Raindeer - Slashdot User

Submission + - Germany: Voting computers ruled unconstitutional 1

Submitted by

Micha Lenk

on Tuesday March 03, 2009 @07:03AM

Micha Lenk writes: "The German Federal Supreme Court has ruled that the use of electronic voting machines for the General Election (Bundestagswahl) 2005 has been unconstitutional. The judges acknowledge the claim that that the voters were not able to supervise neither the cast votes nor the vote counting itself.

They also decided that the election remains valid because of the low share of electronically cast votes. Approximately two million out of 61.9 millionen voters had voted using electronic voting machines in the election almost four years ago."

Submission + - German Supreme Court says No to Voting Computers

Submitted by

WalterSobchak

on Tuesday March 03, 2009 @05:49AM

WalterSobchak writes: "Germany's supreme court banned current voting machines from further elections. While the court found no issues with the elections that had already been held, they banned the current technology from further use, deeming them too in-transparent and not tamper proof.

The court specifically said that this decision is not "technophobic", and applies only to the currently used technology (mainly NEDAP machines), If new technology meets the high standards required for elections, it could be used for elections. Also, the court said that given proper technology, even voting by internet is imaginable

Source: Spiegel Online (German)"

Submission + - RIPE 55 Sings For IPv6 1

Submitted by on Friday October 26, 2007 @06:49PM

An anonymous reader writes: To promote the switch to IPv6, Gary Feldman gave an exciting performance of "The Day The Routers Died" at the RIPE 55 meeting in Amsterdam. The song (to the tune of "American Pie") included lyrics like "be persuaded to upgrade it or your network will die". Gary received a standing ovation.

Submission + - The day the Routers died (secret-wg.org)

Submitted by

Raindeer

on Friday October 26, 2007 @11:44AM

Raindeer writes: "The RIPE 55 meeting has just concluded. There was much debate on what to do on the imminent depletion of the unallocated IPv4 pool in 2010. We could do nothing or we could create a market place and facilitate transfer of IP-adresses, but it's all a train wreck waiting to happen. This is best shown however by a beautiful song "The day the routers died" also available on Youtube written and performed by Gary Feldman. So please all upgrade to IPv6 soon, or else you will not get 40Gbit/s to your mother."

Submission + - U.K. kids get RFID chips in school uniforms

Submitted by Stony Stevenson on Thursday October 25, 2007 @05:50PM

Stony Stevenson writes: Ten schoolchildren in the United Kingdom are being tracked by RFID chips in their school uniforms as part of a pilot program. If the program proves successful as a way to hasten registration, simplify data entry for the school's behavioral reporting system, and ensure attendance, Trevor Darnborough, whose company, Darnbro, filed for a patent on securing RFID tags to clothing, hopes other schools will be interested.

David Clouter, a parent and founder of Leave Them Kids Alone, a children's advocacy group, condemned the plan. "With pupils being fingerprinted and now this it seems we are treating children in a way that we have traditionally treated criminals," he told the Doncaster Free Press.

Submission + - UK conspired with mobile companies on roaming (timesonline.co.uk)

Submitted by

Raindeer

on Thursday October 25, 2007 @05:42PM

Raindeer writes: "The Times revealed that the UK government actively conspired with phone companies to keep mobile roaming charges high. A Freedom of Information Request revealed that the UK Government were "not happy bunnies", when the European Union wanted to lower charges for mobile roaming in the EU dramatically. Ewan Sutherland, a leading telecoms policy consultant, said: "I hadn't fully appreciated that the Government had gone over to the Dark Side to that extent." Even now the charges are excessively high at 49 eurocent per minute. But the chances that the EU would actually support a simple idea that would promote competition are marginal. Data roaming charges (for Brits) are even more excessive at up to 21USD per Mbyte."

Submission + - Should the BBC pay ISP's for iPlayer (blogspot.com)

Submitted by

Raindeer

on Friday August 17, 2007 @05:38PM

Raindeer writes: "In the UK debate has broken out about the BBC's iPlayer. Part of it, because it does'tn support open source, but seems to be some evil Micrsoft plot. Another part of it is because of the choice for the Kontiki P2P distribution system, which according to some important industry insiders and bloggers is unfair towards ISP's. In this article I evaluate the arguments in favour of making content providers pay for their bits and show how these are flawed and would stifle innovation."

Journal Journal: Using Google Adsense for Charity

Journal by Raindeer on Wednesday March 07, 2007 @07:16AM

I hope Slashdot-readers will help me generate more attention for this idea and come up with ideas to get this idea higher up Google's to-do-list. I have blogged about this on my blog. The origins of this idea lie in me looking at the enormous amount of $8 on my Adsense account (the payout limit is $100) and wondering if there was something better to do with it, instead of waiting 12 years for the first check.

Journal Journal: Profanity Blacklist is dumb. 8

Journal by Omestes on Wednesday March 07, 2007 @05:15AM

Quickly running through my foes, just to see how much hatred I garner, and discovered that the Profanity Blacklist (UID 825460) still hates me, even though I haven't used any "foul" language in sometime. Well fine, I did mention the word "asshole" earlier, but I really don't see how offensive that term really is to anyone.

Submission + - Appeal to Google! Use Google Adsense for Good!

Submitted by

Raindeer

on Wednesday February 28, 2007 @07:34PM

Raindeer writes: "I sent the Google Adsense people the following suggestion/feature request; for Google to add an option to allow the pay-out of (a part of) the Adsense revenue of a site directly to a charity. The Google ads on my blog don't generate much income and well, I don't really care about it, they're partially a service to let people find interesting companies and partially a way for me to keep track of statistics (before Google Analytics came around). It's a bit of a long tail idea, where many small sites help generate a big amount of money for charity. I hope some people in the blogosphere help to give this idea some thrust and also encourage Google to allow people to easily let a charity become the beneficiary of the revenue the Google Ads generate."

Submission + - A photo journalist critisizes Creative Commons

Submitted by

Raindeer

on Tuesday January 02, 2007 @07:58AM

Raindeer writes: "Sion Touhig, an award winning photojournalist, wrote a very interesting piece on how the internet has changed the industry of photojournalism. He blames this (at least partially) on the Creative Commons. Though I disagree with him on this, it does remain a fascinating read on how the lower costs to produce content, the lower transaction costs in finding and disseminating content and the decline in advertising revenue for mainstream media is changing an industry. There are some good reactions already on his blog "

Bookmark How the anti-copyright lobby makes big business richer (theregister.co.uk)

by Raindeer on Tuesday January 02, 2007 @07:43AM

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