Another film that forces us to think about the price of what we have and why chasing, the value of every day moments of love, of priorities and, of course, the eternal opposition of fate and chance. How to build your life: love or career pave painted in minute detail a plan to allocate space for love? .. Unfortunately (or fortunately?), The reality does not give a second chance to relive all over again, but it does not stop and wonder what would have happened «if only«.

Pretty and pleasant film, but not for everyone and for the amateur draft «B» category. Simulated impulsivity, in some way, prevented me from head to plunge into the picture. On the other hand, this is offset by a small (92 min.) Duration of the film. Yes, and as such highlights I saw. Somewhat similar, but carefully furnished and presented to, the story can be seen in «evolving» with Matt Damon in the lead role or in the relatively recent «source code» (with Jake Gyllenhaal), and, of course, in the now classic » PS I love you «and in» Premonition » (Sandra Bullock).

The Beatles’ back catalogue is finally available on iTunes, after years of negotiations.

It will mean that for the first time consumers will be able to purchase some of the Fab Four’s most popular songs via the store.

Apple and record label EMI have been in talks for years about getting the catalogue online.

Apple chief executive and Beatles fan Steve Jobs said it had «been a long and winding road to get here».

«We love the Beatles and are honoured and thrilled to welcome them to iTunes,» he said.

Sir Paul McCartney echoed his thoughts.

«It’s fantastic to see the songs we originally released on vinyl receive as much love in the digital world as they did the first time around,» he said.

Ringo Starr added: «I’m particularly glad to no longer be asked when the Beatles are coming to iTunes.»

Trademark dispute

But not everyone was convinced it was such a big deal.

Writing in his blog, James Last, an analyst with research firm Forrester, said it was not what the younger generation of digital music fans craved.

«The fact that securing the content of a band old enough to be most young music fans’ grandfathers is a sad reflection of the state of the digital music market,» he said.

«The digital music market needs new music products, not yesteryear’s hits repackaged,» he added.

For years The Beatles’ music label Apple Corps was involved in a bitter trademark dispute with Apple the computer company. The dispute was finally settled in 2007.

Earlier in the year Sir Paul McCartney hinted that part of the delay in getting a deal with Apple was down to EMI.

Beatles USB

The Beatles catalogue has been a noticeable absence from the iTunes store despite the fact that solo works of members of the band are on sale there.

There have been forays into the digital world for the band.

Last year EMI released limited edition apple-shaped USB drives containing The Beatles’ studio albums as digital files.

And in September 2009, The Beatles: Rock Band video game was released.

Even though the group formed around 50 years ago, they remain one of the top-selling bands in the world.

Neilsen SoundScan reported that they have sold more than 30 million albums in the past decade.

EMI has said that with worldwide sales of one billion albums, the Beatles are the top-selling band in music history.

The deal with Apple comes amid uncertainty at EMI.

The company’s owner, private equity firm Terra Firma Capital Partners, owes millions in debt payments to Citigroup, which helped bankroll the purchase of EMI in 2007.

Ben Rumley from Enders Analysis says the Beatles’ arrival is as important for EMI as it is for consumers.

«EMI will make some money selling The Beatles once again,» he told BBC 6 Music.

«The Beatles were about 10% of their sales in the US last year, excluding digital, so having The Beatles available online can clearly be a good thing. They’re very good at exploiting them.»

The iTunes music store opened in 2003 and is now the largest music retailer in the world.

The Beatles albums are available for purchase and download for £10.99 each, double albums for £17.99 and individual songs for 99p.

A box set, containing all 13 remastered studio albums is available for £125. It includes the Beatles’ very first US concert in its entirety.

© bbc.co.uk

Ofcom’s chief executive Ed Richards has laid out the timetable which will pave the way for next-generation mobile services in the UK.

The airwaves that will enable 4G networks will be auctioned off in the first half of 2012, Mr Richards said.

It means the spectrum will become available from 2013.

The auction was originally earmarked for 2009 but was delayed because of legal action by mobile firms.

Mr Richards announced the timetable at the FT World Telecoms Conference.

Level playing field

He warned that «further litigation against the government or regulator will jeopardise this timetable».

Mobile operators have been arguing over the distribution of existing spectrum.

Ofcom had originally planned to redistribute spectrum allocated to O2 and Vodafone, prompting the two operators to launch legal action against the regulator.

Historically the 900MHz slice of spectrum has belonged exclusively to O2 and Vodafone because they were the only two mobile operators on the market when it was handed out.

Ofcom dropped its plans to share out its spectrum, following the merger between T-Mobile and Orange.

«In the light of the merger, there was not such an unlevel playing field,» said Ovum analyst Matthew Howett.

It prompted Vodafone and O2 to drop their legal action, paving the way for the auctions to go ahead.

«There is still the threat of legal action but operators are more interested in getting this over and done with,» said Mr Howett.

More capacity

The auction will see two chunks of the spectrum – the 800MHz and 2.6GHz bands – sold off.

Both have great value to operators.

The 800MHz slice – which has been freed up by the switchover to digital TV – allows mobile signals to travel over greater distances, making it invaluable in the search to find ways of bringing broadband to rural areas.

The higher capacity 2.6GHz band will be more useful in towns and cities where lots of users require services.

The delay in the sale of spectrum means that the UK will be behind other countries in offering services. Germany has already auctioned off its digital dividend spectrum and others are planning to do so soon.

For consumers 4G or LTE (Long Term Evolution) services will mean more capacity on the networks.

«They will have a more enjoyable experience using mobile broadband,» said Mr Howett.

The popularity of smartphones has meant an explosion in demand for mobile data.

It could mean even next-generation networks run out of capacity, thinks Stephen Rayment, chief technology officer of BelAir Networks.

«Mobile data traffic is already on track to exceed the capacity that will be available in forthcoming LTE and 4G networks. Consequently, buying new spectrum is no longer a speculative move for mobile operators, it’s an absolute necessity,» he said.

Despite the demand for new networks, Mr Howett predicts the spectrum will sell for a lot less than its 3G equivalent which raised £22bn for the Treasury when it was sold in 2000.

© bbc.co.uk

The US Air Force has warned its troops that using Facebook and other social networking sites could inadvertently reveal their location to the enemy.

The warning, posted on an internal website and sent to commanders, concerns new technology allowing users to pinpoint their location on the map.

It said careless use could have «devastating operations security and privacy implications».

The US Army is set to send a similar warning to its troops.

Air Force officials are concerned that troops using BlackBerrys and other devices with GPS capabilities could reveal their location to internet services with geo-location features – Facebook, Foursquare and others – and that the enemy could discover their location, the Associated Press reported.

On most of those sites, users can adjust privacy settings to enable or disable the geo-location features.

The US has about 95,000 troops in Afghanistan and 50,000 in Iraq.

© bbc.co.uk

A woman in China has been sentenced to a year in a labour camp after posting a message on the social networking website Twitter.

The fiancee of human rights activist Cheng Jianping told the BBC she had been accused of disrupting social order, but her message had been a joke.

She had repeated a Twitter comment urging nationalist protesters to smash Japan’s pavilion at the Shanghai Expo, adding the words «Charge, angry youth».

Twitter is banned in China.

However, many people use it by circumventing internet controls.

Diplomatic row

The offending online «tweet», which has landed 46-year-old Cheng Jianping with a year of re-education through labour, was posted in the middle of last month.

At the time, China and Japan were embroiled in their worst diplomatic row in recent years over a group of uninhabited, but disputed, islands in the East China Sea.

Groups of young Chinese had been demonstrating against Japan, publicly smashing Japanese products.

Cheng Jianping’s fiance, Hua Chunhui, told the BBC he first posted the short message on Twitter, ridiculing the demonstrators, saying their actions were nothing new and if they really wanted to make an impact they should smash the Japanese Pavilion at the Shanghai Expo.

Ms Cheng then «retweeted» the mocking message, he said, forwarding it and adding the words «charge, angry youth».

Ten days later she was detained by police «for disrupting social order» and has now been sent to the Shibali River women’s labour camp in Zhengzhou city in Henan Province.

Mr Hua said his fiance had started a hunger strike and he was trying to get her released to undergo her re-education at home.

Contacted by the BBC, staff at the camp said they had no information to give.

But Mr Hua said documents from the labour re-education committee made it clear Ms Cheng had been committed because of her single «tweet».

Another Twitter user has now tweeted that Ms Cheng should apply for a place in the Guinness Book of World Records, because the five words she added to the message had cost her a year of freedom.

Dissidents

Her detention is a sign of how closely China’s government scrutinises comment on the internet.

The authorities are fearful of the power of the internet to stir up discontent.

They are also wary of the way nationalist demonstrations like those targeting Japan have the potential to run out of control.

Ms Cheng may also have been targeted because she is a local human rights activist.

Her fiance said she had signed petitions including one calling for the release of China’s jailed Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo.

And she had been detained by police for five days in August this year after she voiced support for Liu Xianbin, a long-time campaigner for democracy in China, involved in the protests that preceded the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989.

Liu Xianbin had been detained again this year, apparently suspected of inciting subversion of state power for criticising China’s Communist Party.

© bbc.co.uk

Culture minister Ed Vaizey has backed a «two-speed» internet, letting service providers charge content makers and customers for «fast lane» access.

It paves the way for an end to «net neutrality» – with heavy bandwidth users like Google and the BBC likely to face a bill for the pipes they use.

Mr Vaizey said ISPs must be free to experiment with new charges to help pay for the expansion in internet services.

But critics warn the move could harm free speech and stifle innovation.

‘Fast lane’

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are supposed to treat all web traffic equally – serving only as a one-size-fits-all pipe for whatever data is passing from content providers to end users.

But a debate has been raging around the world over how much they should be allowed to control the size of their pipes, and thus the internet speed that users get from the site.

In the US, President Barack Obama has backed net neutrality – treating all traffic equally – and regulators have threatened possible legal action against ISPs that block or restrict access to sites.

But some traffic management, where traffic from one source is favoured over another, is likely to be allowed, with a ruling due next year, Mr Vaizey suggests.

The EU has also backed traffic management but with greater transparency to ensure the internet remains «open» – something that will soon be enshrined in UK law.

Mr Vaizey argues that most ISPs already carried out traffic management «to ensure the smooth running of their networks» without any impact on competition or consumer rights.

In his speech, he argues that the continued quality of internet services in the UK is under threat due to the rapid expansion of mobile and wireless networks and the «massive investment» it needed.

As a result, ISPs had to be free to experiment with new ways of raising revenue – provided customers were clear about what they were buying.

He says: «We have got to continue to encourage the market to innovate and experiment with different business models and ways of providing consumers with what they want.

«This could include the evolution of a two-sided market where consumers and content providers could choose to pay for differing levels of quality of service.»

He also suggests that content makers could be charged for the first time for the use of the ISP’s networks – provided they too were clear about what they were getting.

«Content and application providers should be able to know exactly what level of service they are getting especially if they are paying for it,» he says.

‘Appalling’

He added that the government did not want to introduce new laws on top of those already being adopted from the EU to guarantee an «open» internet, arguing that light touch regulation was better.

He also argued that, that unlike in the US where some areas only had the choice of one service provider, there was enough rivalry between providers to ensure consumers’ rights were protected.

«The essential competition we enjoy in Europe and especially in the UK, will be an essential safeguard against unfair discrimination,» he argues.

He said ISPs must also guarantee that net users can continue to access any legal website or content.

«In order for the internet to continue as the open, innovative force for good that it has been over the past 20 years it is essential that all elements continue to prosper.

«This means ensuring that content providers and applications have open access to consumers and vice versa.

«But it also means allowing ISPs and networks to innovate and experiment with new ways of delivering what consumers want so we can ensure continued investment in the infrastructure that delivers the content and applications we all use.»

But Jim Killock, of net freedom campaigners the Open Rights Group, said the proposals could have «appalling» consequences for free speech and commercial innovation.

«Ed Vaizey is wrong to assume that there is no problem if BT or Virgin restrict people’s internet access for their commercial advantage. Removing ‘net neutrality’ will reduce innovation and reduce people’s ability to exercise their freedom of speech.

«This is why ORG will campaign against any market abuse, should Ed Vaizey allow it to happen.»

‘Peak times’

But the Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) welcomed what it called Mr Vaizey’s «lightly-regulated, market-based approach» towards traffic management, adding that ISPs should be «open and transparent» to boost confidence in the industry.

An ISPA spokesman said: «This approach will reassure those who are investing in networks and coming up with new, innovative online business models.

«A number of ISPA members already provide consumers with clear information on traffic management practices and we expect to see this extended.

«ISPs use traffic management techniques so that they are able to effectively and efficiently run and manage their networks for the benefits of all users.

«This enables ISPs to prioritise time-sensitive applications, such as VoIP and online gaming, at peak times.»

© bbc.co.uk

China has rejected claims that it hijacked a huge chunk of net traffic in April 2010.

The allegation surfaced in a report presented to the US Congress which said that for 18 minutes the traffic was redirected to Chinese servers.

But in an official statement China Telecom «denied any hijack of internet traffic».

So far the Chinese government has declined to comment on the allegations.

The report was written by the US-China Economic and Security review commission and said the re-routing of data was caused when China Telecom sent incorrect routing information. It is not clear whether the re-routing was intentional.

Among traffic rerouted via China during the 18 minutes was that destined for the websites of the US Senate, the Office of the Secretary of Defence, Nasa and the Commerce Department, the report said.

The re-routing began at a small Chinese ISP called IDC China Telecommunication but was then picked up by the state-owned China Telecom.

«Evidence related to this incident does not clearly indicate whether it was perpetrated intentionally and, if so, to what ends,» according to the report.

«However, computer security researchers have noted that the capability could enable severe malicious activities,» it added.

The danger of cyber-attacks has been high on global agendas recently.

This week, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates warned that cyber-attacks posed a huge future threat and urged more joined-up efforts between the US military and civilian agencies.

MPs in the UK have also been hearing about the risks of cyber-attacks.

In evidence given to the Science and Technology Committee, experts said that a concerted cyber-attack capable of damaging key infrastructure could currently only be launched by an enemy state.

Stuxnet fears

«The risk of a concerted attack which has fundamental effect on infrastructure would have to be at state level and therefore politically unlikely,» said Dr Hayes, a senior fellow at the Microsoft Institute for Advanced Technology in Governments.

But he said the tools were there for either politically-motivated hackers or organised criminals to launch an attack.

«If I see a nuclear weapon, I need plutonium, but cyber-weapons are just a sequence of ones and zeros. We have concerns that Stuxnet could be copied for instance,» he said.

«The risk of that is high and could have localised effect on critical infrastructure,» he told MPs.

The recent Stuxnet malware, which appeared to be targeted at Iran’s nuclear power plant, has caused alarm in governments around the world about a new wave of state-sponsored cyber-attacks.

Dalai Lama

Professor Ross Anderson, from the University of Cambridge, told MPs that Stuxnet was a sophisticated piece of malware.

«We can surmise it was from someone who didn’t like the Iranians refining uranium. It took six people five months to write. It appears whoever commissioned it had access to people whose business was writing malware, as well as people clearly expert in industrial control systems.

It was an effort funded to the order of £1m or thereabouts,» he said.

Experts have said that Stuxnet’s complexity means it could only have been written by a nation state.

Prof Anderson told MPs that he had had personal involvement into state-sponsored malware attacks.

«A couple of years ago, a student of mine helped the Dalai Lama’s office clear up malware clearly from the Chinese government,» he said.

Despite the threat from enemy states, the biggest risk to UK computer systems remained the prospect of internal system failures as upgrades to the net addressing system began, he said.

«The most likely cause of disruption to the internet comes from software failure associated with the transition to IPV6,» he said.

But he warned that the threat of external attacks was likely to get worse over time, as more and more systems became computerised.

Experts needed

Prof Anderson said that government needed to become more «IT-aware».

«Regulators such as Ofgem and Ofcom should have people on their staff who understand IT and the risk we could be sleepwalking into,» he said.

He warned that the government needed to do more.

«We have never put enough into combating cyber-crime. The Metropolitan police have difficulty sustaining e-crime units, because they are forever being closed down or merged,» he said.

He said that the situation was not helped because the culture of the UK’s security body GCHQ was non-collaborative, unlike that of the US National Security Agency.

«Currently there are two separate communities, the civil community and the defence community. Outside of the defence community there is no source of expertise,» he said.

«Bodies like the Information Commissioner’s Office and the Metropolitan police don’t have their own engineering staff, so are beholden to Cheltenham [the base for GCHQ] for advice.»

He was not convinced that GCHQ was the right body to be protecting computer systems.

«It may take a cyber-attack to convince the prime minister that GCHQ is incompetent and things need to be changed,» he said.

© bbc.co.uk

A former Facebook executive aims to turn the world of social networking on its head by making it more personal.

Dave Morin’s new company Path has launched a photo-centric social hub that limits the number of friends you can have to 50.

The aim is to enable more effective communications with people who are part of your trusted enclave.

It contradicts the ethos of most social networks which includes loose acquaintances and colleagues.

Path focuses on photo-sharing using mobile devices to let users share not just pictures but also memories and their daily activities via their iPhone or iPod touch.

«We believe the future of the internet is going to be more personal,» Mr Morin told BBC News.

«It took organising all the information on the web by Google and making it social by the likes of Facebook to get us here where personal is the next phase.»

Path aims to capture the daily moments in our lives, he said.

Mr Morin said he was inspired by a talk given by Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel-winning economist who has studied the nature of memories, particularly their relationship to happiness.

«Our ultimate mission is to make the world a happier place and we are trying to architect a product that brings happiness,» said Mr Morin.

The magic number

Path arrived at the idea of limiting users to a network of 50 people following research done by Oxford University Professor of Evolutionary Psychology Robin Dunbar.

He espoused that 150 is the maximum number of social relationships that the human brain can sustain at a given time and that 50 is roughly the outer boundary of our personal networks.

Facebook’s approach and that of other social networks from Bebo to MySpace and Google Buzz is at odds with that thinking.

While the average user on Facebook has 130 connections, power users can average 1,000.

These relationships map your social graph offline and include friends, family, work colleagues and loose connections of people you ‘friend’ because they know someone you know.

«Facebook set out to be a social network of the real world full of friends and acquaintances together,» said Mr Morin.

«Facebook is about society and I think the need we are seeing at Path is that people still want to share more and share more openly with the people they trust the most and that is why we put this 50 limit on the service.»

Path’s vice president of business development Matt Van Horn said it sees itself as a complimentary service alongside the Facebook’s and MySpace’s of the world.

«Networks have grown to become too large in scale and that means people start sharing with people they might not trust or truly know. That influences their sharing behaviour and changes entirely what they are willing to post and share online» said Mr Van Horn.

At the time of speaking to the BBC, Mr Van Horn had 3,171 friends on Facebook and 42 on Path. Mr Morin had 2,666 Facebook friends and 48 on Path.

Making money

Those involved in Path are not too oncerned that Facebook, the world’s biggest social network with over 500 million users, could launch its own pared down service.

«We plan to play nicely with Facebook,» said Path’s Mr Van Horn.

Indeed one of the investors in Path is Dustin Moskovitz, a co-founder of Facebook.

Among the Silicon Valley heavy hitters who have invested in the company are super angel investor Ron Conway who also invested early in PayPal and Google.

Digg founder Kevin Rose is also involved as is Salesforce boss Mark Benioff and Hollywood actor Ashton Kutcher. Company co-founder and chairman is Shawn Fanning, the creator of Napster.

A free app for Path will be coming to Android phones and the BlackBerry soon said the company.

Path said at a later date it will also be adding premium services that users can pay for.

«We fundamentally believe (from a business standpoint) that customers are better than users,» said Mr Van Horn.

Photo-centric Path faces plenty of other competitors in the photo sharing field.

Instagram and PicPlz are two companies that have recently received a lot of publicity while Flickr is a long standing favourite and Facebook is the largest photo sharing site on the web.

© bbc.co.uk

The jury system may not survive if it is undermined by social networking sites, England’s top judge has said.

In a lecture published on Friday the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, raised major concerns about the use of the internet by jurors.

He said: «If the jury system is to survive as the system for a fair trial… the misuse of the internet by jurors must stop.»

Lord Judge said some jurors had used the internet to research a rape case.

Earlier this year a judge in Manchester had to dismiss a jury and restart a trial, The Sun reported, after a juror went onto her Facebook page, gave details of a trial and asked friends: «Did he do it?»

Lord Judge, who is the most senior judge in England and Wales, said it was too easy for campaigners to bombard Twitter with messages in a bid to put pressure on jurors who might be looking at it.

He said: «We cannot stop people tweeting, but if jurors look at such material, the risks to the fairness of the trial will be very serious, and ultimately the openness of the trial process on which we all rely, would be damaged.»

Lord Judge added: «We cannot accept that the use of the internet, or rather its misuse, should be acknowledged and treated as an ineradicable fact of life, or that a Nelsonian blind eye should be turned to it or the possibility that it is happening.

«If it is not addressed, the misuse of the internet represents a threat to the jury system which depends, and rightly depends, on evidence provided in court which the defendant can hear and if necessary challenge.»

He said judges need to warn jurors in the strongest terms not to use the internet to research cases or to give details of cases they are deliberating on.

He wants the notice in jury rooms to be amended to include a warning that such research could amount to a contempt of court. He raised the prospect of sentencing jurors who use the internet for research.

Lord Judge even suggested sending text messages from court buildings should be banned.

The BBC’s Legal Affairs Analyst, Clive Coleman, said: «This is the strongest and most detailed judicial consideration of the threat to the criminal justice system posed by jurors using modern technology. It raises major questions of how to police and stop internet use.»

© bbc.co.uk

Detailed analysis of the code in the Stuxnet worm has narrowed the list of suspects who could have created it.

The sophisticated malware is among the first to target the industrial equipment used in power plants and other large scale installations.

New research suggests it was designed to disrupt centrifuges often used to enrich uranium.

Detailed analysis of the worm has revealed more about the team behind it and what it was supposed to do.

Code secrets

The close look at the code inside Stuxnet was carried out by Tom Parker from security firm Securicon who specialises in picking out the digital fingerprints hackers leave behind in malware.

His analysis of Stuxnet shows it is made of several distinct blocks. One part targets industrial control systems, another handles the worm’s methods of spreading itself and another concerns the way its creators planned to communicate with and control it.

The most sophisticated part of Stuxnet targeted the Programmable Logic Controllers used in industrial plants to automate the operation of components such as motors or pumps.

Subverting PLCs required detailed knowledge of one manufacturer’s product line, the programming language written for it and insight into how it could be subverted. That meant, said Mr Parker, the list of suspects was pretty short.

«I do believe the PLC components were written in the West,» he said. «It’s western companies that are investing most heavily in automation of industrial processes, whether it’s putting coke in cans or nuclear enrichment.»

«However, the bits that drop it into a system and the command and control parts are not that advanced at all,» said Mr Parker.

«I’ve compared this less advanced code to other malware and it does not score very highly,» he said.

Dedicated hi-tech criminals would not have used such crude methods of distribution and control, he said, suggesting that it was put together by a nation rather than organised crime.

What this implies, he said, is that whichever country put Stuxnet together commissioned the creation of the PLC part from a Western nation, then added its own distribution and control code to it.

The analysis suggests that a team of 6-10 people were behind Stuxnet and were involved with it for some time. Whoever wrote it would also need information about and access to industrial plants in Iran if that was the actual target, said Mr Parker.

Motor control

More information has also emerged about how Stuxnet disrupts the industrial control systems it managed to compromise.

Research by security firm Symantec has shown that the likely target were frequency controllers that many PLCs are hooked up to in order to regulate a motor.

In particular, said Symantec, Stuxnet targeted those operating at frequencies between 807 and 1210Hz.

«There’s a limited amount of equipment operating at that speed,» said Orla Cox, security operations manager at Symantec. «It knew exactly what it was going after.»

«Those operating at 600hz or above are regulated for export by the US because they can be used to control centrifuges for uranium enrichment,» she said.

If Stuxnet did manage to infect a PLC connected to a centrifuge, it would seriously disrupt its working, said Ms Cox.

What is not clear, said Ms Cox, is whether Stuxnet hit its target. If it did not, she said, then the fact that the command and control system has been taken over by security firms has ended any chance of it being used again.

«Our expectation is that the attack is done at this point,» she said. «We’ve not seen any more variants out there and I don’t suspect we will.»

Mr Parker said that whoever did write it failed in one respect because Stuxnet has not stayed live for as long as its creators hoped.

The control system set up needed to have been in place for years to have a seriously disruptive effect on its intended targets, he said.

«Someone has serious egg on their face because they are never going to be able to use this investment ever again,» he said.

© bbc.co.uk