Cyber Bullying

• Why Anonymity Matters

RIP trolls and the response from Facebook and Twitter. (or rather the lack thereof)

This web page was inspired by the BBC program "The Anti-Social Network" seen below:

Broadcaster Richard Bacon has been targeted by an obsessive tirade of anonymous online abuse over the last two years, aimed not just at him but at his wife, mother and baby son. Motivated by his own experience, in this documentary Richard attempts to hunt down and confront three online bullies, including his own, only to learn that unmasking these so-called trolls can be a dangerous pursuit.

Richard is one of an increasing number of victims of cyberbullies and internet trolls who use fake identities on social networking sites to torment, harass and abuse. They even target the tribute sites of young people who have committed suicide, posting vile comments and images with devastating consequences for the victims' families.

It makes me question the pursuit of anonymity. Although I maintain anonymity I abhor the antics of those that troll obscene comments  on "tribute pages" and websites.

However, I do not agree that this is something that governments should make up a legislation in an attempt to control it. I do have major concerns that governments if left unchecked will often go too far. As from April 2012 I am increasing my analysis of Cyber Countermeasures taken by both governments and intellectual property rights holders, it is often not easy to see what the motivation is here. Is it the control of the flow of information that could cause citizens harm due to acts of terrorism or is it the protection of commercial interests?

• 2003 Communications act - The Communications Act 2003 (c 21) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It gave regulation body Ofcom its full powers. The Act introduced new offenses for 'Improper use of public electronic communications network'.
• The Anti-Social Network  - BBC Three, 9:00PM Mon, 19 Mar 2012 
• Hunter Moore sells 'revenge porn' site to anti-bullying group BullyVille.com - By Claire Connelly, Technology Reporter Herald Sun news.com.au April 23, 2012

HomeGroup Networking

Is Windows HomeGroup networking a viable solution for home networking?

It was my plan to use a Linux Samba share server to provide a solution to what I observed to be a deficiency in the operation of Windows Homegroup.

My observation is that Homegroup is unreliable in a Windows 7/IPv6 environment. but so are Samba Shares.

• Powerline Networking discussed 
• Samba Shares

Alternative to Cyberlink PowerDVD

The alternative to Cyberlink PowerDVD is to use VideoLan's VLC Player. In fact VLC is a good replacement for ALL DVD players that are either supplied with your computer (pre-installed) or that come with a drive. VLC, being opensource and having users and developers that are connected to the media community, has access to ALL KNOWN codecs. If VLC cannot play a file format I would suspect the file for possible malware.

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I finally got fed up with the constant reminders to upgrade to the full version of PowerDVD that the version that came with with my BD drive displays every time I try and play a DVD.

Sure, the company has to make money, but, constantly bickering and making me dismiss the registration dialog is NOT THE WAY TO DO IT!

Even if you agree to register it tries to make you purchase the full product - THIS IS NOT REGISTRATION! (of the trial, limited functionality version that I was perfectly happy with!).

Please download and use VLC Player from VideoLan - it is free and open source.

I uninstalled PowerDVD from all my computers.

• Systems Pages on The Technology Muse 
• VLC - VideoLan Media Player

ARM Cortex A9 SOC vs. Atom (nVidia ION)

The A9 is a SOC (system on a Chip) - runs at 1GHz and is based on an ARM Cortex A9 processor (a RISC - reduced instruction set computer microprocessor) and the Cortex-A9 NEON Media Processing Engine (MPE)

The competing Intel Atoms have the existing Atom processors (not only the N270) and the nVidia ION GPUs.

nVidia seem to be emphasizing gaming and 1080p on a Netbook.

You may or may-not want to do this.

The nVidia demo video on their website mentions GeForce 9600 transcoding - and shows Call of Duty 4 crashing.

nVidia are not currently comparing their offering to the Apple product (it is too new) - and they are comparing the ION to the Intel Graphics chipset - which is understandably better as it is a newer technology!

I am sure that this debate will emerge as the iPad comes on-line.

Early reviews of the iPad claimed that Apple are using their own brand of processor. While this is not strictly true they are NOT using the Intel product (which is a good thing IMO) - The ARM processor-based products are manufactured by licensed foundries.

Like ALL the Apple products they are manufactured off-shore using Asian manufactured components - even if they did use Intel or AMD.