Technology News and Gadgets Updates: 01/16/11

Sunday, January 16, 2011

Swiss tax whistleblower to give WikiLeaks new data: Report

A former Swiss private banker who was one of the first whistleblowers to use WikiLeaks by publishing internal bank documents on the site has pledged to hand over new data on offshore bank account holders on Monday, a newspaper said.

Rudolf Elmer , who was fired from Julius Baer in 2002 and who goes on trial in Switzerland on Wednesday for breaching bank secrecy, will hand over more data to WikiLeaks at a news conference in London, Der Sonntag reported on Sunday.

Elmer told the Swiss paper he would hand over two compact discs containing the names and account details of around 2,000 bank clients -- including prominent business people, artists and around 40 politicians -- who have parked their money offshore.

"The documents show that they hide behind banking secrecy, probably to avoid tax," Elmer told the newspaper.

He said he understood the data would likely not immediately show up on WikiLeaks while it went through a vetting process, however.

He said the data involved multimillionaires, international companies and hedge funds from several countries including the United States , Germany and Britain.

The data came from at least three financial institutions, including Julius Baer, he told the paper, and covered the period from 1990 to 2009, with many of the documents leaked to him from other whistleblowers.

Neither Julius Baer nor Elmer, who was the bank's former chief operating officer in the Cayman Islands, were immediately available for comment.

Facebook, Google join web future warning

Web addresses are likely to run out as soon as November and to raise public awareness Google and Facebook have decided to switch their websites to a new system for one day in June.

On June 8, a whole bunch of web giants, including Google, Facebook, Yahoo, will turn on a new way of running web addresses, reports the Telegraph.

The system, called IPv6, has been designed to stop the world running out of the web addresses that underlie the locating of websites and devices.

As of now, only 0.2 percent of web users have access to the new protocol, however. ''World IPv6'' Day is designed to encourage its adoption.

Vint Cerf, one of the web's founding fathers, is leading a global campaign to encourage web service providers and IT managers to switch from the current system, IPv4, to IPv6.

The new standard offers many trillions of new web addresses, but cannot be accessed from modems and routers that only use IPv4.

It is likely, however, that most of the changes needed will take place without consumers losing access to any part of the web because they will be part of the standard software and hardware upgrade cycle.

The availability of new web addresses will, it is hoped, allow more connected devices, such as tablet computers, as well as permitting more mundane devices to gain web addresses.

Writing on the Google Blog, Network Engineer Lorenzo Colitti said, "Google has been supporting IPv6 since early 2008, when we first began offering search over IPv6. Since then we've brought IPv6 support to YouTube and have been helping ISPs enable Google over IPv6 by default for their users. On World IPv6 Day, we'll be taking the next big step. Together with major web companies such as Facebook and Yahoo!, we will enable IPv6 on our main websites for 24 hours."

He added, however that "Our current measurements suggest that the vast majority of users will be unaffected. However, in rare cases, users may experience connectivity problems, often due to misconfigured or misbehaving home network devices."

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Beware of Kama Sutra virus

Sophos computer security firm has warned that hackers are spreading a nasty computer virus with a file promising a PowerPoint presentation of sexual positions from the Kama Sutra.

"Be careful what you do with that mouse," Graham Cluley of Sophos said in an online post.

"When you click on the file you do get to see a real PowerPoint presentation, but in the background a backdoor Trojan called Troj/Bckdr-RFM is installed which allows hackers to gain remote access to your computer."

Once a computer is infected with the malicious software, the hacker can steal personal information and spy on users' activities or use the machine for nefarious deeds such as sending spam or attacking websites.

In scant consolation, the booby-trapped file did present slides of more than a half dozen lovemaking techniques illustrated from the ancient Indian text, according to Cluley.

Wikipedia founder sees biggest impact yet to come

Wikipedia's impact on the world has yet to peak as the open online encyclopaedia aims to double its reach, mainly through expansion in developing countries, founder Jimmy Wales told Reuters.

Wikipedia already has about 400 million users and is in the top 10 most popular websites in the world. It aims to reach a billion through international expansion, starting with India, where it plans its first office outside the United States

"The biggest priority for us is diversifying the contributor base, and we mean that both in English Wikipedia -- we want to diversify the kinds of people who are contributing -- but also geographically," Wales said in an interview with Reuters.

Wikipedia has 17 million articles, more than 3.5 million of them in English, which have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site.

"I think our real humanitarian impact will be in the next few years as we bring information to people who haven't had it," Wales said, speaking to Reuters at a party in London to celebrate Wikipedia's 10th birthday this week.

He said that along with increasing the number of languages in which Wikipedia articles are published, increasing speed of access was also a priority.

"One of the problems we have today is that we are sometimes a little bit slow in India and China. The access times are slow because we don't have enough servers there," he said.

But Wales said he would not compromise on censorship in China, where Wikipedia is accessible but does not have its own servers because it would have to collaborate in filtering its own content.

"Access to information, basic information in particular, is a fundamental human right and we won't compromise on it. Of course they don't compromise either," he said.

"I meet with the minister there, he meets with me, we've had a lot of conversations, we agree to disagree. We're making progress but it's slow diplomacy."

A year ago, Google announced it may withdraw from China after a serious hacking episode, and said it was no longer willing to self-censor searches. It now has a diminished presence in China.

Wikipedia funds its operations mainly through donations, and has a budget of about $20 million a year.

Canadian journalist and science-fiction writer Cory Doctorow, an advocate of copyright-law liberalisation, said the absence of money in Wikipedia's mode of operation was one of its main attractions.

"There's one less reason to feel your labour is undervalued, because there's a lot of stuff I would do for free that I wouldn't do for a pittance," he said.

Wales said Wikipedia had no plans to change its non-profit status by selling advertising on the site, which was a place with dialogue and debate that did not come from columnists and bloggers but was aimed at establishing mutual understanding.

"That debate is in the form of how do we get it right, how do we explain the world in a mutual way... so in that context we don't want to have a lot of commercialism," he said. "It's quite important and we don't see any reason to change it."

Apple's iPad enters Singapore classrooms

If Oprah can do it, so can schools in Singapore. Four schools in the wealthy city-state have begun handing out Apple iPads to students, relieving them of the need to carry satchels full of bulging text books and notes.

Nanyang Girls High School has spent S$135,000 (about $100,000) to buy 150 iPads for 140 students and 10 teachers in a pilot project. Users connect to the Internet using the tablet, and download books and course material.

They can take notes on the iPad, and use worksheets. "It's much more convenient," said 14-year-old Chloe Chen, sitting in a classroom wih her iPad in front of her. "Teachers can just tell us to go a website, and we can immediately go and do our work."

Last year billionaire talk show host Oprah Winfrey gave staff at her magazine an iPad and a check for $10,000 each.

Seah Hui Yong, dean of admissions at Nanyang Girls school, said the iPad was chosen because it complemented a new method of teaching under which students are given more freedom to learn themselves, instead of relying solely on the teacher in traditional classrooms.

"It's not so much about the iPad," she said, adding that if some other better device comes along, the school could switch.

"If you talk to the girls you will realise that they practically don't need training. I think if anything, the joke is the teachers are probably taking a little bit longer time in getting used to it."

Safeguards are being put in place as well. "There will be some concerns - making sure that the girls are going to appropriate websites, also making sure that the girls don't get addicted to the device and use it too much," said Physics and Information Technology teacher Mark Shone.

Nanyang Girls is a secondary school, which means the youngest students are 12. Other schools in Singapore using the tablet include Tampines Secondary School, Nanhua Primary School and Dunman Secondary School.

Don't save passwords on your browser

Never store unencrypted passwords on a computer's browser. Doing so makes it too easy for hackers to access the data with tools like Trojans and then access private accounts, warns German computer magazine c't.

The magazine recommends that people who insist on storing passwords on a browser at least use some kind of master password, which means that all stored access data is safely encrypted. However, that option is only available with Firefox and Opera.

To access this function in Mozilla's Firefox, users must go to Extras/Settings/Security and then click the option to "use a master password." Opera automatically asks the first time a password is stored if users wouldn't rather set up a master password.

Many computer users do not adequately protect their accounts. The most popular passwords include "123456" or "Password" - both of which are incredibly easy for cyber criminals to figure out. Worse, one password often tends to provide access to multiple accounts.

C't advises using passwords with at least eight characters and to make each password unique to a particular website.