Bid to block ad-skipping TV fails

8 November 2012 Last updated at 09:38 ET

A bid to block a TV service that allows viewers to automatically skip adverts on recorded shows has been rejected.

Fox had called for a preliminary injunction on Dish Network's Autohop ahead of a copyright ruling.

Broadcasters Fox, Comcast, NBC and CBS have each sued Dish Networks, saying the show recordings are unauthorised.

Fox said it would appeal against the ruling. It says Autohop is "destroying the fundamental underpinnings of the broadcast television ecosystem".

But Dish called the decision not to grant a preliminary injunction a "victory for common sense".

Its Hopper digital video recorder can record and store prime-time content from the four major networks for up to eight days.

And the Autohop feature lets viewers skip advertisements completely - rather than fast-forwarding through them - at the press of a button.

Copyright infringement

Fox had sought a preliminary injunction on Autohop ahead of a ruling on whether the Hopper service was infringing copyright by enabling unauthorised copies of the shows to be made.

The ruling has not been released publicly in order to give the companies involved time to remove confidential commercial information.

However, according to a statement released by Dish Networks, Judge Dolly Gee ruled that Fox was unlikely to be able to prove that it had suffered irreparable harm from the copies Dish's service made.

Fox said it was "gratified" the judge had ruled that the stored programmes did constitute copyright infringement.

"Dish is marketing and benefiting from an unauthorized [video on demand] service that illegally copies Fox's valuable programming," it added.

Dish, which has 14 million customers, argued that Autohop was simply making it easier for viewers to do something most do already - fast-forward through unwanted adverts.

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Credit card has built-in keyboard

8 November 2012 Last updated at 06:22 ET

A credit card with an LCD display and built-in keyboard has been launched in Singapore by Mastercard.

The card has touch-sensitive buttons and the ability to create a "one-time password" - doing away with the need for a separate device sometimes needed to log in to online banking.

Future versions of the card could display added information such as the remaining balance.

The card will be available from January before being rolled out globally.

Many of the world's banks require customers to log in to online banking by using a small security device to generate a one-off password.

Bulky token

While considerably more secure than typical static username and password log-in systems, many people find using security tokens cumbersome given the need to keep it with them in order to use online banking.

Mastercard's interactive card aims to solve that issue.

"We brainstormed on ways to make it convenient and yet secure for customers," said V Subba from Standard Chartered Bank, which is collaborating with Mastercard.

"The question was: instead of sending customers another bulky token, could we replace something which already exists in the customer's wallet? That was when credit, debit and ATM cards immediately came to mind."

Eventually, the card could display information such as loyalty or reward points or recent transaction history.

Improving the portability of secure banking is a continuing priority for the world's credit card firms.

Last year, Visa announced a similar card with interactive functions.

However, smartphone manufacturers will be hoping that enhanced credit cards will be quickly replaced by NFC - near-field communication - alleviating the need for physical payment cards altogether.

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Twitter resets 'hacked' passwords

8 November 2012 Last updated at 12:48 ET

Thousands of Twitter users have received emails warning their account has been compromised by a third party.

Some accounts had been compromised, but other users had received the emails after Twitter had unintentionally reset unaffected passwords, the company said.

The mass email coincided with incidents involving several high-profile accounts, including at least one account belonging to the BBC.

Other media organisations, such as the TechCrunch blog, reported being warned.

Twitter gave no indication of the cause or source of the compromise, and would not share details of the size of the issue.

In a statement, it said: "When we believe an account may have been compromised, we reset the password and send an email letting the account owner know this has happened along with information about creating a new password. This is a routine part of our processes to protect our users.

"In this case, we unintentionally reset passwords of a larger number of accounts, beyond those that we believed to have been compromised.

"We apologise for any inconvenience or confusion this may have caused."

Deletions and spam

Some users who received the email noticed that some of their tweets had been deleted, while others said spam links had been posted without their knowledge - a typical characteristic of a compromised account.

The Twitter account belonging to BBC Radio 4's Today programme earlier told followers it was "trying to get to the bottom" of problems relating to their feed.

Other BBC accounts have received the warning email - but it is not yet clear if any more were compromised.

Comedian David Mitchell tweeted that he had received the email, and that a tweet he had written publicising his column in the Observer newspaper had been removed.

Some users criticised Twitter's email, suggesting it looked like a "phishing scam" - a message that impersonates an official email in an attempt to trick users into giving up personal details.

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Bin Laden unit punished for leak

8 November 2012 Last updated at 23:40 ET

Seven US Navy Seals have been disciplined for revealing secrets during work as paid consultants on a video game, officials say.

They received reprimand letters and had half of their pay docked for two months for work on Medal of Honor: Warfighter.

The active-duty commandos reportedly include one member of the team that killed Osama Bin Laden in 2011.

The game, published by Electronic Arts, does not recreate the Bin Laden mission but purports to show realistic raids.

Those punished were two Senior Chief Special Operators and five Chief Special Operators.

They were charged with violation of orders, misuse of command gear, dereliction of duty and disclosure of classified material.

The seven soldiers worked for two days during the spring and summer on the recently released video game, according to CBS News.

The game's maker has boasted that real commandos, both on active duty and retired, were involved with the process of designing the game to make it as realistic as possible.

Continue reading the main story

We do not tolerate deviations from the policies that govern who we are and what we do"

End Quote Rear Adm Garry Bonelli Dep Cmdr of Naval Special Warfare Command

It is not clear what classified secrets were divulged by the soldiers while they were consulting for Electronic Arts. But they reportedly used material from the US Navy.

"We do not tolerate deviations from the policies that govern who we are and what we do as sailors in the United States Navy," Deputy Commander of Naval Special Warfare Command, Rear Admiral Garry Bonelli told the Associated Press.

He added that the disciplinary action would "send a clear message throughout our force that we are and will be held to a high standard of accountability".

Four other Navy Seals are also under investigation, US reports said. They are said to have left Team Six but are still said to be on active duty.

Unit in demand

The Navy Seals usually respect an unwritten code of staying out of the public eye.

But the BBC's Jane Little, in Washington, says Seal Team Six is now a household name, celebrated on T-shirts and immortalised in film.

The unit was the subject of a recent TV movie about the Bin Laden raid in Pakistan and will feature in another film, about the rescue of a ship's captain kidnapped by Somali pirates.

Meanwhile, another member of the team on the Bin Laden raid wrote a book, No Easy Day, giving his account of that operation.

Some details of Bin Laden's death offered in the book differed from the official version of events.

The content of the book was not reviewed first by the Pentagon, and officials warned that criminal charges could have resulted from the improper disclosure of secret information.

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Armchair auditors 'don't exist'

9 November 2012 Last updated at 04:10 ET By Brian Wheeler Political reporter, BBC News

Ministers were "naive" to believe an army of "brilliant people" would spring up to analyse raw spending data for them, a think tank chief says.

The coalition published vast amounts of previously secret data online in the hope that "armchair auditors" would pore over it to discover waste.

But Neil O'Brien, of Policy Exchange, said the new industry never took off as the data was largely "unusable".

The Cabinet Office is attempting to make the data more user-friendly.

Within weeks of coming to power in 2010, the coalition released all items of local authority spending over £500.

Communities Secretary Eric Pickles, speaking at the time, said the move would "unleash an army of armchair auditors and quite rightly make those charged with doling out the pennies stop and think twice about whether they are getting value for money".

'Transparency'

The government also published the salaries of thousands of civil servants, naming individuals earning more than £82,900 for the first time, and put online the Combined Online Information System (Coins) database of government spending, which ran to millions of lines of raw data.

Continue reading the main story

It didn't lead to a whole band of armchair accountants doing the work for you"

End Quote Margaret Hodge Labour MP

But the army of volunteer auditors predicted by Mr Pickles and Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude - and the boom in "businesses and social entrepreneurs building new applications and services using previously locked-up government data" predicted by the Conservative Party in its 2010 Technology Manifesto - have so far failed to materialise.

Mr O'Brien, whose think tank has been highly influential on Conservative Party policy, said: "I think when they were in opposition the Conservatives were a bit naive about the way they thought they could just stick data out there and brilliant people would come and cut it up and make it very useable.

"That was a bit naive. Things like the Coins database are out there, but in a basically unusable format and if they want that to be a serious driver of transparency they need to enable users to use it in a simpler way."

But, he added, it was a "good thing" to begin government by "forcing" data into the open as it established the principle that it should be publicly available.

Mr O'Brien was speaking at a follow up to the launch of The Big Data Opportunity, a Policy Exchange report claiming the government could save as much as £33bn a year through better data analysis, supported by technology firm EMC.

Airport queues

The report recommends setting up an "advanced analytics team" in the Cabinet Office to identify ways of sharing data across departments, enabling users of public services to save time and money by, for example, accessing data on queue times at airports or doctor's surgeries in real time.

Labour MP Margaret Hodge, chairman of the influential Commons Public Accounts Committee, said "dumping data doesn't help accountability or choice", echoing Mr O'Brien's point that it "didn't lead to a whole band of armchair accountants doing the work for you".

But she said she was in favour of greater transparency - and accused the government of dragging its heels over the promised release of progress reports on major projects, claiming they were worried about revealing problems with the new universal credit system.

The Cabinet Office has been working with data experts at the Open Knowledge Foundation, which recently released an online tool to help journalists and the public search all items of government expenditure over £25,000, to make data more user-friendly and searchable.

Subsequent stages of the project will monitor local councils and other governmental bodies.

It comes as the Cabinet Office released a new strategy for making government websites less confusing and easier for the public to use.

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UK space spend to increase £60m

9 November 2012 Last updated at 04:58 ET By Pallab Ghosh Science correspondent, BBC News

Chancellor George Osborne has increased spending on space technology by £60m per year over the next two years.

The investment is part of a plan to increase the UK's contribution to the European Space Agency.

The government hopes this will attract more hi-tech jobs and contracts to Britain.

Overall spending in civil research has, however, declined by 5% in real terms since 2010 - a reduction which is set to continue.

Mr Osborne made the announcement in a speech to the Royal Society, calling for a national debate on where the UK can lead the world in scientific excellence.

The European Space Agency (Esa) investment will lift UK's contribution to the Paris-based organisation by an average of 30% at a time when many other nations are struggling to meet their contributions or even reducing them.

By increasing its contribution, the expectation is that the UK will get more research contracts in return and this will increase the competitiveness of British space companies, enabling them to win future orders in what is a growing global market for products and services.

Recent data have shown that the UK space industry recorded a total turnover of over £9.1bn in 2010/11, representing an average annual growth rate of 7.5% since 2008/09.

While other sectors have shrunk during the recession, these figures gave Science Minister David Willetts powerful ammunition to persuade the Treasury to back space as a key sector for further growth.

Continue reading the main story

When the 19 member states of the European Space Agency (Esa) meet in Naples in 11 days' time, you'll be able to tell the British delegation from quite a distance. They'll be the ones with a bit of a swagger in their step.

The Chancellor George Osborne has just told them they can now commit substantially more money to the intergovernmental organisation's projects.

Currently, the UK invests an average of £170m a year in Esa. This is going to rise to an average of £240m over the period from 2013/14 to 2017/18.

It is a significant uplift at a time when many other member states have been frantically stuffing their hands down the back of the sofa to find the cash just to pay their existing subscriptions.

This Naples Ministerial Council will be key in setting the priorities of the agency in this decade, and Britain has now indicated it wants to play a leading role - but with a very clear purpose: to spur economic growth at home.

"We have underestimated the strength of our space industry," he told BBC News. "In fact, we are a global player in satellite and telecommunications technology. This additional investment is a signal to Esa and commercial companies that we are going to continue to support space science and technology."

Sir Martin Sweeting, the executive chairman of Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd, which specialises in manufacturing small spacecraft, welcomed the chancellor's announcement, saying: "The UK space industry is a world leader and has been one of the fastest-growing parts of the economy over the past decade.

"Today's announcement will help to maintain the UK's lead in this rapidly growing market."

The commitment to Esa will see the agency base its satellite telecommunications headquarters in the UK, expanding its recently opened technical centre in Harwell, Oxfordshire.

In his speech, Mr Osborne set out seven further areas where the government thinks Britain is a world leader and can and must go further: computing, synthetic biology, regenerative medicine, agricultural science, energy storage, robotics and advanced materials including nanotechnology.

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George Osborne: "It is right that, even at times of fiscal restraint, we find the resources to enable new scientific breakthroughs"

The chancellor said he believes science is important in helping to rebalance the UK economy.

Imran Khan, director of the Campaign for Science and Engineering (Case), said he was pleased to see that Mr Osborne was taking such a close personal interest in science.

"The commitment to new spending on scientific infrastructure is important, as part of the UK's push to be a modern, high-tech economy," he said.

"We hope that George Osborne carries on and turns this commitment into a sustainable, long-term one, along with addressing the cut that inflation has made in the 'flat cash' settlement. Using the £4bn revenue from the forthcoming 4G spectrum auction provides the perfect opportunity to do this, as we and Nesta have called for in our 4Growth report."

Funding for civil research has however been frozen since the chancellor's autumn statement in 2010.

In real terms, the science budget is being cut by 2.5% each year and in two years' time will have been reduced by 10% relative to 2010.

The chancellor also slashed capital spending by research funders by 41% - the money for maintenance and upkeep of the UK's labs and equipment. The cut of £1.6bn has been slightly clawed back by Mr Willetts, who has persuaded the chancellor to set up new research institutes, such as a graphene centre and a computer hub announced last year.

Scientific bodies want to encourage Mr Osborne to continue to spend more on science and so are publicly supportive.

But privately, many are concerned that an ever-shrinking pool of funding has to be spread ever thinner on research areas that catch the eye of the chancellor and science minister at the expense of fields that are less politically appealing but nonetheless important for the UK's science base.

Some are wondering whether this tactic will see a shift away from the time-honoured tradition of allowing scientific experts to decide how research funding should be spent, the so-called Haldane Principle, and back toward an ill-fated attempt by the Labour Party in the 1970s to "pick winners".

Commenting on George Osborne's speech, Shadow Minister for Science and Innovation Chi Onwurah MP said: "In 2010, the Tory-led government pledged to protect science spending, given its importance to future growth and rebalancing the economy, but they have broken their promises.

"Departmental science spending fell by 7.6% in the first year of this Parliament alone and total spending on science last year is down by 6.4%. If the reduction continues at this rate, science spending will be down by a quarter over the life of the Parliament."

Liberal Democrat peer and member of the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee Lord Willis said: "To listen to a well-informed and pro-active speech from the Chancellor is warmly welcomed.

"The challenge now is to back his eight technology transfer priorities with significant new resources - otherwise we will fail to meet the challenges he has rightly identified."

That was a view echoed by the President of the Royal Society, Sir Paul Nurse who jokingly said it was now time for Mr Osborne to "put his money where his mouth is" after the Chancellor had finished his speech.

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Microsoft demos speech translator

9 November 2012 Last updated at 06:10 ET

Software that can translate spoken English into spoken Chinese almost instantly has been demonstrated by Microsoft.

The software preserves intonation and cadence so the translated speech still sounds like the original speaker.

Microsoft said research breakthroughs had reduced the number of errors made by the instant translation system.

It said it modelled the system on the way brains work to improve its accuracy.

Details about the project were given by Microsoft research boss Rick Rashid in a blogpost following a presentation he gave in Tianjin, China, in late October that had, he said, started to "generate a bit of attention".

In the final few minutes of that presentation the words of Mr Rashid were almost instantly turned into Chinese by piping the spoken English through Microsoft's translation system. In addition, the machine-generated version of his words maintained some of his spoken style.

'Dramatic change'

This translation became possible, he said, thanks to research done in Microsoft labs that built on earlier breakthroughs.

Continue reading the main story

The results can sometimes be humorous"

End Quote Rick Rashid

That earlier work ditched the pattern matching approach of the first speech translation systems in favour of statistical models that did a better job of capturing the range of human vocal ability.

Improvements in computer technology that can crunch data faster had improved this further but error rates were still running at about 20-25%, he said.

In 2010, wrote Mr Rashid, Microsoft researchers working with scientists at the University of Toronto improved translation further using deep neural networks that learn to recognise sound in much the same way as brains do.

Applying this technology to speech translation cut error rates to about 15%, said Mr Rashid, calling the improvement a "dramatic change". As the networks were trained for longer error rates were likely to fall further, he said.

The improved speech recognition system was used by Mr Rashid during his presentation. First, the audio of his speech was translated into English text. Next this was converted into Chinese and the words reordered so they made sense. Finally, the Chinese characters were piped through a text-to-speech system to emerge sounding like Mr Rashid.

"Of course, there are still likely to be errors in both the English text and the translation into Chinese, and the results can sometimes be humorous," said Mr Rashid in the blogpost. "Still, the technology has developed to be quite useful."

Many different technology companies, including AT&T and Google, have similar projects under way that are attempting to do simultaneous translation. NTT Docomo has shown off a smartphone app that lets Japanese people call foreigners and lets both speak in their native tongue.

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US finance staff in data blunder

9 November 2012 Last updated at 07:04 ET

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has spent $200,000 (£125,190) investigating security blunders made by staff.

The SEC, which oversees US financial markets, was forced to investigate when it found out that staff were not encrypting sensitive data.

It feared that data had gone missing after realising unencrypted laptops were taken to a hacker conference.

The probe suggested no data had been lost as a result of the mistake.

The unprotected computers at the heart of the investigation were being used by staff in the SEC's Trading and Markets Division, Reuters reported.

One of the responsibilities of that division is advising US financial exchanges about dangers from hackers and ensuring they follow guidelines to steer clear of cyberthreats.

Hacker chat

The employees were found to be flouting standard procedure within the SEC that demands that data on laptops be encrypted to protect it in the event of that device being lost or stolen. The laptops contained sensitive information about the inner workings of many US financial markets.

To compound the mistake, the unprotected laptops were taken when some SEC staff travelled to the Black Hat convention which gathers security hackers together to talk about the latest security threats.

The $200,000 bill was run up as the SEC paid a security firm to carry out forensic tests to ensure that the data had not been tampered with or booby-trapped.

The report into the security lapse was co-ordinated by the Jon Rymer, the SEC's interim inspector general. The SEC has declined to comment on Reuter's findings.

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US army builds its own 3D printer

9 November 2012 Last updated at 07:52 ET

The US military is developing its own 3D printer that it can use to produce spare parts for spacecraft.

By putting 3D printers behind the front line it hopes to be able to produce spares more cheaply and quickly than it can get them from manufacturers.

The army embarked on the project to produce its own printer as commercial devices were too expensive.

Early versions of the printer cost $695 (£436) compared to $3,000 (£1,880) for a commercial model.

The 3D printer has been developed by the Future Warfare centre at the US Army's Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC) in Alabama.

3D printers are gadgets that form objects by melting and shaping plastic into a design dictated by a data file. They are becoming increasingly common and many engineering and research firms use them for rapid prototyping.

"The ability to replicate parts quickly and cheaply is a huge benefit to the warfighter," said D Shannon Berry, an operations research analyst at the Future Warfare office, in a statement. Eventually, it is hoped the printer will find a larger role with US forces deployed overseas.

"Instead of needing a massive manufacturing logistics chain, a device that generates replacement parts is now small and light enough to be easily carried in a backpack or on a truck," he said.

The key reason to develop the printer, said Mr Berry, was to produce cheap spare parts for the sensitive instruments it develops. SMDC systems are typically deployed in space, but prototypes are tested terrestrially on drones and other small aircraft.

"Parts for these systems break frequently, and many of them are produced overseas, so there's a long lead time for replacement parts," he said. By developing its own 3D printer it could end reliance on manufacturers and speed up the replacement process.

SMDC engineers have already used the device to produce custom sensor housings and casings.

Even better, said Mr Berry, the device can even be used to fix itself if it breaks as many of its parts are built to be duplicable by 3D printers.

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Space net used to control robot

9 November 2012 Last updated at 09:33 ET

The interplanetary internet has been used by an astronaut at the International Space Station (ISS) to send commands to a robot on Earth.

The experimental technology, called Disruption-Tolerant Networking (DTN) protocol, could be a future way to communicate with astronauts on Mars.

Currently, if there is a problem when data is sent between Earth and Mars rovers, information can be lost.

The DTN could offer a more robust way to send data over the vast distances.

The European Space Agency (Esa) and Nasa conducted the experiment in late October.

ISS Expedition 33 commander Sunita Williams used a laptop with DTN software to control a rover in Germany.

The DTN is similar to the internet on Earth, but is much more tolerant to the delays and disruptions that are likely to occur when data is shuttling between planets, satellites, space stations and distant spacecraft.

The delays can be due to solar storms or when spacecraft are behind a planet.

"It's all about communicating over large distances, because the 'normal' internet doesn't expect that it may take minutes before something is sent for it to arrive," Kim Nergaard from Esa told the BBC.

The work on the DTN was first proposed a decade ago by Vint Cerf - one of the creators of the internet on Earth.

The technology was first tested in November 2008, when Nasa successfully transmitted images to and from a spacecraft 20 million miles away with a communications system based on the net.

Space network

The system uses a network of nodes - connection points - to cope with delays. If there is a disruption, the data gets stored at one of the nodes until the communication is available again to send it further.

This "store and forward" mechanism ensures data is not lost and gradually works its way towards its destination.

"With the internet on Earth, if something is disconnected, the source has to retransmit everything, or you lose your data," said Mr Nergaard.

"But the DTN has this disruption tolerance, and that's the difference - it has to be much more robust over the kind of distances and the kind of networks we're talking about."

Currently, to communicate with Curiosity, the latest rover that landed in Gale Crater on the Red Planet on 6 August, Nasa and Esa use what is called "point-to-point communication".

"Normally, the rover on the surface of Mars is commanded directly from Earth, or in some cases using spacecraft orbiting Mars as data relay satellites - but it's still considered single point-to-point communication," said Mr Nergaard.

"It's not built-up as a network. There are several rovers on the surface of Mars, many spacecraft orbiting Mars, but they are all seen as individual items.

"But the idea is that in the future rovers on Mars and spacecraft orbiting it will be treated as a network, so that you can send things to the network just as you send things using the internet on Earth.

"It will still be via radio waves, but over different frequencies, to allow you higher data rate communication than the ones used today."

Nasa's Badri Younes said that the test was a success, and it demonstrated "the feasibility of using a new communications infrastructure to send commands to a surface robot from an orbiting spacecraft and receive images and data back from the robot".

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