In the last week have increased efforts to block the objectives of Wikileaks. Among others, Amazon removed the contents of Wikileaks from its servers and PostFinance Swiss bank has blocked the bank account Assange. In the political arena, Senator Lieberman has spread threats from Wikileaks to the New York Times, considering that it can prosecute those who publish leaks.

“If the government acts with the companies that provide servers and requires removing the contents, it is a direct attack on our ability to speak in the Red”, El Pais said Dan Gillmor, writer and director of Project Citizen Media Law.

Last week, Gillmor was one of the first to warn of the consequences Wikileaks censorship may have on freedom of speech and press in the United States. “They are waging a mighty war against freedom of expression,” Gillmor wrote in Salon.com.

“Wikileaks is a publication, a new publication, but in any case, publication, and that makes this an issue of press freedom. We like it or not, Wikileaks is fundamentally a local newspaper and, as such, deserves our protection” , also said the journalist and media expert Matthew Ingram.

Clothilde Le Coz, head of Reporters Without Borders in the United States also argues that Wikileaks deserve such protection. “You’re a reporter on the value of the information you have, not having press accreditation,” he said at a conference in Washington on 30 October.

Those are the two keys. The ability to publish to Wikileaks and the type of information disseminated.

As posed by journalist Joseph Elola COUNTRY, who interviewed Assange on Saturday, the greatest fear of the founder of the website is to be extradited to the U.S.. But, if tried in that country as a professional journalist or public information, what would differentiate the professional New York Times?

The Espionage Act of 1917 protect Wikileaks if it becomes seen as a means of communication. Since The New York Times published the Pentagon Papers, the law condemns the leaking of classified material, but not its publication, to be of public interest. So the U.S. could detain the soldier Manning, accused of the leaks about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but not by Assange disseminate them through their website.

“The greatest threat that has emerged from Wikileaks is not information that has spread or may spread in the future, but the reactionary response that is growing in the United States, which promises to repudiate our legal tradition and freedom of expression, if not punish him, “writes Wired’s director, Evan Hansen, in an editorial.

The problem is not that Wikileaks has published some information, but it was filtered. And that is where U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman wants to draw the line. Last week introduced a bill, SHIELD Act, which makes federal crime disclosure of a source of intelligence for the United States.

“The legislation will help to hold accountable the perpetrators of the crime that is threatening to information sources that are vital to our national security,” Lieberman said in a statement. Their proposal is actually an amendment to the Espionage Act, but extends the prohibition to publish information related to “espionage activities of the United States or any other country”, or “sources classified or secret service informer” American .

“The media have some idea of it should recognize what is at stake. Goes beyond short-term interests of each. To begin with, it is your ability to do its job. If it can obstruct the journalism, and now the government wants to do, we will have thrown overboard our freedom of expression, “says Gillmor.

Reporters Without Borders also condemned what it considers “the first attempt at international censure of a site whose primary purpose is transparency.”

Emily Bell, former director of digital content for the British Guardian, one consequence is clear: “Journalists need to know what they would do if you found this information on his desk and the Government pressured to remain silent.”

Although a legal case against Wikileaks could affect media and journalists, American professionals have expressed some of the harshest sentences from the web.

“You want to prevent this from happening again,” asks columnist Charles Krauthammer in The Washington Post. “Show the world to a man who can not sleep in the same bed two nights in a row because they fear the long arm of American justice. I’m not asking us to recover our KGB agent in a London street killed a Bulgarian dissident with a rod of a poisoned umbrella. But it would be nice that people like Assange have to worry every time he goes out in the rain. ”

Time magazine, Joe Klein called for no Americans abroad pay for Wikileaks: “Assange is criminal. He is the one who should be in jail.”

The Wall Street Journal Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein Assange yesterday condemned as “an agitator with the sole intention of causing harm to our Government, whose laws do not agree, no matter who gets hurt.” And refuses to be a journalist or protected by the Constitution: “Just as the First Amendment does not give license to yell” Fire! ” in a crowded theater, nor is a license to endanger national security. ”

U.S. media and the public still do not have a common vision if Wikileaks is good or bad, if necessary or not, whether to censor or not. But everyone agrees that the impact of the leaks will mark a before and after for the media and not only those who had access to leaks. Many define the publication of the documents as a crucial moment in journalism. For the first time, an organization rooted in the Internet serves as an intermediary between a source-filter also classified data, and journalists. And for the first time it has tried to censor news reports on the Internet, and would have succeeded if not for a group of journalists has become an intermediary between web readers and Assange.

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Cambodian authorities expressed alarm over the significant increase of cheating incidents among students, who used cellphones to share answers during national examinations.

According to reports, hundreds of students were caught talking to friends or relatives over their cellphones to ask for answers in the exams. Some students even bribed their professors to allow them to browse their “smuggled” notes for answers.

Initial investigations also showed that teachers and their cohorts have masterminded the massive cheating incident, even selling answers to the national exams for $30 in advance to avoid suspicion of other school officials.

The report also told that teachers involved with the shenanigan would often turn a blind eye to students who were openly talking to their relatives, and kept inspectors out of the rooms.

The examination result will be announced on August 20, with some 100, 000 students eager to learn if they passed.

Authorities only learned about the cheating incidents after several students (who did not cheat) blurted to school administrators about how their classmates pass on the answers to other students.

“It was hard to copy all the correct answers with just one sheet of paper. So, many of the students just took pictures with their camera phones and pass on the image to other students via mobile Internet,” a female student said.

After the incident, authorities are now studying the possibility of declaring the exam results as null and void.

For his part, Mak Vann, a senior official at the Cambodia Ministry of Education blamed the mass killing of educated people during the 1970s, when the Khmer Rouge has executive all the educated and intellectual people of Cambodia leaving only peasants who have no proper training to help restore the country’s educational system.

He said that the habit of cheating during the years in school is being carried out by students when they work, noting the low-ranking of Cambodia in the fight against graft and corruption.

Vann also recognized that there is still a lot of work to be done before the country can fully restore its education system, saying that it could take years or even decades if the government will fail to act decisively today.

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Computer giant IBM Corp. has raised its annual forecast for this year as the technology sector batted for bigger sales in the coming months.

The company made the announcement despite shaky market conditions in the technology sector, saying that the worst is finally over for the sector and bigger sales will be at hand in the comings months.

IBM also reported that its net income for the second quarter of this year has spiked up by nine percent ($3.39) billion, or roughly $2.65 per share. The figures have topped earlier analysts’ projection of $2.58 per share.

But the company said that its Q2 revenue has slipped by two percent to $23.7 billion, below the $24.2 billion analysts predicted.

The computer giant blamed the currency changes over the past three months, which cost at least $500 million worth of losses to the company. IBM said that experts, who have estimated the revenue projection, have failed to include the data in their calculations.

The currency value is important for IBM since most of its businesses were outside the United States, particularly Europe.

With the dollar-euro rate at its lowest, the computer giant gained less possible revenue when the euros were converted to greenbacks.

Also, despite the consistent positive forecasting by Wall Street, IBM also disclosed that the company shares dropped by four percent on Monday due to reductions in its services contract value.

IBM announced a 12 percent slip in the value of services contracts signed during the second quarter of 2010, costing to about $12.3 billion.

Meanwhile, other major players in the technology sector expressed belief that the economy will soon pick and more corporations will start to replace their old computer systems, which in turn could bring higher revenue for the tech firms.

Other Internet companies such as Google also shared the same view, citing the continued increase in the advertising revenue online.

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Computer giant Microsoft Corp. and the National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA) have teamed up to produce the most detailed 3-D images of space and the planets through the so-called “WorldWide Telescope.”
Microsoft’s “WorldWide Telescope,” which has been steadily increased viewership on the Internet, is the galactic version of Google Earth.

With the help of NASA, Microsoft was now able to produce high-definition 3-D images of objects and planets that can be found in the Milky Way and other galaxies.

One of the highly talked about image was the true color map of the entire Mars surface, taking online users to a “Total Recall” experience.

Microsoft also launched the first of its kind, high-resolution spherical sky map called the “TeraPixel,” which users can view using a virtual telescope.

TeraPixel, which is also under the WorldWide Telescope program, is the largest and clearest spherical image of the sky.

The image was made possible through Digitized Sky Survey, which is a collection of hundreds of thousands of images that were taken in a 50-year period by two survey telescopes on Earth.

The combination of the collected images gives users the spherical and panoramic view of the night skies, which would require 50,000 HD televisions to view.

Scientists at NASA expressed surprise to the outcome of the project, saying that they can now navigate through space using TeraPixel and make their own discoveries.

NASA’s chief technology officer for IT, Chris Kemp, said that the release of the two programs, Microsoft and the space agency have lowered the barrier in accessing the thrill of space.

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A human rights group on Wednesday cried foul over recent moves of the Chinese Internet regulators, who want to reduce the anonymity among online users in mainland China.

State Council Information Office director Wang Chen, in his address to the national legislature in April, has called for the extensive system that would require all Internet users to use their real names when going online or buying a mobile phone.

Chen said that the new registration system will allow the Chinese government to better manage the Internet and the content being provided by its users.

The Chinese government tried to remove the full context of Chen’s speech from its websites to avoid the watchful eyes of its critics. The media’s reporting on the issue was abruptly cut by the government.

However, a New York-based human rights group in China, which managed to obtain the original copy of the speech, expressed fear that the new proposal would make another row of human rights violations in the country, saying that they have found “an unexpurgated text and discrepancies” in the documents.

“This only shows that Beijing is wary that its push for tighter information control to its people,” the group said in its China Rights Forum magazine.

China’s move, according to the group, will plug all the loopholes in its existing Internet control called “The Great Firewall” by limiting anonymous access to contents or comments online.

It will be recalled that the tight Internet control by the Chinese government led to row with online giant Google.

But the due to the large consumer and advertising potential of the country, Google was forced to vow down to the Chinese, allowing it to resume operations in the mainland after months of absence.

Despite the pervasive censorship and stricter controls online, China’s online population continued to grow with over 400 million active users, the largest in the world. Also, China has over 233 million mobile Internet users.

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A group technology experts and volunteers has released on Thursday a new version of the popular open-source blogging website WordPress.

Dubbed as WordPress version 3.0, the new software hosts more than 2, 700 upgrades, which include 1, 217 bugs fix. At least 218 volunteers have provided the software upgrades for the 13th version of the software.

Research and consulting firm Real Story Group analyst Adriaan Bloem said that WordPress has now become the “most capable” blogging platform on the Internet, citing the most notable upgrade in the website’s feature – the multi-task blogging capability.

Real Story group, a company that specializes in content management software, said that with the addition of the WordPress MU, administrators can now run multiple blogs simultaneously.

“MU has been integrated into the main version of WordPress ensures that it should be easier to deploy,” Bloem noted.

Bloem believe that the addition of the MU capability to the main WordPress website has now put it directly ahead of its rival MovableType, which has long offered the multiple blogs.

“Despite MovableType’s long history of running multiple blogs, many of the online users still prefer WordPress because of its user-friendly interface. And with the addition of the MU, WordPress has overtaken MovableType in the race for blogging supremacy,” Bloem added.

It was learned that WordPress run on PHP platform, which is much easier to use than the Perl Language platform of MovableType.

WordPress users can now define whether their articles will go to certain categories such as products, models, and other specification they will require – through the website’s custom post capability.

Prior to the implementation of the custom post, WordPress user content were often limited to just blogs.

“The custom post types will further help establish WordPress as a good candidate for managing an entire Web site’s content, in addition to just the blogs,” Bloem added.

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In a bid to attract more consumers to its doors, the world’s largest coffee chain Starbucks Corp. announced on Monday that it will be offering unlimited use of wireless internet access (Wi-Fi) in all company-operated stores starting July 1.

Starbucks hopes to take back lucrative share of the restaurant business from its rivals like McDonald’s Corp. and other coffee chains that have long used free Wi-Fi connection to attract customers.

This time, Starbucks takes one step further by giving customers free Wi-Fi access, which will include special news networks and entertainment contents.

The Starbucks Digital Network was done in partnership with Yahoo, giving customers free access to online news websites like the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Patch and USA Today as well as free music downloads on Apple iTune Stores.

Previously, Starbucks offered only two hours of free Internet access to each user everyday.

The company started implementing the earlier Wi-Fi scheme based on its study, which showed that customers login on the Internet in an average of one hour on each visit to Starbucks stores. Meanwhile, Smartphone users use Wi-Fi access on an average of 15 minutes.

The coffee giant hopes to extend its quarterly gains, which has been slumped for the past 13 quarters due to the recession and rapid expansion plans.

Starbucks also hopes to take back major market shares from McDonald’s, which has offered unlimited Wi-Fi access to some 11, 5000 stores. The coffee giant lost major clientele to McDonald’s due to its McCafe chain.

Following the announcement, Starbucks shares jumped by 1.5 percent or 41 cents ($27.56) during midday trading on Monday.

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A mobile phone security firm on Monday revealed that hackers have developed new types of computer virus that can be planted in Smartphones running on Microsoft Windows operating system.

In a statement, San Francisco-based security firm Lookout said that the viruswas planted in video games designed for Smartphones such as “3D Anti-Terrorist” and “PDA Poker Art.”

“The worst part is that these games were available on websites that provides legitimate software for cell phones and Smartphones,” Lookout chief executive John Hering said.

Hering, citing the results of their investigations, said that the mobile video games are usually bundled with malicious software (malwares), which are designed to automatically dial premium rate telephone services in different countries like Italy, Somalia, and Spain.

“Our investigations also showed that many of the unwitting victims were charged hundred or sometimes thousands of dollars in a month,” he said.

“Most of them did not even have a clue that their phones were infected by the virus. Not until they receive their phone bills with hundreds of dollars worth of premium-rate services,” he added.

Hering also disclosed the identity of the virus developers, saying that they were also the programmers of the telephone services.

With the boom in the use of the Apple iPhone, Google Android, and Research in Motion Blackberry, the official said that Smartphone users have become the favorite target of these hackers because the technology was relatively new and still has several loopholes in the software design.

Sought for comment, Microsoft Corp said that they were unaware of the new viruses that have been plaguing its clients.

“As always, Microsoft continues to encourage customers to follow all of the steps of the ‘Protect Your Computer’ guidance of enabling a firewall, applying all software updates and installing anti-virus and anti-spyware software,” the company added.

Microsoft said customers should visit http://www.microsoft.com/protect/ for guidance on protection from viruses.

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Skype Limited on Sunday launched a new Apple Application, which allows iPhone users to call other Skype users over 3G networks.

The company said that the new Apple App will be offered to millions of iPhone users for free only until the end of the year.

“Skype-to-Skype calls over Wi-Fi networks will be free of charge while Skype-to-Skype calls over 3G will be offered for free until the end of the year,” the company said in a statement.

However, the company said that it is yet to study the amount of charging to Skype users.

“Apple iPhone users may be charged additional fees by their wireless operators for the use of 3G networks and data traffic. So they’ll have to make sure that they discuss their mobile phone plan, the terms and conditions, with their operators to be allowed to use IP telephony,” Skype added in the statement.

The company said that the new Skype App will allow iPhone, iPod Touch (3rd generation), and iPad users to make calls to other users using Skype technology.

But the company said that iPod users may have to buy the compatible headset and microphone to be able to talk with the person on the other line. It is also limited to Wi-Fi Skype calls since it is no 3G-capable.

Other Symbian-based Smartphones can also download the free Skype App. The company also said that they are now working on Android version of the application.

The Skype software application works by allowing users to make voice calls over the Internet.

Calls to other users within the Skype service are free, while calls to both traditional landline telephones and mobile phones can be made for a fee using a debit-based user account system.

Skype has also become popular for its additional features which include instant messaging, file transfer, and video conferencing.

Skype Limited, the company that operates Skype, was founded in 2003 by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis with headquarters in Luxembourg.

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The Pakistani government blocked on Friday some 800 websites and webpages that have been identified to contain “blasphemous” materials, a Pakistan official reported

Following the ban of popular social networking sites like Facebook, Youtube, and MySpace, the Pakitan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) has extended its Internet control to some 800 webpages, including restrictions on Wikipedia access, in line with its belief that the following pages contains “sacrilegious contents.”

“Since the our government’s order to ban access to Facebook and Youtube, at least 800 individual webpages and web addresses have been blocked to prevent our people from viewing or reading such blasphemous contents,” Internet Service Providers Association of Pakistan Spokesperson Wahaj Us Siraj.

The order came after the “Everyone Draw Mohammed Day” on Facebook has been removed.

The said competition was aimed to promote “freedom of expression” among Muslim communities. But the government immediately seized control since Islam Law prohibits such illustration and depiction of their holy prophet.

Also, millions of conservative Muslims in other countries were angered by the said contest. Even moderate and well-educated elite expressed disappointment over the said action but stressed that the blanket ban on the popular website is “too much.”

They said that the ban should only be implemented on the webpage that has done the sacrilegious contents and not the entire Facebook website.

But PTA, along with the Internet service providers in Pakistan, vowed to block or close down any attempt in restoring the social networking site.

Before being closed down, the “Everyone Draw Mohammed Day” Facebook page has attracted over 105, 000 fans and has produced over five pages of “crudely manipulated” pictures and caricatures of the prophet Mohammed.

Meahwhile, PTA Spokesman Khurram Mehran stressed that the ban on Facebook will only be lifted if they receive instructions from their government.

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