SlashReality - Slashdot User

Submission + - UK Big Brother Data Retention Law Effective Today

Submitted by nandemoari on Monday April 06, 2009 @11:56AM

nandemoari writes: Despite the fact that the UK parliament network was vulnerable to the Conficker virus just last week, reports suggest that the UK Government is forging ahead with their dubious plans to harvest all the personal electronic data of every citizen and storing it for one year, opening the door to the Big Brother super database. Mobile phone calls, emails and Internet activities of every Briton will be stored for a year, placing legal duties on Internet companies to store everyone's private information, including email traffic and Internet browsing histories effective Monday, April 6, 2009. The actual content of emails or phone calls won't be retained; however, details like IP addresses, dates, time and user telephone numbers will be.

Submission + - World's Fastest Broadband at $20 per home

Submitted by EricTheGreen on Monday April 06, 2009 @10:38AM

EricTheGreen writes: Interesting NYT article on how a Japanese telecom is upgrading their consumer network to 160 MPS at an investment cost of $20 per household. Its encouraging that someone, somewhere, is doing this and actually showing it can be done on economically feasible terms.

Comment Awesome man! (Score 1) 13

by SlashReality on Tuesday November 06, 2007 @02:24AM (#21251577) Attached to: Coupled

Awesome man! Congrats, hope all is well.

Submission + - 'Secret' Updates Were For Windows Update (itworld.com)

Submitted by

narramissic

on Thursday September 13, 2007 @02:43PM

narramissic writes: "The so-called 'secret' updates that were recently sent to XP and Vista machines even when users had turned off the automatic updating feature of Windows Update were actually updates for the Windows Update mechanism itself. In an e-mail statement, Microsoft admitted it could have been more 'transparent' before changing files on user computers: 'We could have been clearer on how Windows Update behaves when it updates itself,' the company said. 'We've received helpful and important feedback on this point, and we are now looking at the best way to clarify [Windows Update's] behavior to customers so that they can more clearly understand how [it] works.'"

Submission + - NBC/iTunes pullout forces customers to piracy? (cnet.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 13, 2007 @02:24PM

An anonymous reader writes: NBC's recent withdraw from the iTunes store leaves the millions of users of Apple iPods without a legitimate way to purchase and watch NBC's content. Could this be the push that brings easy-to-use 'piracy' to the masses? The legitimate online stores can't compete with file sharing on price, flexibility and freedom. The only thing that really remained was ease of use. Due to advances in open-source file sharing tools, and boneheaded decisions by the media companies, that remaining advantage now appears to be gone. This CNET article discusses the legal and ethical issues, and then provides step-by-step instructions using the uber-cool open source Miro media player to setup a computer to automatically download any of hundreds of TV shows as soon as they are broadcast and put online.

Submission + - Expedia: Bad security flaw with your CC details. (blogspot.com)

Submitted by

thinkjones

on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @03:33PM

thinkjones writes: "I was recently passing through Lawrence, Kansas, on a road trip and needed overnight accomodation. After browsing Expedia for two different hotels, The Eldrige Hotel, and The Hallmark Inn, I decided to book the Hallmark Inn as it was within budget. After surveying my bank statements I find that Expedia had booked all the hotels I had browsed, not just the ones I booked, without ever informing me. Analogy: This is akin to browsing for a new dvd player in Amazon, choosing only one and going through the booking process, where only one dvd is purchased. However on auditing your bank statement you have 10 CC transactions for different DVD players."

Submission + - How Do you sync your Notebook with your Desktop?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @03:25PM

An anonymous reader writes: When I take my Notebook with me for working some weeks elsewhere, I always find myself in a big sync nightmare when returning. Syncing emails, bookmarks, email addresses, files, icq screen names and what not between computers and even different programs is a time consuming nightmare. In fact it takes days for me.
Are there any solutions which do NOT need to sync over some external service (google or so) but in the LAN only, and which do not need a special groupware or other server but work by connecting directly to the other computer, and which constitute some kind of one-click solution, work even between different mail clients (such as Thunderbird on one system and kmail on another), in order to make this process quick and smooth?
Or is there a need to create a more general framework allowing to tie systems together?

Submission + - Bastille linux hijacked

Submitted by fathertedgrinch on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @03:20PM

fathertedgrinch writes: The Bastille-linux project's registration has apparently been hijacked by a cyber-squatter. See http://isc.sans.org/ for information. note that there are two articles there — one describes the discovery, and the second shows the new url for bastille.

Richard Stallman Proclaims Don't Follow Linus Torvalds 965

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @09:16AM from the was-he-wearing-the-hat-at-the-time dept.

StonyandCher writes "Here is an interview with Richard Stallman about a range of free software topics including GPLv3 and comment on the Microsoft patent issue. Stallman has a go at Linus Torvalds even suggesting that if people want to keep their freedom they better not follow Torvalds. From the interview 'Stallman: The fact that Torvalds says "open source" instead of "free software" shows where he is coming from. I wrote the GNU GPL to defend freedom for all users of all versions of a program. I developed version 3 to do that job better and protect against new threats. Torvalds says he rejects this goal; that's probably why he doesn't appreciate GPL version 3. I respect his right to express his views, even though I think they are foolish. However, if you don't want to lose your freedom, you had better not follow him.'"

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