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Government

What Happened To Obama's Open Source Adviser? 296

Posted by kdawson from the get-over-it dept.
gov_coder writes "Back in January of 2009, various news articles announced that former Sun CEO Scott McNealy was to become the Obama administration's Open Source Technology adviser. Currently, however, a search for Scott on the whitehouse.gov website yields zero results. Searching a bit more, I found that Scott is currently working on CurriWiki, a kind of Wikipedia for school curriculum. So my question is, what happened? Did some lobbyist block the appointment? Did Scott decide his other activities were more important? Scott, if you are out there — please tell us what happened. There are many people working in government IT, such as myself, who were really excited about the possibilities of an expanded role for open source software in government, and are now wondering what went wrong."
Encryption

Recourse For Draconian Encryption Requirements? 555

Posted by kdawson from the cold-dead-fingers dept.
CryoStasis writes in with this question, which likely resulted from the new Massachusetts data security law. "I work for a major hospital in the Northeast. Recently the hospital has taken it upon itself to increase its general level of computer security. As a result they now require full-disk encryption on any computer connected to their network on site. Although I think this stance is perhaps a little over-exuberant, most of these computers are machines that have been purchased with hospital funding. In the department that I work in, however, many of the employees (myself included) bring their own personal machines to work every day. For obvious reasons we're rather reluctant to allow the hospital's IT staff to attempt installation of the encryption software. Those who have allowed the installation have had major problems afterwards, on both Macs and Windows machines — ranging from severe/total data loss to frequent crashes to general slowness — which the hospital does very little to remedy. To make matters worse, the hospital is now demanding that any machine that is used to check email (via email clients or webmail directly) be encrypted, including desktop-style machines at home, which must be brought in to the IT department, as they refuse to distribute the encryption software to the employees for install. By monitoring email access they have begun harassing employees who check email from off campus, stating that their email/login access will be disabled unless they bring in their computers. I have no intention of letting these people install anything on my machine, particularly software of which their IT staff clearly doesn't have a solid grasp. Have other Slashdot readers come across this kind of a problem? Do I have any recourse, legal or otherwise, to stop them from requiring me to install software on my personal machines?"
Australia

Australian Government Delays Internet Filter Legislation 255

Posted by timothy from the by-that-time-the-frog-will-be-asleep dept.
An anonymous reader writes "It seems the Australian federal government is being forced to delay the introduction of its proposed and much-hated, much-maligned Internet filter. It will not be introduced in the next two sittings of parliament, which realistically delays it until after the next election. News on withdrawing the filter, which was a promise from the previous election, has disappointed lobbying groups such as the Australian Christian Lobby."
Security

India, China Try Import Regulations As Security Tools 108

Posted by timothy from the you-can't-enter-our-theme-park dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Register reports that the Chinese government is forcing vendors to cough up the source code to their encryption alogrithms before they can sell their equipment to the Chinese government. The EU doesn't seem to like it, but if I were in their position I'd want the same thing." China's biggest neighbor goes further; another anonymous reader writes "Telco equipment from China could have spyware that gives access to telcom networks in India. The Indian government has officially told mobile operators not to import any equipment manufactured by Chinese vendors, including Huawei and ZTE. The ban order follows concerns raised by the Home Ministry that telecom equipment from some countries could have spyware or malware that gives intelligence agencies across the border access to telecom networks in India. The biggest gainers from the move could be Ericsson, Nokia, and Siemens, which have been losing market share to aggressive Chinese equipment-makers in India."
The Courts

Juror Explains Guilty Vote In Terry Childs Case 537

Posted by timothy from the looked-guilty-from-a-distance dept.
alphadogg writes "Terry Childs, the San Francisco network administrator who refused to hand over passwords to his boss, was found guilty of one felony count of denying computer services, a jury found Tuesday. Now, one of those jurors (Jason Chilton, juror #4) is speaking out in an interview with IDG News Service's Bob McMillan: 'The questions were, first, did the defendant know he caused a disruption or a denial of computer service. It was rather easy for us to answer, "Yes there was a denial of service." And that service was the ability to administer the routers and switches of the FiberWAN. That was the first aspect of it. The second aspect was the denial to an authorized user. And for us that's what we really had to spend the most time on, defining who an authorized user was. Because that wasn't one of the definitions given to us.'"
Google

Submission + - Google Reduces Its Nexus One Termination Fee (computerworld.com)

Submitted by CWmike
CWmike writes: The only smartphone Linux kernel creator Linus Torvalds doesn't hate is that much less unlikable now that Google has quietly chopped $200 off its early termination fee on the Nexus One, meaning it will now cost users less to cancel service on the smartphone. Customers who cancel the service had been paying $550, including a $350 Google cancellation charge. That fee has been reduced to $150, but users are still subject to an additional $200 early termination fee from T-Mobile. That means that, in total, they'll have to pay a total of $350 for canceling service within 120 days. Users have a 14-day grace period during which they do not have to pay either charge, although they may be hit with a restocking fee. The $350 total fee matches one of the highest in the industry, charged by Verizon. Google did not announce the change but simply altered its online terms-of-service document.

Submission + - Nvidia Android Tablet (tomshardware.com)

Submitted by xerio
xerio writes: I don't know if it's been covered here before, but it looks like Nvidia is getting in on the tablet market too with a 15" display, running Android on their Tegra processor
Privacy

Submission + - Facebook vs. the Freedom Box

Submitted by harrymcc
harrymcc writes: Columbia Law Professor Eben Moglen is attacking Facebook and other cloud-based services as immense threats to personal privacy and freedom. And he's proposing a highly unusual alternative to them: A personal, pocketable, open-source Web server he calls the Freedom Box. It would come with built-in peer-to-peer social networking software and might cost $299.99 for a lifetime of service, and would protect users' personal data from all threats short of a court order.

Submission + - AU Government meets Google for YouTube filtering (itnews.com.au)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Australian Government has entered discussions with Google to block access to video content that was refused classification in Australia and that was not technically feasible to filter at the internet service provider level. The Government said applying its mandatory filtering regime in Australia to web sites like YouTube would introduce performance issues. But Google had "experience in blocking material in other countries at the behest of Governments, including China and Thailand" and so the Government was pursuing that possibility.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft: your battery is the issue, not Win7

Submitted by Sammy
Sammy writes: Last week, Microsoft said it was investigating issues in Windows 7 that affect batteries on certain notebooks after hundreds of users reported they thought the OS was to blame. Steven Sinofsky, president of the Windows and Windows Live Division, has posted a lengthy response. "At this time we have no reason to believe there is any issue related to Windows 7 in this context," Sinofsky writes. Here's his explanation:

"Several press articles this past week have drawn attention to blog and forum postings by users claiming Windows 7 is warning them to "consider replacing your battery" in systems which appeared to be operating satisfactorily before upgrading to Windows 7. These articles described posts in the support forums indicating that Windows 7 is not just warning users of failing batteries — as we designed Windows 7 to do this — but also implying Windows 7 is falsely reporting this situation or even worse, causing these batteries to fail. To the very best of the collective ecosystem knowledge, Windows 7 is correctly warning batteries that are in fact failing and Windows 7 is neither incorrectly reporting on battery status nor in any way whatsoever causing batteries to reach this state. In every case we have been able to identify the battery being reported on was in fact in need of recommended replacement."

Submission + - Unblock Blocked Sites and Applications With Your F (infoteknotainment.com)

Submitted by urangcipicungkasep
urangcipicungkasep writes: Your Freedom is a true practical software for those accessing the internet in such countries as Iran, China, united Arab Emirates where internet censorship/ restrictions are in place or to access favorite social networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace, Hulu behind “school proxy” yet trapped behind a firewall or a filtering proxy This application is truly a helping hand to unblock blocked sites.

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