763511
submission
inject_hotmail.com writes:
I just read a story over at newteevee.com. The Pirate Bay wants to develop a new Operating System level protocol called "Transparent end-to-end encryption for the Internets, or IPETEE for short" for Windows, and Linux, that would permit the ability to encrypt all traffic over the Internet, regardless if the app you are running has ever heard the word 'cypher'. This could be executed at a hardware level, which could potentially don a huge set of opaque goggles over the eyes of your ISP, and any other guy that wants to spy on the content of your private communication.
My question is this: Which countries would consider this technology to be illegal?
528678
submission
inject_hotmail.com writes:
MSNBC has a story reporting that a woman (Raelyn Campbell) brought her laptop in to a Best Buy store to have the power button fixed under warranty. Best Buy lost it, and wouldn't tell her the truth. After being thrown about in customer service hell, they finally admitted to losing it, and offered $900 to be on her way. Raelyn Campbell refused, and demanded $2100 to replace the unit, software, and to compensate for her time. That request was promptly ignored. After some letter-writing, BB offered $1600 in refunds and store credits. Again it was refused as being too little. Shortly thereafter, the woman decided to consult council, and realized that her life story (in the form of tax returns) could have been set free, and is now subject to ID misrepresentation. Further complaints to Best Buy fell upon deaf ears. To gain enough attention to the matter, she then filed a $54 million law suit. It worked, now everyone is listening to her story. Hundreds of comments have shown up on MSNBC's news article detailing the horror stories that BB has generated. All she really wanted was an explanation, and replacement of her stuff.
Some people have suggested that she should have removed the hard drive before having it serviced. Though it is sound advice, how is a non-technically minded user with no tech-friends able to do this with confidence? Best Buy may also have had an 'anti-tampering' policy in their warranty terms, which would prevent her from such an action. In that case, having the data cloned to another hard drive by another company, and securely wiped would have helped also, but that would introduce huge costs that shouldn't be required for such a simple situation. Surely a high-risk operation to an end-user.
Has this, or something similar, ever happened to you? If so, how did the situation get resolved?
465454
submission
inject writes:
PC World has an article on how Microsoft and the Library of Congress are getting together to create a new online/offline experience. The idea sounds great! The site "will allow visitors to the Myloc.gov" site to view and sometimes interact with items such as a rough draft of the U.S. Declaration of Independence...". You'll be able to pick points of interest from the website, print a barcode, then go to the kiosks in the LOC, which will show you where to go.
To get the seemingly huge project off the ground, Microsoft will be "donating software, funding and training". The article goes on to say "Interactive presentation software for kiosks will run on Windows Vista and its Web equivalent, built using Microsoft Silverlight. The project will also use Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Web content management software."
