Tag: UK

Not one to let the hyperconservative Australian government walk away with the censorship crown, the UK government plans to make the surfing of Internet porn opt-in. Next month, Communications Minister Ed Vaizey will meet with major UK ISPs to discuss a blanket block of porn. Rather than porn being available to all, UK surfers will have to contact their ISP to be allowed on a 'porn surfing ...

LoveFilm, the UK's Netflix equivalent, can now stream movies direct to your PlayStation 3, following through on the announcement from a couple of weeks ago. Streaming from the company's 'Watch Online' library is available free but with limited hours on a £5.99 per month package, which excludes games rental, or free and unlimited on a £9.99-or-more per month package. A quick look ...

Britain's Information Commissioner, Christopher Graham, announced yesterday that a new investigation into the Google Street View privacy debacle will be opened. If found guilty of a breach of privacy, Google could face a fine of up to £500,000 ($790,000). While £500,000 might seem like a pittance compared to the billions of dollars that Google has in the bank, it is the maximum fine ...

There's no doubt that murder is one of mankind's most belligerent acts. But have you ever wondered how many homicides take place in a city? Or whether there's any pattern to their locations? The team behind Murder Map had those exact thoughts. To answer these questions and more, they took it upon themselves to map every single murder and manslaughter that has ever been recorded in the ...

In a follow up to our previous rumor story on a possible LoveFilm-Apple TV video rental streaming deal, Apple's latest content box is now available at UK Apple retail stores in exchange for 99 of your hard-earned pounds (that's about $157!) There's no evidence of a LoveFilm streaming link at the moment, but we're not giving up hope of a deal in the near future. For the meantime, UK Apple TV ...

Having just got off the phone with Apple's UK flagship store on London's Regent Street, inquiring about the availability of the new Apple TV in the UK -- an "informed" store representative told us that Apple's waiting to try and secure a deal with LoveFilm before releasing stock. She said that Apple's newest media box should be available sometime next week. What with Netflix streaming ...

The UK Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop), in association with a bullied and submissive Facebook, has launched a new app that aims to safeguard the burgeoning population of child surfers. The app's called ClickCoep and it takes the form of a bookmark or tab on your Facebook profile page. According to the BBC, Ceop and Facebook have been at loggerheads for some time. ...

digg_url = 'http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2010/04/08/digital-economy-bill-set-to-pass-into-uk-law-watch-out-hapless/'; In what can only be described as a bunch of witless, whipped cronies dabbling in shit they really have no clue about, the dying United Kingdom parliament is about to pass the Digital Economy Bill into law. Ostensibly, the new law is about protecting intellectual property ...

It turns out that when Google recently deployed Street View all across the UK, they mistakenly ignored "do not photograph" signs around some key military installations, including bases of the Special Boat Service and Special Air Service (SAS) and the MI5 headquarters. This obviously raised some (real or imaginary) concerns that said images might be used by terrorists, and Google promptly ...

The UK is already one of the most-monitored Western countries. It has a record number of security cameras on the streets and public transport stations (one camera for every 14 people!); its authorities are installing chips in garbage cans to monitor the amount of trash, and now Google is "helping out" by bringing Streetview to each and every street, effective tomorrow. 238,000 miles of public ...

In today's day and age it's pretty rare for the owner of a large-scale copyright-infringement website to escape the law. They can run, but they can't hide! The cases are often settled out of court, but when they do go to trial it's incredibly uncommon to see a not guilty verdict. But that all changes today! Go UK! The owner of Oink, one of the largest British-run file-sharing sites, has walked ...

It had to happen eventually -- and sooner rather than later it would seem! Today I am proud to be a crumpet-eating, tea-drinking subject of the Queen because in the UK, video games outsold movies in 2009. A total of of $2.8 billion was spent on video games, while only $1.93 billion was spent on DVD, Blu-ray and box office sales. That's not just a minor victory, that's a frackin' landslide. ...

It probably says an awful lot that after spending ten (10) minutes on Carnage UK's website... I still don't know what they do exactly. I think they arrange wet t-shirt contests or something -- binge-drinking, wet t-shirt events for students in the UK. Either way, their brutal, eye-gouging monstrosity is quite possibly the most garish and ugly site I've ever seen. I don't know if it's meant to ...

Often lauded as the 'CCTV state' and 'the most surveilled country in the world', the UK may soon deliver a killing blow to the Internet as we know it. Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing is reporting some leaked legislation from the UK government that would remove any kind of freedom or privacy that the Internet grants its users. The proposed amendments to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act would ...

Findings in a recent report presented at the London Gaming Conference last night show that 7 of PC-gamers prefer to download their games in digital, no-box-or-paper-instruction-booklet format. This isn't as big news as it seems though, as many PC owners also own consoles, and vice-versa -- and I bet there's some cross-over in the demographics. But, with the recent take-off of digital-only ...