This is no secret. We didn’t need Wikileaks to tell us about it.

Steve Jobs, the man who created the very computer I’m typing this on passed away today. He was 56. Not only was he a visionary and a genius, he was one of the greatest CEO’s this country has ever produced.

His family is in my prayers.

It saddens me that Republicans are behind something like this. I hope ‘Dingy’ Harry Reid kills it in the Senate.

Internet providers would be forced to keep logs of their customers’ activities for one year–in case police want to review them in the future–under legislation that a U.S. House of Representatives committee approved today.

The 19 to 10 vote represents a victory for conservative Republicans, who made data retention their first major technology initiative after last fall’s elections, and the Justice Department officials who have quietly lobbied for the sweeping new requirements, a development first reported by CNET.

A last-minute rewrite of the bill expands the information that commercial Internet providers are required to store to include customers’ names, addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and temporarily-assigned IP addresses, some committee members suggested. By a 7-16 vote, the panel rejected an amendment that would have clarified that only IP addresses must be stored.

It represents “a data bank of every digital act by every American” that would “let us find out where every single American visited Web sites,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California, who led Democratic opposition to the bill.

I think that bill is pretty damn outrageous. Internet providers have no business logging every move a user makes and then storing it. The potential for abuse is huge. Republicans have gone too far on this one. Privacy has to count for something.

But here’s where it gets really infuriating. And it’s so predictable for the GOP to pull something like this:

To make it politically difficult to oppose, proponents of the data retention requirements dubbed the bill the Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011, even though the mandatory logs would be accessible to police investigating any crime and perhaps attorneys litigating civil disputes in divorce, insurance fraud, and other cases as well.

“The bill is mislabeled,” said Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the panel. “This is not protecting children from Internet pornography. It’s creating a database for everybody in this country for a lot of other purposes.”

To be fair, both parties use that tactic but it’s still sick no matter who does it. Whenever the government wants to take away one of our rights or invade our privacy they say it’s for the kids. They just want to protect kids. What about the rest of us? Who the f*ck is protecting us? This bill doesn’t have a damn thing to do with protecting kids. It’s about giving the federal government and law enforcement more power.

I’ve been on board with the Patriot Act and even the warrantless wiretapping by the NSA, but this is a bridge too far. Enough is enough.

This article titled “China boosts internet surveillance” was written by Tania Branigan in Beijing, for The Guardian on Tuesday 26th July 2011 10.27 UTC

Police have told cafes, hotels and other businesses in central Beijing to install surveillance technology for Wi-Fi users or face fines and possible closure, in a further tightening of internet controls.

China has the world’s largest and most sophisticated web censorship and monitoring system, which it has tightened still further after the Middle Eastern uprisings. Measures included blocking major virtual private networks, which allow people to evade internet controls.

The new software, which costs about 20,000 yuan (£1,900), allows officials to check the identities of users and monitor their activity. Businesses that fail to comply face a fine of the same size and could have their licences revoked.

Strict controls already apply at internet cafes, which poorer people rely on for access.

It is unclear how strictly the measures will be enforced, and it appears that only Dongcheng district has told owners of the regulations. A staff member at its internet security unit said the initiative was city-wide, but Beijing police headquarters had not responded to a faxed query at time of writing.

The Dongcheng police officer added: “This regulation is made to enhance internet security and to assist public security bureaux to break criminal cases. Details of implementation are confidential.”

According to the New York Times, a notice from the district office said the measure would tackle offenders seeking to “conduct blackmail, traffic goods, gamble, propagate damaging information and spread computer viruses”.

“This is undoubtedly an invasion of Wi-Fi users’ privacy,” said Jason Chen, a 22-year-old Beijing resident.

“We have already felt the restriction on university campuses, since they have always been monitored. But this time, the control is stretching to cafes and people’s feeling of violation is sharper. If cafes cancel their Wi-Fi I will care a lot, and I believe young people will react strongly.”

Some venues in Dongcheng complained they were already losing custom after cutting off Wi-Fi.

“It is just unbelievable. Customers are not happy either,” said Leona Zhang, manager of the Contempio bar.

“Some owners simply think this is for the public security bureaux to make money from us. The charge is the same regardless of size, even for small ones with only two or three tables.”

Businesses in other parts of Beijing said they had not heard of the measure.

“If the regulation was implemented here, it would struggle to be accepted. The cost is too high,” said a worker at the New Seven Day Bar in Haidian.

“Furthermore, there is also the privacy of our customers to protect.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Here’s a graphic showing the kind of questions President Obama will get on Twitter this afternoon.

(H/T BuzzFeed)

Source: Associated Press
Apple CEO Steve Jobs has briefly emerged from medical leave to unveil a new service for his i-devices. The iCloud will store user information from several devices, like the iPhone and iPad, and make it available on all of them.

When I first saw photos of the helicopter wreckage at Bin Laden’s compound I just glanced at it. I wanted to skip to the grizzly scenes of death. Now come to find out the leftover helicopter pieces belong to a new classified stealth helicopter. After looking at the wreckage again I absolutely believe it is. The skin looks similar to that of a B2 Stealth Bomber. Bin Laden’s neighbors say they didn’t hear the helicopters until they were hovering overhead.

Military analysts say rumors of a stealth helicopter program have been swirling around for years ever since the DOD killed the Comanche program in the late 90′s. The Comanche was essentially a stealth version of the Apache. It appears that some of the technology developed for the Comanche was improved further in secret and applied to the Blackhawk.

RAH-66 Comanche

The rotor blades of the downed chopper appear to be made of a special material and the tail rotor has some type of noise reduction modifications. Industry experts who have studied the pictures say it’s likely you would not see or hear that helicopter until it was right on top of you.

As fascinating as I find this kind of thing it’s very sad that it’s out in the public now. What was otherwise a flawless mission now has a very serious downside. The Pentagon’s biggest fear is that the helicopter pieces will end up in the hands of the China. If that happens they will reverse engineer the pieces and figure out the technology.. The Chinese are great at manufacturing things, but they suck at inventing. Nearly everything in China’s arsenal was stolen from the US, UK, and Russia.

The reason China is building a Stealth fighter jet is because they sent agents to gather pieces of a Stealth fighter that was shot down in the 90′s over Bosnia. The wreckage was spread out over a hundred miles. Chinese agents gathered those pieces and shipped them back to China. They were able to reverse engineer it and are now in the process of producing their own stealth aircraft.

On the other hand I’m relieved to know that regardless of the rhetoric in Washington we remain on the very cutting edge of military technology. At every point in our history the US military has possessed super secret aircraft that are a decade or more ahead of what the public believes is even possible. Think about it. We had the Stealth Fighter in the 1980′s. That kind of technology in the 80′s was practically alien. It was Star Wars stuff. Now it’s no big deal. So imagine what kind of technology we have tucked away somewhere in 2011. It’s probably the kind of thing you would expect to see in 2025.

This newly discovered helicopter is only a glimpse of the kind of toys we have squirreled away.

Here’s a typical Blackhawk tail rotor:

Here’s the tail rotor from the Bin Laden crash site:

Steve Jobs made a surprise appearance this afternoon and unveiled the iPad 2 personally.

Consumer Reports doesn’t love the Obama-backed Chevy Volt.

“When you are looking at purely dollars and cents, it doesn’t really make a lot of sense. The Volt isn’t particularly efficient as an electric vehicle and it’s not particularly good as a gas vehicle either in terms of fuel economy,” said David Champion, the senior director of Consumer Reports auto testing center at a meeting with reporters here. “This is going to be a tough sell to the average consumer.”

That is precisely what a lot of us said from the get go. Once the Obama administration took over GM they forced them to make the Volt as a way to push their “Green” agenda. You pay more than $48,000 for a car that goes 25-27 miles on electricity before the gas engine has to kick in. That’s a joke. The Prius goes 70 miles on a single charge. Even 70 miles is a joke in my opinion but at least better than the stupid Volt. Personally, I’d rather spend $48k on a Lexus GS460.

The only electric plug-in car that will be taken seriously by consumers is scheduled to hit the streets next year. With gas prices sure to rise due to Middle East turmoil I may even have to get one of these. I’m of course talking about the Tesla Model S. It will go 300 miles on a single charge, it looks like a Maserati, and costs about the same as a Volt.

Chevy should just stop making the Volt now because it’s already dead.

[See a sneak peak of the Tesla Model S]

China has the largest and most sophisticated Internet censorship program on earth. It’s known as “The Great Firewall” of China. The Great Firewall blocks access to sensitive subjects in China like democracy or Tibetan independace. It also blocks access to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social networking sites. Why would China want to block Facebook? Think Egypt.

The LA Times has a story about the man who created China’s Great Firewall. His name is Fang Binxing and he heads up the telecommunications department at Beijing University. Binxing is vilified throughout the country for creating the climate of censorship for Chinese Internet users. He says being the bad guy is a sacrifice he was willing to make for his country.

Ironically, Binxing admits to having six Virtual Private Networks (VPN) on his computer for getting past the very firewall he created.

VPN’s are illegal but nevertheless widely used throughout China to get through the Great Firewall. The fact that Facebook has 700,000 members in China even though the site is blocked speaks to that.