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Privacy

Submission + - All Danish citizens under surveillance (information.dk)

Snaller writes: Unfortunately I can find no English news sites reporting this, so i guess it may never go beyond your eyes (or ours), but at least one American (I'm assuming) will have read it then:

During this weekend the real big brother put his foot down on the country of Denmark, in Europe, in the name of fighting terrorism the government has ordered all Internet providers and telcos to log: who you call on your phone, who calls you, the addresses of the calling parties and for cell phones where you are when you make/receive the call. Times of messages you send and receive on your phone. Internet providers must log who a user connects to via his computer, this includes the users IP address, the destination IP address, what port numbers are used on the sending end, and port numbers used at the receiving end, and the duration of the communication. They must log the identity of the user initiating the communication and the precise geographic location of the user. In addition to this they must log the email address of people the user sends email to, and the email address used to send from, and the time of the email transmission. By law these loggings must be carried out for every single citizen who uses the Internet or the phone system, and these logs must be kept for one year, to be made available to the police if it is found relevant for an investigation. A judge needs sign of on it, however apparently the secret Danish police does not need that — they can simply demand to see it.

Some Danes are pragmatically pointing out that there is a bit of a hole in the law since libraries are currently not included, hotels are confused since they are included but not sure if they need to write down the names of all of their guests who try to use the Internet or just that the hotel computer was used, while others are outraged at what they consider a gross violation of their privacy, but apparently, and unfortunately, many seem to accept it when the blonde minister of justice opinions that only people who plan on doing crime could object to these measures.

This is the full text of the law (in Danish) http://147.29.40.91/DELFIN/HTML/B2006/0098805.htm

And a couple of articles about the subject (alas, in Danish)

Newspaper Information
News paper Arbejderen
Newspaper Politiken and here
Newspaper Jyllands Posten
And The Danish Library Agency

The Courts

Submission + - Has RIAA Abandoned "Making Available"?

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "The RIAA's standard complaint (pdf) was thrown out last month by a federal judge in California as so much "conclusory" "boilerplate" "speculation" in Interscope v. Rodriguez. Interestingly, the RIAA's amended complaint (pdf), filed six (6) days later, abandoned altogether the RIAA's "making available" argument, which it first formulated in defending the dismissal motion in Elektra v. Barker. This raises a number of questions, including (a) whether the RIAA is going to stick to this new form of complaint in future cases, (b) whether it is going to get into a different kind of trouble for some of its new allegations, such as its contention that the investigator "detected an individual" (contradicting the testimony of the RIAA's own expert witness) and the allegation that the defendant should be held liable because he or she is "the individual responsible for that IP address at that date and time", a phrase which would appear to be meaningless in a copyright infringement context, and (c) what tack defendants' lawyers should take (this was one lawyer's suggestion)."
The Courts

Submission + - Has RIAA Abandoned "Making Available" Clai

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "The RIAA's standard complaint (pdf) was thrown out last month by a federal judge in California as so much "conclusory" "boilerplate" "speculation" in Interscope v. Rodriguez. Interestingly, the RIAA's amended complaint (pdf), filed six (6) days later, abandoned altogether the RIAA's "making available" argument, which it first formulated in defending the dismissal motion in Elektra v. Barker. This raises a number of questions, including (a) whether the RIAA is going to stick to this new form of complaint in future cases, (b) whether it is going to get into a different kind of trouble for some of its new allegations, such as its contention that the investigator "detected an individual" (contradicting the testimony of the RIAA's own expert witness) and the allegation that the defendant should be held liable because he or she is "the individual responsible for that IP address at that date and time", a phrase which would appear to be meaningless in a copyright infringement context, and (c) what tack defendants' lawyers should take (this was one lawyer's suggestion)."
Databases

Submission + - Music Metadata - Is FOS not making the grade? (real.com)

An anonymous reader writes: After downloading version 11 beta this weekend, I noticed that RealPlayer has changed its metadata supplier from Gracenote to All Media Guide (the allmusic.com people). A quick check revealed that Rhapsody has done the same. Gracenote has certainly had its share of controversy over the years, but what could have made Real drop its long term supplier of music recognition? And why wouldn't Real pick a open source solution like freedb or Musicbrainz? What is the state of of music metadata and tagging technologies? Are the open source solutions just not ready for prime-time, or are commercial solutions still the only way to go for majors like Real?
Databases

Submission + - Real Dumps Gracenote in RealPlayer and Rhapsody 1

An anonymous reader writes: I am a heavy user of RealPlayer and upon recently installing the most recent version of RealPlayer was surprised to find that it no longer uses Gracenote for tagging. They appear to have adopted a commercial metadata service from All Media Guide. Further checking with Rhapsody shows it has also uses the same AMG service. Gracenote has had more than its share of controversy over the years, including lawsuits against its customers such as Roxio and Musicmatch. The new service from AMG seems to be working fine, but I wonder — What could have driven the world's second most pervasive media player to dump its long-term music identification supplier? Any answers from the Slashdot community would be appreciated.
Businesses

Submission + - UK internet banking fails first slashdotting (guardian.co.uk)

crush writes: Customer panic due to the instability in the mortgage market in the UK demonstrated inadequate server capacity at the UK's fifth largest mortage lender according to the Guardian UK "[...] websites at Northern Rock and many other banks crashed as savers tried to access their accounts. Police had to be called to a branch in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, when a couple barricaded the manager in her office when she refused to let them withdraw their £1m savings." Financial institutions have reduced costs by replacing physical locations and staff with web and other online services, but have they adequately designed those services to cope with Slashdot-like loads?
Math

Submission + - The Founding of the first Faculty of Math

An anonymous reader writes: Ralph Stanton, the man behind the founding of the worlds first Faculty of Math some 50 years ago recently gave a talk explaining the history of it all. He talks about how the faculty of math allowed mathematicians and computer science to be free from the constraints of other departments (such as Arts) to focus on there craft. He also talks about the politics behind creating the first Faculty of Math. Perhaps of more interest, he talks about how it has evolved over time and how computer science has changed the face of mathematics.
Security

Submission + - Media Defender's Internal Emails Go Public

An anonymous reader writes: The notorious anti-piracy company Media Defender has had 9 months of internal emails amounting to 650mb, leaked to BitTorrent. In them are the companies darkest secrets including details of how they lied over the 'MiiVi' incident and methods they use to cripple file-sharing on many networks. Salaries, pay negotiations, confidential corporate information on their clients and competitors are all there. Surely the biggest anti-piracy security breach this year, you'll be reading with a dropped jaw until Christmas and beyond! Check out the emails to and from the New York District Attorney!
The Gimp

The GIMP UI Redesign 549

sekra writes "The GIMP UI Redesign Team has created a blog to collect ideas for a new design of the most popular image manipulation program. Everyone is free to submit suggestions to be published in the blog. Will a new GUI finally get more users to choose The GIMP as their program of choice?"
Input Devices

Submission + - Phone makers collaborate on flashcard format (neowin.net)

Technical Writing Geek writes: "Nokia said today it is collaborating with several of its rivals to create a common flash memory card format. First virtual machines, now flash, what is the world coming to? The proposed specification is being backed by Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Micron Technology, Spansion, MTMicroelectronics and Texas Instruments. The format will be standardized by the JEDEC Solid State Technology Association, an open-standards organization in the semiconductor industry. http://www.neowin.net/index.php?act=view&id=42579"

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