How PayPal beat communists and civil servants at logic

Those brought up in communism (in the Soviet or Cuban sense)--as well as those who have dealt with any nation's civil service--will tell you that logic is infinitely malleable.

So I was slightly less impressed by PayPal's apology for freezing an account that tried to raise money for needy children, than by its beautiful logic in first freezing the account.

Should you have missed this tale, PayPal shut down the account of a site called Regretsy because it tried to use PayPal's "donate" button to accept, well, donations.

Regretsy, knowing that if David had been on the Web he would never have had to catapult stones at Goliath, published some of its conversations with PayPal.

PayPal has not denied the accuracy of these quotes, so I am assuming them to be true. It seems that when Regretsy's account was suspended, PayPal explained: "Only a nonprofit can use the Donate button."

(Credit: Screenshot: Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)

Regretsy pointed out that PayPal's instructions declared that the button could be used for "worthy causes."

In its first, highly salty pretzel of logic, PayPal allegedly replied: "What you're doing is not a worthy cause, it's charity."

It would surely be fair to ask any number of the idlers known as philosophy students--with Alain De Botton as their supervisor--to examine this stunning parsing of meaning.

If charity is not worthy, what is it? One suggestion might be that charity is something we do to make ourselves feel better, while a worthy cause is something whose primary goal is to make the recipients feel better.

Another might be that charity is tax deductible, while a worthy cause might not be.

PayPal's representative, though, allegedly offered something so much richer, so much more nuanced: "You can use the donate button to raise money for a sick cat, but not poor people."

A sick cat is a worthy cause. Poor people are not.

I stare at this logic and find myself desperate to reach for some Lava Vine port. I feel sure that even with De Botton, Wittgenstein, and Morrissey at my side, I would still need my brains loosened by high-table thinking juice in order to envelop such sleight of mind.

If the poor people were also sick, would this have made a difference? If the cat was merely impoverished, would that have changed its worthy cause status to merely charitable?

I want to believe that these conundrums--based, as they must have been on some interpretation of in-house rules--can be solved using simple words, 10 great minds, and one mere bottle of port.

However, what could possibly have been in the mind of the person who allegedly wrote these words? I feel sure that the person responsible would make an excellent leader of one the world's few remaining communist countries or the head of any national civil service.

They could be sent out to be an infiltrator, take power and then use such parsing of words in order to make the world a better place.

I think of such a plan as a charitable act. A charitable act in a worthy cause.

Originally posted at Technically Incorrect

For and against: DDoS attacks as a legitimate form of protest?

Many students and I would argue that yes, distributed or non-distributed denial-of-service attacks are a legitimate form of protest.

The British media has been inundated with news of student protests erupting after the government voted to treble tuition fees for new students starting in the 2012 academic year. Though all media from around the world have focused also on the Wikileaks scandal, which continues to put pressure on governments and their efforts around the world.

The two can overlap. The problem is that most students and political activists of my age are unaware of this mechanism of airing our disdain.

A distributed denial-of-service attack is when hundreds or thousands of people at one time use an application to target their own broadband bandwidth to pummel a certain server, often a web server hosting a website, to overload it with information causing it to shut down.

In practice, you download a small application, follow the instructions made available by means of viral marketing spreading and you ping; you ping until your heart’s content.

• Read more: MPAA down, RIAA next: An e-protest over piracy
• Read more: The Global Cyber War Hacks and Attacks Scorecard
• Related: DDoS: How to take down WikiLeaks, MasterCard
• Related: Poll: What’s your take on Wikileaks?

I am neither condoning nor supporting the use of denial-of-service attacks, but one has to wonder whether the evolution and the speed of the Web has placed certain priorities higher than others when resorting to means of protest.

In a recent poll undertaken by the Between the Lines bloggers, though results are still coming in and polls are yet to change, at the time of publication most do not believe denial-of-service attacks are a legitimate form of protest. I think the readers are wrong.

So let’s just run through some basic pro’s and con’s to see if you can be persuaded otherwise:

Reasons for:

• In some places, protesting is illegal without a court order or police authorisation;
• It takes less people to actually ‘protest’ depending on the size of the target you are hitting;
• Street protests are often not listened to: politicians though accountable to the electorate often do as their party whips decide;
• Street protests do sometimes turn into violence, bringing the entire protest into disrepute.
• When operated virally, they are incredibly easy to organise and are ’simpler’, essentially.

Reasons against:

• It’s may be illegal in your country;
• In some cases it’s too easy to perform a DDoS attack against a small victim, and the numbers do not justify the wider feeling;
• Street protests give a greater accurate portrayal of the angeragainst a particular issue;
• Websites are often very resilient and can be up again as soon as the denial-of-service attack stops.
• A lot of students don’t have very fast broadband, and communal living makes bandwidth hungry students angry.

Whether or not you consider it to be a legitimate form of protest, suited for the twenty-first century, it still makes one hell of a noise.

Do you consider DDoS’ing a legitimate form of protest?

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Google Chrome for business: It's ready for you, even if you're not ready for it

Google’s Chrome browser is ready for the workplace, updated and enhanced so that IT folks can not only deploy it on office computers but can also starting testing those Web apps - just in case the company is thinking about switching to the Chrome OS platform when it goes live next year.

That’s the bigger message in an announcement today about enhancements to the Chrome browser. In a post on its Enterprise blog, the company wrote:

…Chrome offers controls that enable IT administrators to easily configure and deploy the browser on Windows, Mac, and Linux according to their business requirements. We’ve created an MSI installer that enables businesses who use standard deployment tools to install Chrome for all their managed users. We’ve also added support for managed group policy with a list of policies and a set of templates that allow administrators to easily customize browser settings to manage security and privacy.

The selling point: businesses can take advantage of “improved security and web application performance” without breaking the bank on other expensive software licenses or new hardware. Who could say no to something like that?

More importantly, though, Google seems to be trying to lure businesses into a Chrome environment before the big rollout of Chrome OS next year. At an event last week, the company showcased the OS and even started a pilot program to hand out free Chrome-powered notebooks so that real users - consumers, businesses, bloggers like me - to startputting Chrome OS through some early tests.

The jury is still out on whether Chrome OS - and the browser-only Chrome notebooks due out in mid-2011 - will gain any real traction against Microsoft’s Windows, Apple’s Mac OS X or Linux. But Google is being proactive about trying to get businesses to start thinking about alternative operating systems and Google’s take on Web-based applications.

Google suggests that companies interested in deploying these features will be ahead of the game - but the one that’s really ahead of the game here is Google, which hopes to get business customers interested in a technology that’s not even available yet.

China dotcom giant launches English language service

Will you QQ? The popular Chinese instant message service is launching in English, French and Japanese.

"We're looking to expand our reach outside of China to get involved with people who are interested in China."

Already QQ has users in 212 countries, most of who come from the U.S. and Europe, Violo told CNN. Tencent has partnered with popular English-language web sites in China -- such as travel provider CTrip and state-run newspaper China Daily -- to draw more traffic from overseas consumers.

"And if you want to instant message someone living in China, you have access to 92 percent of the online population here," Violo said.

The company is also working on a partnership with Canada-based StumbleUpon, a content discovery service company. QQi hopes to have "between 7 and 10 million subscribers" by September, Violo said.

A beta version, released last year targeting expatriates living in China, has 2 million subscribers.

Tencent is not the only Chinese Internet company with international ambitions. Baidu, China's largest search engine, launched a search service in Japan several years ago.

The company has plans to expand into other regions, including Latin America, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, according to Baidu spokesperson Kaiser Kuo.

"We are looking at markets where Google is not dominant," Kuo said. "Our preference is for markets with languages that are not Latin-based, so we have a leg up there."

In November, Baidu CEO Robin Li said he hoped that in 10 years, the Chinese search giant would become a household name in 50 percent of the world.

With Chinese Internet companies' plans to do business abroad also come challenges that analysts say they are unsure China's domestic web giants will ultimately ever be able to overcome.

The obstacles relate to the Internet censorship policies inside China that require companies to monitor and remove sensitive content from websites and block user behavior deemed inappropriate, political or otherwise.

"This is one of the key issues for all of these really rich Chinese Internet companies trying to go overseas," Bill Bishop, a Beijing-based independent media consultant, said.

"When they go into developing markets, it is one thing (because) there is a less sophisticated user base. When they go into the United States, they are carrying a huge amount of baggage and Google added a few tons to that baggage last year."

Read more on Google in China

Companies, like Tencent, have no choice but to follow Chinese Internet law or be shut down. Tencent, for example, blocks chats or posts containing sensitive words from its servers.

"For sure, I think all of the chats are monitored by QQ," Lu Gang, co-founder of OpenWeb.Asia, a working group focusing on the Asian Internet industry.

"If you type in sensitive key words, the messaging will be blocked. I think more and more people realize the problem, but still no one will give up QQ because it is part of the Internet culture in China. If you are not using it, you will lose lots of contacts in your social life."

Most recently the company was involved in a high profile dispute with Qihoo 360, China's largest antivirus software provider, which alleged Tencent was scanning private data of its more than 600 million users. Tencent denied the allegations.

"This whole Qihoo 360 case only raises people's level of suspicion," Bill Bishop said.

"Tencent may feel it is a great company but what matters is if they can convince users they are safe and now that bar has been raised significantly."

Violo said he believes this can be done.

"Most people don't realize that QQ is a very large multinational that is listed on the stock exchange and has thousands of shareholders," the QQi project manager said.

"Everything needs to be transparent. Of course we are in China so the government can put pressure on the company, and of course we have to comply with certain subjects, which are sensible in China. But if you are not planning a coup d'état against the Chinese government using QQ, then QQ is a safe thing."

Online WikiLeaks game is a hit

In "WikiLeaks: The Game," players become Julian Assange and try to steal documents from President Obama.

(CNN) -- A computer-game parody of the much-talked-about WikiLeaks saga has made a splash online.

In the online game, players assume the role of WikiLeaks founder and outsized personality Julian Assange hiding behind President Obama's desk in the Oval Office.

Using their mouse, players must manipulate the Assange character to smuggle secret documents from Obama's laptop onto a USB drive as the president dozes off. Those who fail are treated to a juicy presidential sound bite and a mock story planted in the newspaper.

More than a million people have visited the website for "WikiLeaks: The Game" since it was posted five days ago, developer Sebastiaan Moeys, 21, told ABC News.

"Just like governmental attempts to quash WikiLeaks, the game is harder than it looks," wrote Alexia Tsotsis on the tech-news blog TechCrunch. "I've played it five times and I still haven't won."

Game developers have been quick in recent years to capitalize on the popularity of prominent news events.

Satirical animated games have spoofed Tiger Woods' extramarital scandal, the Hudson River plane landing, the Chilean mine rescueand the rescue of a ship captain from Somali pirates.

Artists reimagine Facebook's new profile pages

Alexandre Oudin of Paris is credited as a pioneer of this new type of Facebook profile art.

(CNN) -- Facebook unveiled a redesign of its profile pages earlier this month that rearranged users' personal info and photos into a streamlined layout.

But some enterprising designers have taken the revamp one step further, turning their Facebook profiles into creative works of art.

The site's new page design was intended to more prominently display recently uploaded photos that tell a story about the user's life, said Facebook engineer Josh Wiseman in a blog post.

Where most users saw a rigid presentation of one profile photo next to five smaller, uniform thumbnails, some saw potential. The websiteReface.me has organized a page with some of its favorite profile-page reimaginings, which it calls "profile hacks."

Alexandre Oudin, who works at a consulting firm in Paris, has been credited by many bloggers as the pioneer of this young art phenomenon.

Oudin's main profile picture is of the right side of his face. Each of the five thumbnails are to-scale pieces of his eyes, nose and hair. Together, they form a stunning composite of his face.

"I used Photoshop and played a little bit with Facebook's privacy settings," Oudin told CNN in a message on -- where else? -- Facebook. "Just wanted to have fun with the new profile."

His example sparked several copycats.

Nelson Caparas, who lives in the Philippines, hacked together a similar project, showing his ear in the main picture and his eyes and a floral backdrop in the smaller shots.

"Right after seeing Mr. Alexandre Oudin's brilliant idea, I couldn't resist trying," Caparas wrote in a message. "It can be tricky too with the privacy settings and profile information so you really have to take a lot of time to perfect it."

For a more ridiculous take on the profile effect, Ouri Stopek's shows a picture of a little person named Super Kidi burning cars by firing lasers from his eyes. Stopek, who develops a French auction site, used to be a painter and said he leveraged some of his old techniques for the project.

Vlad Hernandez, a Web designer from Calgary, Canada, spotted the trend early on a technology blog and gave his own face composite a shot.

"I love learning new things," Hernandez wrote in a message. "In my business, the more I know, the better. It makes me stand out to my peers and prospective clients."

For many, this type of unconventional project is a creative outlet. "I definitely did this for the sake of art," Caparas wrote.

Privacy Courtesy of an Internet Police State? Thanks but No Thanks

While the objective of anti-tracking legislation would be similar to that of the Do Not Call List, those seeking to apply this model to the Internet seem to be ignoring two important facts: 1) This is not 2003, and 2) Monitoring telephone calls is a lot easier than keeping tabs on Internet traffic. In fact, one of the things the Congressional hearings on this matter revealed is there currently is no reliable way of ensuring compliance with a do-not-track law.

We've been hearing a lot lately from people who think it's time to start policing the Internet.

Last week, the U.S. Congress began holding hearings to determine whether it should outlaw the practice of tracking Internet users' browsing habits. Meanwhile, the European Union started exploring the possibility of trying to make Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) change its method of delivering search results.
The people leading most efforts to put legal curbs on Internet-based businesses profess to be to be acting out of a desire to protect consumers. They want to shield us from the evils of cyberspace -- all those trackers lurking in the background of websites, waiting for just the right moment to feed us ads for things we shouldn't be buying.
As a frequent Internet user, I'm glad to know that someone has my back. However, I question the wisdom of trying to turn the Internet into a police state, primarily because I don't think it's possible to regulate the Internet in a way that would benefit the average user.
Consider the prospect of prohibiting the tracking of users' browsing habits. The current suggested method for doing that for doing that is to create something called a "Do Not Track List." Not surprisingly, this proposal has been likened to the law passed in 2003 that allows consumers to stop telemarketers from intruding on their quiet time simply by signing up to have their phone number placed in a National Do Not Call Registry.
That law has worked well for consumers. I signed up for the list, and now the only time I'm bothered by unwelcome telephone solicitations is during political campaign season. (How those calls got exempted from the ban is a subject for another column.)

No Way to Ensure Compliance

While the objective of anti-tracking legislation would be similar to that of the Do Not Call List -- to protect consumers from what at least are perceived be to unwelcome intrusions -- those seeking to apply this model to the Internet seem to be ignoring two important facts: 1) This is not 2003, and 2) Monitoring telephone calls is a lot easier than keeping tabs on Internet traffic.
In fact, one of the things the Congressional hearings on this matter revealed is there currently is no reliable way of ensuring compliance with a do-not-track law. The most plausible approach seems to be a method developed by a Stanford University research team that calls for embedding a header in your Web browser that transmits a signal telling all the sites that you visit that you don't want to be tracked.
It wouldn't take much for users to embed these headers in their browsers, but it won't do any good unless all website operators adopt corresponding technology that listens for the do-not-track signal. Who's going to make sure that technology is present -- and always turned on -- across the entire Internet?
Regulators might have an easier time imposing restrictions on Google's actions in the search arena, but I'm not sure they should even bother. This is an issue because Google is being accused of manipulating search results to the favor of its own services.

Arguing Over Search Results

These accusations are being leveled by companies that rely on Google's search engine to push customers their way, and now find themselves, in effect, competing with new services -- such as a health website -- that Google is creating to expand its own revenue stream.
Obviously, there's a lot at stake here for both Google and its competitors/customers. Two thirds of the people conducting Internet searches in the U.S. use Google's engine. In some European countries, that number is 90 percent, which explains why EU regulators are so interested in this situation. If Google is, indeed, manipulating search results to its advantage, it could be causing European companies a substantial amount of business.
Google argues that its engine generates the best set of results for users, and that's the case even when those results put Google's own services at the top of the page.
I don't know enough about the inner workings of Google -- or search technology in general -- to know whether Google is manipulating results for its own advantage. However, I do know that if enough users feel they are not getting objective answers to their search queries, they will start using other search engines.
Regulators concerned about how big Google is getting also should be aware of the natural evolution of technology companies.
Tech companies typically become successful because they hit on a new idea that quickly becomes wildly popular -- Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) and Facebook are primary examples. That success also usually breeds competitors, and it's normally only a matter of time before one or more of those competitors establishes a solid foothold in the market. Apple is experiencing that now, with Android phones eating away at the iPhone lead in the smartphone space.
At some point, the market itself will spawn a real competitor to Google. If consumers don't like Google's business practices, that competitor will emerge sooner rather than later. So, there really is no reason for the government to start sticking its nose into our Internet browsers.