With all the hype of the new 802.11n wireless spec floating around, it would appear that a number of manufacturers are starting to put out the required hardware. Unfortunately for the consumer, the 802.11n spec is still in the draft 1.0 phase, with a second draft not being planned until early next year.

802.11n, the upgrade from 802.11g, will give speeds of upto 600mbps, a vast improvement in wireless transmission speed. The current problems arise as the spec has not been fully resolved, meaning that many devices currently available will, likely, be incompatible with the final draft. Furthermore, initial testing has shown a very bad inter-manufacturer compatibilty.

As if they couldnt crawl any lower, in the case Warner Bros vs Scantlebury, the RIAA are continuing their case against, the now deceased, Mr Scantlebury who passed away before his trial was resolved. The RIAA have given Mr Scantlebury’s family, a very kind and heartfelt, 60 days to grieve before taking depositions from the Scantlebury family.

More Information: Recording Industry vs The People [blog]

On 30th August, the Home Office conclude their musing of, as yet, un-included portions of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2000). Portions that will give police not only full access to peoples encrypted data, but full a history of a person’s communications records.

Further Information: Spyblog Conference Details & information

More Information : 5150 at IBM.com
Further Spec : Old-Computers.com

With the new regulations being introduced in the UK allowing mobile network operators to block access to phones by invalidating its IMEI, the BBC are reporting on the relative ease of which the IMEI can be manually changed by the average user using , soon to be outlawed but publically available software.

The International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) is a 15 digit number that contains information about the device and is only used on GSM networks. Currently O2 and Vodaphone, operating the older networks, are unable to block via IMEI, but that will change when the new laws are passed into effect.

Your phones IMEI number can often be found on the inside cover of you device or displayed on screen by keying *#06# into your phone.

Blackberry devices are under scrutiny once again as, director of research for Germany’s Praetorian Global, Jesse D’Aguanno demonstrates its effectiveness as a hacking tool at this years DefCon. D’Aguanno plans to release a software suite later this month that will allow an attacker to penetrate a companies Intranet with veritable ease. The vunerability occurs as there is little to no segmentation between the Blackberry device and the internal network.

More Information : http://www.praetoriang.net/presentations/blackjack.html

Last night, mobile phone operator Orange managed to cripple services to its network. Reports state that just before 6pm, access in and out of the Orange network was severely disrupted. To make matters worse, calls to Orange Customer Service numbers where also plagued with problems. I can confirm, from first hand experience, as I was in the middle of trying to modify my tariff at the time. Calls to customer service were either dropped instantly, met with a message informing the user that the line was busy, or a nondescript beeping loop. Orange have made a statement on the issue claiming the problems were due to a technical bork in one of the areas managed by one of its network partners

The Register is reporting on a new scandal involving the Royals. From the article: “Police have arrested three men - including a reporter from the News of the World - as part of an investigation into allegations that the phone calls of staff working for Prince Charles were intercepted.”

Source : The Register - Three quizzed in Royal phone tap probe

In a very controversial move, long time ISP AOL; have released the search details of 657,427 of its users for “research purposes”. Realising what a bollocks up they’ve made, AOL have now pulled the data, although it is still available via The Pirate Bay.

“AOL has released very private data about its users without their permission. While the AOL username has been changed to a random ID number, the ability to analyse all searches by a single user will often lead people to easily determine who the user is, and what they are up to. The data includes personal names, addresses, social security numbers and everything else someone might type into a search box.”

Notes Michael Arrington of TechCrunch.

News giant, Reuters are currently on the run after a story on a blog, little green footballs, outted the media monolith for faking and digitally enhancing some of the photos that they distribute. Now under heavy investigation, Reuter’s photographer Adnan Hajj, has been found to stage photographs as well as digitally edit them to appeal to western society.

To make matters worse, other pictures from Reuters are now under scrutiny, as it would appear that Adnan Hajj isn’t the only person to touch up his pictures. Numerous web sites are covering the story, though I somehow doubt that it will make mainstream news - a case of the media censoring the media’s censoring, so to speak.

More information and analysis can be found at:
http://www.littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/weblog.php
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/014929.php
http://drinkingfromhome.blogspot.com/2006/08/extreme-makeover-beirut-edition.html
http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/184206.php