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Comment Compare to this, in the real world ... (Score 1) 119

by enselsharon (#34504864) Attached to: The First Truly Honest Privacy Policy

http://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/tos.html

I especially like:

"No form of data or meta-data concerning the behavior of our customers or the contents of their filesystems, or
even the customer data that we hold in our records for billing, will ever be divulged to any law enforcement
officer or agency without order served directly by a US court having jurisdiction. "

and:

"No consumer or personal information about our customers of any kind will be divulged to any party for any reason."

Comment Only do business with ISPs with Warrant Canaries (Score 1) 227

by enselsharon (#30588558) Attached to: Canadian Censorship Takes Down 4500 Sites

I would like to do business with ISPs that have Warrant Canaries:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary

Like my offsite backup provider maintains:

http://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt

However, in absence of this (I realize this is rare) your ISP should at the very least have a stated policy as to how they respond to warrants and "requests".

Turning off an entire block of IP space because some joker calls you on the phone is absolutely terrible. If you continue to do business with "serverloft" you deserve whatever you get.
Censorship

The Chinese Route To a Web Free of Porn 420

Posted by kdawson from the regarding-babies-and-bathwater dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Despite repeated 'for the children' campaigns, the Western Web as a whole has provided little or no isolation of pornography. This is why the Chinese are now attempting to march to a place where no country has been before: a Web without porn. Recent regulations have included closing down 'vulgar' mobile sites, disconnecting 'obscene' servers, and restricting domain registrations. Yet the breaking news for Monday is that China is planning to enforce a whitelist on foreign domains: in particular, any e-commerce will have to register locally and obey Chinese law before they get whitelisted. Domains will otherwise be 'irresolvable' to Chinese Internet users. Meanwhile, the government is promoting this campaign heavily, calling it a 'fresh start.' It seems the Chinese may have to do without the Internet, before they can rid it of porn."
Transportation

The Last GM Big-Block V-8 Rolls Off the Line 525

Posted by kdawson from the blow-it-out-gto dept.
DesScorp writes "It's the end of an era in auto technology, as the very last big block V-8 engine from GM has rolled off the production line. The L18 engine was the last variant of an engine that had been in continuous production for over 50 years. The big blocks powered everything from the classic muscle cars of the '60s and '70s to heavy-duty trucks today. From the Buffalo News: 'When GM said last June the L18 would be eliminated by year's end, the announcement triggered another show of devotion to the product. Some customers ordered two years' worth of L18s, to put on the shelf for future use.' More than 5 million big blocks have been produced over the engine's history. The final big block engine to come off the line in Tonawanda, NY is headed for the GM Heritage Center in Sterling Heights, MI."
Google

How Do I Keep My Privacy While Using Google? 533

Posted by Soulskill from the encrypt-your-search-terms dept.
hubert.lepicki writes "I use Google all the time. I keep two GMail tabs open when I'm online (one is private, another is a corporate account), I use Google search, and recently I switched to the Chromium browser. Google's services are fast, easy to use and usually reliable. At the same time, I know Google is tracking everything I do; I can see it in search results or their ads on web pages, which tend to match my interests. After the recent post by Mozilla's community director suggesting Bing has a better privacy policy (a response to questionable comments from Google CEO Eric Schmidt), I started to... 'google' ways of keeping my private data safe while browsing and using Google services. The results weren't very helpful, so I ask you, Slashdotters: how do I stay anonymous to Google while using their services?"
Censorship

Iran Slows Internet Access Before Student Protests 289

Posted by timothy from the oh-y'know-the-usual dept.
RiffRafff writes "Iran is at it again, pre-emptively slowing or cutting Internet access before anticipated student protests." From the article: "Seeking to deny the protesters a chance to reassert their voice, authorities slowed Internet connections to a crawl in the capital, Tehran. For some periods on Sunday, Web access was completely shut down — a tactic that was also used before last month's demonstration. The government has not publicly acknowledged it is behind the outages, but Iran's Internet service providers say the problem is not on their end and is not a technical glitch."

Comment A lesser form of the FSOSA meme... (Score 1) 130

by enselsharon (#30219418) Attached to: UK File-Sharing Laws Unenforceable On Mobile Networks

I don't think FSOSA (free speech or stone age) had this (somewhat middle ground) scenario in mind, but it rhymes quite a bit.

Basically, you can't quash speech unless people can't access laptops and wireless cards. Period. You either go back to the stone age or accept arbitrary, free speech.

But in this case you don't even need to resort to some grassroots, duct-taped together community mesh network - you just need to get one or two abstractions away from the proper "Internet" and you're already there. Which is really great news, actually.
Privacy

UK File-Sharing Laws Unenforceable On Mobile Networks 130

Posted by kdawson from the p2p-ringtones dept.
superglaze writes "UK mobile broadband providers currently have no way of telling which subscribers are file-sharing which copyrighted content, ZDNet UK reports. This represents something of a problem for new laws that have been proposed to crack down on unlawful file-sharing. According to the article, databases (tracking IP address mappings) could be built to make it possible to identify what specific users are downloading, but the industry is loathe to fund this sort of project itself. Also, as an analyst points out in the piece, users of prepaid phone cards are mostly anonymous in the UK, which creates another challenge for the government's plans. And if that isn't enough, connection-sharing apps like JoikuBoost would make identification pretty much impossible anyway."

Comment Re:Sonos - it begins and ends with Sonos (Score 2, Informative) 438

by enselsharon (#30019664) Attached to: Simple, Cost-Effective, Multiroom Audio?

Sonos is the answer. The problem with all of the lower priced squeezebox-style systems is that they save money on components by not having the decoding hardware inside of them. That is the reason that even with a stock-standard samba share, you STILL need to install their "server software" on the system you store your music on.

In reality the "server software" is actually doing some or all of the transcoding of the music format because the units themselves don't have the horsepower to do it.

The sonos systems, OTOH, have the necessary horsepower, so you can just point them at your A/UX based fileserver (or whatever else you want to point them at) and say "just work".

I've had a 5-zone sonos system for 4+ years now and could not be happier.
GUI

Clutter Reaches 1.0 Release Candidate Status 78

Posted by timothy from the my-clutter's-been-manifest-since-1974 dept.
nerdyH writes "Intel's interesting 3D UI technology has arrived at a significant milestone. Emmanuele Bassi on Monday released Clutter 1.0rc1, commenting 'This is a development release of Clutter 0.9 leading towards the 1.0 stable cycle. It is the first release candidate for the 1.0.0 release.' Clutter is a centerpiece of Intel's Moblin stack for netbooks, MIDs, and IVIs. It aims beyond the traditional 2D 'desktop' UI metaphor, stepping up to a 'theatrical' metaphor in which 2D interface objects are likened to 'actors' moving around on a 3D 'stage,' with developers in the role of 'director.' Also updated Tuesday: the Clutter-GTK+ library, aimed at helping GTK+ developers Clutter up their existing apps."

Comment Re:That's it, I'm moving to ... rsync.net (Score 1) 195

by enselsharon (#28385257) Attached to: Proposed Canadian Law Would Allow Warrantless Searches

I guess they are technically not an ISP - they are my online/offsite backup provider ...

But they have maintained a "warrant canary" for years:

http://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt

I don't know how effective it would really be if push really came to shove, although it's difficult to imagine a court upholding a LEA coercing them to make public false statements ... the point is, someone is pushing back.
Privacy

Proposed Canadian Law Would Allow Warrantless Searches 195

Posted by timothy from the rifling-through-america's-storage-unit dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A bill introduced by Canada's Minister of Public Safety will allow police to (warrantlessly) force ISPs to provide access to any requested digital traffic records, reports News 1130. Police lobbied for the bill as means of 'combatting gangsters, pedophiles, or terrorists,' but apparently they find the legal principles of judicial review and probable cause, as well as a constitutional provision against 'unreasonable search or seizure', to be too much of a hassle, and would rather be able to search anyone's web or e-mail traffic at their own discretion and without any oversight. All in the name of public safety, of course."

Comment A lot of people having this same thought ... (Score 2, Interesting) 263

by enselsharon (#28369341) Attached to: The State of Iran's Ongoing Netwar

The phrase:

"the information technologies that are the mainstay of modern society can become its weapons, as well"

is very similar to what is being said in the "Free Speech or Stone Age" meme that has sprung up:

"Once again, the standardization and interoperability of these protocols
that so readily enables anonymous free speech are the same qualities that
make them so valuable to commerce. You cannot restrict access to this
functionality and continue to take part in modern commerce."

http://blog.kozubik.com/john_kozubik/2009/06/free-speech-or-stone-age.html

(I recommend the entire article that is linked from the blog synopsis...)
Math

Statistical Suspicions In Iran's Election 512

Posted by kdawson from the funny-smell dept.
hoytak writes "An expert in electoral fraud, professor Walter Melbane, has released a detailed analysis (PDF) of available data in Iran's controversial election (summary here). While he did not find significant indications of fraud, he does note that all the deviations from the predicted model are in Ahmadinejad's favor: 'In general, combining the 2005 and 2009 data conveys the impression that a substantial core of the 2009 results reflected natural political process... [These] stand in contrast to the unusual pattern in which all of the notable discrepancies between the support Ahmadinejad actually received and the support the model predicts are always negative. This pattern needs to be explained before one can have confidence that natural election processes were not supplemented with artificial manipulations.'" In related news, EsonLinji notes reports in the Seattle PI and other sources that the US State Department has asked Twitter to delay system maintenance to prevent cutting off Iranians who have been relying on the service during the post-election crisis. And if you would like to help ease the communication crunch, reader RCulpepper tips a blog post detailing how to set up a proxy server for users with Iranian IP addresses.
Censorship

A Black Day For Internet Freedom In Germany 420

Posted by kdawson from the sun-going-down dept.
Several readers including erlehmann and tmk wrote to inform us about the dawning of Internet censorship in Germany under the usual guise of protecting the children. "This week, the two big political parties ruling Germany in a coalition held the final talks on their proposed Internet censorship scheme. DNS queries for sites on a list will be given fake answers that lead to a page with a stop sign. The list itself is maintained by the German federal police (Bundeskriminalamt). A protest movement has formed over the course of the last several months, and over 130K citizens have signed a petition protesting the law. Despite this, and despite criticism from all sides, the two parties sped up the process for the law to be signed on Thursday, June 18, 2009."

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