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Submission + - How to be the world's greatest ISP (arst.ch) 3

Submitted by Raindeer
Raindeer writes: We're not always aware of it here in the USA, but there are many ISPs out there in the world who do things quite differently than what we're used to. Some of these ISPs ideas are even really good. Ars surveys the global ISP landscape and paints a picture of what a dream ISP might look like.

So what would it take to craft a truly "cool" ISP, one that attracted legions of adoring customers who sing its praises to everyone they meet? Fortunately, ISPs around the world are doing innovative things at prices that will make your jaw drop. Join us on our worldwide quest to find the coolest ISPs in the world, then get ready to write your own service provider a strongly worded note once you know what else is possible.

Submission + - Nominum calls Open Source DNS 'a recipe for proble

Submitted by
Raindeer
Raindeer writes: "In an effort to promote its new Cloud based DNS service SKYE, Nominum one of the commercial DNS-software, providers slaundered all open source/freeware DNS packages. It said: "Given all the nasty things that have happened this year, freeware is a recipe for problems, and it's just going to get worse.(....) So, whether it's Eircom in Ireland or a Brazilian ISP that was attacked earlier this year, all of them were using some variant of freeware. Freeware is not akin to malware, but is opening up those customers to problems. " This has the DNS community fuming. Especially when you know Nominum was one of the companies affected by the DNS Cache poisoning problem of last year. Something PowerDNS, MaraDNS and DJBDNS all open source weren't vulnerable too."
Security

Submission + - UAE hacking Blackberry's for interception (blogspot.com)

Submitted by
Raindeer
Raindeer writes: "It seems the UAE had some trouble reading Blackberry communications and turned to SS8 for a solution. SS8 suggested an unobtrusive program to be loaded on all Etisalat's customers Blackberry's. 'Trust me guv, nobody will notice'... yeah right. The programme eats batteries for lunch and the server it needed to communicate back with was overloaded (IDIOTS, like you don't know how many devices there are!). Annoyed Blackberry users saw their devices slow down to a crawl and started to complain. A little investigation later and a programmer found out the so called performance upgrade rolled out to all Blackberry users was a snooping programme by the SS8 company."
Cellphones

Submission + - Etisalat bungles Blackberry spyware deployment

Submitted by
nwetters
nwetters writes: "Dubai's Gulf News is reporting a bungled attempt by the national telco Etisalat to deploy spyware to Blackberry devices. ITP.net gives some details of the battery-sapping "performance patch", which has been uploaded to the Blackberry support forum last week. On Sunday Etisalat issued a two paragraph statement apologising for "a phased software upgrade...that led to extra consumption of the handset battery.". It described the patch as a "routine upgrade process", but said it had stopped issuing it as a precautionary measure.""

Comment Cellphone data to be stored 12 months (Score 2, Informative) 232

by Raindeer (#28621161) Attached to: Cellphones Increasingly Used As Evidence In Court

Cellphone traffic data has to be stored for 6-24 months in the EU, exactly for this reason. It's useful for law enforcement. The Dutch Parliament yesterday accepted a law that requires this data to be stored for 12 months (who called who, where). Internet data (who used what IP-adress at what moment, who mailed who, but not what websites were visited, gmail, twitter etc.) will only need to be stored for 6 months.
Government

Submission + - German Supreme Court bans voting machines (heise.de)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The german Supreme Court has just declared the use of voting machines during the last elections unconstitutional. The decision does not prohibit voting machines per se, but defines strong requirements for transparency and accountability in the future use of these machines. It is thought that in the upcoming State-elections, authorities will have to revert to paper and pencil voting. Spiegel-online also carries the story.
Cellphones

Submission + - Iphone users use 640MB per month (blogspot.com)

Submitted by Raindeer
Raindeer writes: T-mobile NL saw a great increase in mobile data usage from the introduction of the iPhone 3G. The monthly usage of mobile increased from 12Terabyte to 80Terabyte a month. How stunning a number that is, I only realized last night in bed. The average iPhone user uses 640MB per month. T-mobile also said it was 30-40 times more than the average mobile data user at 16-22MB per month.
Government

Submission + - Secret Government Legal Memos Released to Public (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Dekortage
Dekortage writes: After the September 11 terrorism attack in 2001, U.S. government lawyers provided broad interpretations of the law authorizing President Bush to use military within the U.S., conduct raids and wiretaps without obtaining search warrants, suppress freedom of speech and the press, abolish foreign treaties unilaterally, ignore the Geneva Conventions, and more — all in the name of fighting terrorism. "Too often over the past decade, the fight against terrorism has been viewed as a zero-sum battle with our civil liberties. Not only is that thought misguided, I fear that in actuality it does more harm than good," said Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. before releasing the previously-secret documents on Monday.
Government

Submission + - German Constitutional Court Bans Voting Machines

Submitted by Dr. Hok
Dr. Hok writes: The German Federal Constitutional Court ruled today (German, babelfish translation here) that the use of voting machines in the previous federal election was against the constitution. Voting machines are not illegal per se, but with these machines it wasn't possible to verify the results after the votes were cast. The verification procedure by the German authorities was flawed, too: only specimens were tested, not the machines actually used in the elections, and the detailed results (including the source code) were not made public. The results of the election remain legally valid, though. The ruling is here (in German).
Government

Submission + - Germany: Voting computers ruled unconstitutional 1

Submitted by
Micha Lenk
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."
Government

Submission + - German Supreme Court says No to Voting Computers

Submitted by
WalterSobchak
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)"

Comment Telstra: No problems here and better agree with us (Score 3, Interesting) 98

by Raindeer (#25673415) Attached to: Raising Doubts About Australia's Broadband Upgrade Plan
Paul Budde an Australian Broadband honcho had the following experience with Telstra and the way they see broadband:

Telstra and Freedom of speech Last week I was involved in an interesting but disheartening incident - one that further highlights the problems we are facing with Telstra in Australia.

Tomorrow I will be chairing Day One of the Broadband World conference, organised by terrapin. This event included a panel session entitled 'Can open access regulation truly work in Australia without retail separation?' in which Telstra had agreed to participate.

At the last moment, however, Telstra asked the conference organisers to withdraw two people from the panel, saying they wouldn't participate otherwise. It was also very interesting to see that they even came up with the names of the people they would like as replacements. more

The Internet

Submission + - How the Net works: Peering and Transit explained (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by
Raindeer
Raindeer writes: "Ars Technica just posted an article I wrote, where I explain Peering and Transit. In 2005, AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre famously told BusinessWeek, "What they [Google, Vonage, and others] would like to do is to use my pipes free. But I ain't going to let them do that...Why should they be allowed to use my pipes?" The story of how the Internet is structured economically is not so much a story about net neutrality, but rather it's a story about how ISPs actually do use AT&T's pipes for free, and about why AT&T actually wants them to do so. These inter-ISP sharing arrangements are known as "peering" or "transit," and they are the two mechanisms that underlie the interconnection of networks that form the Internet. In this article, I'll to take a look at the economics of peering of transit in order to give you a better sense of how traffic flows from point A to point B on the Internet, and how it does so mostly without problems, despite the fact that the Internet is a patchwork quilt of networks run by companies, schools, and governments."
Medicine

Submission + - Children Learn to Share by Age 7 or 8 (medicine-news.org)

Submitted by
emy2008
emy2008 writes: "A Swiss study, led by Ernst Fehr at the University of Zurich, shows that children with 3 or 4 year old are very selfish, but the good new is that children develop altruism by the age of 7 or 8 years old."

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