Beyond Borders Network Coverage

In this modern age of easy communication across international borders via phone, email, social networks–it’s a funny irony that our connectivity is still really dependent on our physical location.

Phone networks and wifi spots are the “new” borders.

Endgadget has a nice guide to keeping connected while travelling:

Staying connected while traveling abroad is no easy task, and while the internet may feel ubiquitous to tech-savvy smartphone owners who remain planted within the borders of their home nation, the world wide web suddenly becomes a whole lot less easy to track down once you plop down on foreign soil.

See more here.

Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

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When Suicide Compensation Is Enough

More interesting news from China:

iPhone maker Foxconn International Holdings will no longer pay compensation to families of employees who kill themselves to discourage further suicides

Other than the moral issue, it’s probably nothing less than what to expect in a society that puts value on money over human life. Was loss of life compensation large enough compared to expected full year revenue–did the suicides use NPV worksheets in Excel before they offed themselves?

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File Sharing Legislation

Seems the evolution of Internet legislation and regulation almost borders on the abstract. Of particular note are the intellectual property laws that are emerging everyday and the reaction to file-sharing protocols such as Limewire and Napster.

For a while Limewire advocates have defended its system of P2P or peer-to-peer sharing without a central server, as the primary technicality that differentiated it from its precursor: Napster–which was forced to shut down in 2001 primarily because it allowed users to store and share unlicensed mp3s on Napster’s central server. Ultimately, Napster was not a pure P2P, since it hosted the files on its own server–whilst Limewire did not.

However currently touted as a Napster alternative, Limewire has recently been subject to an adverse court ruling, giving scope for the recording industry to claim damages that may go the the billion dollars.

If Limewire goes the way of Napster, other file-sharing sites like Kazaa and BitTorrent will be natural targets for this legislation.

Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

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