spain

A Spanish company is hoping to put the word on the street inside the pavement under your feet, starting this summer. Via Inteligente plans to introduce intelligent "iPavement" at this year's International Building & Construction Show in Dubai.

The paving stones sport Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, their own operating system, apps, and sensors -- all with the goal of connecting with locals and passersby to push information ranging from local weather conditions and emergency alerts to maps and coupons for nearby businesses.

Via Inteligente's mission is to turn city streets into information platforms, and it has even gone so far as to develop its own Viacities OS (perhaps one day Viacities and iOS will go head-to-head, literally) to run its initial suite of apps, which it described for the first time in a release:… Read more

An anti-piracy law passed in Spain on January 3 has striking similarities to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) that is stirring controversy in the U.S.

The Sinde Law, which is named after former Spanish Culture Minister Angeles Gonzalez-Sinde, lets copyright holders report Web sites that host content which infringes on their rights. The government must then choose to take action against the site or ISP. If moved along, a judge will decide whether to shut down the Web site.

What's interesting about the law is that the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) alleges the U.S. had a … Read more

It's not often that a solar installation gets the royal treatment, but in the case of Torresol's molten salt solar plant that's exactly what happened yesterday.

King Juan Carlos of Spain and Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, crown prince of Abu Dhabi, along with Masdar CEO Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, Sener President Jorge Sendagorta, and several other royals from the United Arab Emirates, oversaw opening ceremonies at a 19.9-megawatt solar plant in Fuentes, Andalucía, Spain.

The plant, which uses molten salt thermal storage to generate electricity, is the result of Torresol Energy, a … Read more

After Spain's national police arrested three hackers allegedly linked to Anonymous and the Sony PlayStation Network hacks, the amorphous collective claims to have successfully taken the agency's site offline in retaliation.

According to a Saturday posting on AnonOps Communications, "Operation Policia (#OpPolicia) is the name for the successful DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack that paralyzed the Official National Police website (Página Oficial del Cuerpo Nacional de Policía www.policia.es) for hours on Saturday, making it inaccessible to visitors. The DDoS attack is a protest tactic often deployed by Anonymous."

The … Read more

Authorities in Spain say they have arrested three suspected members of the "hacktivist" collective known as Anonymous, alleging that the trio took part in the now notorious hack of Sony's PlayStation Network as well as other infiltrations of governments, banks, and other businesses.

According to a translation of a press release from Spain's national police, it also seized a server used in the attacks from the home of one of the suspects. The suspects were picked up in the cities of Barcelona, Valencia, and Almeria. Police claim they represent the organization's leadership in Spain and that they directed attacks against the country's central election board, the Catalan police and the UGT, a major Spanish trade union.

Spanish police also claim to have evidence that the group went after a number of international targets from an apartment, including "...the Web sites of the Sony Playstation Store, BBVA, Bankia, ENEL and the governments of Egypt, Algeria, Libya, Iran, Chile, Colombia and New Zealand."… Read more

Google is facing yet another challenge over privacy rights--this one to be played out in a Spanish courtroom, starting tomorrow.

The search giant is up against a legal test from the Spanish government's data protection agency. Established to field complaints from citizens over how their personal information appears online, the agency has demanded that Google remove links to sites that it claims violate people's privacy rigths, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The agency contends that under Spanish law, Google is required to remove such links--a claim that Google has challenged. Specifically, the agency wants more than 90 … Read more

China will soon overtake Japan as the world's second heaviest spender on research and development, according to a report from the Battelle Memorial Institute.

A nonprofit group that conducts scientific research, Battelle published its findings today as part of an article in its R&D Magazine. The article and its full supplementary report (PDF) looked at global R&D spending in general and across six specific segments--Information Technology, Electronics, Life Sciences, Aerospace/Defense/Security, Energy, and Advanced Materials.

Next year, China is expected to spend $153.7 billion on R&D, a big jump from $141.… Read more

A new report out of the University of Valencia in Spain finds that roughly one in four teens studied have been bullied by cell phone and/or the Internet at some point over the past year.

While these findings may sound reasonable, it is bound to raise eyebrows as it comes on the heels of a much larger, 25-country European Union study called EU Kids Online that reports the European cyberbullying average far lower, at 5 percent, with Spain being even slightly below that average.

The discrepancy could be the result of differences in how cyberbullying itself is defined. In … Read more

The Spanair plane crash that killed 154 people two years ago Friday may have been partly caused by malware, according to reports.

El Pais, Spain's top newspaper, reported Friday that Spanair's mainframe was contaminated with Trojans at the time that Flight JK 5022 to Gran Canaria crashed just after take-off at Madrid's Barajas airport.

The mainframe was supposed to raise the alarm when three similar technical problems were noted, but did not do so due to the infestation, El Pais said.

According to the report, investigating judge Juan David Perez has ordered Spanair to turn over relevant … Read more