John Lister

British news agency BBC has published a list of its articles which are no longer linked to through Google, due to a controversial European law. The move means that the people who requested the pages be removed may have actually made things worse. ... The situation involves the " right to be forgotten ", a policy introduced last year by the European Court of Justice . It rules on those laws that apply across the 26 countries that are part of the European Union. The policy applies in cases where people want pages with embarrassing, outdated or privacy-threatening information about them ... (view more)

The US Navy has paid $9.1 million for ongoing support for Microsoft Windows. What makes it really amazing is that the ongoing support is for Windows XP. The payment comes from the Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command. It covers support for ... XP, Office 2003 and Exchange 2003. It only covers a temporary extension and there's an option for the Navy to extend the support coverage until 2017 with a total price of $30.8 million. The Navy isn't completely clueless about how outdated the software is. It's running a program to upgrade to more recent software and previously ... (view more)

A Chinese company has developed a wireless router with a setting that supposedly protects pregnant women. Rivals have accused Qihoo 360 of using bogus science to try to scare customers into purchasing the device. The router has three settings with ... names that translate as "wall penetration", "balance", and "pregnant women." The difference between the 3 settings has to do with the signal strength, with the "wall penetration" setting having the highest, and the "pregnant women" setting having the lowest. According to the Qihoo, the signal ... (view more)

The issue of exactly who gets a free copy of Windows 10 has continued to confuse the tech community. It now appears a couple of loopholes have been closed, restricting the pool of people getting the free upgrade. Windows 10 will bring us very close ... to the end of the era of having to pay to use the operating system. Not only will it be the last completely new edition of Windows (with future changes made through major incremental updates), but it will also be a free upgrade in the first year for those running Windows 7 or 8.1. In March, Microsoft also revealed that users in China will be able ... (view more)

Amazon is reportedly exploring the idea of paying members of the public to deliver packages to their neighbors. It appears to be a bare bones idea that may not lead to anything. According to sources quoted by the Wall Street Journal, the project is ... codenamed On My Way. The basic idea is for Amazon to pay retail stores to act as a delivery hub for their neighborhood, working either on a flat rate for a certain time period, or a per-delivery fee. (Source: wsj.com ) The stores would then hold the parcel until a local citizen using a dedicated app saw there was a parcel available in their area ... (view more)

Plans to draw up guidelines for how firms use facial recognition technology have fallen apart after civil liberties groups withdrew from talks. They say businesses aren't making a serious offer at an acceptable compromise. Businesses and consumer ... groups have been taking part in facial recognition guideline talks since early last year. They've been organized by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), a government agency. The idea behind the talks was to avoid the need to draw up and implement legislation, something that could be politically tricky. The ... (view more)

Toshiba has announced that some of its forthcoming laptops will have a dedicated Cortana key. It's designed as an easier way to control the "digital assistant" feature in Windows 10. Cortana, which is already implemented in Windows Phone devices, is ... a similar idea to Apple's dedicated virtual assistant, Siri. While Cortana features spoken information and voice control, it also combines online searches with information on user devices or computers to increase relevancy. Some examples Microsoft gives include taking notes of ideas, delivering personalized news updates, or ... (view more)

Kaspersky Lab, one of the biggest security software firms, says its own internal network was attacked by hackers. The company heavily implied that a national government was behind the hack. Owner Eugene Kaspersky says the hackers were able to access ... confidential internal data relating to research and development into new and improved security techniques. The attack didn't delete or change any data, or affect any performance. The company is also quick to stress that no customers were affected by the move and that it's products continue to work as designed. Attack Method Impressive, ... (view more)

All US government websites accessible by the public must use secure connections by then end of next year. The new rules should protect the public, particularly "whistleblowers." New rules laid down this week mandate the change for all public sites ... that are wholly or partly maintained by the federal government. This applies even if the site is operated by a contractor. The rules apply whether or not the site requires a user to log-in. (Source: cio.gov ) Under the rules, sites must use the most secure protection that is widely available. The initial implementation of the rule ... (view more)

A new security firm says it has come up with a way to stop malicious software before it reaches a user's computer. The "Isolation Platform" will initially be offered to business users, but remains to be seen how practical the solution is. According ... to makers Menlo, the main problem with most security tools are that they are based around the idea of examining programming code on a user's computer, and trying to determine if the code is malicious. Only if everything appears to be OK is a program allowed to run on the computer. Menlo says that's flawed because malware ... (view more)