So, in an effort to hide from NSA you go all out HTTPS. However, to avoid getting those pesky "this site is dangerous!!!" messages browsers show you on self-signed certificates, you buy your keys from any of the larger certificate authorities. Safe? Sorry, no. Almost all those CAs work under American jurisdiction, or on delegation from American CAs. Assuming NSA doesn't get the keys in other ways, all they have to do to get them is to ask the CA and the company would have to hand them over.

With those private keys available they can listen in on the HTTPS conversations in real time, and there is no way for the participants of the conversation to know this.

Amusingly enough, the safest bid (well, to hide from NSA at least) would be to use self-signed keys despite all the browser warnings.

If you still want to get valid keys, here is an interesting discussion on which CA to choose.

This theme has been investigated extensively in the revelation space books by Alastair Reynolds, if anyone is curious about reading fiction about how it could look. Here, a full dump of a person is called an alpha-level simulation and is essential a living digital copy of a person, capable of continuing to "live", learn and having conversations with their descendants.

The stockholm stock exchange is part of the NASDAQ-OMX group ( http://www.nasdaqomx.com/aboutus/whatisnasdaq/ ) . Do they use the same software?

I can help but imagine zonked bees saying "BzzZZzzzt!?" and flying into trees...

Loudspeakers are all and well, but no-one under the age of 30 should be allowed to own one. Especially not my neighbors.

Even if they didn't do it themselves, they would be bound by the EU Data Retention Directive to do it.

Sweden has already got threatened with the EU high court for not implementing the directive.

Ok, that's about the most amusing hack since someone wrote a fully working web server in postscript: http://www.pugo.org:8080/

(Still think the postscript web server leads the list of odd hacks)

The same clause is present in swedish 3G TOS from for example Teliasonera. I'm forbidden to use any voip service on my android phone, although I don't know if they actively try to detect such use.

http://xkcd.com/927/

If there is any value left in either the oracle code base or the IBM code base, the only sane thing for apache to do would be to commit it to the LibreOffice code tree. That's where the development is happening at the moment, and I don't see why Apache would be interested in maintaining a lesser competing product when there already is a blooming open source one around.

The answer is not all that simple and straight-forward. First you have to decide what level of "cloud" it is you want? Is it platform-as-a-service (PAAS) or infrastructure-as-a-service (IAAS)? Your situation will be very different depending on what you choose. Assuming you are interested in going all out cloud and insist on going for microsoft products, you should read up on Azure and then decide if the gains are worth it. You should especially read up on the pricing model and see if it fits with your model for generating income.

I have gotten my SOE account "hacked" (using SOE's terms). So has a close friend, and several other people I know of. Ok, if it had only been me I would have assumed it was an isolated incident even though I can't even begin to guess how my password got out in the wild. When this many people got their accounts taken over in such a limited time, I do no longer believe this was a problem on my side. However, trying to get anything other than "update your antivirus" out of the SOE customer support is an exercise in futility.

My qualified guess is that the recent security breaches aren't in any way exceptions: Most likely Sony/SOE have had security problems for several months now and have tried to keep a lid on it. But as said, that's just my guess.

Having seen the "stable" 11.04 release crash simply upon booting the live-cd and noting that the list of "known issues" is four screen pages long, I'd say they have some distance left to go.

The EU area controls about 16% of the total world economy. That may sound small, but when an area like that takes a considered and coordinated stance like the one in the OP, and (knowing EU) is prepared to put significant legislative effort behind the decision, it would have a significant impact. 16% of the world market is too much to ignore, even discounting the manufacturers actually living in the EU area (for you foreign barbarians, about 500 million people lives here).

A decision like this would cause great market incitement for thinking up and selling new "green" products.

Anyone else see the death star at 01:33?