Thanks, Obama: Now you can legally unlock your smartphone if you want to

The President has signed a bill into law that allows American citizens to legally unlock their phones. That means that you can take your mobile device, no matter which carrier subsidized it, and take it over to one of its competitors. Unlocking phones was made illegal in January of 2013 when an exemption to the DMCA expired.

The bi-partisan bill was passed last week by the U.S. House of Representatives, after already being approved by the Senate. There is bit of a catch, however: the Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act, as it's called, is only valid through 2015. For now, it ensures that you have a choice in matters of your mobile device, just as long as your phone is compatible with another carrier's network and you've complied with your previous contract. And even if you don't fancy yourself as technologically savvy, the bill allows you to seek outside help.

It's been a bit of a journey to get to this point. About a year ago, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) filed a petition urging the FCC to make a ruling that would require carriers to unlock phones and tablets at the customer's request. And while most carriers have been mostly kind about unlocking devices, tools to for consumers to unlock those phones and tablets themselves were considered illegal.

So, what are you waiting for? Go forth and be free! At least until the next time this exemption expires.

16.01 | 0 komentar | Read More

Twitter looks to give context to hashtags

We've all been there: You see a hashtag trending on Twitter or in something your friend tweeted...except you have no idea what it means or what's going on. Twitter, it seems, has heard your cries of confusion, and is working on a new feature that should help.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Twitter is testing adding explanatory labels to certain popular hashtags in its iOS app. For example, the Journal says, #TBT gets labelled as "Throwback Thursday" with the new label feature, while #OITNB becomes Orange Is the New Black.

Not everyone gets this new feature, though—not yet, anyway, Twitter periodically tests new features—such as the Mute tool and various interface changes—on a limited subset of users before it rolls them out to everyone.

Providing additional information for popular hashtags should help bring some clarity to the sometimes confusing Twitterverse.

In recent months, Twitter has made an effort to try and make its service easier for new users to grasp. Earlier this year, reports indicated that Twitter might eventually do away with hashtags and @-replies entirely. Meanwhile, the service's updated photo sharing features, which rolled out earlier this year, lets you tag other users without having to eat up your alotted 140 characters—another win for simplicity.

The hashtag may be too ingrained into people's habits to kill off entirely—even Hollywood and big business has caught on to the practice—but providing additional information for popular hashtags should help bring some clarity to the sometimes confusing Twitterverse.

16.01 | 0 komentar | Read More

Obama signs cellphone unlocking bill

The right to unlock your cellphone became law on Friday as President Barack Obama signed a bill that rapidly passed both houses of the U.S. Congress.

The Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act passed in the Senate on July 16 and was unanimously approved by the House of Representatives last Friday. Obama had been expected to sign it.

The law restores U.S. consumers' rights to update the software on their phones so they can change mobile operators. That practice had been outlawed by a January 2013 decision by the Library of Congress, which ruled that consumer unlocking violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

Most cellphones sold in the U.S. come with built-in software that locks the phone so it can be used on only one carrier's network. The Library of Congress had found that changing that software violated the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA, which are typically deployed against cracking of digital-rights-management technology.

The law just signed is good news for customers of AT&T and T-Mobile, which use the same network technology, so phones can be switched easily if unlocked. It also benefits international travelers who want to buy service from a foreign carrier instead of roaming, which is typically more expensive.

However, there is a catch to the new law: Its exemption to the DMCA will expire in 2015, when the Library of Congress is due to make another rulemaking on the subject.

"Unfortunately, Congress wasn't ready to deal with the underlying copyright issue that makes it illegal to unlock your phone," said Sina Khanifar, who organized an online petition against the Library of Congress decision, in a prepared statement. "I'm going to be celebrating tonight. And consumers have another year and half to unlock their devices. Hopefully the Librarian of Congress will have better sense than to deny an unlocking exemption again."

16.01 | 0 komentar | Read More

Microsoft sues Samsung for license violations, post-Nokia

Microsoft sued Samsung Friday, saying Samsung violated the terms of a patent licensing agreement following Microsoft's acquisition of Nokia.

David Howard, corporate vice president and general counsel for Microsoft, tacitly accused Samsung of simply growing too big to ignore a mutually agreed-upon contract. Samsung had not issued a statement of its own by press time.

In a blog post, Howard struck a neutral tone, citing Microsoft and Samsung's long history of partnering with one another. The statement referred to a 2011 agreement where Samsung and Microsoft agreed to cross-license each other's patent portfolio, with Samsung agreeing to pay Microsoft royalties for devices that used the Android operating system. Samsung also said at the time that it would develop and market Windows Phones—a pledge which Samsung largely abandoned after becoming the world's largest supplier of Android phones.

Microsoft has struck several licensing agreements with technology companies, supposedly helping them to launch Android products without fear of litigation from Microsoft.

In September 2013, however, after Microsoft announced it was acquiring the Nokia Devices and Services business, "Samsung began using the acquisition as an excuse to breach its contract," Howard wrote. "Curiously, Samsung did not ask the court to decide whether the Nokia acquisition invalidated its contract with Microsoft, likely because it knew its position was meritless."

Microsoft is asking a court to "settle our disagreement," Howard wrote.

Specifically, Microsoft is arguing that Samsung halted its royalty payments for the second fiscal year of the agreement, and refused to pay interest once the payment had been made. Samsung also believes, according to Microsoft, that the Nokia Lumia phones made by Microsoft are not covered by the cross-licensing agreement, and thus violate Samsung's patents.

It's not clear how a court will settle the disagreement between the two, although Microsoft apparently seeks a cash payment of an undisclosed amount. A court date has not been set.

This story has been updated at 5:19 PM with information from the complaint.

16.01 | 0 komentar | Read More

Thanks, Obama: Now you can legally unlock your smartphone if you want to

The President has signed a bill into law that allows American citizens to legally unlock their phones. That means that you can take your mobile device, no matter which carrier subsidized it, and take it over to one of its competitors. Unlocking phones was made illegal in January of 2013 when an exemption to the DMCA expired.

The bi-partisan bill was passed last week by the U.S. House of Representatives, after already being approved by the Senate. There is bit of a catch, however: the Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act, as it's called, is only valid through 2015. For now, it ensures that you have a choice in matters of your mobile device, just as long as your phone is compatible with another carrier's network and you've complied with your previous contract. And even if you don't fancy yourself as technologically savvy, the bill allows you to seek outside help.

It's been a bit of a journey to get to this point. About a year ago, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) filed a petition urging the FCC to make a ruling that would require carriers to unlock phones and tablets at the customer's request. And while most carriers have been mostly kind about unlocking devices, tools to for consumers to unlock those phones and tablets themselves were considered illegal.

So, what are you waiting for? Go forth and be free! At least until the next time this exemption expires.

16.01 | 0 komentar | Read More

Obama signs cellphone unlocking bill

The right to unlock your cellphone became law on Friday as President Barack Obama signed a bill that rapidly passed both houses of the U.S. Congress.

The Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act passed in the Senate on July 16 and was unanimously approved by the House of Representatives last Friday. Obama had been expected to sign it.

The law restores U.S. consumers' rights to update the software on their phones so they can change mobile operators. That practice had been outlawed by a January 2013 decision by the Library of Congress, which ruled that consumer unlocking violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

Most cellphones sold in the U.S. come with built-in software that locks the phone so it can be used on only one carrier's network. The Library of Congress had found that changing that software violated the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA, which are typically deployed against cracking of digital-rights-management technology.

The law just signed is good news for customers of AT&T and T-Mobile, which use the same network technology, so phones can be switched easily if unlocked. It also benefits international travelers who want to buy service from a foreign carrier instead of roaming, which is typically more expensive.

However, there is a catch to the new law: Its exemption to the DMCA will expire in 2015, when the Library of Congress is due to make another rulemaking on the subject.

"Unfortunately, Congress wasn't ready to deal with the underlying copyright issue that makes it illegal to unlock your phone," said Sina Khanifar, who organized an online petition against the Library of Congress decision, in a prepared statement. "I'm going to be celebrating tonight. And consumers have another year and half to unlock their devices. Hopefully the Librarian of Congress will have better sense than to deny an unlocking exemption again."

16.01 | 0 komentar | Read More

Some are twisting the facts in requests to be forgotten, Google says

Some of those seeking to scrub their histories from the Web under Europe's "right to be forgotten" rule are being economical with the truth when making their requests, Google said Thursday.

In a letter to European data regulators, Google listed some of the challenges it faces in complying with the ruling, which allows people to compel search engines like Google and Bing to remove links to pages that mention their name, if the references are "inadequate," "irrelevant" or "excessive."

Part of the problem is that Google must often rely on information submitted by the requester in granting or rejecting a request.

"Some requests turn out to have been made with false and inaccurate information," Google said in the letter. "Even if requesters provide us with accurate information, they understandably may avoid presenting facts that are not in their favor."

For example, it said, someone might want to remove an old article about crimes they committed when they were a teenager—without revealing they'd been convicted of similar crimes as an adult.

As a result, Google might not be aware of information that would support leaving the search result intact.

Google has criticized the ruling in the past but said it's working to comply with it nonetheless. Its letter Thursday was in response to a questionnaire from regulators seeking more details about how it handles the requests.

As of July 18, Google had received more than 91,000 requests involving more than 328,000 URLs. On Thursday it said it had removed around 53 percent, or just over half, of those URLs. It declined to remove about a third of them, and requested more information in 15 percent of cases. It said those percentages could shift over time.

Reasons it might not grant a request include if removing the link would not be in the public interest, or if the contents of a link involve political speech, it said.

People in France and Germany submitted the most requests, at 17,500 and 16,500, respectively, Google said, followed by the U.K. with 12,000 requests, Spain with 8,000, Italy with 7,500 and Holland with 5,500.

Some webmasters have complained to Google about the removal of links to their sites, it said.

Others besides Google have criticized the ruling. This week, a U.K. House of Lords subcommittee said the ruling was unworkable and misguided. It said it could be particularly damaging for smaller search engines that don't have the resources to handle the requests.

Google provides a form online for the removal requests. So does Microsoft's Bing.

"We continue to work out the details of the process we'll use to evaluate the requests," a Microsoft spokeswoman said.

16.01 | 0 komentar | Read More

Microsoft security tool EMET 5.0 puts a leash on plugins

The latest release of a Microsoft security tool that's designed to stop exploits lets administrators control when third-party plugins are launched, a long favored route for attackers.

Microsoft has been steadily improving and adding more capabilities to the Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET), a free tool that strengthens the security of non-Microsoft applications by using defenses built within Windows, such as ASLR (Address Space Layout Randomization) and DEP (Data Execution Prevention).

The latest 5.0 iteration, released Thursday, includes something called "Attack Surface Reduction," which can block some of an application's modules or plugins that might be abused, wrote Chris Betz, senior director of the Microsoft Security Response Center.

He wrote that Microsoft Word, for example, can be prevented from loading an Adobe Flash Player plugin or allow Java plugins to only run from intranet-zone sites rather than outside ones.

Third-party software is often favored by hackers as finding vulnerabilities in the Windows operating system has become more difficult. Java, an application framework for running applications, is often targeted, as well as applications from Adobe Systems.

EMET has been configured by default to block Adobe's Flash plugin from being loaded by Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

Another improvement to EMET deals with digital certificates, which are used to secure a SSL (Secure Socket Layer) connection, Betz wrote. EMET now has a blocking mode that will tell Internet Explorer to halt an SSL connection if an untrusted certificate is detected without sending session data.

Microsoft also hardened EMET in light of successful efforts at bypassing mitigations in its 4.0 version. Earlier this year, researchers from Bromium, which develops security technologies based on micro-virtualization, found that more technical hackers could bypass all of EMET's protections.

The company worked on hardening EMET against bypass techniques, which are possible "when a memory corruption within an EMET-protected application can be abused to overwrite selected memory areas and corrupt data belonging to EMET itself," according to a technical writeup.

16.00 | 0 komentar | Read More

Mitro makes password manager open source as team heads to Twitter

The team at Mitro Labs, the developer of a password manager, is joining Twitter, and its software is being released under a free and open source license, Mitro said Thursday.

The Mitro team said in a post on the company's website that they were joining Twitter's location team in New York to focus on geo-related projects.

Twitter said it is not providing any details of the deal at this time beyond what is in Mitro's blog post. Twitter Engineering welcomed the Mitro team in a message.

The Mitro password manager for individuals and groups records user names and passwords as users log in to new sites, synchronizes them across devices, and lets users share them with others. It has extensions for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari, mobile apps for iOS and Android, and a server to do the synchronization.

Online rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation is helping transition Mitro to "a sustainable, community-run project."

The client and server side software is being released under the GPL (general public license) on code sharing site Github.

EFF said that while the Mitro team is joining Twitter, Mitro itself will continue as an independent corporation. It said Mitro had committed that it would fund the continued operation of its servers at least till the end of this year. "The service will continue to operate as-is for the foreseeable future," Mitro said.

Mitro is described by EFF as "already quite a mature and usable system." It said it didn't recommend downloading the Android version of the app for the time being because of security issues arising from its use of the Android clipboard.

16.00 | 0 komentar | Read More

Android grabs record 85 percent smartphone share

Google's dominance of the smartphone market has reached new heights, with its Android operating system now accounting for a record 84.6 percent share of global smartphone shipments, according to research by Strategy Analytics.

The growth in Android phones during the second quarter of this year came at the expense of BlackBerry, Apple iOS and Microsoft's Windows Phone, the research firm said Wednesday.

Android accounted for 249.6 million smartphones shipped in the quarter, up from 186.8 million a year earlier, and about seven times more than the 35.2 million Apple iOS phones shipped. The market share of Apple's iOS slipped to 11.9 percent in the quarter from 13.4 percent in the same quarter last year.

"Android's global growth is being driven by strong demand for low-cost smartphones across most major regions such as China, India and Africa," Neil Mawston, Strategy Analytics' executive director, wrote in an email. ("The main threat to Android's future growth is Apple's upcoming portfolio of larger-screen iPhones during the next three to six months."

Millions of Android users worldwide will likely switch to the bigger-screen iPhones later this year, Mawston added.

Overall global smartphone shipments grew 27 percent annually in the quarter to 295.2 million units from 233 million a year earlier. While growth has slowed to its lowest level in five years, it remains strong in Asia and Africa and weaker in North America and Europe.

The latest shipments tally was in line with numbers released on Tuesday by IDC, which said top-ranked Samsung saw its market share slip to 25.2 percent in the quarter from 32.3 percent a year earlier.

Strategy Analytics said earlier this month that the number of smartphone users around the world will approach 2.5 billion by the end of 2015, fueled by strong growth in East Asia.

16.01 | 0 komentar | Read More