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EU

France Broadens Surveillance Powers; Wider Scope Than NSA 169

Posted by timothy from the touch-of-the-old-industrial-espionage dept.
krakman writes "With the NSA disclosures, French media was 'outraged'. Yet they appear to be worse than the NSA, with a new law that codifies standard practice and provides for no judicial oversight while allowing electronic surveillance for a broad range of purposes, including 'national security,' the protection of France's 'scientific and economic potential' and prevention of ;terrorism' or 'criminality.' The government argues that the law, passed last week with little debate as part of a routine military spending bill, which takes effect in 2015, does not expand intelligence powers. Rather, officials say, those powers have been in place for years, and the law creates rules where there had been none, notably with regard to real-time location tracking. French intelligence agencies have little experience publicly justifying their practices. Parliamentary oversight did not begin until 2007."
Microsoft

Microsoft Surface Pro Arrives Feb. 9 268

Posted by Soulskill from the because-everybody's-clamoring-for-more-expensive-tablets dept.
adeelarshad82 writes "According to Microsoft, the Surface Windows 8 Pro will be available for purchase on Feb. 9 in the U.S. and Canada. As anticipated, the Surface Pro will be slightly thicker than the Surface with Windows RT, and will weigh about two pounds. The tablet is powered with an Intel Core i5 processor and 4GB of memory. It also includes an 802.11 a/b/g/n dual band Wi-Fi, a stylus for pressure-sensitive input, dual 720p HD webcams, a full-sized USB 3.0 port, microSDXC slot, and mini DisplayPort. Since the Surface Pro runs Windows 8 Pro, it will work with your corporate infrastructure, as well as any older apps that you used on Windows XP to 7. In terms of pricing, the 64GB version will cost $899 while the 128GB will set you back by $999."
Microsoft

Assessing Media Bias: Microsoft Vs. Everyone Else 364

Posted by samzenpus from the smallest-violin dept.
snydeq writes "J. Peter Bruzzese questions whether Microsoft receives unfair criticism in the media, while Apple, Facebook, and Google seem to get away from missteps unscathed. 'I've noticed an unfair, ongoing trend: If Microsoft does something a little off, it gets bashed into the ground for it. But if Google, Facebook, or Apple (all three of which can be categorized, like Microsoft, as The Man in their own rights) missteps, it generally gets mild reprimands and even support from the media and those drinking the Kool-Aid.' Do you feel any inherent media bias in its coverage of the tech industry?"
Hardware

Digital Generation Rediscovers Analog Wristwatches 505

Posted by timothy from the old-revolvers-are-nice-too dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "As recently as a half-decade ago, time seemed to be running out for the wristwatch; the mechanical device was declared to be going the way of the abacus. But now the NY Times reports that the 'sundial' of the wrist is experiencing an uptick among members of the digital generation, particularly by heritage-macho types in their 20s and 30s who are drawn to the wristwatch's retro appeal, just as they have seized on straight razors, selvedge denim and vintage vinyl. 'A cool machine that is all moving parts has got to be intrinsically interesting to someone born into this generation,' says Mitch Greenblatt, an online retailer of design-forward watches who is seeing a surge in business, 'because there's just nothing like that in their life.'"
Cellphones

Nokia Introduces MeeGo-Powered N9 Phone 252

Posted by Soulskill from the wherever-you-go,-meego-meego-meego dept.
An anonymous reader writes with news that Nokia has unveiled its first MeeGo-powered smartphone, the N9. "[T]he smartphone doesn't have any buttons on the front, with only the volume controls and a lock button located on the right side of the device. ... The performance of the prototype device felt very snappy, and it looks almost ready for retail. As a MeeGo device, the N9 will be running apps based on the Qt platform." The Washington Post calls it "the platform that could have been," referring to Nokia's decision to make the transition to Windows Phone for future devices. Others are impressed with the device, but see it as either a dead end or just another distraction to Nokia's long-term plans.
Cloud

Should a Web Startup Go Straight To the Cloud? 442

Posted by samzenpus from the silver-lining dept.
Javaman59 writes "I am a one person company developing a web site from home. The site is hoped to attract millions of accounts and daily hits (just to give an idea of the scale of things, as its important to the question). My infrastructure is currently Visual Studio 2010 on a PC. To progress the site I need to set up version control, continuous integration, and staging. I have a Win2008 server VM, with all the Windows software (free and legal) to do this. However, I am only just competent as a Win admin, and I foresee each step of the way (setting up a domain; SQL-Server, etc) as a slow, risky process, and a big disruption to development. Should I forget my VM server (it will make a nice games machine!) and just go straight to the cloud for all my infrastructure?"
The Courts

Apple: an 'App Store' Is Not a Store For Apps 279

Posted by Soulskill from the do-you-read-the-words-you-write dept.
recoiledsnake writes "What would be your first guess about what an app store sells? Don't be fooled, Apple warns, the phrase 'app store' is not generic and can only be used to describe Cupertino's... um, app store? 'Apple denies that, based on their common meaning, the words "app store" together denote a store for apps,' Apple said in a Thursday filing with a California district court. All this notwithstanding that Jobs himself used the phrase generically while referring to Android app stores. We've previously discussed this ongoing legal battle."

Comment Re:No ROI has been done for this network.... (Score 1) 62

by captain random (#35315562) Attached to: Transparency Required For $37 Billion Aussie Broadband Deal

Good god, what a load of ignorant rubbish - governments are SUPPOSED to do it where it's not viable for private companies to do so!

Young people leave rural areas all the time because of limited employment opportunities. Putting high-speed links out there means you can move (or start) many types of tech-supported industries that otherwise wouldn't be able to exist outside of the city.

You know all that overcrowding the anti-boat-people brigade keep whining about? Well this is part of the reason for overcrowding. Because we keep trying to fit more and more people into the existing cities. Nobody wants to live out of the city because they can't get these sort of services.

Comment Re:In two minds about transparency (Score 1) 62

by captain random (#35314082) Attached to: Transparency Required For $37 Billion Aussie Broadband Deal
That's a little disingenuous mate; when most people mention the insulation program, they are simply repeating the Liberal line that the whole thing was a fiasco. Which it wasn't. Some dodgy operators spoiled it for everyone (and perhaps the government could have taken a little more care vetting operators somehow), but overall the program was a success.

When you talk to just about anyone in Australia, and they immediately bring up one of the following, you may as well just walk away (or face the urge to throw yourself from the nearest window):

  • The government is incompetent because the insulation program was a farce (it wasn't).
  • The government is incompetent because the Building the Education Revolution (BER) program was a farce and a waste of money (something like a 3% complaint rate, I believe).
  • The government is illegitimate and we should have another election.
  • They call Julia Joolya or JuLiar (name-calling; it's practically a hallmark).

You can guess they get almost all their talking points from The Australian (a Murdoch rag) or AM talkback radio. For the record, I'm a Greens voter; I don't actually like Labor, but I think they're a damn sight better than the Liberals, and I'd rather have a government that (supposedly) aims for services and social mobility.

Comment Re:What filter? (Score 1) 222

by captain random (#33530858) Attached to: Australia's National Broadband Network To Go Ahead
I disagree; NBNCo is not an ISP. I think it is more analogous to the case where Telstra resells access to its network via ADSL.

It's the wrong level to insert a filter at, because the NBN should not know what its traffic means.

Oh, and would you stop with the $1000000000 per household $80 billion dollar DEBT WASTE DEBT hysterics, would you?
The first phase of the NBN pilot came in both ahead of schedule and under budget.
Google

Google Apps Gets a 99.9% Guarantee 155

Posted by kdawson from the outlook-cloudy-try-again dept.
David Gerard passes along a posting on Google's official blog announcing that they have extended the three-nines SLA for the Premier Edition of Google Apps from Gmail alone to also cover the Calendar, Docs, Sites, and Google Talk services. 99.9% uptime translates to 45 minutes a month of downtime, and the blog post puts this in context with Gmail's historical reliability, which has been between three and four times as good over the last year (10-15 min./mo.). It also claims, based on research by an outside group, that Gmail's historical reliability beats that of in-house hosted solutions such as Groupwise and Exchange, on average. Reader Ian Lamont adds an article in The Standard that digs down into the details of the SLA, revealing for instance that outages of less than 10 minutes aren't counted against the monthly 45 minutes.
Windows

Windows 7 To Dial Down UAC 390

Posted by kdawson from the cancel-or-allow dept.
Barence writes "Engineers working on Windows 7 have admitted Vista's User Account Control was too intrusive, and are promising to tone it down in the forthcoming Windows 7. 'We've heard loud and clear that you are frustrated,' says Microsoft engineer Ben Fathi. 'You find the prompts too frequent, annoying, and confusing. We still want to provide you control over what changes can happen to your system, but we want to provide you a better overall experience.' According to Fathi, when Vista first launched, 775,312 unique applications were producing prompts — so some may be annoyed that it won't be scrapped entirely, but at least Microsoft is listening. The comments echo those of Steve Ballmer, who admitted at a conference in London that 'the biggest trade-off we made was sacrificing security for compatibility. I'm not sure the end-users really appreciated that trade-off.'"
Image

Slashdot's Disagree Mail 206

Posted by samzenpus from the the-old-ball-and-chain dept.
Being in a relationship is not easy, more than half of all first marriages fail in this country. That statistic doesn't improve if you spend most of your time reading your favorite website and not tending to the needs of your family. Instead of asking me to help fix your relationship maybe you should try playing with your kids, talking to your wife, and not staring at a computer screen all day. You should realize that the help link doesn't provide help with your life. It's mostly for getting passwords and stuff. Below you'll find a collection of people that should have reached out to Dr. Phil and not Dr. Sam.

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