Tag: ban
EU's knee-jerk anti-plasma campaign could lead to total ban and more sensationalist tech headlines
Everyone knows that, in general, large TVs consume more electricity than small ones, but it seems that EU bureaucrats are just turning themselves on to the idea of banning plasma TVs because they’re not energy efficient.
The yawn-inducing title attributed to plasma sets is “the 4×4 of the living room” (I reported this over at HDTVUK two years ago) because it’s easy to lump them all together as electricity guzzlers.
Sweeping generalisations reported in the mainstream press include such gems as “they use up to four times as much electricity and are responsible for up to four times as much carbon dioxide as traditional cathode ray tube sets.” The clue is in those two words — “up to” — which, just as when applied to your flagging broadband connection, can cover a huge range of values…
Textecution – an extremely clever mobile app that stops you texting while you're driving
So, go on then, guess how a mobile phone app can tell if you’re driving or not? Speed of texting? Pauses while texting? More errors than usual? Drastic directional adjustments detected by the iPhone’s accelerometer as you hastily steer away from the bus stop, off the pavement and back onto the road?
Nope – Texecution uses GPS to locate the position of your phone, and therefore you, deactivating the phone’s SMS features when you seem to be moving at more than 10mph.
There is, of course, an override function for when you’re a passenger, on buses and trains, or running really fast…
This week, YouTube has been banned in… Kuwait
Oh dear. The poor people of Kuwait will no longer be able to watch poorly-lit webcam footage of women dancing to Latin American hip hop in their underwear, thanks to a fresh batch of religious outrage.
As ever, it’s the old portraying-Mohammed issue that’s lead to Kuwaiti officials demanding a ban on the video streaming site, thanks to it featuring videos that could offend Muslims. Here’s how the Kuwaiti top brass demanded the ban in a memo to the country’s ISPs…
Grand Theft Auto IV blamed for Thai killing – game pulled from shelves
This isn’t your usual tabloid shock story, where there was a robbery and one of the items taken just so happened to be a PlayStation. This is FOR REAL.
A Thai teenager has confessed to robbing and killing a taxi driver – then allegedly told police he was trying to recreate a scene from Grand Theft Auto. There’s no denying the facts or fudging the issue here – he was copying the game. It’s a 100% confirmed copycat crime. There’s going to be trouble over this. Big trouble.
“He said he wanted to find out if it was as easy in real life to rob a taxi as it was in the game,” chief police investigator…
Dutch people with death-wishes now allowed to take Segways out on the roads
For some odd reason, the Segway has always been banned in Holland. Isn’t it funny the sort of rubbish facts you pick up from the internet?
The Segway may even be banned in the UK – I’ve certainly never seen one tootling around the streets of South London. So it’s either banned, or too shameful…
Indonesian censorship news: YouTube allowed again!
Previously we have reported on Indonesia banning porn and YouTube. We are the UK’s premier source of news regarding Indonesian ISP policies. It it’s happening in Indonesia, you’ll find it first here first!
So it’s pleasing to report that Indonesia has today un-banned YouTube, with the country’s ISPs allowing access to the video-sharing site again – but still blocking any individual pages containing the offensive and supposedly anti-Islamic film that sparked the…
Europe votes "no" to internet bans for file sharers. We are saved!
The EU has just voted against the idea of banning file-sharers from using the internet, in a rare victory for the right-thinking common man.
Any possible plan to criminalise file-sharing was rejected by EU members, along with the concept of axing the web connections of those caught Bittorrenting the entire output of Hollywood overnight. It’s OK. You’re not going to get done for it any more…
Now Indonesia bans YouTube
We reported news a couple of weeks back about Indonesia banning porn – now Indonesian web authorities are cracking down on YouTube as well.
There is no way we’re going to Indonesia, EVER.
The latest internet row involves protests over a Dutch film entitled Fitna, made by Geert Wilders. Fitna commits the very, very serious crime of…
Three strikes and you're back to reading books – UK internet anti-piracy rules revealed
Good god, they’re actually going ahead with it.
Next week, says The Times, the government will introduce its Green Paper outlining plans to officially adopt a similar anti-piracy stance to the one used in France – get caught downloading copyrighted material three times and your internet connection will be terminated…
French piracy web-banning scheme coming to the UK?
The lunatic French idea of disconnecting the web connections of those caught downloading pirated material could be coming to the UK.
John Kennedy of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, told Billboard he’s hoping UK ISPs will take voluntary action to kerb file sharing…
