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Comment Re:ANSII on a BBS (Score 1) 479

by jarle.aase (#44432449) Attached to: Remember the Computer Science Past Or Be Condemned To Repeat It?

Well, yeah, Facebook is just a slightly improved BBS and a browser is just a slightly improved ANSI terminal.

The BBS thing was interesting. You would meet new people, and new opinions. New thoughts. On Facebook, the best you can hope for is new ads. But Facebook is may be some weird, perverted "evolution" of the BBS concept.

I wrote my own BBS (CrCs) in C, and had it running on a 8086 based PC with QNX and 4 modems.

Comment Re:We don't shun those who should be shunned. (Score 1) 479

by jarle.aase (#44432381) Attached to: Remember the Computer Science Past Or Be Condemned To Repeat It?

... Want a quick web server for xyz, that's like 3 lines of python.

I did exactly that on a build machine to share a 50 line text-document about the recent builds. When the build-machine is building, serving that 50 line text-file takes 1 minute or more. I don't really think I would deploy something like that on prod.

Submission + - Liberal Saudi Web Forum Founder Sentenced to 600 lashes and 7 Years In Prison (seattletimes.com) 1

Submitted by cold fjord
cold fjord writes: Some reformers travel a harder road than others. The Seattle Times reports, "The founder of a liberal-minded website in Saudi Arabia has been sentenced to seven years in prison and 600 lashes after angering Islamic authorities in the ultraconservative kingdom... Raif Badawi, through his website known as Free Saudi Liberals, had urged Saudis to share opinions about the role of religion in the country, which follows a strict form of Islam that includes harsh punishments for challenging customs. A judge in the Red Sea port of Jiddah imposed the sentences but dropped charges of apostasy, which could have brought a death sentence, the Al-Watan newspaper reported. Badawi has been held since June 2012"" More at The Inquirer, and the BBC, which informs us that, "The judge ordered that the 600 lashes be administered 150 at a time. ... "The lashes could be spread out but in Sharia this is a sign that the judge wants to insult him," he said."

Submission + - Lawmakers Who Upheld NSA Phone Spying Received Double the Defense Industry Cash (wired.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The numbers tell the story — in votes and dollars. On Wednesday, the House voted 217 to 205 not to rein in the NSA’s phone-spying dragnet. It turns out that those 217 “no” voters received twice as much campaign financing from the defense and intelligence industry as the 205 “yes” voters.

Comment Re:Google's against everything the FSF stands for. (Score 3, Interesting) 63

by jarle.aase (#44393489) Attached to: FSF Launches Fundraiser For Replicant
I agree.

I believe it would be better to build a privacy-oriented free alternative to all the spy-on-me crapware. This year there are several new mobile OS'es up for release, but they all seem all to be designed for HTML5 or the "cloud", which in my book, are even more evil than Android or iOS. There was a time when I had hope for Nokia, but then Stephen Elop happened.

I want a phone that can run applications, on the device. I want to decide which applications. I want to be able to block any company or service I see as evil, or that may not respect my privacy. I don't want any backdoors or phone-home bs.

Basically, I want free software that behaves well. Designed by good people who focus on usability, security and privacy - rather than data gathering and me-as-a-product.

Comment Re:Expert Advice (Score 4, Insightful) 148

by jarle.aase (#44390369) Attached to: Chinese Firm Huawei In Control of UK Net Filters
Yes, and that is a good thing.

You know, what this is really about is not just protecting innocent children, - it's really about protecting our Freedom.

Freedom from the reds and the blacks and the criminals
Prostitutes, pansies and punks
Football hooligans, juvenile delinquents
Lesbians and left wing scum

Freedom from the niggers and the Pakis and the unions
Freedom from the gypsies and the Jews
Freedom from left wing layabouts and liberals
Freedom from the likes of you

To quote an old British song

With something as important as the British populations Freedom at stake, no wonder they go for the best Freedom-enhancing technology in the World.

Submission + - Facebook Andriod app: Behaving badly, or dangerously incompetent?

Submitted by jarle.aase
jarle.aase writes: A blog-post at symantec.com, claims that: ...The first time you launch the Facebook application, even before logging in, your phone number will be sent over the Internet to Facebook servers. You do not need to provide your phone number, log in, initiate a specific action, or even need a Facebook account for this to happen.

ZDNet have picked up the story and asks the question: Facebook: Behaving badly, or dangerously incompetent?. They continue: To the knowledgable bystander, combined with the app's other mechanisms, it's impossible not to consider the opinion that the app is acting like spyware.

I just bought a Sony Xperia Z, and noted that the bundled Facebook app was constantly running — even if I myself never started it or used it. (I never used Facebook). I disabled it as soon as I noticed this behavior, feeling like a paranoid idiot — but it also turned out that my gut feeling was right.

Let's hope that EU's privacy authorities fines them appropriately.

Submission + - EU websites track users without warning, against own rules (euractiv.com)

Submitted by Sam Lowry
Sam Lowry writes: European institutions are tracking users of their web sites, in breach of the EU's own data protection rules. The fact has been confirmed by Europe’s data protection watchdog, in an interview with EurActiv, while Brussels is reviewing privacy legislation to tackle the abuse.

Submission + - US Phone companies provided call metadata VOLUNTARILY for 4 years 2

Submitted by Bruce66423
Bruce66423 writes: According to http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us-surveillance-architecture-includes-collection-of-revealing-internet-phone-metadata/2013/06/15/e9bf004a-d511-11e2-b05f-3ea3f0e7bb5a_story_1.html p.2
the Bush administration,took “bulk metadata” from the phone companies under voluntary agreements for more than four years after 9/11 until a court agreed they could have it compulsorily.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: How to defeat government spying on a cellphone?

Submitted by jarle.aase
jarle.aase writes: It's doable today to use a mix of virtual machines, VPN, TOR, encryption, and staying away from certain places; like Google+/Facebook & Friends(TM), in order to retain a reasonably degree of privacy. There is actually a lot of information available on on-line privacy. In recent days, even major main-stream on-line magazines has published such information. (Aftenposten, one of the largest newspapers in Norway had an article yesterday about VPN, Tor and Freenet!)

But what about the cell-phone? The tinfoil-hat crowd will probably assume that Google and Apple already allows NSA (and anyone else who will pay up) to stream GPS locations, audio and video directly from Android and iOS devices. Even is that is not so (yet), we know that the telecom companies will allow government agencies to follow a persons movements in real-time using radio tower / device triangulation. Is it possible to protect ones privacy also on the phone?

Technically it's not hard to design a phone that can switch off the GSM transmitter, and use VoIP for calls. VoIP could then go from the device trough wi-fi and VPN. Some calls may be routed trough PSTN gateways — allowing the agencies to track the other party. But they will not track your location. And they will not track pure, encrypted VoIP calls that traverse trough VPN and use anonymous sip or xmpp accounts.

Android, may not be the best software for such a device, as it very eagerly phones home. The same is true for iOS and Windows 8. Actually, I would prefer a non cloud-based mobile OS from a vendor that is not in the PRISM gallery.

Still, it would be nice if the device had the capabilities of a modern smart-phone, with installable apps, email, web browser and a nice touchscreen display.

Does such a device exist yet? Something that runs a relatively safe OS, where GSM can be switched totally off? Something that will only make an outgoing network connection when I ask it to do so?

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