Fly Me….But Not Here!

Couple flown to wrong continent after airline error

Two US holidaymakers found themselves a long way from their intended destination after an airline confused two airport codes.

Sandy Valdiviseo and her husband Triet Vo were intending to fly from Los Angeles to Dakar in Senegal with Turkish Airlines. However, instead they ended up almost 7,000 miles away – on an entirely different continent – in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, after the airport codes were mixed up, the Los Angeles Times reports.

The airport code for Dakar, the capital of Senegal, is DKR, while the code for the airport in Dhaka, which is the capital of Bangladesh, is DAC.

After arriving in Istanbul, the couple had boarded a connecting flight. It was only after seeing the route map of the flight’s progress, which showed the plane over the Middle East, that they realised the error.

“When the flight attendant said we were heading to Dhaka, we believed that this was how you pronounced ‘Dakar’ with a Turkish accent," Ms Valdivieso said.

When they arrived in Bangladesh, the pair informed Turkish Airlines about the mistake, and tried to arrange a transfer to Senegal.

According to reports, the airline insisted on tracking down the recording of the initial booking before acknowledging the error and installing the couple on flights to West Africa, 12 hours after their arrival in Bangladesh. Their baggage arrived in Senegal two days after they did.

The incident happened in December last year, but has only just been reported after the couple’s long battle to obtain compensation.

"I have called them [Turkish Airlines] every Friday for the past four months," said Ms Valdivieso. "They told me each time that they will review my case and get back to me. But they never do."

"We are very, very sorry that this happened," a Turkish Airlines spokeswoman said. The couple have since been offered two free economy-class tickets to anywhere on the airline’s flight network.

Big Brother?

US President Planning Online Wiretapping Law

As you know, the British Labour Government will surely go down in history for its extensive use of CCTV cameras, but in the meanwhile, Barack Obama can become known for his online wiretapping laws.

Media reports say that Barack Obama is going to end the long-running debate over online snooping with a legislation allowing law-enforcement agencies tapping into many types of online communications.

Everyone understands that bringing in this law will surely have political, technical and legal obstacles. Indeed, if Obama gets it through it would really represent a sea change in American culture. Industry experts point out that if he succeeds, the FBI and other agencies will have a right to snoop on voice-over-Internet-protocol (VoIP) services like Skype and real-time chats.

Apparently, it would end a regime where the FBI has difficultly snooping but is able to eavesdrop on traditional telephone calls. Of course, tech firms hate the idea, which would likely face stiff opposition in Congress. At the moment, spooks can ask the courts to wiretap almost anything, but only traditional telecommunications carriers are demanded to make it easy.

The law in question – Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act – doesn’t apply to any of Microsoft’s services, for example. This includes Skype, as it doesn’t class Microsoft as a traditional telecommunications carrier.

Thus, Obama’s new legislation would encompass VoIP, chat and any other online communication services. However, it is still unclear how tech companies could be compelled to help the authorities unscramble encrypted communications, apart from providing access. Actually, Obama’s proposed legislation is a slightly watered down version of what the Federal Bureau of Investigation wants. The FBI had called for a blanket requirement that ISPs provide authorized officials the same kind of sweeping, turn-key access to their networks that phone companies do.

However, tech firms, civil libertarians and some government officials claimed that it was impractical for smaller firms and such back doors can present serious security risks. Some of the critics insist that the fact the President would end up pushing the legislation will make him the punching bag for every American citizen who is already worried about their government.

What’s In A Name?

Apple Called Outdated iPhone “Vintage”

A new marketing spin from Apple can be seen as an insult to the intelligence of the American nation. Now Apple is peddling a phone it has dubbed “obsolete” in the rest of the world as “vintage” in the United States.

Media reports reveal that starting 11 June, the original iPhone 2G model will gain “obsolete” status – in other words, the device won’t any longer be serviceable in the Apple care centers. According to press reports, the “obsolete” status for the iPhone model will apply in Canada, Asia, Europe, Japan and Latin America.

This wasn’t a great surprise for many – after all, the Apple 2G is really outdated – but for some reason the company doesn’t want to admit that in the United States. Instead, the first-generation mobile device will be given “vintage” status – may be in the hope that the terminally dumb will suddenly want to buy it. Moreover, they will even be given limited support to do so: currently running iOS 1.0, the iPhone can be upgraded to iOS 3.1.3, but couldn’t manage anything more advanced than that.

The critics point out that only Apple could take the word “vintage” (normally applied to fine wines and cheese) and stick it on something the rest of the world called obsolete. The most amusing thing is that the company clearly understands that the rest of the world isn’t so dumb to fall for the marketing scam. Therefore, Apple isn’t even trying it on in nations where its customers are a little more discerning.

In the meanwhile, Apple is also rendering many other technological gadgets “obsolete” – for example, the 17-inch and 20-inch iMac G5, the late 2005 Mac mini, and the 15-inch and 17-inch versions of the Apple PowerBook G4. Among the list of retired devices you can also find the mid-2007 iMac, Mac Pro, late-2007 iMac, Xserve and AirPort Express Base Station. However, none of these gadgets are considered “vintage” – instead, some of them should probably be labeled “fire hazard”.

The U.S. Rules?…Yeh Right!

Spain Removed from Watch List, Ukraine under Scrutiny

The Office of the United States Trade Representative has recently released its 2013 report, known as the “Special 301”. There, Ukraine found itself at the top of the notorious list, marked as a “Priority Foreign Country”.

In the meanwhile, Spain and Bulgaria managed to make it out of the “Special 301”, but they aren’t off the hook completely, because the United States Trade Representative will keep conducting reviews on both of them. The “Special 301” also reveals that Canada’s grade has been modified, from “Priority Watch List” to “Watch List.”

The report noted that a year ago, the United States welcomed the passage of the Copyright Modernization Act. The latter, among other things, was created to implement Canada’s obligations under the WIPO Internet Treaties, as well as to address the challenges of copyright piracy. A few months ago, Canada also implemented the Combating Counterfeit Products Act in order to strengthen IPR enforcement. The latter included provisions which would provide ex officio authority to the local customs officials to seize pirated and counterfeit goods at the border.

Along with Canada, Israel, Egypt, Mexico, and Brazil also made it to the “Watch List”, while such countries as Algeria, Argentina, China, Chile, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Russia, Thailand, and Venezuela had less luck and were all tagged under the “Priority Watch List.” In addition, the report says that obtaining effective enforcement of IPR in China is still its central challenge. The matter is that more than 90% of the revenue generated by American movies in China is represented by box office revenues, compared to 25-30% in the US. This difference is explained by widespread piracy of films in the Internet and on optical discs.

Finally, the American government discovered that some trends are blossoming – for example, the “emergence of Media Box piracy, whereby “boxes”, usually having capability to play high definition content, are loaded with lots of pirated works. Such boxes may be sold with preloaded content, while later offering to upload new content for a relatively low fee. Of course, the entertainment industry was quick to respond – it pointed out that Ukraine and Thailand still need better copyright laws and congratulated Spain for a job well done.

Never Satisfied?

 

Viacom Lost Piracy Case against YouTube

All efforts of the entertainment industry to accuse YouTube were undermined by the legal system of the United States. For a long time Viacom had been hoping it would manage to squeeze a billion dollars from the streaming service, accusing it of allowing pirated content on the website.

However, thus far it hasn’t succeeded – media reports say that the plaintiffs had previously convinced the Second Circuit to remand the case to the district court in order to determine some factual points that related to specific videos. The matter is that the company’s cunning plan came unstuck after district judge resolved everything in favor of Google’ YouTube, once again dismissing the case.

This lawsuit is crucial, because the judge has come to a decision that YouTube didn’t have knowledge or awareness of unauthorized activity, nor was it engaged in “willful blindness” towards any specific violation. The judge also pointed out that YouTube didn’t encourage its users to commit copyright violation or otherwise interact with its users and participate in any infringement.

As a result, the judge has told Viacom and other members of the entertainment industry that the DMCA actually means that there is an element of safe haven protection in such cases as YouTube’s one.

The $1 billion lawsuit died back in 2007, right after Google acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion. In the case, Viacom essentially argued that the streaming service was knowingly allowing copyrighted content to be uploaded to the website. In response, YouTube explained that it was just a platform where Internet users could add content, and that the service would take down any video that the copyright owners asked.

Three years ago, a judge ruled in favor of the streaming service, granting a summary motion to dismiss the lawsuit. However, an appeals court then reversed the ruling, sending the case back to court. Now the judge again came to a conclusion that YouTube was protected by the DMCA safe harbor provision.

Despite recent cooperation of Viacom and YouTube, it looks like Viacom isn’t giving up yet. Viacom has issued a statement to say that it will appeal the court ruling, claiming that the decision ignores the opinions of the higher courts and completely disregards the rights of content creators. Viacom wants a jury to weigh up the facts of this case and take into account the “overwhelming evidence” that the streaming service willfully infringed copyright.

Second Thoughts?

Microsoft May Backtrack on Its Touch Obsession

The suspicions of the industry observers are that Microsoft might have realized that the reason users don’t want to move to Windows 8 is because of its inconvenient interface. When the software giant introduced Windows 8, it for some reason believed that in the middle of a recession, the users would splash out on an expensive touch screen. Therefore, in order to make sure they adopted this, Microsoft got rid of the classic start screen and forced people to search through mobile tiles. However, it now seems that the company didn’t acknowledge that people may simply say “no” to the new OS. As a result, Windows 8 is not selling well at all.

The industry experts say that Windows Blue, also referred to as Windows 8.1, may backtrack on some of those stupid Microsoft novices. The rumors are that the upcoming update may bring the Start button back to the Windows desktop and provide people with the ability to bypass the Start screen entirely at boot.

Microsoft is currently still unsure about introducing the changes, but at least it is considering this option – this is a good sign anyway. If Microsoft kills both the Start button and disables the boot-to-desktop option by default in the next major Windows update, it will make absolute sense. The experts point out that businesses afraid of retraining costs or user backlash tend to purchase Windows 8 with a Windows 7 interface. There are more barriers to sale – for example, the fact that most people believe they need a touch screen to use Windows 8. In the meanwhile, Windows Blue is expected to come out later in 2013. Industry observers say that a public preview should arrive in or around June.

Keeping Up With The Joneses?

Quick – fetch the decanter!

Want to keep up with the Joneses? Follow our guide to middle-class cheating

TRAVEL

Are you concerned that you can only afford to go on holiday to Bognor Regis? Give a richer friend your Facebook log-in details so that they can update your status from Tuscany.

Don’t forget to polish your automated out-of-office email. “I’m currently away on annual leave; please contact my secretary” doesn’t really cut the mustard. “I’m currently on annual leave in Tuscany; please have a look at my photos on Facebook” is much more like it.

Get really good at Photoshop.

Embarrassed by the blue-and-yellow cabin-approved bag you bought from Ryanair last summer? Jazz it up by tying a stolen Virgin Upper Class label to the handle.

Do: use a car-sharing club, such as Zipcar, allowing you to pass off an Audi A3 as your own.

Don’t: get caught swiping the windscreen with Zipcar’s card.

YOUR HOME

Casually drop into conversation that you had a lovely weekend on the estate. Don’t let slip that the estate in question is the nearby council estate that you hurry through after dark.

Tell people how much you enjoy the shooting on the estate.

Does the fact that you can’t afford more than one pot of Oval Room Blue, Vert de Terre, Breakfast Room Green, Dorset Cream, Rectory Red or Manor House Gray make you weep? Don’t worry: Dulux is a lot cheaper than Farrow & Ball. Just make sure to leave the right colour chart lying around your kitchen.

Rightmove lets you search over a million properties for sale. But if you’re going to scan the website at work, remember that no one walking past your desk will be impressed unless you put in a suitable minimum price. Houses costing up to £1.5 million should do the trick.

Can’t afford to move home? Why not change its name instead. It’s relatively simple, involving letters to your local council, the Land Registry, the Electoral Roll, your mortgage lender, your doctor, and anyone else who writes to you. So take the plunge and change your address now to: “47c Smith Street, The Old Rectory, Hull.”

If you live in London, remember that every area has two names: the actual name and the one the estate agents call it. Always use the latter. It’s not Battersea; it’s South Chelsea. It’s not Maida Vale; it’s (very) North Notting Hill.

If in doubt, use “village” as a suffix. As in: “Yes, I live in Peckham Village – very up and coming.”

And if you bump into a casual acquaintance on the Tube journey home, impress them by getting off in zone one – and then walking the final eight miles to your flat in zone four.

WORK

Are you a middle manager in charge of a team of two and a budget of £10,000? No, you are what your business card says you are: “Vice President, Marketing (UK, Europe and Middle East)”. Make sure everyone sees it.

You’re not “between jobs”, “taking some time out” or, God forbid, “unemployed” – you’re on “gardening leave”. Yes, you are gardening the solitary pot plant in your tiny kitchen. It requires a lot of attention.

Do say: “I dabble in a spot of consultancy on the side. It’s all about portfolio careers these days, isn’t it?”

Don’t say: “My job only lets me into the office three days a week, so I spend the other two in my pants at home watching Neighbours.”

FAMILY LIFE

Can’t afford boarding school? No problem. Simply send your children to stay with their grandparents at weekends and pretend they’re at Radley.

Annoyed that your daughter narrowly missed out on Oxford – perhaps because you couldn’t afford to offer to renovate the college library – and is going to Durham instead? Just tell everyone she’s off to Doxbridge.

Embarrassed by the mongrel you picked up from Battersea Dogs Home? Save hundreds of pounds by forging your own five-generation pedigree certificate.

Struggling to keep up with Bupa premiums? Lots of NHS hospitals have private wings attached, so you can still enter by the appropriate door – before scuttling down the corridors to where you belong.

AT THE SHOPS

Make sure your credit card looks the part. If in doubt, colour it in with a black felt tip and write “American Express” on the front.

Looking for a Savile Row suit on the cheap? Pick one up from a charity shop, cut out the label and sew it into a suit from Marks & Spencer.

Never accept a Sainsbury’s “bag for life” when you can take your own Waitrose bag to Sainsbury’s instead.

As above, substituting Lidl for Sainsbury’s and Sainsbury’s for Waitrose.

CULTURE

Join a public library, if you can still find one, and borrow all their impressive‑looking books. Forget to return them.

Tell anyone who’s interested that the reason you bought standing tickets at the Globe has got nothing to do with the £5 price tag and everything to do with getting close to the action.

As above, for the National Theatre, remembering that standing tickets are at the back and therefore you have to say that you prefer the wider angle on the stage.

ENTERTAINING

Always remember to invite people for “kitchen suppers”. Then they’ll never discover that you don’t have a dining room.

Refer to “the old Aga”, even if your cooking device is a camping stove.

PG Tips tea bags can be taken out of their box, unstitched and put into biodegradable Teapig tea temples.

Buy a wine decanter.

Remember to throw away the three-litre, £13.29 Lidl wine-in-a-box from which you decanted the wine.

The Russian Way!

Russian Government Changed Its Mind

The Russian government decided to try and avoid the disastrous effects of misdirected copyright enforcement like it happened with the United States, while at the same time keeping piracy at bay. As such, the authorities have announced they would adopt a different approach.

At the moment, governments from all over the world are trying to fight digital piracy, either by dragging thousands of suspected copyright infringers into mass lawsuits or by pursuing the source – file-sharing portals. The problem is that neither of these methods worked – instead, their efforts only increased the popularity of such services, while doing nothing to stop piracy from spreading. As a result, a regime known as graduated response system was enforced in many countries. However, the governments failed to find a better solution – for example, launching more places on the Internet where people can purchase legal content. The authorities usually can’t understand that there is a vital difference between “hardcore pirates” and the ordinary BitTorrent users and therefore fail to suggest improved copyright legislation which wouldn’t undermine people’s freedom of speech and human rights. Although for the government it would be enough to educate the regular Internet users about copyright law, this isn’t enough for copyright owners, who are never tired of targeting file-sharers by the hundreds of thousands.

Vladimir Grigoryev, a head of the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media, announced that they aren’t going to hold Internet users responsible for downloading as the United States does, and won’t bring owners of PCs to court. But this doesn’t mean that piracy will thrive in Russia. The authorities are determined to impose stricter rules regarding portals facilitating copyright violation. In other words, the owners of pirate websites will be hold liable for infringement, not end users. As for the users, they will soon be the subjects of educational programs, just as their American fellows.

Thus far, there are no details about the campaign, but Russian authorities seem to be confident. The experts doubt that the country’s entertainment industry, which is known for sending complaints about VKontakte (InTouch) and AllofMP3 clones for a while now, will be satisfied once such campaigns kick in.

Buy Me…I’m Not XP!!

Microsoft Strongly Recommends XP Users to Upgrade

Since only one year of Windows XP support is left, Microsoft again asks users of this OS to upgrade to something not so ancient. One of the most stable operating systems ever developed by Microsoft has been around for ten years and is still used on 15-20% of PCs worldwide, including mine.

The software giant is going to cut off support for the venerable OS on 8 April 2014, thus giving users one year to either upgrade or get ready to face more vulnerabilities and security risks. Nevertheless, XP is still incredibly popular, particularly among SMBs and home users. All of them feel it gets the job done and therefore don’t see a point in upgrading to Windows 7. But you should understand that Windows XP is older than iOS, Android, Facebook and YouTube.

In addition, the problem is that Microsoft sold millions of XP licenses for first generation nettops and netbooks based on Atom processors, this being years after XP stopped shipping on regular desktops and laptops. Apparently, upgrading these systems to Windows 7 may not be an option for most users.

In the meanwhile, the software giant insists that the only way for users to stay safe is to upgrade to a new operating system. The cutoff date is only a year from now, so time is already running out. It seems that Microsoft does not care that users of ancient XP PCs might choose to upgrade to something else, for instance Linux or even Chrome and Android. As for me, I might take it as a sign to buy myself new Macbook and switch to MacOS X.

With so many XP boxes out there, the experts predict that many users will simply ignore Microsoft’s warnings. The company’s decision to ditch XP could also lead to more opportunities for peddlers of alternative low cost systems based on free OS.

An Apple A Day??

DEA Can Read iMessages

The US Drug Enforcement Agency seems to be messing with Apple customers by pretending that it can’t read their iMessages. It was a few days ago that CNet obtained some DEA memo suggesting that the messages sent via Apple’s own system were untappable and therefore “frustrating” law enforcement.

The “leaked” memo complained that encryption used in the iMessage chat service had stymied effort of DEA to eavesdrop on people’s conversations. It was said that some recent criminal investigation was affected and the DEA warned that due to the use of encryption, it appeared impossible to intercept iMessages between two iOS devices, even though they had a court order.

In other words, it was proof that the Apple was so superior that it even had law enforcement unable to match it – so, if you wanted true privacy you had to purchase an iPhone. Pure advertising, to put it shortly. However, there was some faulty logic in the memo – while it implied that the company had some brilliant security that even the federals couldn’t crack, it also implied that Jobs’ Mob had no control over its own network.

It is a known fact that Apple can boast end-to-end encryption, but the company itself holds the key, as it means that when you boot up a new iOS device, you get access to your old messages – in other words, the company stores the data in the cloud and is able to decrypt it in case of need.

It seems that the “leak” only means that DEA isn’t able to get iMessages by going to the mobile operators, but it surely can get them by going to Apple directly. Moreover, iMessages may appear even more prone to surveillance, because SMS messages are normally stored on mobile operators’ database for a brief time, while iMessages seem to be stored by the company indefinitely.

Other media reports suggest that the memo was leaked to CNet in order to falsely imply that iMessages are almost impervious to government snooping. However, there are two plausible theories: it may be part of the federal’s effort to convince lawmakers to force all communications systems keep backdoors for wiretapping, or it may be a try to convince criminals that iMessages are safe and force them to use them falsely believing the messages are protected. So, don’t text about the corpse in the trunk even if you own an iPhone.