Daily Internet Digest

No email or PM yet from your family member or business partner in India or the Middle East? Don’t worry, they’re not evading you or anything like that. They’re having a small problem: they have been disconnected from the World Wide Web; and it’s not because of some strict government crackdown or terrorist activity, but rather because of two damaged undersea cables in the Mediterranean.

There was disruption to 70% of the nationwide network in Egypt, and India suffered up to 60% disruption.
UK firms such as British Airways have told the BBC that call centres have been affected by the outage.
Industry experts said it could take up to one week to repair the damaged cables and resume full service.
International telephone calls, which have also been affected, are being rerouted to work around the problem.

Reports are saying that the internet connection will be up within a week or so.

Source

Thanks to gamers from all over and l33t-speak (that�s hacker language for the laymen out there) shout — “w00t!” — has just been named as the “Word of the Year” by the Merriam-Webster Online Web Site. According to the Merriam-Webster Web site, the word �w00t!� (spelled with two zero�s instead of two letter O�s) is an acronym for �We owned the other team,� but is mainly used as an interjection to express joy, most especially in the case of triumph.

Such as other coded languages, l33t-speak was developed for exclusivity so as to make it harder to detect hackers� online conversations. And as the nature of speakers of coded languages, despite the popularity of “w00t!,� I�m sure that these guys have moved on and have coined another term to substitute for it. But I�m sure that whatever that new term is, it would eventually get out of its exclusivity and may even be the next catch phrase of 2008.

Source: Yahoo! News

Have you ever gone through the difficult, not to mention sluggish, process of suing somebody whether it may be about divorce or medical malpractice?

A newly established Californian website called SueEasy promises “instant” justice to your legal qualms. The website is said to be paired with lawyers and litigants thus, alarming some of the seasoned lawyers present in the country. Most of them question the quality of lawyers working for the website.

Some also are concerned about the people’s responsibility when it comes to suing someone. They said that since suing is now more “accessible” to just about everyone, then most likely, there are some who might abuse the system.

Photo taken from http://www.sueeasy.com/

Yep, those bloody pirates have struck again! But the British police were right to save the day as they conducted a dawn raid in Cardiff, Welsh and arrested three people suspected of involvement in Internet-based music and film piracy rings. Two men (one of which is the ring leader) and a woman were said to be part of the biggest suppliers of pirated music and films in Britain, earning about 3,000 pounds (6,173 $) a month. Now I understand how these cyber thieves find the piracy business a lucrative one. Too bad it�s considered illegal and unethical. But piracy is not going to end unless people stop buying from them. Just some food for thought, folks.

Source: Reuters

Poor old television has just lost to the Internet according to a survey released by the European Interactive Advertising Association (EIAA). Apparently, a majority of the 7,000 survey participants in 10 European go online between five and seven days a week. Only 77 percent watch television just as often with 48 percent saying that their TV consumption has been reduced because of the Internet. A European teen spends an average of 11.9 hours of Internet time every week. 32 percent of the respondents cite the e-mail as particularly indispensable. Participating countries were Belgium, Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain and Sweden.

I wonder what the results will be like in the rest of the world. I guess it must be the same. I myself don�t even watch TV anymore. And if I do access my TV, it�s to watch DVD�s. Ask me about the recent TV commercials and I won�t be able to answer you. I even get my news over the Internet.

Source: Yahoo! News

Consumersearch.com has released the top five anti-virus programs available on the internet as of January 2008. The list are as follows:

1. Kaspersky Anti-Virus 7.0 (estimated cost to buy around $40.00)
2. ESET NOD32 (estimated cost to buy around $40.00)
3. AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition 7.5 (free to download from their official website)
4. Panda Internet Security 2008 (estimated cost to buy around $40.00)
5. Norton Anti-Virus 2008 (estimated cost to buy around $40.00)

However, these sites also have online virus scanners (except for AVG) if you only wish to use the program once or you wouldn’t wish to buy their product (utilitarian purposes!). Their online scanners are as follows:

1. Kaspersky online lab
2. ESET NOD32 online scanner
3. NO AVG ONLINE SCANNER
4. Panda online scanner
5. Norton online scanner (Symantec’s online scanner, makers of Norton)

Photo taken from http://www.worldofstock.com

From online mapping technology to the latest venture of Google to help homeowners monitor the amount of electricity they use with PowerMeter, the company has been on the forefront of internet technology for a long long time. The much anticipated and now praised Google maps has become a very useful tool for most people who want to see the world as it is and for what it is. Available to the public, it allows people to learn more about the world through maps loaded with all the information they need. They added the ability to see paces of interest with street-view that is possible with extensive mapping and scanning technology that lets you stand in front of the place you were interested in. Continue Reading »

The case of the Pirate Bay people who were convicted and found guilty of violating several copyright and intellectual property rights issues has seemingly ended with their conviction, sending them straight to the slammer, end of story. We hoped it was but it seems these guys have a trick or two up their sleeves in their appeal process where they seek to overturn charges levied against them by seeking an impartial judge to preside in their affairs. Their lawyers argue that the previous judge that handled the case was quite biased from the start and that they were found guilty even before the process started.
The Pirate Bay is one of the longest and largest FTP file sharing sites the world over that has damaged the film, music and other industries where intellectual property rights were violated hundreds if not thousands of times every day. Continue Reading »

China has long been identified as one of the leading sources of hackers and malware the world over along with Russia and many other countries. Their aims may be for economic and other means yet the country itself is falling victim to it’s generation of computer savvy youth’s armed with the know how and cheaper technology coming in from the West to do more damage it now fears itself from home-based hackers. There have been publicized cases of hackers being caught and prosecuted but the government is taking more steps to prevent such incidents happening from within its borders. Continue Reading »

Mainly because of the free-ranging quality of the web where hyou may get one source but risk missing several others making it an exercise in futility. Most measures to control content and software have been quite effective till the internet became so far reaching the policing efforts have simply become too costly. There have been major success stories with major piracy hubs being closed down for a couple of hours till they got the system back up again. The ability of these hackers to move from place to place is quite frustrating for law enforcement for they can lose these people in the blink of an eye. Even some for the best Information Technology security systems are having a hard time to cope with the ever growing threats that are on the internet.
Continue Reading »