BE on the look out for scam emails supposedly from the government’s Hadopi service, which was set up to combat online file sharing.

The TorrentFreak website highlights the technique being used, where people are asked to access details of their ‘case’ via a code sent by mobile phone.

With previous versions, it was possible to choose a “classic” look rather than the default of Unity; now, for good or ill, the left-hand vertical menu is a permanent desktop element…

I have been using a traditional WIMP environment for such a long time now (since Windows 1.0 and the original Mac) that I am not sure I really want to change over to a new way of doing things. Not that I am unwilling to try new things but I have become quite productive because I know where everything is.

I might try a Live Disk version to test it out before upgrading. If I want an up to date Linux install but without Unity then there is always Linux Mint.

I guess I need to check over the settings to see what was upsetting things BUT I won’t be doing that on my live blog.

Anyone else encountered problems?

The latest stats coming out of France’s HADOPI “three strikes” (really three accusations) policy are really quite stunning. Most of the focus is on the fact that 60 ISP account holders have received their third strike, and now await to see if they’ll be fined and/or kicked off the internet without ever having actually been convicted of copyright infringement. But, to me, the much more interesting numbers are the first and second strike numbers. An astounding 650,000 people have received “first strike” notices, with 44,000 of those receiving a second strike as well. Those are huge numbers. It makes you wonder, at what point do those in power begin to recognize that if so many people are engaging in this, there must be some sort of better solution.

The next version of the Linux operating system is due very soon. To see how long you have to wait for Oneiric Ocelot (11.10), check out the count down page. Ok, well it’s actually October 13th when it’s going to be available.

For a few more details, see the Engadget post - The countdown to Oneiric Ocelot begins, Ubuntu 11.10 arrives October 13th

I have been very happy with 11.04, mainly because I have been using the classic version without the messed around menu system.

Today I came across this site in my RSS feed, Europe V Facebook. Apart from discussing the ways in which Facebook records the most intimate details about it users (and what it can then infer and use to fill in gaps) it also shows how you can get Facebook to send a copy of what it knows about you. EVERYTHING it knows.

You can ask (actually more like demand) for it this ton of knowledge…

According to European data protection law every individual has the right to get a copy of all personal data a company holds about him (right to access). This law is applicable to facebook too, since every European user has a contract with “Facebook Ireland Limited”, based in Dublin, Ireland.
Facebook has a well hidden page, where you can send them an access request.
Generally all nonusers have the same right to access data that Facebook might hold about them.

This page on the Europe V Facebook site tells you how you can get everything Facebook has on you on a CD. It has to be on a CD because ‘the PDF will be more than 1.000 pages long and more than hundred megabyte in size.‘

You have probably seen this on your Facebook news stream and yeah, we are not obligated to use social networking sites.

But I think that is missing the point. It not that we get annoyed with small changes but the fact that our privacy is not being honored. Just the act of clicking a ‘like’ or playing a game means they can calculate your political view point, your religious views and how you are influenced by the adverts on the page.

All this is done to ensure that each advert you see is as appealing to you as possible. It’s all about money.

We would be ok with that if Facebook and the like were just that bit more transparent about their actions add what the record and store.

Here is an interesting video by Cory Doctorow of BoingBoing. I like what he says on this subject.

The video cannot be shown at the moment. Please try again later.

• Sleepers of Mars – John Wyndham (1938, my edition 1973)
• The undercover aliens – A.E. Van Vogt (1950, my edition 1980)
• Perelandra – C.S. Lewis (1944, my edition 1973)
• Currents of Space – Isaac Asimov (1955, my edition 1958)
• One human minute – Stanislaw Lem (1986, my edition 1991)

Mixed in with this selection…

• Smiley’s People – John Le Carré
• Invasion of the Moon 1969, the story of Apollo 11 – Peter Ryan
• Taoism, The quest for immortality – John Blofeld
• Discovery, Expansion and Empire – W.D. Hussey
• Freakonomics – Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner

I shall be starting this challenge this weekend, Saturday 24th September 2011!!

Don’t know about you but I would love one of these on my desk!

Blast off to a clutter-free desk with the Spaceport ceramic rocket usb hub! 

This silver ceramic rocket is a fully functional USB hub.

Plug your thumbdrives, mice, keyboards, cameras or any USB device into one of its 4 ports. 50″ cable included.

Found via Boing Boing

entitycode.com gives nicely formatted tables of useful codes. It also explains what these codes are…

Entities are used to implement reserved characters or to express characters that cannot easily be entered with the keyboard.

ISO-8859-1 is the default character set in most browsers.

The first 128 characters of ISO-8859-1 is the original ASCII character-set (the numbers from 0-9, the uppercase and lowercase English alphabet, and some special characters).

The higher part of ISO-8859-1 (codes from 160-255) contains the characters used in Western European countries and some commonly used special characters.

The HTML Symbol Entities include mathematical symbols, Greek characters, various arrows, technical symbols and shapes.