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Comment "Would you trust your government?" (Score 4, Insightful) 189

by seanmcelroy (#35941370) Attached to: Malaysian Government Offers Free E-mail To All Citizens

The question "Would you trust your government to be your mail provider?" is pretty irrelevant: if they government can subpoena your mail account for any reason, without notification, you know, to prevent any sort of "terrorism" (against the state, content providers, the prevailing political ideology)... then they already are your de facto mail provider.
The Internet

Submission + - UK ISPs to Make Voluntary NetNeutrality Commitment (ispreview.co.uk)

Submitted by
Mark.JUK
Mark.JUK writes: "A UK government advisory body, the Broadband Stakeholders Group, has confirmed that most of the major fixed line internet providers in the country will next week sign-up to a new Voluntary Code of Practice on Traffic Management Transparency. Recently everybody from the European Commission to the UK government has called upon ISPs to be more "transparent" with their traffic management policies, which until now have been too vague and often fail to inform customers about any background restrictions that might be being imposed upon their services.

The new code is likely to surface as a result of last year's Net Neutrality consultation — the principal of treating all internet traffic as equal — by the country's communications regulator. Ofcom is not expected to enforce any tough new rules, largely due to a lack of evidence for market harm, but will recommend greater transparency from ISPs. However, to most providers, transparency usually means yet more unreadable small print."
Space

Submission + - Brown Dwarf Hits Record Low (discovery.com)

Submitted by
astroengine
astroengine writes: "The Keck II infrared telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, has spotted what appears to be the coldest brown dwarf ever detected. Astronomers from the University of Hawaii have managed to constrain its temperature to just shy of 100 degrees Celsius. The object is part of a brown dwarf binary system and is estimated to be 6-15 times the mass of Jupiter. This is an exciting object as it could belong to a so-far theoretical "Y" class of brown dwarf, a classification that makes objects like this cool example more planet-like than star-like."
Facebook

Submission + - Warner Bros offers movie rentals through Facebook (gizmag.com)

Submitted by cylonlover
cylonlover writes: Warner Bros. is hoping to leverage the popularity of social networking juggernaut Facebook by becoming the first Hollywood studio to offer movies directly through the site. Facebook users will be able to purchase and rent titles from the Warner Bros. catalog using Facebook Credits and play, pause and resume the movies through their Facebook account for up to 48 hours from the time of purchase. An initial test offering of The Dark Night to fans who "Liked" said movie on Facebook can now rent the title through the movie's official Facebook page, with additional titles to be made available in the coming months.

Submission + - Breakthrough in MRAM Write Speeds (physorg.com)

Submitted by
DrSpock11
DrSpock11 writes: "Once touted as the "next big thing" in memory. MRAM has been slow to make it to market. A new breakthrough changes all that; promising MRAM with write speeds comparable to other forms of memory, along with its benefits of unlimited writes and maintaining state after power loss."
Cloud

Submission + - FreeBSD and NetBSD in Amazon's EC2

Submitted by jschauma
jschauma writes: To the cloud! Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) has long offered cheap virtual machines
running Windows, Solaris or Linux. Recently, both NetBSD and FreeBSD have been added to the mix:FreeBSD's Colin Percival made available experimental FreeBSD/EC2 AMIs, and
based on his experience and instructions, NetBSD's Jean-Yves Migeon wasable to make available (equally experimental) NetBSD/EC2 AMIs.
Oooh, cloud!
Censorship

Submission + - Block major labels off the internet (bustallmajors.com) 2

Submitted by slart42
slart42 writes: Bust all major labels is a campaign to block web site access to anyone accessing the internet from computers belonging to major record labels. The site provides a script to embed into your web site/blog/whatever, which displays a message (analogue to the error message users see when trying to access youtube videos from countries where the record industry does not want you to see the content) and blocks access when viewing the site from an IP address belonging to a list of record labels or industry associations. With enough people using this, it could make a pretty strong message.

Submission + - Timezone Maintainer Retiring (ietf.org)

Submitted by linuxwrangler
linuxwrangler writes: It's used in Java. It's used in nearly every flavor of UNIX/Linux. In PostgreSQL, Oracle and other databases. Several RFCs refer to it. But where does the timezone database come from? I never gave it much thought but would have assumed that it was under the purview of some standards body somewhere. It's not. Since the inception of the database Arthur David Olson has maintained the database, coordinated the mailing list and volunteers and provided a release platform and now he is retiring. IANA is developing a transition strategy. Jon Udell has an interesting literary appreciation of the timezone database.
Security

Submission + - We need to ignite a Layer-1 revolution (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "Egypt's revolution was heralded as a success story for social media services such as Twitter and Facebook. Western journalists fawned over every rare example of social media, ignoring the more mundane but far more at communication services such as cellular phone calls and text messaging. The really interesting story out of Egypt, and more recently Libya, Iran and other places was the communications blackouts imposed by each regime. While the west focused on layer-7 technologies, the tyrants were smart enough to strike at the root of their citizens efforts: layer-1 physical layer connectivity for phones."

Comment Domestic Accountability (Score 1) 304

by seanmcelroy (#35272050) Attached to: WA Election To Try Online Voting

The company's software appears to be from Scytl, a company based in Barcelona, Spain.

Would anyone consider it a national security issue that public elections be held with technology either openly and freely available for review or at the very least, controlled by entities with not just a domestic presence, but a domestic registration?

I don't think I'd be okay with the 2000 election "hanging chad" ballots being counted in India, because they might have been the more cost-effective solution. Isn't it okay to be a bit nationalistic about the manner in which elections are handled?

Comment Re:The continuing problem of patents... (Score 1) 475

by seanmcelroy (#15089048) Attached to: Lucent Sues Microsoft, Wants All 360s Recalled
Patents are supposed to be a hindrance to new entrances to a makret. They're a reward for R&D, and encourage the development of technology, which reduces the marginal cost of products, and eventually, price to consumers.

I argue patents are important to developed economies (with easy access to capital) that want to continue their leadership roles. They raise a barrier to entry, but I believe they increase competition, not among production, but among idea developers... and that's what really enriches a nation.

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