The nation's top banking regulator warned Tuesday that help for troubled homeowners is failing to keep pace with the foreclosure crisis.img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/rss/money_latest/~4/HJhScrNd1Nk" height="1" width="1"/

Rebecca McKinnon has published an extensive and densely informative blog post in which she shares findings of her ongoing Chinese blog censorship research. She is developing a more in-depth academic paper for release in 2009, and welcomes feedback and reaction to what she's posted now, including the presentation slides which contain more concrete, visual examples of how the censorship works. Snip: All Chinese blog-hosting companies are required by government regulators to censor their users' content in order to keep their business licenses. But as Liu discovered, they all make different choices not only about how to implement censorship requirements, but also how to treat the users who get censored. Most Chinese bloggers who want an audience inside mainland China use domestic Chinese blog-hosting services - only a very tiny minority use overseas services like Blogger or Wordpress.com because they tend to be blocked, and even fewer have the tech skills to do their own custom Wordpress installation on their own rented server space. The aim of my research was to look at the Chinese blog-hosting services (which includes foreign brands offering services inside China to the Chinese market) and establish how much variation there is in terms of what gets censored and how it gets censored. Since it's not in the interest of people who work at blog-hosting companies to tell the truth about these things in great detail to a foreign researcher, I decided that the best way to do this would be to post a range of content across a number of blog-hosting services and track who censored what and how. With the help of John Kennedy, Ben Cheng, and some student research assistants, my team posted more than 100 pieces of content - passages from news items, blogs, and chatrooms of varying political sensitivity - consistently across 15 different Chinese blog-hosting platforms. We found that censorship levels and methods vary tremendously from company to company. I have written about some of the interesting findings that came up as we went along here, here, and here. If I publish a chart naming who censors more than whom, it is likely that those who censor less will get in trouble with the authorities. Therefore in the chart at right I have changed all the company names to letters. Of 108 pieces of content on a variety of public affairs and news-related subjects from a variety of sources (ranging from Xinhua to dissident websites), the most censor-happy company deleted over half, while the most laid-back company censored only one. (Note that I only posted one item about FLG and one about Tiananmen because most bloggers expect those to be censored - it's more interesting to see how censorship works on topics that Chinese bloggers interested in current events might write about.) Studying Chinese blog censorship (RConversation) Previously on Boing Boing: Google founder regrets censoring China - Boing Boing Google, China, and genocide: web censorship and Tibet - Boing Boing China: gov to expand "Great 'Net Firewall," censor web even more ... Which search engine is worst censor in China? - Boing Boing Chinese editions of MSN Spaces censor political terms - Boing Boing How Chinese net-censorship works -- Reporters Without Borders ... Net censorship: HOWTO bypass China's Great Firewall - Boing Boing China: blog providers sign "self-discipline" act to nix anonymous ... Okay, *do* be evil: Google launches censored google.cn in China ... Xeni's LAT op-ed: war, blogs, news, and profit. - Boing Boing Yahoo: dissident shareholders' anti-censor, pro-human rights move ......br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=220f7aab74ea28660d7a340c877e2905p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=220f7aab74ea28660d7a340c877e2905p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=220f7aab74ea28660d7a340c877e2905" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/85004?ns=guardianpageName=Money%3A+Mortgage+market+will+%27grind+to+a+halt%27ch=Moneyc3=guardian.co.ukc4=Mortgages+%28Money%29%2CProperty%2CMoney%2CHousing+market+%28Business%29%2CBusiness%2CUK+newsc5=Personal+Finance%2CCredit+Crunch%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CBusiness+Markets%2CProperty+Mortgages+and+Interest+Ratesc6=Jill+Treanorc7=2008_12_02c8=1127595c9=articlec10=GUc11=Moneyc12=Mortgagesc13=c14=h2=GU%2FMoney%2FMortgages" width="1" height="1" //divpThe mortgage market will come to a standstill next year unless the government takes further action to help banks and building societies, the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) said today./ppDirector general, Michael Coogan, raised the prospect of "mortgage rationing" as he admitted the government's demand for mortgage lending to return to 2007 levels could not be achieved./ppHis warning echoed last week's prediction by the government's mortgage tsar, Sir James Crosby, that 2009 could see a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2008/nov/25/mortgages-property"negative net lending for the first time/a as more home loans are paid off than new ones are granted./ppAddressing this year's CML conference, Coogan called on the government to take further steps to make life easier for mortgage lenders, including cutting the cost to the banking industry of funding the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS). /ppThe scheme is currently paying out depositors in Bradford Bingley, the collapsed Icelandic banks and London Scottish Bank, and Coogan said the contributions demanded by the government could amount to 20%-30% of the industry profits next year./pp"Unless government takes further targeted action to help market participants, we will see a worsening of the picture next year compared to this. I would therefore not disagree today with Sir James Crosby's analysis or prognosis in his report," Coogan told delegates./pp"A good outcome next year in my view would be if had lending at levels seen in 2008, but bearing in mind we will be in a recession ... this would be a real challenge."br / br /Jon Pain, the retail markets managing director at the Financial Services Authority (FSA), agreed with the predictions for negative net lending./ppBut while some areas of the mortgage market had dried up, Pain said the regulator wanted to "encourage growth in mortgage lending that properly reflects the price of risk"./ppThe CML has forecast that net lending this year will be half the record £108bn reached last year. However, the government has set this figure as a target for the banks accepting its £37bn bail-out./ppCoogan set out a number of steps the government, the Bank of England and the FSA should take rejuvinate lending. These included calling a halt to demanding that lenders pass on base rate cuts because of the impact this has on savings rates, and allowing income support for mortgage interest payments to be paid when one borrower's income is reduced, not just an entire household's./ppHe also said specialist lenders should be allowed to use the special liquidity scheme which banks and building societies can use to swap mortgage bonds for higher rated government paper, and that the terms of the £37bn recapitalisation measures should be reviewed./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/mortgages"Mortgages/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/property"Property/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/housingmarket"Housing market/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/lTDDTAzgY42-IMViJADPHuF9eDg/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/lTDDTAzgY42-IMViJADPHuF9eDg/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

div class="rxbodyfield"p class="ArticleBody" page="1"Femtocells, indoor 3G base stations installed by consumers, will boost cellular network capacity more than tenfold without causing interference, according to research carried out by the Femto Forum./pp align="right"a href="http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/idg.us.info.rss/news;pos=imu;tile=6;sz=336x280;skey=patch_management;pkey=security;ord=123456789?" target="_blank" /img src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/idg.us.info.rss/news;pos=imu;tile=6;sz=336x280;skey=patch_management;pkey=security;ord=123456789?" width="336" height="280" border="0" alt="" align="right"//a/pp class="ArticleBody" page="1"Femtocells are designed to give indoor coverage for 3G (third-generation) phones, routing traffic over broadband networks and freeing up the existing cellular networks. However, as they will often operate on the same frequencies as outdoor networks, operators have expressed fears that they will cause interference. Because of these and other concerns, femtocell services have been slow to appear./pp class="ArticleBody" page="1"b[ Find out more about the#160;a href="http://weblog.infoworld.com/realitycheck/archives/2008/03/the_benefits_su.html?source=fssr"benefits of using femtocells/a. And keep up on the latest networking news with our a href="http://www.infoworld.com/newsletter/subscribe.html?source=fssr"Networking Report newsletter/a. And discover the top-rated IT products as rated by the a href="http://www.infoworld.com/testcenter/?source=fssr"InfoWorld Test Center/a. ]/b/pp class="ArticleBody" page="1"quot;The capacity jump will be equivalent to the jump experienced when mobile phones moved from analogue to digital,quot; said Professor Simon Saunders, chairman of the Forum. quot;We analyzed scenarios where total capacity could increase by a hundred times.quot;/pp class="ArticleBody" page="1"The study analyzed simulations based on real data from the Forum#39;s operator members, he explained. It found that femtocells will normally deliver an order-of-magnitude more capacity than the macro network alone, even when they are deployed very densely. Interference can be limited by various power-management technologies available in current femtocell products, the study found./pp class="ArticleBody" page="1"quot;I was expecting more commercial activity in femtocells by the end of 2008,quot; said analyst Richard Webb of Infonetics Research. quot;Really there are only two services [Softbank in Japan and Starhub in Singapore]. There are technical challenges which need to be addressed before we will see mass market adoptions. I think we are moving towards solutions, but I don#39;t think these have been hard-baked yet.quot;/pp class="ArticleBody" page="1"Commercial femtocells reduce the interference problems by adapting their power levels downward in response to the strength of the nearby macrocells, says the Forum#39;s report. They also use attenuation and other technologies to deal with the fact that 3G handsets are not quot;tunedquot; to femtocells, and so they may signal at high power, as if to a distant cell-tower, even when the femtocell is in the same room./pp class="ArticleBody" page="1"quot;We are making sure these technologies are supported in the femtocell standards,quot; said Saunders, quot;and making sure regulators understand that femtocells can make better use of existing spectrum without creating harmful interference.quot; Today#39;s interference-limiting technologies are proprietary, however, and have to be standardized, he acknowledged. quot;We are not promoting one technology or another. We want to highlight that these techniques exist,quot; said Saunders./pp class="ArticleBody" page="1"Analysts believe femtocells face bigger challenges than interference: quot;I think there#39;s still a remaining question mark about the business model,quot; said Webb. quot;How will femtocells be sold and who to? What is the price point and what is the bundle?quot;/p/divbr style=clear: both;/ a href=http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/ht.php?t=camp;i=6baad1ae5e43eced920711e2a1938810amp;p=1img style=border:0; src=http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/ht.php?t=vamp;i=6baad1ae5e43eced920711e2a1938810amp;p=1 border=0 //a

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/96014?ns=guardianpageName=Business%3A+Government+puts+RBS+lending+policy+under+scrutinych=Businessc3=The+Guardianc4=Royal+Bank+of+Scotland+%28Business%29%2CBanking+sector+%28Business%29%2CRegulators%2CBusiness%2CMortgages+%28Money%29%2CBanks+and+building+societies%2CMoney%2CEconomic+policy%2CPoliticsc5=Personal+Finance%2CInvestments%2CCredit+Crunch%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CBusiness+Markets%2CProperty+Mortgages+and+Interest+Ratesc6=Jill+Treanor%2CRupert+Jonesc7=2008_12_02c8=1127185c9=articlec10=GUc11=Businessc12=Royal+Bank+of+Scotlandc13=c14=h2=GU%2FBusiness%2FRoyal+Bank+of+Scotland" width="1" height="1" //divpRoyal Bank of Scotland was put on notice yesterday that its lending policy, boardroom appointments and business strategy were being reviewed by the government as it took control of 58% of the Edinburgh-based bank./ppThe body set up to oversee the government's stake said it was in "active discussions" about the bank's strategy. UK Financial Investments said that John Crompton, hired from Merrill Lynch, would manage the stake that came under government control yesterday after shareholders shunned a pound;15bn cash call. It has presented the taxpayer with a paper loss of about pound;2.5bn. The UKFI said it was "putting in place arrangements to secure a robust assurance" that commitments to maintain lending to homeowners and small businesses at 2007 levels for the next three years were fulfilled./ppMeanwhile RBS's new chief executive, Stephen Hester, yesterday promised to grant a six-month moratorium to home owners struggling to keep up with mortgage payments. RBS pre-empted any government crackdown on repossessions by asserting that it would give customers falling into arrears six months rather than three months before beginning any repossession proceedings./ppThe move was welcomed by the Treasury and is expected to become a benchmark for the industry. Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman Vince Cable said it was "welcome news" for RBS customers. But, he added: "It will be a mere drop in the ocean unless it is followed by the whole industry. The government must now insist that all the nationalised and part-nationalised banks follow suit."/ppNorthern Rock, the nationalised bank responsible for a tenth of all repossessions, insisted it actually took 15 months for homes to be repossessed./ppHBOS, which owns the country's largest mortgage lender Halifax, which is accepting a pound;12bn government rescue package, said it would look at the RBS announcement but felt it already had a package in place to deal with customers in difficulty./ppLloyds TSB, which will take over HBOS next year and is likely to be 40% owned by the taxpayer, said borrowers were usually at least six months in arrears before it began repossession steps./ppThe Council of Mortgage Lenders will use its annual conference today to urge "an honest assessment of the challenges facing the lending industry". It appealed against the imposition of strict criteria on repossessions for each lender./pp"In a large number of cases, borrowers are already able to remain in their home for six months or longer while they work with the lender on implementing a plan to pay off their arrears," it said. "But in cases where there is little or no equity in the property - and no chance of the borrower getting back on his feet in a short period - it may be in the best interests of the home-owner to move towards selling the property rather than allowing arrears to continue to build up over a long period."/pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/royalbankofscotlandgroup"Royal Bank of Scotland/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/banking"UK banking sector/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/regulators"Regulators/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/mortgages"Mortgages/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/banks"Banks and building societies/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/economy"Economic policy/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/vb3TVPgl9pQWbnvPOkAIHCmTSCU/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/vb3TVPgl9pQWbnvPOkAIHCmTSCU/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

Federal regulators have rejected proposed changes by the Federal Communications Commission that would require all U.S. cell phone towers to have at least eight hours of backup power.div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?a=xHQtO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?i=xHQtO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?a=xueTo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?i=xueTo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?a=K0Yeo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?i=K0Yeo" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ibtimes/tech/~4/471849465" height="1" width="1"/

Dave sent us this tasty step-by-strep for homebrewing root beer -When I asked them about the yeast, the man behind the counter gave me a dreadful warning that making root beer with yeast is like making bombs. He said it was too dangerous as the bottles have a high likelihood of exploding. He also said that they had a high likelihood of fermenting the root beer and so it was a very poor way to make root beer. The method he suggested instead was carbon dioxide infusion. This required a carbon dioxide tank and regulator (I borrowed this from Dave) and a cornelious keg, which I purchased from Main Street Homebrew. It was used and set me back about $45. With the extracts and the book, I spent about another $25.Mmmm ... me likey non-explosive root beer - Root Beer: The Bacon of Beverages

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DIY root beer

a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/12/diy_nonexplosive_root_bee.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" /Read more/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/12/diy_nonexplosive_root_bee.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" / Permalink/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/12/diy_nonexplosive_root_bee.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890#comments" /Comments/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/diy_projects/?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" /Read more articles in DIY Projects/a | a href="http://digg.com/submit?url=blog.makezine.com%2Farchive%2F2008%2F12%2Fdiy_nonexplosive_root_bee.htmltitle=DIY%20non-explosive%20root%20beerbodytext=%20Dave%20sent%20us%20this%20tasty%20step-by-strep%20for%20homebrewing%20root%20beer%20-When%20I%20asked%20them%20about%20the%20yeast%2C%20the%20man%20behind%20the%20counter%20gave%20me%20a%20dreadful%20warning%20that%20making%20root%20beer%20with%20yeast%20is%20like%20making%20bombs.%20He%20said...topic=tech_news" /Digg this!/a

An ad for the iPhone 3G a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/nov/26/apple-iphone"has been banned/a in the UK, after the country's advertising regulator decided that calling the device "really fast" four times in an ad was making deceptive claims about the speed with which it could access the internet. a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/aug/27/apple.apple"Earlier in the year/a, Apple had another iPhone ad banned after it said it could access "all parts of the internet." The regulator's action was prompted by 17 complaints from consumers about the ad, though at least one of those who complained after he'd received some poor customer service from Apple a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/26/advertising-iphone"says revenge was a factor/a, and wonders if others had similar motivation. While plenty of complaints about Apple in online forums get ignored or shouted down by the legions of Mac fanboys, at least one guy found a way to make his stick.p style="border-top: 1px #aaaaaa dashed;padding-top: 5px;margin-top: 10px;"emCarlo Longino is an expert at the a href="http://www.insightcommunity.com/"Insight Community/a. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, a href="http://www.insightcommunity.com/"click here/a./em/p br /br /a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20081126/0932272962.shtml"Permalink/a | a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20081126/0932272962.shtml#comments"Comments/a | a href="http://techdirt.com/article.php?sid=20081126/0932272962op=sharethis"Email This Story/abr / br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=9a56a9cc313eac2c2bf23a0c17ced560p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=9a56a9cc313eac2c2bf23a0c17ced560p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=9a56a9cc313eac2c2bf23a0c17ced560" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~f/techdirt/feed?a=ovC5o"img src="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~f/techdirt/feed?i=ovC5o" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~r/techdirt/feed/~4/471138015" height="1" width="1"/

London Scottish Bank, the lender which specialises in customers with poor credit histories, plunged administration this morning after regulators stopped the group from accepting customer deposits.