Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category
News roundup
Posted: October 3, 2008 in Politics, TechnologyTags: bankaholic, Friendster, Fujistsu, hp, macbook, Obama, picasa 3, SK Gaming, skype, steve jobs, VP debate, Wester Digital
Skype conversations being monitored in China
The Chinese government is searching for keywords in Skype messages and then logs your messages. The president of Skype addresses the privacy breach through a blog post. Click here
New Macbook on October 14
Or maybe Oct 15, we dont really know a lot about the upcoming notebooks from Apple but speculations have increased eversince the codename ‘brick’ surfaced. And now this photo seems to suggest that Apple might not redesign the MacBook but will shift from using Intel based video cards to NVIDIA.
Did Steve Jobs have a heart attack?
A recent citizen journalist on CNN’s iReport said “Steve Jobs was rushed to the ER just a few hours ago after suffering a major heart attack. I have an insider who tells me that paramedics were called after Steve claimed to be suffering from severe chest pains and shortness of breath.” Apple has denied these claims and CNN has since removed the post from its site. Apple stocks took quite a dip when because of this but managed to bounce back before trading ended. But until people see a recent photo of Steve Jobs people will still have their doubts.
Fujitsu hearts Western Digital?
Japan’s Fujitsu Ltd is in talks with U.S. hard disk drive maker Western Digital Corp on the sale of its money-losing hard drive business, a company official said, in a deal one newspaper estimated could be worth millions. Fujitsu shares went up 4.7 percent because of this rumor. If these pseudo merger comes through it could drive up Western Digital’s market share in the 2.5 inch hard drives to around 25-30% which puts it ahread of currently no.1 Seagate.
SK Gaming split up
A while back Sk Gaming decided to sponsor a popular WoW guild called Curse which to me was a smart move because eversince the Sunwell patch Curse has been the best that guild that they’ve ever been PvE-wise. But for some reason they’re saying that the merge just isnt working out like they thought it would. If you ask me, I think Curse got hustled, I mean think about it, SK gaming gave them a little bit of cash.. maybe but in return they got so much exposure when Curse started changing its name to SK Gaming. A brand that was once purely known for e-sport dominance is now associated with PvE pawnage as well. Of the 11 or 12 million WoW players lets say at least half of them would know who the top PvE guild and of course you can bet your bottom dollar that those players will check out that guilds site and boom there you go plus millions of hits = advertising cash. Anyway you can check out the announcement here.
Friendster now supports Facebook apps
Yes its in 3rd place worldwide but Friendster is still the dominant social website in Asia and this move will only improve its global appeal. So if you have a Facebook app its now easier than ever to ‘port’ that app into Friendster so you can tap into the 80 million registered users / 57 million unique visits that this ’3rd placer’ has. Click here for more developer info
VP debate
In case you missed it you can check out the videos here so that you can get into heated arguments among friends and family members on who won the debate.
HP coming up with its own smart phone
The new device will have a touchscreen and keypad and will use Windows Mobile 6.1 operating system. It will be able to send and receive emails, and access the Internet.The new phone will likely be released in Europe within the next two months and will be under HP’s iPaq line of products.
Picasa 3 Beta available for Linux
I love this app, its file browser looks so much cooler than Windows picture viewer, you can create collages and simple videos.. and now its available for Linux users as well. Google blog post
Obama has lots of cash and he’s spending it wisely 
1 man sells his blog for 15 million dollars
NEW YORK, Sept. 23 announced today it has acquired Bankaholic ( www.bankaholic.com ), a Web site owned by Blackshore Properties, Inc. Bankaholic provides rate information on savings products, such as certificates of deposit, savings accounts, and money market accounts, as well as insurance quotes and a comparison of the best credit card offers, which are currently powered by Bankrate. In addition, Bankaholic offers consumers advice and information that allows consumers to comment and rate banks and their promotions through social networking features. Bankrate paid $12.4 million for Bankaholic, with up to an additional $2.5 million earn-out payment available for the attainment of certain performance metrics in the next 12 months. Rest of the article
VP candidate Sarah Palin’s e-mail gets hacked
Posted: September 19, 2008 in Politics, TechnologyTags: email, hack, Sarah Palin, yahoo
Ah yes, its a beautiful thing when politics and technology come together, Obama uses twitter and text messaging to announce his running mate direct to the public, John McCain not knowing how to use e-mail and now the newest player in the U.S. elections, the first ever ViLF as some forum posters like to refer to her, is getting into the tech world. But, as most of us know as good as the internet is for us, it can also do some pretty bad things. Just recently Palin came under fire for using a Yahoo! e-mail to conduct government business, critics allege that she uses the account to get around public records laws, as the Bush administration has also been charged with doing. and sure enough just a couple of days when the news hit the fans, her account got hacked. The hacker got access to Palin’s account last Tuesday and posted screenshots and emails in wikileaks. The e-mail addresses have since been deleted.
At first it was believed that this was a professional job, that a group of 1337 hackers target the VP candidate’s e-mail. However, recent reports and further analysis of the screenshots show that the hacker could’ve done a better job to cover his trails. The hacker used a proxy service, which is the right thing to do, called Ctunnel.com to hide his IP address, this is all well and good but the hacker forgot to remove his browser’s address bar when he posted the screenshots on the internet this would make it a lot easier for officials to check the logs and track his as* down.
And now a few days later someone that claims to be the hacker has surfaced saying that the hack was quite easy to do. The hacker simply reset her password by using her birthday, ZIP code and some info on where she met her spouse, which the hacker pretty much found with simple web searches. After the hacker posted the screenshots online other people tried to help by logging on to Palin’s e-mail address and resetting her password.
Philippines anti prawn act of 2008
Posted: September 16, 2008 in PoliticsTags: Philippines, porn, senate
Recent reports have uncovered a senate bill that Senator Manny Villar has filed last July 24, 2008, its called Senate Bill No. 2464: The Anti-Porn Act of ‘08. AN ACT PROHIBITING AND PENALIZING THE PRODUCTION, PRINTING, PUBLICATION, IMPORTATION, SALE, DISTRIBUTION AND EXHIBITION OF OBSCENE AND PORNOGRAPHIC MATERIALS AND THE EXHIBITION OF LIVE SEXUAL ACTS, AMENDING FOR THE PURPOSE ARTICLE 201 OF THE REVISED PENAL CODE, AS AMENDED.
If you wanna read the whole thing you can download the file here.
Senator Villar said “It is the duty of the State to give special value to the dignity of every human person and to promote and safeguard its integrity and the moral, spiritual and social well-being of its citizenry, especially the youth in general and women in particular, from the pernicious effects of obscenity and pornography.”
I don’t care who you are, who you want to be the next US president, what you think of Obama or if you even know who Obama is, just check out his speech here. I think this is the first time I almost cried hearing someone just uttering the words “I accept.”
