Thursday, May 31, 2012

The 8 Cheapest Computers in the World

Computers are more affordable these days than they ever have been. But what if affordable ain't affordable enough—what if you need absolute, rock-bottomest, dirt cheap? Our friends at Laptop Mag rounded up the 8 cheapest computers in the world, just for you.

When the PC era began in the early 1980s, you'd be lucky to find a computer for under $3,000. Today, you can buy a notebook that's hundreds of times more powerful than the original IBM PC for well under $400, but for many people around the world, even that is too much. A new generation of low-cost tablets, USB-sized computers and miniature motherboards can put an entire world of computing power in the palm of your hand for as little as $25.

Raspberry Pi ($25)

More than just a machine with a cute little name, the Raspberry Pi flaunts high-performance video and graphics on a single-board computer. It can even run popular video game Quake III and play back full HD video using HDMI. Developed in the UK by the Raspberry Pi Foundation, this "system on a chip" was originally built to help teach basic computer science in school. Today, the Foundation offers two flavors of Raspberry Pi, priced at $25 or $35.

DataWind Ubislate 7 ($60)

Late last year, India announced a noble project to the world: The country would create the "world's cheapest tablet computer," intended for students and offered at the lowered price of $35, and later on in stores for $60. Available as of October 2011, the Aakash — eventually called the Datawind Ubislate 7 on retail availability — features a 366 MHz Connexant CPU, 256 MB of RAM and 2GB of storage (expandable via microSD).

Instead of a capacitive touch screen, however, the tablet has a 7-inch resistive LCD display, runs on the Android 2.2 operating system and has access to the Getjar market instead of the traditional Android Market. Though it notches a rather short battery life of three hours — and even shorter when you're playing HD video — the endeavor is still an altogether laudable one for a population where most commercial tablets have simply been out of reach.

Aakash 2 ($40)

The Aakash education-focused tablet from India later gave rise to a predecessor, the Aakash 2. Both tablets are technically tweaks on the Datawind Ubislate, but the Aakash 2 is a more ramped up version with a 7-inch capacitive touch screen, a 700 MHz ARM Cortex-A8 processor and a 3200 mAh battery — notably, specs that are almost twice as good as the original project blueprint. In terms of software, the Aakash 2 is surprisingly set to get Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and finally gives users access to the beefier Android Market apps ecosystem. Connection methods include WiFi and GPRS. Picking up this slate will run you either $40 or $60, according to a couple of different sources.

Mele A1000 ($70)

Aside from garnering a cult following, the Raspberry Pi also inspired a wave of imitators — and it's easy to see why. These thumb-sized, cheap and Linux-powered devices gave a new population access to technology and innovation, and the (relatively new) Mele A1000 doesn't stray from this philosophy.

Already out in the market for $70, the Mele A1000 is an ARM PC that runs Android 2.3 originally, but can be tweaked to run Ubuntu Linux as well. It's powered by the ARM-based Allwinner A10 chip and a 1.2 GHz Cortex A8 ARM core processor. Graphics-wise, a MALI400MP OpenGL ES 2.0 GPU is onboard, and if you ever get the itch to run apps on a TV, the Mele A1000 can handle this task with aplomb. The device also features an SD card slot and USB ports for additional attachments, along with an external SATA port and Ethernet. Computer tweakers, start using your imagination.

MK802 ($74)

Sneakily stuffed into a package that resembles a USB flash drive, the $74 MK802 is a mini PC that vaunts a 1.5 GHz Allwinner A10 processor, 512 MB of RAM, 4 GB of storage and runs Android 4.0. Not bad for a little stick that weighs just 7 ounces and measures a diminutive 3.5 x 1.4 x 0.5 inches. If you've been lusting after FXITech's $200 Cotton Candy, but weren't feeling partial to its heftier price tag, this is the alternative to consider.

It's worth noting that this competitor doesn't have an HDMI connector, only an HDMI port, and you're only getting a single core processor instead of Cotton Candy's 1.2 GHz Samsung Exynos dual core chip. But for less than half the price, the Chinese-manufactured MK802 — with free shipping to the US from AliExpress.com — is worth a serious look.

Intel NUC (>$100)

Pricing details are scant on Intel's NUC or "Next Unit of Computing," slated for release in the second half of 2012, but if the advertised specs are anything to go by, it's worth keeping a close watch on the product. Inside the 10 x 10 cm demo box, you've got a choice of either a Core i3 or Core i5 Sandy Bridge processor, with connection options that include Thunderbolt, HDMI and USB, all wrapped up in a 10 x 10 cm box. In terms of graphics, you'll see the decent integrated Intel HD 3000 onboard.

Apparently Intel told press outlet Just Press Start that the NUC will "not be in the hundreds or thousands range," and that different SKUs would likely be available — that's good news for the mainstream public, although it has never been made clear where the product will ship. But either way, with one of the biggest names in the industry behind the endeavor, we're interested to see how this project takes shape.

Aionol Novo 7 ($120)

It's usually a safe bet to write off a $120 Android tablet as a flop, but the Ainol Novo 7 is actually worth considering. The slate features a 1024x600 IPS display, 8GB of Flash memory (expandable up to 16GB via microSD) and 802.11 b/g/n WiFi. Even better, it's run by a 1.2-GHz ARM Cortex processor and comes dripping in Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, so you should be able to watch movies, play popular casual games and surf the Internet with ease — up to its rated battery life of 8 hours, to boot.

VIA APC 8750 ($49)

If you're not averse to having a naked motherboard on your desk and you're attracted to extremely cheap price tags, the VIA Technologies' APC 8750 could be the Raspberry Pi alternative of your dreams. This tiny, barebones PC measures 17 x 8.5 cm and can be plugged directly into a TV or monitor, or stuffed into the undersized chassis of your choice (a standard Mini-ITX or microATX, for instance).

The device runs Google Android 2.3 (for mouse and keyboard input), and is powered by an 800MHz clock processor with 512MB of RAM and 2GB of NAND Flash graphics. You also get VGA and HDMI display ports, HDTV support, four USB 2.0 ports and a microSD slot for expandable storage on the undersized device.

Privacy, obliterated

There's a huge issue looming that we had to be in touch about: Congress is on the verge of ending your right to privacy. The sites you visit, your personal emails, and everything you do online could soon be used by secretive government agencies to hurt you.
Our plan is to stop this bill like we stopped SOPA. But it won’t be easy. We're down to the wire, a key vote in the Senate in a few days is our last good chance. We're joining other groups to ask you to do two things that are going to matter:

Most importantly, join the Facebook protest. Change your Facebook cover photo to show the world how Facebook will be a creepy database for government agencies like the FBI or the IRS. This is probably the best thing you can do to get other people to help fight CISPA.
The other thing you can do?
Can you click on this link to email, call or mail this one-pager to stop this bill dead in its tracks? We need your help.

Some background: the House passed the privacy-killing bill CISPA last month after a rushed vote. CISPA would let any corporation share users’ private information with any government agency, from the NSA to the FBI to local police. In just days, the Senate will vote on a similar bill, Lieberman-Collins or the “SECURE IT Act”. Both bills would trump decades of existing privacy laws and establish wholesale sharing of your personal information between corporations and the government.
While SOPA would have empowered Hollywood to take down websites, CISPA and its Senate counterpart, Lieberman-Collins, would let Homeland Security and private companies build vast databases of our data that could be used against individuals at any time and for any purpose. Goodbye privacy, hello police state.
The general consensus among internet freedom groups is that CISPA poses a greater threat to your rights than SOPA. The difference is, the bill hasn’t made enemies of the largest tech companies. This time, public interest groups like us are on our own, and we need your help more than ever.

Please, click here to save online privacy-- every call or email makes a difference!

To be honest, we’re not sure we can win this. Congress is convinced they have to pass *something*. But we’re sure the playbook we’re working from right now is our best shot. And we’ve got a team of three organizers dedicated to making it happen. First we’re asking people to email and call local Senate offices while the Senators are at home for Memorial Day recess, and drop in at Senate offices to express their concerns about the bill. We’re planning a call-in day for later in the week, and we’ll also be pressuring President Obama to keep his veto promise (this won’t be easy). But the first step is to either write or call your Senator right now. If we’re going to win, everybody needs to be heard.
One thing that’s in our favor: timing. This is an election year, and there’s just a few more weeks before Congress *shuts down*. If we can make Senators think twice before voting on this, we can run out the clock and hold on to our privacy rights. Even if you’re not a US-citizen, this still affects you: any information that passes through US-based services could be shared with the US government. Help us spread the word and find every single one of your friends who cares about their privacy and can help save it:

If we get active now, we can win. Click here to email your Senator.
Thanks for always being there for the internet.
- Tiffiniy Cheng, Fight for the Future
P.S. We also just redesigned our website and put two beautiful billboards outside SOPA sponsor Lamar Smith’s offices. Fight for the Future makes these projects happen through a tiny staff that works hard to protect internet freedom, but we couldn't do all this without your support dollars. Please donate to us if you haven't yet. Click here to keep us going!
P.P.S. If you’re in Europe, click here and make a call. There are important votes on ACTA this week.

DIGITAL MUSIC NEWS

Judge: RIAA's $72 Trillion Damages Claim Against Limewire Is "Absurd"

"Absurd." That's the single word Judge Kimba Wood of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York used to describe the Recording Industry Association of America's claim that LimeWire should pay as much as $150,000 for each download of each song from its P2P servers. The RIAA had argued that, since the courts have identified that some 11,000 songs were infringed upon and, as each song has been downloaded probably thousands of times, it should be compensated for each individual download. The simple math places the total damages at $72 trillion, which is 20% higher than the gross domestic product of the entire world. In her 14-page ruling, Judge Wood wrote that the plaintiffs' position on statutory damages "offends the canon that we should avoid endorsing statutory interpretations that would lead to absurd results. If plaintiffs were able to pursue a statutory damage theory based on the number of direct infringers per work, defendants' damages could reach into the trillions." If this "absurdity" was approved, the amount would be "more money than the entire music industry has made since Edison's invention of the phonograph in 1877," she said. [Full story:Red Orbit]

Sony Grabs "World's Largest Label" Title From Universal

According to new market share data reportedly leaked to Digital Music News [no connection to this publication], Sony Music appears ti have snared the title of "World's Biggest Music Label" from Universal Music Group. Based on figures from Nielsen Soundscan, Sony now has 32.81% of the global music market, while Universal has 28.35%, Warner has 15.33%, and EMI has 11.80%. Independent labels make up the remaining 11.72% of the pie. The New York Post backs up the claim, and says high-selling albums from Adele, Adam Lambert, and Carrie Underwood helped propel the label past UMG. Sony's increase is seen as a success for label chief Doug Morris, who jumped ship from Universal last year. Son'y Number 1 position may be short-lived, however, if UMG succeeds in merging with EMI. Those two labels combined would create a 44.61% share of the global record industry. [Full story: TheMusic.com]

Pandora Beats Mobile Ad Growth Estimates, But Net Loss Doubles

There was good news and bad news in the world of Pandora last week, as the online music company reported that its first quarter 2012 results exceeded analysts' estimates, while its net loss more than doubled as the costs of acquiring music and marketing increased. Of the $70.6 million in advertising sales the company earned during the quarter, 55% came from mobile devices, while net loss grew to $20.2 million, or 12 cents per share, compared to a loss of $9.1 million, or 61 cents per share, a year prior. "Pandora is off to an excellent start, exceeding our first quarter outlook and raising our expectations for the full fiscal year," said Pandora's chairman and CEO, Joe Kennedy. "This quarter Pandora averaged more than 50 million active users a month who generated more than 3.09 billion listening hours across Pandora's multiple platforms - desktop, auto, consumer electronics, and mobile devices. Advertisers want to be everywhere their consumers are. They are moving quickly to speak with their target customers across the Pandora platform, with the majority of the top 50 digital advertisers in the U.S. already having bought multiplatform advertising on Pandora." [Full story: Bloomberg News Proactive Investors]

N.Z. Judge: "U.S. Must Share Evidence" Against Megaupload

When the police in New Zealand raided the headquarters of file-sharing site Megaupload in January on behalf of the United States, it seemed that the case against the company and its founder, "Kim Dotcom," was airtight. Not so much anymore, as a judge subsequently ruled that police used the wrong kind of search warrant, while Mr. "Dotcom" was given access to his seized Mercedes-Benz and $49,000 a month from his bank accounts. Then, last week, Judge David J. Harvey of District Court in Auckland ruled that the U.S. must share evidence with Mr. "Dotcom" - including the Federal Bureau of Investigation's report - and also produce specific evidence to justify an extradition request and to allow Mr. Dotcom to prepare his defense. "A denial of the provision of information that could enable a proper adversarial hearing in my view would amount to a denial of the opportunity to contest," Judge Harvey wrote. "That would effectively mean that the process is one-sided." The charges against Mr. "Dotcom" and other Megaupload employees include criminal copyright infringement, conspiracy, money laundering, racketeering, and wire fraud. Mr. "Dotcom" faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted. [Full story: Mediadecoder]

Grooveshark Launches Beluga So Fans Can Follow Artists

Despite ongoing legal problems with the recorded music industry, Grooveshark this week announced it would be launching Beluga, a free music information tool that allows anyone to conduct in-depth research about particular artists and their fan bases. Drawing from Grooveshark's existing survey platform, Beluga collects data with complete transparency to develop pure listening-demand information, deep geographic and international music fan insight, pinpointed demographics, and first-party data - all while keeping user identities anonymous. "Any artist with music on Grooveshark can leverage Beluga's data to learn about their fans, route their tours, sell merchandise, work on building a following, and take their careers to the next level," said Josh Greenberg, Grooveshark Co-Founder and CTO. "Beluga opens doors for advertisers and brands to partner with artists who connect with their target audience, presenting endless opportunities. Best of all, we provide all of this market research information entirely for free." [Full story: PR Newswire]

Samsung Launches Music Hub For Android, May Expand To iOS

As expected, Samsung Electronics has launched an expanded version of its Music Hub service, including streaming access to 19 million songs and scan-and-match cloud storage features. The Android-powered Galaxy S III with Music Hub is offered in two versions: a free platform that enables users to purchase individual songs and albums, and listen to 30-second previews of all content; and a premium version, priced at $12.53 per month, that allows subscribers to upload and access their entire digital music collection to the cloud and guarantees unlimited streaming for all songs in the Samsung catalog. These users also may personalize music stations based on their favorite artists. Samsung SVP/Media Services T.J. Kang said the company is considering whether to expand Music Hub to other operating systems, noting that "there is a possibility that Music Hub will be made available on competing platforms, such as iOS." Kang did not specify whether those "competing platforms" also include Research In Motion's BlackBerry and Microsoft's Windows Phone. [Full story: Fierce Mobile Content]

Al Bell Presents American Soul Music ... And American Soul TV

If you're into classic and contemporary Soul, R&B, Blues, Gospel, Jazz, Hip-Hop Soul, Rap Soul, and Neo-Soul, we invite you to listen to Al Bell Presents American Soul Music. Former Stax Records owner and Motown Records Group President Al Bell personally has programmed this awesome radio station online, presenting your favorites from the 1960s and '70s [and some '80s], a lot of the best new music that's being released today, and some real gems you haven't heard in a long, long time. Come to www.AlBellPresents.Com

Hope Burning: Obama as cool triggerman.

Robert Scheer's Columns

Hope Burning

AP/Rafiq Maqbool

An aerial view of Kabul, Afghanistan, is seen through the window of a Soviet-era helicopter. Much more sophisticated weapons are at President Obama’s disposal when he orders an assassination.

By Robert Scheer

So now we have Rambo Obama, a steely warrior who, according to a lengthy leaked insider account in The New York Times, hurls death-dealing drones at anyone who threatens the good old USA. Including children. Those children are presumed guilty by virtue of proximity, and the Times plays along, not even modifying a targeted terrorist with the word “alleged,” as once had been the paper’s convention: “When a rare opportunity for a drone strike at a top terrorist arises—but his family is with him—it is the president who has reserved to himself the final moral calculation.”

Obama as the cool triggerman is an image useful to White House operatives as they buff the president’s persona for the coming election. But what it reveals is the mindset of a political cynic whose seductive words cloak the moral indifference of a methodical executioner. Forget Harry Truman, who obliterated the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or Lyndon Johnson, who carpet-bombed millions in Vietnam. The Democrats have got themselves another killer, one whose techniques are as devastatingly effective, but brilliantly refined.

The story obviously was planted in The New York Times to benefit the Obama political campaign. Otherwise, why would the president’s former chief of staff, William Daley, and three dozen current and past intelligence insiders provide the newspaper with the most sensitive details of national security decision-making?

Pfc. Bradley Manning was held for many months in solitary confinement for allegedly disclosing information of far lower security classification. The difference is that the top secrets in the news article are ones the president wants leaked in the expectation they will burnish his “tough on terrorism” credentials. This is clearly not the Obama whom many voted for in the hope that he would stick by his word, including the pledge he made on his second day in office to ban brutal interrogation and close the prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. “What the new president did not say was that the orders contained a few subtle loopholes,” the Times now reports concerning the early promises by Obama. “They reflected a still unfamiliar Barack Obama, a realist who, unlike some of his fervent supporters, was never carried away by his own rhetoric.”

Parse that sentence carefully to learn much of what is morally decrepit in our journalism as well as politics. The word “realist” is now identical to “hypocrite,” and the condemnation of immoral behavior addresses nothing more than “rhetoric” that only the “fervent” would take seriously. The Times writers all but thrill to the lying, as in recounting the new president’s response to advisers who warned him against sticking to his campaign promises on Guantanamo prisoners: “The deft insertion of some wiggle words in the president’s order showed that the advice was followed.”

How telling that reporters who might as well be PR flacks are so admiring of the power of “wiggle words” to free a politician from accountability to the voters who put him in office: “A few sharp-eyed observers inside and outside the government understood what the public did not. Without showing his hand, Mr. Obama had preserved three major policies—rendition, military commissions and indefinite detention—that have been targets of human rights groups since the 2001 terrorist attacks.”

The Obama answer to those human rights groups is the same as that offered by George W. Bush: Get the Justice Department to say that anything goes. When Obama wanted to kill “an American citizen, in a country with which the United States was not at war, in secret and without the benefit of a trial,” the Times tells us, “ ... the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel prepared a lengthy memo justifying that extraordinary step, asserting that while the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process applied, it could be satisfied by internal deliberations in the executive branch.” Obama approved, and two American citizens were assassinated, including Samir Khan, who was not on any official list of targeted terrorists. “This is an easy one,” Obama told his chief of staff.

What makes such decisions particularly easy is that Obama does not have to release any details of drone attacks or the legal rulings of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) that justify the assassinations—exactly the practice that Bush followed in regard to the OLC briefs that he cited for the legality of his torture policy. Michael Hayden, a director of the CIA under Bush and now an adviser to presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney, accurately described the danger that this poses to a democratic society: “This program rests on the personal legitimacy of the president, and that’s not sustainable. I have lived the life of someone taking action on the basis of secret O.L.C. memos, and it ain’t a good life. Democracies do not make war on the basis of legal memos locked in a [Department of Justice] safe.”

But imperial plutocracies do.

What is the Deep Web?

What is the Deep Web? A first trip into the abyss

The Deep Web (or Invisible web) is the set of information resources on the World Wide Web not reported by normal search engines.

According several researches the principal search engines index only a small portion of the overall web content, the remaining part is unknown to the majority of web users.

What do you think if you were told that under our feet, there is a world larger than ours and much more crowded? We will literally be shocked, and this is the reaction of those individual who can understand the existence of the Deep Web, a network of interconnected systems, are not indexed, having a size hundreds of times higher than the current web, around 500 times.

Very exhaustive is the definition provided by the founder of BrightPlanet, Mike Bergman, that compared searching on the Internet today to dragging a net across the surface of the ocean: a great deal may be caught in the net, but there is a wealth of information that is deep and therefore missed.

Ordinary search engines to find content on the web using software called "crawlers". This technique is ineffective for finding the hidden resources of the Web that could be classified into the following categories:

Dynamic content: dynamic pages which are returned in response to a submitted query or accessed only through a form, especially if open-domain input elements (such as text fields) are used; such fields are hard to navigate without domain knowledge.
Unlinked content: pages which are not linked to by other pages, which may prevent Web crawling programs from accessing the content. This content is referred to as pages without backlinks (or inlinks).
Private Web: sites that require registration and login (password-protected resources).
Contextual Web: pages with content varying for different access contexts (e.g., ranges of client IP addresses or previous navigation sequence).
Limited access content: sites that limit access to their pages in a technical way (e.g., using the Robots Exclusion Standard, CAPTCHAs, or no-cache Pragma HTTP headers which prohibit search engines from browsing them and creating cached copies).
Scripted content: pages that are only accessible through links produced by JavaScript as well as content dynamically downloaded from Web servers via Flash or Ajax solutions.
Non-HTML/text content: textual content encoded in multimedia (image or video) files or specific file formats not handled by search engines.
Text content using the Gopher protocol and files hosted on FTP that are not indexed by most search engines. Engines such as Google do not index pages outside of HTTP or HTTPS.

A parallel web that has a much wider number of information represents an invaluable resource for private companies, governments, and especially cybercrime. In the imagination of many persons, the DeepWeb term is associated with the concept of anonymity that goes with criminal intents the cannot be pursued because submerged in an inaccessible world.

As we will see this interpretation of the Deep Web is deeply wrong, we are facing with a network definitely different from the usual web but in many ways repeats the same issues in a different sense.

What is a Tor? How to preserve the anonymity?

Tor is the acronym of "The onion router", a system implemented to enable online anonymity. Tor client software routes Internet traffic through a worldwide volunteer network of servers hiding user's information eluding any activities of monitoring.

As usually happen, the project was born in military sector, sponsored the US Naval Research Laboratory and from 2004 to 2005 it was supported by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Actually the software is under development and maintenance of Tor Project. A user that navigate using Tor it's difficult to trace ensuring his privacy because the data are encrypted multiple times passing through nodes, Tor relays, of the network.

Connecting to the Tor network

Imagine a typical scenario where Alice desire to be connected with Bob using the Tor network. Let’s see step by step how it is possible.

She makes an unencrypted connection to a centralized directory server containing the addresses of Tor nodes. After receiving the address list from the directory server the Tor client software will connect to a random node (the entry node), through an encrypted connection. The entry node would make an encrypted connection to a random second node which would in turn do the same to connect to a random third Tor node. The process goes on until it involves a node (exit node) connected to the destination.

Consider that during Tor routing, in each connection, the Tor node are randomly chosen and the same node cannot be used twice in the same path.

To ensure anonymity the connections have a fixed duration. Every ten minutes to avoid statistical analysis that could compromise the user’s privacy, the client software changes the entry node.

Up to now we have considered an ideal situation in which a user accesses the network only to connect to another. To further complicate the discussion, in a real scenario, the node Alice could in turn be used as a node for routing purposes with other established connections between other users.

A malevolent third party would not be able to know which connection is initiated as a user and which as node making impossible the monitoring of the communications.

After this necessary parenthesis on Tor network routing we are ready to enter the Deep Web simply using the Tor software from the official web site of the project. Tor is able to work on all the existing platforms and many add-ons make simple they integration in existing applications, including web browsers. Despite the network has been projected to protect user’s privacy, to be really anonymous it's suggested to go though a VPN.

A better mode to navigate inside the deep web is to use the Tails OS distribution which is bootable from any machine don't leaving a trace on the host. Once the Tor Bundle is installed it comes with its own portable Firefox version, ideal for anonymous navigation due an appropriate control of installed plugins, in the commercial version in fact common plugins could expose our identity.

Once inside the network, where it possible to go and what is it possible to find?

Well once inside the deep web we must understand that the navigation is quite different from ordinary web, every research is more complex due the absence of indexing of the content.

A user that start it's navigation in the Deep Web have to know that a common way to list the content is to adopt collection of Wikis and BBS-like sites which have the main purpose to aggregate links categorizing them in more suitable groups of consulting. Another difference that user has to take in mind is that instead of classic extensions (e.g. .com, .gov) the domains in the Deep Web generally end with the .onion suffix.

Following a short list of links that have made famous the Deep Web published on Pastebin

Cleaned Hidden Wiki should be a also a good starting point for the first navigations

http://3suaolltfj2xjksb.onion/hiddenwiki/index.php/Main_Page

Be careful, some content are labeled with common used tag such as CP= child porn, PD is pedophile, stay far from them.

The Deep Web is considered the place where every thing is possible, you can find every kind of material and services for sale, most of them illegal. The hidden web offers to cybercrime great business opportunity, hacking services, malware, stolen credit cards, weapons.

We all know the potentiality of the e-commerce in ordinary web and its impressive growth in last couple of years, well now imagine the Deep Web market that is more that 500 times bigger and where there is no legal limits on the odds to sell. We are facing with amazing business controlled by ciber criminal organizations.

Speaking of dark market we cannot avoid to mention Silk Road web site, an online marketplace located in the Deep Web, the majority of its products are derived from illegal activities. Of course it's not the only one, many other markets are managed to address specify products, believe me, many of them are terrifying.

Most transactions on the Deep Web accept BitCoinsystem for payments allowing the purchase of any kind of products preserving the anonymity of the transaction, encouraging the development of trade in respect to any kind of illegal activities. We are facing with a with an autonomous system that advantage the exercise of criminal activities while ensuring the anonymity of transactions and the inability to track down the criminals.

But is it really all anonymous? Is it possible to be traced in the Deep Web? What is the position of the governments towards the Deep Web?

I will provide more information on the topic in next articles ... in meantime let me thank a great expert of the Deep Web, "The gAtOmAlO" with whom I collaborate on a project which we will present you soon.

Author : Pierluigi Paganini

Anarchy in the EU: the black flag flutters as Europe protests

Anarchist groups promise violence and mayhem amid the chaos of the financial crisis

BY MATTHEW CARR LAST UPDATED AT 07:58 ON THU 31 MAY 2012

AS EUROPE slowly asphyxiates in the grip of the financial markets, an old yet familiar figure from the not-so-distant past has re-entered the landscape of crisis - the anarchist as class avenger and agent of violent mayhem.

Anarchists – or groups calling themselves anarchists – have played a sporadic role in street protests and demonstrations in various countries since the crisis began, particularly in Greece and Italy.

But there has always been a more militant strain that disdains permitted forms of protest in favour of more direct action, from sabotage, arson, and parcel bombs and attacks on representative individuals and institutions.

Last month, advocates of such insurrectionist tactics crossed a new threshold, with the kneecapping of Roberto Adinolfi, the executive of an Italian nuclear company owned by the defence and aerospace giant Finnmecanica, by a group calling itself the Olga Nucleus of the Federazione Anarchica Informale (Informal Anarchist Federation).

In a statement on the 325 website, the FAI claimed responsibility for punishing one "of so many sorcerers of the atom with a candid spirit and a clean conscience". Mixing quotations from Bakunin with diatribes against nuclear power and science in general, the authors described the shooting of "a colourless scientist, a technician" as "the logical consequence of an idea of justice, the risk of a choice and at the same time a confluence of enjoyable sensations".

This insouciance cannot be considered representative of the European anarchist movement in general. Indeed, the UK Anarchist Federation explicitly condemned the shooting, claiming that such acts are ineffectual, counter-productive and elitist. The FAI, for its part, condemned this condemnation as a tepid expression of "civil anarchism" – a phenomenon that it described somewhat hyperbolically as "a slathering, craven and despotic monster with eyes in the back of its head".

For the FAI, violence is a form of self-expression and personal liberation that enables activists to "recover volition and dispel the inauthentic". Its technophobic rhetoric is reminiscent of the Unabomber, so much so that the respected Nature magazine has described the kneecapping of Adolfini as a expression of "anti-science".

Maybe so. But neither its tactics nor its ideology are entirely new. In the early seventies, a proliferation of individuals and pop up groups in Italy carried out acts of factory sabotage, and kneecappings and beatings of factory bosses and management officials, which later escalated into the more lethal violence of the Red Brigades.

At the time there was speculation that at least some these groups were directed by obscure forces from within the Italian state as part of a "strategy of tension" intended to destabilise society and generate public support for authoritarian government or a military coup.

Whether directed or not, the actions of small group insurrectionists like the Red Brigades and the FAI have rarely benefited the left – or the working class constituencies they claim to support.

More often than not they have played into the hands of their political enemies, and provided a justification for security crackdowns and antiterrorist emergencies of the type that have become depressingly familiar over the last decade.

Such actions are not limited to the anarchist heartlands of southern Europe. Only last week, the FAI raised its head in Britain, promising to disrupt the London Olympics, on the grounds that "We don't want rich tourists — we want civil war". In a demonstration of intent, militants set fire to signalling cables on railway lines in Bristol, severely disrupting commuter services, in what the FAI called the beginning of "a new generation of urban, low intensity warfare".

Whether the FAI has the capability to escalate this campaign and penetrate the iron security cordon around the games, remains to be seen. But we can't be entirely surprised that some people are attracted by such tactics.

At a time of massive youth unemployment, when mainstream politicians across the continent increasingly have nothing to offer but ever-more savage cuts and austerity in order to make their electorates pay for a crisis they did not cause, the instant gratification of direct action is always a temptation, and the black flag of anarchy – or at least a certain version of it – is likely to have more appeal than waiting for the next election. ·

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

What the minimum wage gets you

By Vera H-C Chan | Trending Now – 10 hrs ago day

Minimum wage advocat

What does $7.25 an hour get you?

These days, barely two gallons of gas. You'd probably have to work 30 minutes to enjoy a tall Frappuccino (maybe more if prices keep going up), although that's an indulgence when a box of diapers would cost about two hours of labor.

As the economy slowly rebuilds itself, talk about raising the minimum wage is, well, on the rise, and it has taken on more urgency in cities, states, and at the national level:

Eight states raised minimum wages on January 1.
Advocates in New York ($7.25/hr) are lobbying for $8.50, a pay raise that Governor Mario Cuomo calls harder to pass than gay marriage.
Legislators in New Jersey ($7.25/hr) want to add $2,500 to a full-time minimum-wage annual salary that is indexed to inflation. Governor Chris Christie has said, "I'm showing a willingness to listen but also honestly saying I'm not inclined to do so."
Connecticut ($8.25/hr) lost momentum on its campaign to raise wages, although the issue is stillpercolating among legislators.
Missouri may vote on a November referendum.
Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) introduced the Rebuild America Act in March, part of which addresses raising the federal minimum wage.

Minimum Wages in the United StatesThe debate over who benefits: It's clear who immediately profits from a wage bump—the current job-holder. But, the real back-and-forth revolves around who loses out because of a wage hike: Are increases a "job killer" (a $1.25/hour boost for one could mean no job for another), or will businesses benefit from better-paid consumers? Do the poor lose out, partly because they don't even work in the first place?

Then there's the impassioned debate over the "moral obligation:" Faith leaders talk about championing the "poor and needy," while the other side emphasizes the "moral imperative" of protecting job creation. In a speech commemorating a federal hourly wage raise 15 years ago, Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton, hinged the minimum wage concept to a "moral basis of our labor."

Minimum Wage Chart

Declining purchasing power: While media coverage has defined the debate along party lines, politicians like Mitt Romney andPresident Barack Obama have agreed on one thing: Inflation has reduced the purchasing power of the minimum wage. "Over 30 years, we've had either stagnating, at best, or declining wages for our low-wage workers," saysUniversity of California at Berkeley labor economist Sylvia Allegretto to Yahoo!. "This idea that we can have a thriving economy, when we have a good swath of our workers losing ground in pay decade after decade, while those at the top are making more and more money, that does not make a successful economy."

Minimum wage by the numbers:

The last time there was a federal minimum wage boost was in 2009.
1.8 million workers earn $7.25/hour.
2.5 million workers earn less, due to exemptions that allow lower wages for certain types of workers (including students).
Women make up two-thirds of minimum-wage workers.
The same proportion of women work in occupations that depend upon tips, which has a federal minimum of $2.13/hour.
If wages were indexed to inflation since 1968 wages, which is the high point of American purchasing power, the minimum wage would be $10.58.
If wages rose at the same rate as executive salaries, the lowest-paid worker would make a whopping $23/hour.

Earned income tax creditThe case study of the teen summer market: Among those campaigning for minimum wage increases are kids barely old enough to land a job. A 12-year-old Girl Scout helped to galvanize the New York discussion on wages: Hannah Buckler started a petition to support a minimum wage increase. More than 3,000 miles away, students at a San Jose college pushed the city council to approve a November ballot initiative to raise its minimum wages and tie future increases to the cost of living.

Some economists, though, have focused on the younger generation as a prime example of the minimum wage's negative effects: Teens lose out on summer and part-time jobs because businesses can't afford to hire them. A recent effort has been underway to loosen child-labor laws. Some studies, however, dispute a causal connection.

Instead, academics like Allegretto say that the laws of supply and demand don't apply to minimum wage, pointing to the idea of monopsony. For instance, the way Apple and Wal-Mart have created their own supply chain and labor forces, illustrates monopsony in action.

To oversimplify: Basic economy theory believes that when the cost rises (in this case, labor costs), demand falls. But the buyer in this case is the employer paying below-competitive wages. "The wages are actually set below supply and demand," Allegretto says. "In theory, you can increase the wage and employment" and also reduce costly churn and recruitment at the same time. And while it's tempting to see this as a labor versus business dispute, coalitions like the Business for a Fair Minimum Wage, which includes companies like Costco, support minimum wage increases.

Sub-minimum wages: There's another class of wage-earners who make even less than the minimum: those who get tips on the job.

Like many tipped workers, [Zhanneta] Dunder has trouble making ends meet because of an obscure federal provision called the tip credit, which has established a sub-minimum wage for tipped workers at $2.15 per hour, or $4,333 a year for a full-time worker. Forty-five states have established slightly higher sub-minimum wages...Organizations like the New York nonprofit Restaurant Opportunities Centers don't think that's enough, and recommend at least raising tipped wages to 70 percent of the minimum wage...Tipped workers, the group says, are more likely to fall into poverty than those who receive minimum wage. Servers rely on food stamps at nearly double the rate of the general population. (May 23, Women eNews)

As with federal minimum wages, regions can choose to pay more. The San Francisco living wage rose to $10.24 on January 1; employers are also required to pay towards health care coverage, which diners have seen as a bill surcharge.

Real value of minimum wage and tipped-worker minimum wageWhat is minimum wage throughout United States? Although the federal minimum is $7.25, three states (Wyoming/$5.15, Georgia/$5.15, and Arkansas/$6.25) have lower state wages that apply to certainbusinesses and exemptions.

Below, a chart that contrasts the annual minimum-wage salary with a state's median income, for a sampling of states.