Internet Archive

"One of life's minor annoyances is having to wait on my devices to connect to the network after I wake them from sleep. All too often, I'll open the lid on my EeePC netbook, enter a web address, and get the dreaded 'This webpage is not available' message because the machine is still working on connecting to my Wi-Fi network. On some occasions, I have to twiddle my thumbs for as long as 10-15 seconds before the network is ready to be used. The frustrating thing is that I know it doesn't have to be this way. I know this because I have a Mac. When I open the lid of my MacBook Pro, it connects to the network nearly instantaneously. In fact, no matter how fast I am, the network comes up before I can even try to load a web page. My curiosity got the better of me, and I set out to investigate how Macs are able to connect to the network so quickly, and how the network connect time in other operating systems could be improved." Yes, I'd love to have Windows and Linux reconnect as fast as Macs do. Alas, "Method to quickly reconnect to a wireless or wired network", as well as its completely different "Method to quickly reconnect to a wireless or wired network on a mobile device" are probably patented, so Windows and Linux can't reconnect too fast out of fear of violating a software patent. In case you haven't noticed: I'm joking. Sort of.

"Internet streaming music service Pandora announced on Tuesday that it is phasing out Flash in favor of HTML 5. The change means users won't have to rely on the Flash plug-in in their Web browser to listen to the service's music offerings, and the company claims switching to HTML 5 has improved overall performance, too. 'The front-end technology has been rebuilt in HTML 5 and together with a host of other improvements results in a much faster experience,' the Pandora Web site stated."

Via TorrentFreak: "Entertainment industry lobby groups often describe file-sharers as thieves who refuse to pay for any type of digital content. But not everyone agrees with this view. Swedish telecom giant Ericsson sees copyright abuse as the underlying cause of the piracy problem. In a brilliant article, Rene Summer, Director of Government and Industry Relations at Ericsson, explains how copyright holders themselves actually breed pirates by clinging to outdated business methods." No faeces, Sherlock.

So, while The Netherlands just adopted net neutrality, the US is now nearing a comprehensive agreement on a piracy crackdown system. It will include throttling internet speeds, limiting access to e.g. only the top 200 websites, and forced participation in an educational program on copyright. The system has been drafted by the White House, big content, and ISPs. I guess this is the final nail in the coffin for net neutrality in the land of the 'free'.

Remember when Altavista was the search engine? Or Yahoo? They stuffed their search pages with useless, distracting crap, and using them became unpleasant. And then, bam, along came Google, with a simple, clear search page and uncluttered search results. However, now that Google has become this massive behemoth, tracking our every move, and tailoring our search results, leading to only being fed those pages you agree with - isn't it time for something new? Something simple? It might be, and you've undoubtedly heard of them: DuckDuckGo. I'm switching. Update: Just got an email from Gabriel Weinberg, the guy behind DuckDuckGo. The OSNews !bang (!osnews) is now live!

It's official now. The signs had been there for a while now. While the west bangs on about the importance of freedom and democracy, they don't actually want anyone to have too much of it. The US, France, and the UK have jointly pretty much declared war on freedom on the web.

Since it's weekend, let's start with some good news we can all be happy about. The United Nations has declared internet access a human right, and has called upon all nations to not instate any laws that have the power to cut people off the internet, with France and the UK being singled out because they passed three strikes laws.

"One researcher has decided he wants to make Skype open source by reverse engineering the protocol the service uses. In fact, he claims to have already achieved that reverse engineering feat on a new skype-open-source blog. The source code has been posted for versions 1.x/3.x/4.x of Skype as well as details of the rc4 layer arithmetic encoding the service uses."

If there is one organisation that I hold in very high regard and have a lot of respect for, it's the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The EFF formed after a US Secret Service raid on Steve Jackson Games' office, back in 1990, which owned the Illuminati Online BBS and later the IO.com domain. As Slashdot reports, the IO.com domain has been sold, and all email, shell, and homepage services will be transferred. A piece of internet history, right here, and a landmark in the fight for online freedom and free speech.

A few weeks ago, we talked about Dutch mobile phone carriers planning to charge for the use of different kinds of application, such as Skype, WhatsApp, and so on. They would check people's data traffic using deep packet inspection, and charge accordingly. This led to a massive outrage here in this glorified swamp - and this outrage has had its effect.

Well, this is a pleasant surprise. This weekend, we ran a story about the carrier situation in the The Netherlands. The largest carrier in The Netherlands has announced it's going to charge for services like IM and Skype, while the other two carriers were thinking about following suit. I stated I expected little from our politicians - but boy, turns out I was wrong. Basically the entire lower house - left to right, progressive to conservative - is not happy with the carriers' moves, and are now exploring options to prohibit them from implementing their plans - including the option to embed net neutrality in our telecommunications act. Go go... Politicians?!

You know all that talk about net neutrality in the US? How for instance Verizon and Google want net neutrality to apply only to something they call the 'wired' internet, which is apparently somehow different from the 'mobile' internet? Well, while you Americans are only talking about it, us Dutch are once again way ahead of the curve: the largest of the three main carriers has announced its intention to start charging extra for services like VoIP, instant messaging, Facebook, and so on, with the other two carriers contemplating similar moves. The dark future of the web, right here in my glorified swamp.

A major win has been scored in Europe against the content industry and several governments who are trying to impose censorship on the internet through ISPs. The European Court of Justice, the highest court in Europe, gave a preliminary opinion which states that no ISP can be forced to filter the internet, especially not enforce copyright.

"Camino - the Gecko-based browser with a native Cocoa user interface - is considering switching its underlying rendering engine to WebKit. Developer Stuart Morgan announced the proposed change this week after Mozilla effectively put an end to the project that supported embedding Gecko into other software. While the team is still putting the finishing touches on a long overdue 2.1 update, which would finally bring rendering parity with Firefox 3.6, the small group is looking to recruit help to make the transition happen."