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Privacy

EU pressures Google over Street View

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "European Union privacy regulators are urging Google to make changes in the way it executes goes about its controversial Street View program, adding to its legal worries in Europe. Authorities are pushing the US Internet giant to shorten the period it stores images due to privacy concerns, it said in a letter to the company. The EU is also asking Google to notify people before it sends its camera vehicles into the streets.

Google rejected the calls, however, saying its need to retain Street View images for one year is "legitimate and justified.""
United States

Excellent essay on the dangers of copyrights->

Submitted by
John Brice
John Brice writes "Long essay on the dangers of copyright and the need for society to embrace the free flow of ideas. Suggests that the current copyright environment is way to protective of owners and this has a negative effect on the economy as a whole. Argues that current technology makes current restrictions bizarre and ineffective. Also brings up the gift economy and the need for society to embrace a free flow of ides and concepts in order to advance. Overall this is a very well written and though provoking piece on the current state of copyright."
Link to Original Source
Handhelds

Bored UK politicians get BlackBerrys in parliament

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "News that British politicians are so fed up with having to sit and listen to other MPs giving interminably long and boring speeches they have been pleading to be allowed to take their beloved BlackBerrys into the House of Commons, presumably so they can spend their time checking their email instead of listening, according to this article. This is in violent contrast to France — where the cabinet has been banned from using BlackBerrys by the national security agency for fear the US will snoop on its state secrets."
Programming

Results of Web Programming Contest Published

Submitted by
alvar-f
alvar-f writes "The results and final report of the Plat_Forms international web programming contest were published today. For each of the categories Perl, PHP and Java, three teams of three people each competed to produce a comprehensive "social networking" application in just 30 hours. A short summary of the results: The Perl teams produced the most compact code and their solutions are very easy to extend. One Java team produced by far the most complete solution overall, the other two by far the most incomplete ones. The Java solutions are very hard to extend. The PHP teams used no autogenerated files, resisted SQL injection attempts and created the most similar solutions. There are also some pictures of the teams and you can guess what language they are using ..."
Portables

Ten years of mobile computing with Linux

Submitted by Michael-2712
Michael-2712 writes "This month, TuxMobil celebrates its 10th
anniversary. TuxMobil is the number one online resource providing information
about Linux for laptops, PDAs, cellular phones and portable media players. In
short, TuxMobil is all about Linux and portable devices.

Starting with an installation report about Linux on his first laptop, published
at the university account of its founder, Werner Heuser, the predecessor of
TuxMobil was launched in March, 1997. Over the years, more and more Linux
laptop installation guides were listed at TuxMobil. Now, to date, TuxMobil has
become the biggest online resource on this topic. Today there are more than
6,000 links to Linux laptop installation guides available.

"It's easy to find the laptop model you are looking for," says Werner Heuser.
"All the guides are ordered by manufacturer and model. Almost every laptop
manufacturer is covered. That's currently over 220 manufacturers."

For each guide, the language and Linux distribution is stated. All major Linux
distributions, such as Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, Mandriva, Redhat, SuSE, Ubuntu,
and many not so well known distributions are covered. Special sections cover
other free Unix derivatives like BSD and OpenSolaris.

Additional information is provided about Linux compatibility of accessories for
portable devices, like PCMCIA cards, miniPCI cards, ExpressCards, webcams,
infrared, BlueTooth and wireless LAN devices.

All these free guides and "How To's" are written by Linux enthusiasts for
newbies as well as experts. Most of the guides are in English, but there are
special sections of TuxMobil dedicated to German guides about Linux on portable
computers, documentation in Russian , Chinese and many other languages.

To find professional support or to purchase a laptop, notebook, PDA, handheld
PC or mobile phone with Linux preloaded, there is an international survey of
vendors dedicated to Free and Open Source systems. If visitors have further
questions, a mailing list is provided that offers individual help."
PC Games (Games)

Commodore returns with new gaming PCs

Submitted by
JamesO
JamesO writes "Commodore is a name which will bring memories flooding back to many a gamer and it's been announced that the legendary brand is to return with a new range of high specification gaming PCs.

The new Commodore PCs optimised for gaming will be launched at the CeBIT show in Germany on March 15 and attendees will be offered the chance to play the latest PC games using the purpose-built PCs.

http://www.pro-g.co.uk/news/06-03-2007-4930.html"

You cannot propel yourself forward by patting yourself on the back.