Posted 11/05/09 at 09:04:26 AM by Paul Lilly

We wanted to scream bloody murder when our folks would hide the power adapter for our Atari 2600 after a night-long gaming session. For those of you who have no idea what we're talking about, it's the equivalent to having your DSi yanked from your backpack. But no matter which generation you grew up in, it looks like we all had it easy, at least compared to kids growing up in China. Up until recently, youths diagnosed with Internet addiction were subject to beatings and confinement.

New rules have now banned such unpleasantness following the beating death of a teenager in August, which led to the discovery of abuse at other clinics. That was enough for China to reach a revelation that maybe a different approach was needed.

"Parents and teachers must analyze the causes and not arbitrarily condemn, hit, or scold youths...intervention methods that restrict personal freedom are strictly forbidden and corporal punishment is strictly forbidden," read new regulations posted on the health ministry's website.

According to local press reports, China had up to 10 million teenage Web addicts and at least 400 private Internet rehab centers nationwide in August.

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Posted 10/27/09 at 12:30:52 PM by Paul Lilly

The U.S. Defense Department has decided to cautiously reinstate the use of USB thumb drives and other flash storage-based media. Flash storage -- and devices which use them, including memory sticks, digital cameras, media players, PDAs, and more -- were banned last November after thousands of military computers were infected by various malware, most of which was traced back to thumb drives.

That ban will soon be lifted, at least partially. Robert Carey, chief information officer of the U.S. Navy, said in a blog post that only "authorized individuals" are likely to be given permission to use thumb drives, and even then only for "mission-essential functions." And these won't be personal drives picked up off of Newegg or Best Buy.

"The days of using personally owned flash media or using flash media collected at conferences or trade shows are long gone," Carey said.

Instead, the drives will be "government-owned and procured," and will also contain built-in encryption chips that may require both a password and a fingerprint scan to decrypt the data, among other safeguards that are yet to be worked out.

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Posted 10/23/09 at 04:15:31 AM by Nathan Grayson

Sorry, Gabe Newell and co. You gave it your all, we’re sure, but in the end, Left 4 Dead 2’s true form proved too gore-splattered for Australians’ delicate palettes. Or at least, that’s how the Australian government sees it. Said a note from Australia’s Review Board:

“In the Review Board’s opinion, Left 4 Dead 2 could not be accommodated within the MA 15+ classification. The computer game contains a level of violence which is high in impact, prolonged, repeated frequently and realistic within the context of the game.”

“In addition, it was the Review Board’s opinion that there was insufficient delineation between the depiction of general zombie figures and the human figures, as opposed to the clearly fictional ‘infected’ characters. This was a major consideration of the Review Board in determining the impact of this game on minors.”

It’s true! We totally have friends who – if you squint really hard – are the spitting images of Boomers and Tanks. Oh, there’s also that one guy with the crazy-long tongue. But we don’t really talk to him. Wait. You say the Review Board was talking about "general zombie figures"? And here we thought our colossal, bile-spewing buddy had finally found a country that would accept him with open arms. 

Ahem. Anyway, Australia’s still on track to receive a heavily censored version of Left 4 Dead 2, which is better than nothing, we suppose. Oh well. Aussie gamers, if our site hasn’t already been censored, better luck nex—[content blocked because we’re pretty sure it had a knife].

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Posted 10/09/09 at 06:04:34 PM by Jason Barry

Twitter made an embarrassing mistake this week by suspending security researcher Mikko Hyppönen’s account for allegedly sending direct messages containing phishing URLs. Hyppönen realized Twitter had unexpectedly banned his account without any warning yesterday.  He received a message from them last night with a customer-service-disaster of an explanation:

“I've unsuspended your acct.
You were suspended for using the malware URL rnyspeceDOTcom in DMs.
Be careful!
We scan evrythng for malware.”

It’s all downhill from there.   Hyppönen posted the tweet they are referring to months ago trying to deter users from visiting a particular phishing site.  He took precautions to make sure it was not linkable and even included the warning “don’t go there” in the tweet.  Not only is the post benign but its intent is actually altruistic.

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Posted 09/18/09 at 10:44:29 PM by Nathan Grayson

Some of you, we’re sure, are probably exercising your God-given right to boycott Left 4 Dead 2 for whatever reason. Australia, though, totally has us Yanks beat. Over there, no one’s buying the game! Oh, what’s that you say? The game’s been “banned” in good ol’ Oz? That’s why they’re not buying it? Well then, that’s no good at all.

As it turns out, Left 4 Dead 2 was refused classification by Australia’s ratings board, the OFLC. Why? Because it’s too violent, apparently.
 
“The game contains realistic, frenetic and unrelenting violence which is inflicted upon ‘the Infected’ who are living humans infected with a rabies-like virus that causes them to act violently,” reads the OFLC description of the game. “Attacks cause copious amounts of blood spray and splatter, decapitations and limb dismemberment as well as locational damage where contact is made to the enemy which may reveal skeletal bits and gore.” 

As expected, Valve is a bit broken up about the whole mess.
 
“We were surprised to hear of this news yesterday,” Valve’s Doug Lombardi said. “Obviously, everyone at Valve is pretty bummed. It would be a shame if folks in Australia, or anywhere else, are unable to purchase Left 4 Dead 2 because of a ratings issue.”

Bummer indeed, Doug. Guess it’s time to start stuffing those zombies with marzipan and kittens instead of blood and bone. And maybe replace gunfire with the sound of children’s laughter. Yeah, that ought to do it.

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Posted 08/05/09 at 04:51:07 PM by Andy Salisbury

Effective immediately, the U.S. Marines have banned Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and all other social media sites from their networks.

According to an official order issued to the Marines, “These internet sites in general are a proven haven for malicious actors and content and are particularly high risk due to information exposure, user generated content and targeting by adversaries. The very nature of SNS [social network sites] creates a larger attack and exploitation window, exposes unnecessary information to adversaries and provides an easy conduit for information leakage that puts OPSEC [operational security], COMSEC [communications security], [and] personnel… at an elevated risk of compromise.”

The ban is currently slated to last a year, and was drawn up by U.S. Strategic Command due to network security concerns. But, if a Marine is able to provide a “mission critical need,” the sites could be temporarily unblocked. But, other than that, there will be no tweeting from the frontlines.

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Posted 07/06/09 at 06:38:49 PM by Andy Salisbury

In a recent flub, Twitter has unfortunately suspended hundreds to thousands of accounts with little or no reason whatsoever.

Twitter has come clean about the whole issue, stating on their blog, “Earlier today, we accidentally suspended a number of accounts. We regret the human error that led to these mistaken suspensions and we are working to restore the affected accounts—we expect this to be completed in the next several hours.”

So, if you find yourself amongst the suspended, be sure to enter a ticket as soon as you can. Chances are good that plenty of accounts were suspended, so you may as well help them find and correct their mistake.

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Posted 02/03/09 at 08:22:37 AM by Pulkit Chandna

The fate of the Medina report, which propounds several anti-piracy measures, will be soon decided by the European Parliament. MEPs (Member of European Parliament) are supposed to vote on the report authored by Spanish socialist Manuel Medina Ortega in the next few weeks. The regulations proposed by Ortega are a shade hackneyed.

The report has torrent websites and their users in its crosshairs. It seeks to ban all torrent websites like The Pirate Bay – specifically mentioned in the report, as they “allow downloading of protected works or services without the necessary authorization are illegal.” However, the presumption that the illegality of such torrent portals follows from their illegal use is not entirely incontrovertible.

Ortega not only proposes to saddle ISPs with more responsibility, he wants them to be able to be more powerful than before. He suggests that ISPs be allowed to disconnect transgressors.

Image Credit: Moldova.Org

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