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United Kingdom

Submission + - UK Ministers' Private Communications Subject to Freedom of Information Act (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by
Techmeology
Techmeology writes: "Emails and texts sent from UK ministers' private accounts could be subject to the Freedom of Information Act, which means copies could be requested by members of the public. New guidelines to be released by the government say that the key factor is "the nature of the information and not the format". This development comes amid a two year dispute caused when a newspaper used the act to obtain and publish an email sent from the education minister's private email address."
Android

Submission + - New Smartphone Malware Designed to Steal Your Life

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Neal Ungerleider writes about PlaceRaider, a trojan that can run in the background of any phone running Android 2.3 or above, and is hidden in a photography app that gives PlaceRaider the necessary permissions to access the camera and upload images. Once installed, PlaceRaider quietly takes pictures at random that are tagged with the time, location, and orientation of the phone while muting the phone's shutter sound. Once pictures are taken, PlaceRaider uploads them to a central server where they are knitted together into a 3D model of the indoor location where the pics were taken. A malicious user can then browse this space looking for objects worth stealing and sensitive data such as credit card details, identity data or calender details that reveal when the user might be away. If a user's credit card, bank information, or personal information happen to be out in the open — all the better. — the software can identify financial data, bar codes, and QR codes. End users will also be able to get the full layout of a victim's office or room. The good news? PlaceRaider isn't out in the wild yet. The malware was built as an academic exercise by a team at Indiana University as a proof of concept to show the invasive potential of visual malware beyond simple photo or video uploads and demonstrate how to turn an individual's mobile device against himself (PDF), creating an advanced surveillance platform capable of reconstructing the user's physical environment for exploration and exploitation. "The message is clear — this kind of malware is a clear and present danger. It's only a matter of time before this game of cat and mouse becomes more serious.""
Businesses

Submission + - Does crowdfunding work? (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by
Barence
Barence writes: "Is it really practical to fund a business from hundreds of small donations harvested over the internet? With Kickstarter grabbing the headlines with some high-profile projects, it's all too easy to assume crowdfunding is great, the obvious solution for a business that needs investment. But just how feasible is it for most businesses? This feature looks at several lower-profile examples and investigates the positives and negatives of this new way to raise money."
EU

Submission + - EU privacy watchdog to ICANN: Law Enforcement WHOIS demands "unlawful" (domainincite.com)

Submitted by benyacrick
benyacrick writes: WHOIS was invented as an address book for sysadmins. These days, it's more likely to be used by Law Enforcement to identify a perpetrator or victim of an online crime. With ICANN's own study showing that 29% of WHOIS data is junk, it's no surprise that Law Enforcement have been lobbying ICANN hard to improve WHOIS accuracy.

The EU's privacy watchdog, the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party, has stepped into the fray with a letter claiming that two of Law Enforcement's twelve asks are "unlawful". The problem proposals are data retention — where registrant details will be kept for up to two years after a domain has expired — and re-verification, where a registrant's phone number and e-mail will be checked annually and published in the WHOIS database.

The community consultation takes place at ICANN 45 in Toronto on October 15th.
Privacy

Submission + - Think tank's website rejects browser do-not-track requests (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: The website for the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) now tells visitors it will not honor their browsers' do-not-track requests as a form of protest against the technology pushed by privacy groups and parts of the U.S. government. The tech-focused think tank on Friday implemented a new website feature that detects whether visitors have do-not-track features enabled in their browsers and tells them their request has been denied. "Do Not Track is a detrimental policy that undermines the economic foundation of the Internet," Daniel Castro, senior analyst at the ITIF wrote in a blog post. "Advertising revenue supports most of the free content, services, and apps available on the Internet."
Games

Submission + - Minecraft Creator Refuses To Certify Game For Windows 8 (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "The backlash against Windows 8 from various developers continues, but this time the game's creator isn't just expressing discontent. Notch, the developer behind smash hit Minecraft, has declared that he won't be working with Microsoft to certify Minecraft for Windows 8. Note that this doesn't mean Mincraft won't run on Windows 8. The certification process in question is Microsoft's mandatory rules for submitting content to the Windows game store. In order to be listed there, an application must be Metro-compatible and conform to a laundry list of other conditions. The real problem with Windows 8 is that it locks ARM users into a second class experience. If you buy an x86 tablet, you can download programs from Sourceforge, Github, or any file mirror. If you're an ARM user, you can download programs from the Microsoft store and that's it. The bifurcated permission structure is the problem, and it makes WinRT tablets categorically impossible to recommend for anyone who values the ability to install whatever software they please."

Comment Re:Very Disappointed! (Score 1) 183

by DecimalMan (#41496541) Attached to: Slackware 14.0 Arrives

Gentoo may well be the last bastion of mandatory text editing. Hopefully they never aim for "elegant" package management, because the current way is great. And so help me, if I can update Qt painlessly, I'm switching to LFS.

Comment Re:Why Slackware? (Score 1) 183

by DecimalMan (#41496521) Attached to: Slackware 14.0 Arrives

It doesn't suck. How many other distros can that be said of?

Expecting the user to know what they're doing doesn't make it inconvenient. My experience with Slack has been that if you know what's going on, it's easier to manage than anything else out there.
Japan

Submission + - Element 113 Synthesized (scientificamerican.com) 1

Submitted by
DevotedSkeptic
DevotedSkeptic writes: "After nine years of painstaking experiment, researchers in Japan reported yesterday that they have created a third atom of the element 113. That success, according to experts in the field, could see the element officially added to the periodic table. It would be the first artificial element to be discovered in East Asia, potentially giving the Japanese team the right to name it.

But that privilege is not assured. US and Russian researchers have also been hard at work on element 113, and say that they have created 56 atoms of it since 2003.

None of these sightings has been confirmed by the independent committee of experts appointed to rule on such matters. That shows how hard it is to prove the creation of new superheavy elements, although it also highlights the bureaucratic nature of the process set up to approve findings."
Politics

Submission + - Iran's News Agency Picks Up Onion Story (cnn.com) 2

Submitted by
J053
J053 writes: "FARS, the Iranian news agency, ran a story about a Gallup poll which showed that "the overwhelming majority of rural white Americans said they would rather vote for Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad than U.S. president Barack Obama. “I like him better," said West Virginia resident Dale Swiderski, who, along with 77 percent of rural Caucasian voters, confirmed he would much rather go to a baseball game or have a beer with Ahmadinejad". Only problem was, it was a story from The Onion. Not only that, they took credit for it! The Onion responded by stating that "Fars is a subsidiary and has been "our Middle Eastern bureau since the mid 1980s"."

Comment Re:LOL (Score 1) 142

by DecimalMan (#41039767) Attached to: Trouble At OnLive

This.

GP's suggestion that OnLive was bound to fail because it made sacrifices in the name of convenience is laughably misinformed. Compressed digital music trumped the entrenched CD market in spite of crummy sound quality; consumers chose Netflix streaming over Blu-ray in spite of crummy video quality (and having to deal with Netflix, Inc.). Convenience CAN win if it's sold right, and OnLive would be positioned to fill the gap between $100 netbook with Facebook games and $2000 gaming PC with $60 games, without sacrificing the feel of "premium" gaming. They're struggling for the reasons you mentioned, not because gamers like the business model they're trapped in.

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