Official Ares Free Download

Music: Too Expensive to Be Free, Too Free to Be Expensive Wired
MySpace, rumored to be on the verge of purchasing the free music streaming site imeem, is struggling to keep up with its own payments to music copyright holders, according to a top News Corp executive — a problem that has plagued every other licensed free music service. The digital music doubters could be right with the contention that advertising revenue can’t cover the costs of licensing music. Meanwhile, illegitimate free music sources continue to proliferate, rendering paid music subscriptions irrelevant for most music fans. Advertising was supposed to be music’s magic bullet, enabling fans to get the free music they’re going to find anyway while contributing at least something to copyright holder coffers. That dream is fading fast. As legitimate sources for free on-demand music dry up, fans will likely head back to file sharing networks, which is bad news for everyone involved in music — except for, perhaps, hard drive manufacturers.

Spain Codifies ‘The Right to Broadband’ Reuters
Spanish citizens will have a legal right from 2011 to be able to buy broadband internet of at least one megabyte per second at a regulated price wherever they live, the country’s industry minister said on Tuesday. The telecoms operator holding the so-called “universal service” contract would have to guarantee it could offer “reasonably” priced broadband throughout Spain, said Miguel Sebastian in a statement sent to media. Former state monopoly Telefonica has always held the universal contract aimed at protecting consumers in poorly populated areas from being cut off in cases where operators would otherwise consider providing the service unprofitable. The service also subsidises telecoms to disabled users. Until now, the “universal service” has only guaranteed internet via telephone line, fixed telephone, directory service and telephone booths.

Apple Macs no safer than PCs from computer phishing attacks USA today
Mac users get victimized by a certain, very active segment of the cyber underground — phishers — just as often as PC users, says Randy Abrams, director of technical education at antivirus firm Eset. And Macs that are allowed to tie into Windows-centric company networks can help elite phishers spread malicious attacks, adds Timothy Armstrong, security analyst at Kaspersky Lab. No doubt many Mac loyalists will take umbrage: Eset this week released results of a phone survey of 1,003 U.S. consumers that shows 57% of Mac users feel it is safe to use their computers with no antivirus protection, while only 27% of Windows PC users feel that way. That dichotomy is vividly reflected in this Apple TV commercial, in which a composed young man, representing a Mac, talks to a flustered geek wearing a biohazard suit, representing a virus-plagued Windows PC.

New Web Site Makes Internet Time Traveling Easier Wired Campus
A new Web site called Memento Web will allow anyone curious about what the Internet used to look like to plug in a date and then browse the World Wide Web as it was on that day. The site is already live with limited use. Users can enter a URL and the date on which they wish to see a version of the page the URL once called up. That doesn’t mean they’ll get exactly what they were looking for. For example, a search for nytimes.com on November 17, 2006, returned a Web page dated December 8, 2007. Some searches don’t work at all.

House lawmakers push ban on peer-to-peer software Associated Press
Stung by an embarrassing electronic leak last month revealing ethics investigations into dozens of lawmakers, Congress moved Tuesday to prohibit federal employees from using the same type of Internet file-sharing software blamed for the disclosure. The Secure Federal File Sharing Act, introduced in the House, would bar government employees and contractors from downloading, installing or using so-called peer-to-peer file sharing software such as Limewire without official approval. The bill also would require the White House to develop rules for employees and contractors working on home or personal computers.

Feds: Top e-tailers profit from billion-dollar Web scam CNet News
Words like “scam,” “fraud,” and “arrest” filled the air during a Senate hearing on Tuesday that focused on the controversial marketing companies that allegedly dupe consumers into paying monthly fees to join online loyalty programs. Ray France, a U.S. Army veteran, testifies at a Senate hearing about how consumers are duped into paying monthly fees to join online loyalty programs. Vertrue, Webloyalty, and Affinion generated more than $1.4 billion by “misleading” Web shoppers, said members of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, which called the hearing. Lawmakers saved their harshest rebuke for Web retailers that accepted big money–a combined sum of $792 million–to share their customers’ credit-card information with the marketers. Senate investigators launched their six-month inquiry by examining complaints from people who discovered mysterious charges on their credit card bill. For years, Web shoppers have complained that they were signed up to some Web loyalty program without their knowledge and were charged fees until they discovered the problem and complained. Some paid fees for years.

64-bit Windows safer, claims Microsoft Computerworld

Windows users running 64-bit versions of the operating system are less likely to get infected by attack code, Microsoft’s security team said yesterday. But that doesn’t mean they won’t, countered an outside security researcher. “64-bit Windows has some of the lowest reported malware infection rates in the first half of 2009,” said Joe Faulhaber of the Microsoft Malware Protection Center in a post to the group’s blog yesterday. “64-bit malware is still exceedingly rare in the wild.”

T-Mobile admits employee sold private data Reuters
A [sic] employee of mobile phone operator T-Mobile is facing prosecution after selling personal details of thousands of British customers to rival companies in an alleged major breach of data protection laws. In a statement, T-Mobile UK, part of Deutsche Telekom AG, said it had contacted the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) after discovering an employee was passing on the information and it believed the investigation would result in a prosecution. “While it is deeply regrettable that cus

Related Articles

 Enjoyed this? Subscribe to the feed.