Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment The summary (Score 1) 3

I just read through the summary translated into English.

It seems they are proposing

1: The introduction of a digital identity to be used for public as well as private services on the Internet.

2: That automatic security updates are encouraged (this is slightly different to what the original poster mentioned).

3: Compulsory PC inspection "to develop and introduce a PC inspection which will in future be required when using public services on the Internet" (yep, this is the scary one)

4: Compulsory mail filtering

5: Security rating for software

6: Blocking of websites that are without doubt works as an active part of the IT crime

7: That the use of online data storage be promotes and that "public authorities give the rights, that include data stored on third-party servers, a critical view".

_____________

As to proposal 1, whatever they do if it's adopted by bank and financial service companies it will be hacked in under a fortnight.

As to proposal 2, encourage all you want but companies will only do what makes financial sense.

As to proposal 3, show me your warrant/court order - I think Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights could come into play here.

As to proposal 4, again I'm pretty sure Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights could come into play here.

As to proposal 5, no comment

As to proposal 6, It's easy enough to use a dns sever other than your ISP's if you want to see what your missing.

As to proposal 7, A persons data should have the same rights and legal protections wherever they choose to store it but in many countries this is not the case so yes a review is probably in order.
Privacy

E.U. Regulator Says IP Addresses Are Personal Data 164

NewsCloud writes "Germany's data-protection commissioner, Peter Scharr told a European Parliament hearing on online data protection that when someone is identified by an IP, or Internet protocol, address, 'then it has to be regarded as personal data.' Scharr acknowledged that IP addresses for a computer may not always be personal or linked to an individual. If the E.U. rules that IP addresses are personal, then it could regulate the way search engines record this data. According to the article, Google does an incomplete job of anonymizing this data while Microsoft does not record IP addresses for anonymous search."
Math

Submission + - Math Geek Software Smackdown (wired.com)

An anonymous reader writes: A movement is afoot among some mathematicians in academia to make the switch from expensive, closed-source calculation software to free, open-source alternatives. In early January, thousands of mathematicians will gather in San Diego for the joint meeting of the American Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Association of America. In the exhibition hall, Stein has paid the first-timers' rate of $400 to rent a booth alongside those of the major mathematical software companies, where he and students will hand out DVDs with copies of Sage.
Google

Submission + - GMail integrates AIM chat (blogspot.com)

LeandroTLZ writes: "Google has started to roll out support for AOL Instant Messenger from within the GMail interface, running alongside the Jabber (Google Talk) network:

Today we are happy to tell you about a new feature we've started to roll out which will enable you to sign into your AIM account and chat with your AIM buddies right inside Gmail. When you log in to AIM through Gmail chat, your AOL buddies will appear in your chat list with friends from your Google Talk network, and you will see the yellow "running man" logo to the right of your AIM friends' screen names. To your AIM friends it will look like you are logged in to AIM as usual.
"

Portables

Submission + - Eee PC as Portable Security Device (enterprisenetworkingplanet.com)

stoolpigeon writes: "Enterprise Network planet has a nice article on using Ubuntu to turn an Asus Eeepc into an ultra portable security device. This article may be of use to any aspiring Eee pc owner who would like to run ubuntu rather than what comes bundled with the machine. Full steps are given for installing ubuntu and getting the wireless to work with ndiswrapper.

Asus is reporting high demand on the machine and have also said they will be providing a windows version of the machine by the end of this year. (Which would have to be pretty soon if they are going to hit that deadline.) Adding this option may further fuel adoption of the device. I'll be curious to see if there is a difference in the price between the two OS options or if the lower priced of the two Eee pc models is capable of running windows."

Space

Submission + - First Evidence of Another Universe? 2

blamanj writes: Three months ago, astronomers announced the discovery of a large hole at the edge of our universe. Now, Dr. Laura Mersini-Houghton thinks she knows what that means. (Subscription req'd at New Scientist site, there's also an overview here.) According to string theory, there are many universes besides our own. Her team says that smaller universes are positioned at the edge of our universe, and because of gravitational interactions, they can be observed, and they're willing to make a prediction. The recently discovered void is in the northern hemisphere. They contend another one will be found in the southern hemisphere.
Government

Submission + - New Government, New Network?

renegadesx writes: "Australia has a new government lead by Kevin Rudd and the center-left Labor party in a landslide victory Saturday night. For months Mr Rudd has promised if elected he intends on bringing Australia up-to-date broadband capacity in establishing a Fiber to the Node (FTTN) infastructure nation wide.

What challenges await the new PM in establishing this? Telstra, who of course want to retain their monopoly over Australia's infastructure. Can Rudd and Telstra play nice in the interests of bringing Australia out of the stone age of DSL capabilities?

Time will tell, the Howard Government and Telstra did not get along at all. http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/15505/1086/"
Windows

Submission + - WinXP under Parallels "bypasses" activatio 1

crystalattice writes: "Since my bought a new Macbook Pro a few weeks back, I've installed Parallels to create virtual OS environments. Naturally I created a Windows virtual machine so I can run my old PC games again. When I first built my PC many years ago, I had activated this installation of XP on it. I decided to reuse this XP disc for my Macbook VM. Surprisingly it worked. I was able to activate the same XP disc on a virtual machine with no errors or any other problems. According to MS, I shouldn't be able to do this because it's a brand new machine; the hardware is completely different from my old PC. At a minimum I should have been required to call MS support and have someone activate it that way, which is what I expected to do. Is anyone aware of MS not checking on "true" activation anymore? Does this mean that people can create as many VMs as they want and distribute them, a la VMWare Player?"
Government

Submission + - Supreme Court To Rule on Second Amendment (dcguncase.com)

djmoore writes: "The Supreme Court has granted cert in District of Columbia v. Heller. This is the first case examining the Second Amendment to reach SCOTUS since the much-misunderstood Miller case in 1939. The SCOTUS asks the question,[PDF] "Whether the following provisions, D.C. Code 7-2502.02(a)(4), 22-4504(a), and 7-2507.02, violate the Second Amendment rights of individuals who are not affiliated with any state-regulated militia, but who wish to keep handguns and other firearms for private use in their homes?" Some links to background information on this case and the Second Amendment can be found here. Oral arguments will likely be heard in March or April.

Roughly speaking, the question is, does an enumerated "right of the people" have as much weight as, say, the unenumerated right to an abortion? Or does the 2nd Amendment, uniquely in the Constitution, use the phrase "the people" to grant coercive power to the state?

Mandatory Geek Link: Eric S. Raymond's "Ethics From the Barrel of a Gun"."

Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Demands Patent for Saying 'Goodbye' 7

theodp writes: "Demonstrating its commitment to high-quality U.S. patents, Microsoft has submitted a just-published patent application to the USPTO for Automatic Goodbye Messages. By automatically sending messages like 'Have a great afternoon!', 'Sorry, I have got to go!', 'Have a terrific day!', 'Ciao, Harry!', or even a simple 'Bye!' at the end of an IM session, Microsoft explains, one avoids insulting a converser with whom a conversation is ended. Hopefully the USPTO will give this one the quick buh-bye it deserves."
Windows

Submission + - Vista not as ready for modern desktop as Linux? 1

Pr0xY writes: "Recently I purchased my new "gaming rig." So I decided to just go for and loaded up a new Dell XPS 720 with the works. Among other things, I got 4GB of RAM. To my (and many others according to google) surprise, x86 Vista only reports 3 and change GB of RAM.
I do some systems programming, so I had a clue as to what was going on, my first reaction was "PAE must not be enabled." Here's what's going on. With traditional paging, there is 4GB of physical address space available to a 32-bit x86 processor. This includes memory mapped devices, for example, your shiny new video card with 768 Megs of RAM takes up that much space of physical RAM your system can use. The solution is to use either PAE or PSE36, both provide up to 64GB of physical memory to a 32-bit x86 system. The limit of what you can map into memory at a time is still 4GB, but this allows motherboards to relocate the RAM that got displaced by hardware above the 4GB and still be usable.
However, it turns out that first of all, Vista automatically enables PAE if you want DEP since it is necessary for the NX bit. And in addition to that, Microsoft deliberately doesn't use RAM above the 4GB mark even with PAE for "compatibility reasons." The main issue being that DMA can't touch RAM higher than 4GB on x86. Microsoft could have easily had a special pool for this "high memory" in order to make some use of it when you know it's safe. This isn't impractical as the server editions of Windows are in fact able to use upwards of 4GB on 32-bit systems as well.
Linux has no issue using all 4GB of my RAM once I build my kernel with PAE support. Microsoft also claims that they support 4GB of RAM in their documentation. All in all, I find this whole thing to be a bit deceptive on Microsoft's part. Microsoft's solution: "Get Vista x86-64""
Announcements

Submission + - Fossil of New Whale Specis Rescued by Amateurs (theworldlink.com)

Kreigh writes: "A team of amateur fossil hunters and rockhounds discovered a fossil whale in the tidal zone of Coos Bay, OR. Preliminary study indicates a new genus and species of whale in this probably eight million year old fossil. They rescued the eight foot long fossil from the rock in the Bay and plan on preparing it for exhibit at a Museum. You can find additional pictures here if you scroll down the page to the 'NARG Fossil Point Whale Skull Search & Rescue' link."
Media

Submission + - BBC tech head: "BBC not in bed with Bill Gates (tech.co.uk) 1

whoever57 writes: According to the BBC's head of technology, there are only a small number of Linux visitors to the BBC's website and this is the reason that the BBC's iPlayer only supports Windows XP Why he expects a large number of Linux based visitors to his site when the media downloads are Windows XP only is not clear. He also thinks that "Launching a software service to every platform simultaneously would have been launch suicide", despite the example of many major sites that support Linux (even if this is through the closed source flash player). How the small number of Linux visitors could cause "suicide" is not explained. Most software processes envisage launching to a select group first, then working out the bugs, then making it available to the largest group.
Censorship

Submission + - Viacom Wants Industry Wide Copyright Filter (pcworld.com)

slashqwerty writes: Unsatisfied with the proprietary copyright filter Google recently unveiled, Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman has called for an industry standard to filter copyrighted material. Mr. Dauman has the backing of Microsoft, Disney, and Universal. "They reflect the fact that there ought to be a filtering system in place on the part of technology companies," he noted. "Most responsible companies have followed that path. What no one wants is a proprietary system that benefits one company. It is a big drain to a company like ours to have to deal with incompatible systems." How would an industry standard impact freedom of speech and in particular censorship on the internet? How would it affect small, independent web sites?

Slashdot 10-Year Anniversary Charity Auction for the EFF 327

As part of our 10-Year anniversary, we've decided to have a little charity auction, with the cash going to the EFF. The items currently up for bidding are 'Triton' (the big old tower case from the first x86 used to host Slashdot from Feb 11 1998 through much of 1999... picture is attached to the story if you're curious). A low numbered UID (3 or maybe 2 digits!) so you can win those stupid low UID pissing match threads. Your URL plugged in the story where we announce the auction winners. Oh the fame! The Slashdot Grab Bag: We're putting stuff around the office in a box- random t-shirts, hats, even an old Nokia NGage. The mystery box could contain anything that we stuff in the box before the contest ends... there's a picture of what we have so far attached. A copy of the watchmen trade paperback singed in Hemos's 1999 house fire. An @slashdot.org email alias (tasteful names only ;) The auctions will be running for like 10 days, and we'll post the results when they come up.

Slashdot Top Deals

"A car is just a big purse on wheels." -- Johanna Reynolds

Working...