ...". Honestly, how many times have we heard that? The word "crime" is used as a kind of wild, when the reality shows that can be as complex and varied as human nature itself. There is no exact formula for preventing crime, and personally, I think it never will be. It's a constant battle, not only against criminals. Lack of resources is a recurring problem in many police forces, to name just one. Technology can help in different ways, although it is still resisted by elements who believe that "traditional methods" are more reliable.
One element that may tip the balance in favor of "prevention technology" is an algorithm developed by the people of PredPol. The software works together from previous reports, studies of criminal behavior and anthropological research. The District Police Department's Foothill of Los Angeles began to follow the patterns indicated by the algorithm, and a decrease of 25 percent in property crimes. The main advantage is that the algorithm can process full years of reports and indications, thus presenting more accurate predictions. With reference to random locations, the algorithm was six times more accurate anticipation of crimes against three times human analysts. Still, company officials clarified that the objective is not "replace" the police effort, but place it in the right place and right time.
The application of this algorithm has so far yielded solid results, but as expected, certain questions arise. On the one hand, if a policeman stops a vehicle or type in a place simply because a computer program has indicated that "could" be a crime there, some would invoke the Fourth Amendment to protect, leading to a more complicated legal situation . On the other hand, take into consideration that the crime is rarely static. If prevention in an area becomes too strong, the criminals simply move elsewhere. The big question is whether the algorithm, or a similar development can anticipate where would these criminals. The algorithm will use expanded in the coming months, and perhaps even departing from Los Angeles to be applied in other cities.
Blind, deaf and dumb should be the autistic computers do not believe that we have equated gradually more characteristic of the human qualities, those that give us reason to be and add meaning to our existence as a whole identified as humanity. Still missing and I hope very much, but to give us another example of how insignificant we are, some Spanish scientists developed a computer capable of composing classical music like one of the many great musicians in history. Of course, Lamus at incredible speeds up and puts us to discuss music, man and the universe itself.
For its complexity, which involves writing and execution by the secrecy of his age and because like a fine wine, only specialists know what it's made and tastes so good, listening to the mystique that has a quasi-supernatural large piece of classical music, the feeling of joy is in part to recognize the human as a being capable of the most virtuous, when we insist on the other hand through the media that serve only to destroy each other. There are moments of human feeling pride when you hear these heavenly pianos weeping cellos conjugated with a philosophical subtlety, but may now have to attach another narcissistic wound of humanity to the list provided and fed Freud, because scientists Malaga University have developed a computer capable of composing classical music.
No more exclusivity and bad copies, because the computer Lamus, scientists at the UMA, Department of Computational Intelligence, have broken with the established view that only humans had the sensitivity and wonder to build musical works which have no noticeable differences with the human authors. The team manager, Francisco José Vico, Professor of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, told that the current draft is based on the application of biomimetic techniques and hence is the closeness of the Darwinian theory of evolution, genetics and computing, with its own language that has been able to answer the question about the creativity of the machines. That is, a reformulation of the question that Alan Turing founded the Artificial Intelligence.
So far Lamus has created over 800 original scores and how to check their "humanity" is the comparison of these with other group of renowned artists of all time. As the results have been positive with amazing composition speeds (less than 10 minutes to write a score of 5 minutes to an instrument), at year end we will have a record with 10 scores performed by the London Symphony Orchestra among others. Of course, the existence of this binary Mozart has created debates around the world on how a machine that does not think or feel can create music that generates emotions in humans and appear to have included in his musical body. What does this mean? What music is just math? What computers can sit or emulate the emotions to a very high level? So that. Computers compose classical music, man.
