To get apps outside of the app store mafia, you had to jailbreak and install Cydia. Now you can use this. This will allow web based apps. Only for Iphone for now, but hoping to expand to other devices.
The Economist weighs in and says that extending copyright doesn’t increase creativity, it stifles it and Europe should think long and hard before going down the American way and extending it for perpituity.
Protecting creativity: Copyright and wrong | The Economist.
This is an interesting read:
It’s about the current EU antitrust complaint filed against Google – not by Microsoft, as it happens. It covers whitelisting of people and Google using its search engine results to push its own services, which is anti-competitive. Specifically two examples are mentioned: on line map services (where MapQuest lost out in searches to Google Maps, even when the term MapQuest was specifically used) and price comparison sites. This tactic could obviously be used to kill off any competitors in any market Google is in, especially if they are then whitelisted, whereby the competitor is not to found in the search engine at all any more, unless through paid exposure using AdWords.
So this is about anit-competitiveness and transparency.
Why the Google antitrust complaint is not about Microsoft • The Register.
The current (demissionary) minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin has made himself a total idiot by declaring a database into which he wants to put fingerprints of all the Netherlands ‘safe’. Hasn’t he learnt yet, when it comes to databases, there is no such thing as safe?!
Further, the data will be stored at a third, non-governmental database. Where it will be safe too.
Really.
Idiot.
Minister: database vingerafdrukken is veilig | Webwereld.
The BAA employee took a photo of his co-worker, Jo Margetson, when she inadvertently went through a scanner.
“I can't bear to think about the body scanner thing,” she told the Sun. “I'm totally traumatised. I've spoken to the police about it. I'm in too much of a state to go to work.”
BAA said: “We treat any allegations of inappropriate behaviour or misuse of security equipment very seriously and these claims are being investigated thoroughly,” a BAA spokesman said. “If found to be substantiated we will take appropriate action.”
via Airport worker given police warning for ‘misusing’ body scanner | UK news | guardian.co.uk.
Well it’s not a surprise that the thing is used for what it was built. These things are a total scourge on our privacy and it’s ridiculous that these can be used on passengers, especially when they don’t increase passenger safetly at all.
Yup, being a man sucks if you have a child. If you don’t make your payments, they will freeze your assets and sell your house. If you don’t get to see your child, however, you’re basically fucked.
Child maintenance agency moves to seize 340 non-payers’ homes | Society | guardian.co.uk.
GoogleSharing is a special kind of anonymizing proxy service, designed for a very specific threat. It ultimately aims to provide a level of anonymity that will prevent google from tracking your searches, movements, and what websites you visit. GoogleSharing is not a full proxy service designed to anonymize all your traffic, but rather something designed exclusively for your communication with Google. Our system is totally transparent, with no special “alternative” websites to visit. Your normal work flow should be exactly the same.
via GoogleSharing :: A Special Kind Of Proxy.
First this story: a guy has been sentenced to probation, where the officer gets to spend the next three years deciding if and who he’s allowed to date
Wis. teen will need legal permission to date girls – wtop.com.
And then we have this story where US soldiers are threatened with jail time if they impregnate or are impregnated.
WTF?
You’d have thought that Isreal of all countries would have learned of the problems involved in having too much useless information in a centralised database from the Dutch in WWII – which had ethnic information such as: “are you jewish?” in there, enabling the Germans to export the most jews per capita from the Netherlands. But no – they want a compulsory database of every citizen in Israel containing two fingerprints and a picture. Idiots.
Israel tests biometric database • The Register.
This map is updated frequently and shows you a live map of many many marine objects and their headings
Live Ships Map – AIS – Vessel Traffic and Positions.
If you have a cellphone, it turns out that Sprint keeps 24 months of your location data and turns it over to law enforcement regularly. 8 million requests were made over the last year. Requests can be made every 3 minutes for up to 60 days.
Sprint isn’t the only one who tracks this data: Yahoo and Verizon are also culprits but they’re not disclosing the amount of times they’ve given away this kind of data to the government.
Yup, they know where you are and where you’ve been. It’s a brave new world indeed!
Sprint Makes Goverment Tracking of GPS Data Easy – PC World.
In 1969, Chairman Mao commanded the construction of a second Beijing beneath the surface of the original city, designed to accommodate all six million of its then inhabitants, so that if nuclear war did kick off, folk would still have somewhere to hang out and play Mah Jong while the rest of us burnt to death in a shower of atomic rain. War never came, but the city is still there.
http://www.viceland.com/wp/2009/11/chairman-maos-underground-city/
The Dutch have a crazy plan to charge people per km they drive. How will they monitor this? By placing little black GPS boxes in every car. If you don’t have a working box in your car, you will face up to four (!) years in jail – more than most other forms of crime.
Now the economics minister is saying that the ideas of an invasion of privacy are indian stories and nonsense. I ask, how much more can you invade someone’s privacy than following someone’s car everywhere (s)he goes and putting all that information in a huge database?!
EZ: privacybezwaar km-heffing is indianenverhaal (video) | Webwereld.
Basically it’s all about the movie and music industry being able to kick you off the net and subject you to huge fines without any proof – just an accusation of filesharing is enough. It’s also about giving the business secretary the power to make up penalties and enforcements at whim.
It’s not about stimulating creativity, new business, ensuring that everyone has broadband, etc.
Looks like labour has it’s pockets filled with copyright holders hands!
And allthough the authenticity of the 1079 emails and 72 documents hasn’t been verified, it shows that the researchers have manipulated the data to fit their models, can’t explain the lack of global warming and have plans set up to destroy the credibility of any scientist doubting their stance.
Michelle Malkin » The global warming scandal of the century.
[edit]You can find the full archives here
If you don’t allow the third party cookie, you can’t logout!
Great news for people using snotmail in libararies and internet cafe’s, where they often disable cookies for you…
Hotmail imposes tracking cookies for logout • The Register.
Showing unbelievable balls by MS, incredible incompetency by the US Patent Office, and why software patents are such a manifestly bad idea, MS has managed to patent a method of privilege escalation commonly known among almost all *NIX users since almost the inception of *NIX as sudo.
Groklaw – Microsoft Patents Sudo?!!.
This article is from a facebook advertiser, who explains how to make lots of money using false adverts, getting your email address, telephone number, or getting you to download a toolbar using less than exactly honest means.
How To Spam Facebook Like A Pro: An Insider’s Confession.
2 council run adventure playgrounds in Watford are off limits to parents. Only “play workers” are allowed to supervise the children playing there. For some reason, the local council thinks it’s not appropriate for parents to be in the same area as playing 5 – 15 year olds.
Let’s fuel the paedophile paranoia some more shall we?!
Brave New World arrives In Watford • The Register.
“The law in the Netherlands says that intercepted phone calls between attorneys and their clients must be destroyed. But the Dutch government has been keeping under wraps for years that no one has the foggiest clue how to delete them Google translation. Now, an email PDF from the National Police Services Agency KLPD has surfaced, revealing that the working of the technology in question is a NetApp trade secret. The Dutch police are now trying to get their Israeli supplier Verint to tell them how to delete tapped calls and comply with the law. Meanwhile, attorneys in the Netherlands remain afraid to use their phones.
via Slashdot Your Rights Online Story | Dutch Gov’t Has No Idea How To Delete Tapped Calls.
Yup – someone had to think of a way to turn those CCTV camera’s into something that everyone had access to! In an internet game, people are encouraged to use the CCTV network to spy on people in the street. Whoever catches the most “criminals” (say litterers or jaywalkers) gets GBP 1000,- every month! Have fun participating in the spy state!
The whole Pirate Bay saga continues: after strange court orders, dodgy sales, bans on Google, etc, etc, here is the latest:
Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde has gone to the Dutch police and has charged the Brein organisiation with fabrication of evidence and fraud.
Pirate Bay doet aangifte tegen Brein en Kuik – update 2 | Webwereld.
Brein has been trying to get the Pirate Bay down globally – due to Brein suboepna’ing the 3 mere conduits for the IP range they use:
Brein blokkeert Pirate Bay wereldwijd – Webwereld
That block has been circumvented by a Dutch guy working for a German host
Nederlander helpt Pirate Bay weer online – update – Webwereld
Never a boring moment with these guys!
We should all know by now that the fingerprint biometric is a bad one: not only can you duplicate it fairly easily using just gummy bears, or increase the risk of having your finger cut off for you, they also give too many false negatives; some people will never be able to use fingerprint scanners.
The problem here is that because they have to automate the fingerprinting process, you get a lower level of accuracy in the scans. No two prints by the same finger are ever exactly the same. This is corrected for by error correction codes, which adds information to the prints to allow the computer to correct for these disparities. If you can get to these codes, you can find out information about the original fingerprint and the amount of data loss that is expected. So searching through the error correction code database allows you to find a fingerprint that is similar to yours and has a large correction. This means you can become this other person fairly easily.
Vingerafdrukparanoia is terecht (opinie) | Webwereld.
Lovely. If you’re an asylum seeker, the UK border patrols will want to take you DNA through your hair and nails to determine your nationality. Not only is this an insane breach of your person, there is also no scientific methodology being given out to show how exactly anything will be accomplished by the investigating company (whoever that is).
Slashdot Science Story | Scientists Decry “Horrifying” UK Border Test Plan.