EU's knee-jerk anti-plasma campaign could lead to total ban and more sensationalist tech headlines

plasma-electricity.jpg

Everyone knows that, in general, large TVs consume more electricity than small ones, but it seems that EU bureaucrats are just turning themselves on to the idea of banning plasma TVs because they’re not energy efficient.

The yawn-inducing title attributed to plasma sets is “the 4×4 of the living room” (I reported this over at HDTVUK two years ago) because it’s easy to lump them all together as electricity guzzlers.

Sweeping generalisations reported in the mainstream press include such gems as “they use up to four times as much electricity and are responsible for up to four times as much carbon dioxide as traditional cathode ray tube sets.” The clue is in those two words — “up to” — which, just as when applied to your flagging broadband connection, can cover a huge range of values…

Textecution – an extremely clever mobile app that stops you texting while you're driving

textecution-app-gps-speed-driving-ban.jpg

So, go on then, guess how a mobile phone app can tell if you’re driving or not? Speed of texting? Pauses while texting? More errors than usual? Drastic directional adjustments detected by the iPhone’s accelerometer as you hastily steer away from the bus stop, off the pavement and back onto the road?

Nope – Texecution uses GPS to locate the position of your phone, and therefore you, deactivating the phone’s SMS features when you seem to be moving at more than 10mph.

There is, of course, an override function for when you’re a passenger, on buses and trains, or running really fast…

This week, YouTube has been banned in… Kuwait

youtube-banned-kuwait.jpg

Oh dear. The poor people of Kuwait will no longer be able to watch poorly-lit webcam footage of women dancing to Latin American hip hop in their underwear, thanks to a fresh batch of religious outrage.

As ever, it’s the old portraying-Mohammed issue that’s lead to Kuwaiti officials demanding a ban on the video streaming site, thanks to it featuring videos that could offend Muslims. Here’s how the Kuwaiti top brass demanded the ban in a memo to the country’s ISPs…

Grand Theft Auto IV blamed for Thai killing – game pulled from shelves

GTA-IV-banned-thailand.jpg

This isn’t your usual tabloid shock story, where there was a robbery and one of the items taken just so happened to be a PlayStation. This is FOR REAL.

A Thai teenager has confessed to robbing and killing a taxi driver – then allegedly told police he was trying to recreate a scene from Grand Theft Auto. There’s no denying the facts or fudging the issue here – he was copying the game. It’s a 100% confirmed copycat crime. There’s going to be trouble over this. Big trouble.

“He said he wanted to find out if it was as easy in real life to rob a taxi as it was in the game,” chief police investigator…

Indonesian censorship news: YouTube allowed again!

indonesia-unbans-youtube.jpg

Previously we have reported on Indonesia banning porn and YouTube. We are the UK’s premier source of news regarding Indonesian ISP policies. It it’s happening in Indonesia, you’ll find it first here first!

So it’s pleasing to report that Indonesia has today un-banned YouTube, with the country’s ISPs allowing access to the video-sharing site again – but still blocking any individual pages containing the offensive and supposedly anti-Islamic film that sparked the…

Europe votes "no" to internet bans for file sharers. We are saved!

eu-file-sharing-criminalised-no-non-nein.jpg

The EU has just voted against the idea of banning file-sharers from using the internet, in a rare victory for the right-thinking common man.

Any possible plan to criminalise file-sharing was rejected by EU members, along with the concept of axing the web connections of those caught Bittorrenting the entire output of Hollywood overnight. It’s OK. You’re not going to get done for it any more…