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Submission + - EU Copyright Reform: Your input is needed! (copywrongs.eu)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The European Commission has finally (as of last month) opened its public consultation on copyright reform. This is the first time the general public can influence EU copyright policy since fifteen years back, and it is likely at least as much time will pass until next time. In order to help you fill out the (enlish-only, legalese-heavy) questionnaire, some friendly hackers spent some time during the 30c3 to put together a site to help you. Anyone, EU citizen or not, organisation or company, is invited to respond (deadline fifth of February). Pirate MEP Amelia Andersdotter has a more in-depth look at the consultation.

Submission + - Facebook tracks the Status Updates and Messages You Don't Write too. (slate.com) 1

Submitted by Jah-Wren Ryel
Jah-Wren Ryel writes: Do you think that facebook tracks the stuff that people type and then erase before hitting (or the “post” button)? Turns out the answer is yes. If you start writing a message, and then think better of it and decide not to post it, Facebook still adds it to the dossier they keep on you.

Submission + - UK Goverment sedates a pregant woman and takes baby from womb (metro.co.uk)

Submitted by metrix007
metrix007 writes: The UK Goverment as part of it's onward march to becoming a full police state has reached a new low. British Social Services received a court order to sedate a woman and perform a ceasarian section to take custody of the unborn child. The woman was an Italian citizen who was in the UK for training. Her family stated the "breakdown" was due to her not taking her mediccation for her bi-polar condition. This is a new low...not only did they deprive a mother of childbirth and bonding with her child, they did it with little cause to someone who was not even a British citizen, but a visitor. Appaling.

Submission + - DHS Now Censoring Imported Videos (google.com) 6

Submitted by Jah-Wren Ryel
Jah-Wren Ryel writes: J. Michael Straczynski (Babylon 5, Thor, He-Man) reports that US Customs now requires a Video Declaration Form be completed for any imported DVDs. The form requires that you "declare the the films/videos contain no obscene or immoral matter, nor any matter advocating or urging treason or insurrection against the United States, nor any threat to take the life of or inflict bodily harm upon any person in the United States."

Comment Re:language wars still hot for good reason (Score 2) 144

by msclrhd (#45568357) Attached to: Zuckerberg Shows Kindergartners Ruby Instead of JavaScript

Python is a good language to build up from the ground up -- just type "python" and you start a Python interpreter. You can then start typing. For example:

        >>> 5
        5
        >>> 5*2
        10

This allows you to only teach the absolute minimum of what is needed at the time. You can even tie it into things like mathematics.

Submission + - Jolla: Ex-Nokia employees launch smartphone (MeeGo resurrected)

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: A team of ex-Nokia employees has released the first handset running on a new smartphone platform. The Jolla phone — pronounced Yol-la — is powered by open-source operating system Sailfish, but can run most apps designed for Google's Android platform. The platform — originally called MeeGo — was developed by Nokia, but dumped in 2011 in favour of the company adopting the Windows Phone system. Nokia released just one handset running the software, the N9-00. Antti Saarnio, chairman and co-founder of Jolla, told the BBC in May that MeeGo — now called Sailfish — had not been given enough chance to succeed.

Submission + - The Biggest Fraud in Kickstarter History is Currently Unfolding (kickstarter.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The SmartDuino project launched on Kickstarter last October promised many things, including making it super simple for hobbyist to create amazing electronic projects easily, and ended up raising an amazing $157,571 for project creator Dimitri Albino. But allegations of fraud soon came out shortly after funding ended — including Arduino creator Massimo Banzi calling Mr. Albino's claims of being the manufacturer of the Arduino a lie and claimed his project violated the Arduino Trademark. Now a year later, after many broken promises and no products delivered, the project backers are demanding answers, refunds and threatening international legal action in what looks to be the largest fraud in Kickstarter history.

And to add insult to the victims of this, Mr. Albino's company, SmartMaker, is currently running multiple other projects on crowdfunding site Indiegogo which so far have raised over $420,000 and also have had similar fraud claims being made.

Submission + - Dalek Caan joins Linkedin, gets 600 contacts.

Submitted by Guru Jim
Guru Jim writes: Interesting article about the foibles of Social Networks. Linkedin is generally regarded as having the highest level of quality for it's members, but a fake profile for Dalek Caan gained 600 contacts and resulted in multiple calls from Sales people wanting to set up meetings or catch up for a coffee. There was no real restrictions on the farming of contacts and it enabled the mapping of organisational charts pretty easily. Should Linkedin be doing more to protect it's users and should Linkedin users be more skeptical of peoples profile?

Submission + - US Working to Kill UN Privacy Resolutions (foreignpolicy.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: The United States and its key intelligence allies are quietly working behind the scenes to kneecap a mounting movement in the United Nations to promote a universal human right to online privacy, according to diplomatic sources and an internal American government document obtained by The Cable.

American representatives have made it clear that they won't tolerate such checks on their global surveillance network.

Submission + - Jailbreaking and unlocking might be restricted in treaty pushed by Obama (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by SonicSpike
SonicSpike writes: The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) treaty pushed by the Obama administration could complicate efforts to loosen restrictions on jailbreaking and unlocking smartphones, tablets, or other consumer electronics.

A working draft of the treaty published by WikiLeaks prohibits the manufacturing or distribution of devices or services "for the purpose of circumvention of any effective technological measure." It goes on to prohibit devices and services that "have only a limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent any effective technological measure, or are primarily designed, produced, or performed for the purpose of the circumvention of any effective technological measure."

Derek Khanna, a Yale Law Fellow who submitted a White House petition that led to the Obama administration publicly supporting the end of a ban on unlocking, wrote in Slate that "while the White House was publicly proclaiming its support of cellphone unlocking, it was secretly negotiating a treaty that would ban it."

The treaty text never specifically mentions jailbreaking or unlocking, but the lack of an exemption to the ban on circumventing technological measures has Khanna worried.

"The treaty as proposed would stop all methods of circumvention," Khanna wrote in an e-mail to Ars. "The key is that there must be an exemption to allow for unlocking. In the draft text, there is no exemption for unlocking."

Submission + - UK Government says progress made on internet filters. (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by PsyMan
PsyMan writes: Using a ruse involving a blatent "think of the children" line the UK Government is ploughing ahead with its latest internet censoring project. ISP's are of course unwittingly/eagerly assisting the ConDem Overlords in their quest to create a controlable media blackout switch and so far results are looking promising.

First they blocked Pr0n but I did not care as I did not publically delare that I ever looked at pr0n............Then they blo

Submission + - EFF says Mark Shuttleworth is wrong about trademark (muktware.com)

Submitted by sfcrazy
sfcrazy writes: Last week Canonical sent a cease and desist letter to EFF staffer Micah F Lee asking him to remove the word Ubuntu from the URL as well as removed the Ubuntu logo from the site. Lee responded through an attorney who said that Canonical’s “request were not supported by trademark laws and interferes with protected speech.” Shuttleworth apologized, though it was cheeky, and while he dubbed the Mir opponents as non-technical (hello KDE, systemD, Wayland, Intel) he also went on to explain why they needed to protect their trademark.

Now there is official response from EFF.

In the blog post EFF has explained that Shuttleworth is far from reality and was totally wrong about trademark. Looks like Canonical needs some communication experts. One more thing Mark should stop blogging.

Submission + - Modern Microsoft Word Does Not Reliably Read Earlier Formats: A 1989 Print Test (blogspot.ca)

Submitted by badger.foo
badger.foo writes: Prompted by a fabulous rant by Charlie Stross named Why Microsoft Word must Die, Peter Hansteen dug out from his archives the simplest possible 1989-vintage Microsoft Word .DOC document, and has the data to prove that newer versions or Microsoft Word do in fact not reliably read files from earlier versions. Case in point: An ASCII table print test generated and saved as .DOC in 1989.

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