MILAN (Reuters) - Treasure Hunting will go fully digital on Friday night when players chase a mysterious oriental wand with special powers along the narrow streets and bridges of Venice.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. government guidelines to spend $4 billion to expand broadband access to underserved areas across the United States may go beyond current laws, a broadband industry group, said on Thursday.
By Dan Whitworth
Newsbeat technology reporter
The social networking site Facebook has come under fire for planned changes to its privacy settings.
It wants to "simplify" the process so users only have to set them once, instead of for each individual feature.
Facebook says the change will help people share more information with one another.
However, critics argue the new set up could lead to members being persuaded to share too many personal details - their date of birth for example.
Tom Royal is from Computeractive magazine.
He said: "I’m a little bit worried about the settings recommended by Facebook because as far as I can see it’s actually sharing quite a lot of information with quite a few people.
"That’s not something we’d advise people to do. We’d very much recommend people choose the ‘limited’ option instead.
‘One size fits all’
"For example, just your date of birth can be a security question for lots of internet applications."
Facebook argues a ‘one size fits all’ approach will make things more straightforward for users.
"The effect of more and more settings has made controlling privacy on Facebook too complicated," according to the site’s chief privacy officer Chris Kelly.
It’s also phasing out regional networks like London and Manchester because Kelly says "they don’t adequately reflect a world where people choose the audience they want to share with".
The number of people using Facebook has risen above the 20 million mark this year in the UK.
It is the most popular social networking site in the world, with 200 million members globally. </p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Novel ways of thinking about the digital world are needed, says Bill Thompson, and perhaps the arts can help.
One of the more interesting shifts in the technology world over the last quarter century has been the way that cultural organisations have gone from being the late adopters, inheriting office-oriented computer systems from business and making do with them, to being those leading the digital revolution in many areas.
When I worked with the Community Computing Network in the late 80s it was hard work persuading charities and voluntary organisations that having a computer to handle their member databases and print letters was worthwhile.
But now that there really is a computer on every desk and word processing, spreadsheets and databases are standard, arts organisations seem to be far more willing to engage and experiment with the latest tools, especially online.
"We have few stories that talk about technology and few workable metaphors or analogies that let us convey complex technological issues in ways that people really grasp"
Bill Thompson
Many are making expert use of social media, moving from MySpace and Bebo to Facebook to follow the audiences, but also finding out how Twitter and other services can be used to help them engage and interact with people who may be interested in their art.
Stage craft
The much-loved Pilot Theatre brought in virtual worlds expert Caron Lyon to built them a stage set in Second Life. The team at Hoi Polloi used video diaries, Facebook and Twitter to establish an online following that has supported them as they tour from their Cambridge base as far afield as Australia, offering new audiences a chance to discover their work in all its strangeness while also ensuring that fans - including me - know what they are up to while they are away.
When it comes crossover organisations like Hide&Seek, who recently ran a social gaming festival in London, it is impossible to separate the art from the technology, and their work offers a real inspiration to those who wonder what the arts will look like in a digitised world.
This cross-fertilisation is important in several ways. It obviously makes sense for those committed to experiment and exploration in the arts to embrace new technologies as a way of exploring the creative potential of a new domain of human activity, just as painters explored the radical new technology of oils for for many decades, or sculptors turned from marble and limestone to work with welded iron or novel materials like frozen blood.
But there is something else going on, something deeper and potentially more important, because in working through the creative potential of new technologies artists of all types are helping us to find new ways to think about these tools and working out how to integrate them into our wider cultural and commercial practice.
They are helping us to explore the latest chapter in the ongoing conversation between human psychology and the capabilities of modern technology, something which will matter more and more as the network becomes pervasive and digital devices penetrate every area of our lives.
The point was made clear to me at Shift Happens, a conference on the ways arts organisations are using new technologies that took place this week at York Theatre Royal.
Over a day and a half the audience, mostly made up of practitioners, was treated to a fascinating selection of arts-based technology, or technology-based arts, from the interactive animations of the always-engaging Sancho Plan through calls to ensure that tech-based arts are environmentally sustainable from Envirodigital and a demonstration of how to subtitle your online video from Internet Subtitling.
It quickly became clear that the network revolution is already happening in the arts even if its success on the political stage is sometimes sadly limited, as we saw this week in Iran.
One problem in talking about this is that relatively few people understand the underlying technology sufficiently well to be comfortable with it. We have few stories that talk about technology and few workable metaphors or analogies that let us convey complex technological issues in ways that people really grasp.
Texting times
I wonder, however, if we can take some old stories and use them to explore the new world. Take The Tempest, for example, Shakespeare’s last play and one of his finest. Set on a remote island where Prospero, exiled Duke of Milan, lives with his daughter Miranda and a strange creature called Caliban, the Tempest explores issues of redemption and forgiveness and the use and abuse of power.
Prospero rules his island thanks the the spells in the books he has studied in his exile, commanding the spirit Ariel to torment and manipulate his former enemies, who have been shipwrecked on the island by a tempest created at Prospero’s command.
A modern reading this tale would see Ariel as a representative of the digital realm, created from bits but able to have a real effect on the physical world. We discover during the play that Ariel was locked into a forked tree until released by Prospero, a good analogy for the effort needed to liberate the power of the digital revolution, represented by Prospero’s books of spells.
We can take this further. The witch’s child Caliban believes himself the true inheritor of the island as his mother was banished there before Prospero arrived and fails to realise that Prospero’s books have given him power over the unseen world that far outstrip Caliban’s physical prowess, just as the rulers of analogue distribution fear the world we have conjured from our code.
And when Caliban, wandering the island with shipwrecked sailors Trinculo and Stephano, hears an invisible Ariel playing on a pipe he tells them:
Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises, Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.
Today the thousand twangling instruments that Ariel and his sprites conjure up are replaced by millions of tweets, status updates, but they still fill the world with sweet sounds, and offer us a vision of a digital world that can be as rich and full of delight as we choose to make it. It’s reassuring to see that some of our best artists are working hard to make that happen.
Bill Thompson is an independent journalist and regular commentator on the BBC World Service programme Digital Planet.</p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Space trading game Eve Online has suffered a virtual version of the credit crunch.
One of the game’s biggest financial institutions lost a significant chunk of its deposits as a financial scandal started a run on the bank.
One of the controllers of the bank stole about 200bn kredits and swapped them for real world cash of £3,115.
As news of the theft spread many of the bank’ customers rushed to remove their virtual cash.
Space scandal
The theft from EBank took place in early June but only now have details emerged about the amount of money stolen and why it was taken.
The theft was carried out by EBank’s chief executive, a player known as Ricdic, now known to be a 27-year-old Australian who works in the technology industry. His full identity has not been revealed save that his first name is Richard.
The stolen kredits amounted to 8% of the 2.6tn that Ebank had in its virtual vaults.
"Basically this character was one of the people who had been running EBank for a while. He took a bunch of (virtual) money out of the bank, and traded it away for real money," Ned Coker, of Icelandic company CCP which runs Eve, told the Reuters news agency.
Eve Online has about 300,000 players all of whom inhabit the same online universe. The game revolves around trade, mining asteroids and the efforts of different player-controlled corporations to take control of swathes of virtual space.
It has now emerged that Ricdic used the cash to put down a deposit on a house and to pay medical bills.
"I’m not proud of it at all, that’s why I didn’t brag about it," Ricdic told Reuters. "But you know, if I had to do it again, I probably would’ve chosen the same path based on the same situation."
Ricdic has now been thrown out of the game as trading in-game cash for real money is against Eve Online’s terms and conditions.
The rules governing play within Eve would not have sanctioned Ricdic if he had simply stolen the cash and used it in the game, nor if he had bought kredits with real dollars.
The scandal is not the first to play out in Eve Online. In early 2009 one of the game’s biggest corporations, called Band of Brothers, was brought down by industrial espionage.</p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Japan is considering the introduction of noise-making devices for near-silent hybrid cars following safety fears from vision-impaired pedestrians.
"Vision-impaired people feel that hybrid vehicles are dangerous", a transport ministry official told AFP.
The top-selling hybrid vehicles run almost without any sound when they change from fuel to battery mode.
The ministry of transport has brought together a panel that will draw up a report by the end of the year.
The panel is considering forcing manufacturers of hybrid cars to introduce a sound-making function that alerts passersby to the presence of a vehicle.
"Blind people depend on sounds when they walk, but there are no engine sounds from hybrid vehicles when running at low speed," the transport ministry official said.
The world’s most popular hybrid, the Prius, was launched by Toyota in 1997.
Paul Nolasco, a spokesman for Toyota Motor in Tokyo, told the BBC it had no immediate plans to add noise-making devices to the hybrid vehicles.
"But if it becomes a social concern, it is something we will have to address", Mr Nolasco added.</p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
AP - Scientists have confirmed for the first time that Australia was once home to a dinosaur that was big, fast and terrifying, and they’ve named it like something from an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. Meet the Australovenator.
US anti-trust regulators are to investigate a $125m (£76.4m) deal Google has made with book publishers to settle copyright issues, reports say.
The settlement compensates copyright holders and gives Google a share of online book sales and advertisements.
The deal "warrants further inquiry", US Deputy Assistant Attorney General William Cavanaugh said in a letter filed to the New York District Court.
Some fear the deal could make Google the main source for many online books.
"The US has reviewed public comments expressing concern that aspects of the settlement agreement may violate the Sherman [Anti-Trust] Act," Mr Cavanaugh said.
"At this preliminary stage, the US has reached no conclusions as to the merits of those concerns or more broadly what impact the settlement may have on competition," he added.
Right to read
In October 2008, Google reached a deal with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers.
The search engine agreed to pay $125m to create a Book Rights Registry, where authors and publishers can register works and receive compensation.
Google can also digitise orphan works - works whose rights-holders are unknown. Some fear the settlement could prevent other companies from entering the digital book market.
"The Department of Justice and several state attorneys general have contacted us to learn more about the impact of the settlement, and we are happy to answer their questions," Google said in a statement.
"It is important to note that this agreement is non-exclusive and if approved by the court stands to expand access to millions of books in the US."
Jeff Bezos, chief executive of Amazon.com, has previously expressed concerns about the settlement and has said he believes "it needs to be revisited". </p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
By David Reid
Reporter, Click
Have you ever bought something on the internet and found it does not turn up or it is not quite what you bargained for
Shoppers worried about parting with their money online can now get practical advice about their digital entitlements.
The eYouGuide explains the rights of European consumers surfing the web or shopping in the digital marketplace.
The new online tool created by the European Commission (EC) also sets out a Digital Agenda of possible actions in the future.
It aims to ensure that some of the consumer rights taken for granted in the real world apply to products and services sold on the net.
Many consumers often find it is far harder to get a refund on an unsatisfactory product online, than it is doing it in an actual shop.
Customer power
One area targeted for improvement is the terms and conditions that buyers have often have to click to accept when making a purchase or signing up for a service.
The small print is often hard to understand because the legal jargon in which it is written means few people are prepared to try.
Konstantinos Rossoglou, legal officer at the European consumers’ association BEUC, said most shoppers do not read terms and conditions online.
"Most consumers… just put ‘yes I accept’, and then they don’t know what they have accepted," he said.
He added that failing to read the small print could disadvantage the customer.
He said many companies use the terms and conditions to: "limit their liability, to impose unfair restrictions on the use of their content, and even to restrict the applicable law."
"We were so surprised that a regime that applies to simple material objects would be copied and pasted onto intangible software"
Francisco Mingorance, Business Software Alliance
Level of liability
But the Digital Agenda is not without controversy - it could mean software manufacturers will be liable for bugs in code and compatibility issues that some claim are impossible to anticipate or fix.
Francisco Mingorance, from the Business Software Alliance which represents software makers, said it was unfair to expect the same level of liability from software manufacturers as from the makers of other goods.
He said that computer programs work as part of an environment, and it is not possible to take responsibility for how software interacts with someone else’s components.
"If you buy a car or a fridge it is not going to upgraded in six months," he explained. "There is not going to be a new component that comes into play."
"That is why we were so surprised that a regime that applies to simple material objects would be copied and pasted onto intangible software," he said.
Small producers
Software producer Benjamin Henrion also fears a law change, meant to target big software developers, will hurt his small business.
Like many small independent developers, Mr Henrion uses open source code as a resource to build his software for business clients.
If there is a bug in the open source code he has used, he will not always know about it. As a small firm he cannot afford to get sued.
Developers currently use open source software without a warranty, but making them accountable for it could be "problematic", said Mr Henrion.
"Most of the time you don’t review code you use; especially if you use libraries which means code you can integrate easily into your software," he said.
"Sometimes you discover bugs… so creating liabilities is especially bad for small producers because they don’t have the means to fight a trial in court against a client," he said.</p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
A US judge has indicated that he will overturn the conviction of a Missouri woman accused of "cyber-bullying" a 13-year-old girl who later killed herself.
Lori Drew was alleged to have posed as a teenage boy on MySpace and sent flirtatious messages to Megan Meier.
After the fake boy "dumped" Ms Meier online, she committed suicide.
Drew, 50, was found guilty of illegally accessing computers last year, but Judge George Wu said he was tentatively
acquitting her.
If Drew were convicted for breaking the social networking site’s terms of service, "you could prosecute pretty much anyone who violated terms of service," he said.
‘Public symbol’
Prosecutors alleged during the trial that Drew had set up the phony MySpace account in order to find out if Megan Meier was spreading rumours about her daughter Sarah.
Posing as "Josh Evans", she started an online relationship with the 13-year-old, before apparently staging a falling-out and sending a message that "the world would be better off without" her.
During court proceedings, Drew’s lawyer argued that "the government’s case is all about making Lori Drew a public symbol of cyberbullying".
"The government has created a fiction that Lori Drew somehow caused [Megan's] death, and it wants a long prison sentence to make its fiction seem real."
But federal prosecutor Tom O’Brien said he stood by his decision to prosecute.
"I’m proud of this case," he said. "This is a case that called out for someone to do something. It was a risk. But this office will always take risks on behalf of children.</p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
