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Authored by: Tolerance on Thursday, November 22 2012 @ 11:28 PM EST |
Recall the current newspick, Andy Greenberg's Forbes article?
It concerned
the conviction of a 'hacker' (Auernheimer by
name or "Weev" by handle) - and
how this conviction sets a
terrible precedent.
... as he faces
possible prison time, the
information security community is now arguing that
Auernheimer’s conviction sets a precedent that could
dangerously restrict free
speech and behavior online. If
merely visiting an unrestricted web page to copy
an email
address counts as unauthorized access, the legal line
between
intrusive hacking and testing websites for
vulnerabilities–or merely visiting a
website at all–could be
blurred.
Like Kim (Schmitz) "Dotcom"
and Megaupload's bust for
copyright infringement (or inducement thereof) this
is not a
very sympathetic victim. The larrikin background of either
perp
doesn't help their cases, but Auernheimer's conviction
does in fact seem like a
power grab by the FBI and CIA,
except for one inconvenient fact: unlike
Dotcom,
Auernheimer plead guilty.
What induced him to do so is a
matter for speculation, but
can I observe before we all go completely nuts that
once the
guilty plea was entered, the judge had no choice but to
convict?
--- Grumpy old man [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Gringo_ on Friday, November 23 2012 @ 12:46 AM EST |
The Newpick article is titled Oracle’s
Ellison
Vindicated in Autonomy PR Flap by HP’s $8.8 Billion
Writedown.
I have been following this and am amazed that
HP showed so much incompetence. I
remember when they
announced the purchase of Autonomy, saying how they are
going to reinvent themselves as services company, just like
IBM did so
successfully. However, I don't think "reinventing
yourself" is quite so easy as
going out and buying a
seriously over-priced services company. I think they
must
have seen the writing on the wall about where their PC
business was
headed and got desperate to park their money
anywhere but in a business
dependent on Microsoft.
Anyhow, HP is playing this up like they got
scammed, even
though they performed due diligence before buying Autonomy.
HP
says the books were cooked, though the accountants found
nothing amiss. The
former director of Autonomy says the
value was there, but HP mismanaged the
company. HP sure look
like fools, whatever happened.
This all reminds
me of Microsoft's big 6 billion dollar
write down they announced
just 4 months ago. At least in that
case, they had hung on
to the online ad agency aQuantive Inc for several years
before writing it off.
Companies are getting too big these days, when
they reach
the point where they can throw away billions of dollars so
easily.
6 billion here, 8 billion there, that's some pretty
serious money. If all those
dollars were laid out end to
end they would stretch from here to the moon and
back
nearly three times. (14^9 x 6.14 inches long) [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, November 23 2012 @ 06:20 AM EST |
The newspick made some mistakes, regarding the party membership of the drafters.
Falkvinge himself wrote:
<blockquote>The resolution, which was passed with a large majority,
included Members of European Parliament (MEPs) from all major party groups, and
the Pirate Party’s Amelia Andersdotter had been playing a central role in its
drafting, together with MEPs Marietje Schaake and Judith Sargentini from the
Netherlands, Sabine Verheyen and Petra Kammerevert from Germany, Ivailo Kalfin
from Bulgaria, and Catherine Trautmann from France.</blockquote>
Only Amelia Andersdotter is a Pirate Party member. Marietje Schaake is member of
Democraten 66 (progressive liberals), Judith Sargentini is member of Groen Links
(Green party), Sabine Verheyen is a Christian Democrat , Petra Kammerevert a
social democrat, etc.
This initiative was taken by MEP's from all factions of the European
parliament.
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Authored by: tiger99 on Friday, November 23 2012 @ 10:09 AM EST |
Obligatory link So if they have copied
edges and corners, will Apple sue them? Should be fun.... [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: SilverWave on Friday, November 23 2012 @ 12:46 PM EST |
The Onion, titled "Using Social Media To Cover
For Lack Of Original Thought." --- RMS: The 4 Freedoms
0 run the program for any purpose
1 study the source code and change it
2 make copies and distribute them
3 publish modified versions
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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, November 23 2012 @ 05:18 PM EST |
Here's my suggestion as an excellent start:
Stop allowing entrenched
Corporations the ability to prevent new business from growing!
Consider
OLPC - this was a laptop specifically designed to allow it to network with other
local laptops forming an inherent grid of those computing devices in an area
where communication infrastructure is missing.
Now look back at the
history of what Microsoft and Intel tried to do to put the OLPC out of business.
Look to the potential of patents that are being used - not competitively, but
anti-competitively.
In short:
Let people build - safely - on
knowledge, develop new ideas and share those ideas with others!
But... this
is the FCC - and they do have limited power, so I don't think my suggestion will
go far even though the FCC itself could look into mobile patents and open their
eyes to the real damage being done. Real damage based on a lot of patents that
should not have even been granted in the first place because they break the very
exchange patents are supposed to be granted for:
To disseminate knowledge of
the invention to the public!
Instead, they take existing knowledge already
available to the public and lock that away.
RAS[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, November 23 2012 @ 10:43 PM EST |
Newspick
I notice the
"urgent" is in quotes as if that is some kind of special clarification. I think
it's too late for urgency, the Irish deputy
data-protection commissioner missed
the boat when FB first started accepting public accounts. One reason I don't go
near
Facebook is that they have thus far failed to tell
their users the truth
the whole truth and nothing but the truth about personal data access and the
particular form of privacy that
FB practises. The "changes" AFAICT are simply
to remind users how fragile a FB profile really is, to remind them that the
internet
makes them stupid, and perhaps FB think the "changes" may cause them
less future hassle
in this department. In which case I've got a bridge for sale that
Messrs Zuckerberg or Davis may be interested in.
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Authored by: IMANAL_TOO on Saturday, November 24 2012 @ 03:21 AM EST |
www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Linux-brings-over-
EUR10-million-savings-for-Munich-1755802.html:
"Over €10
million (approximately £8 million or $12.8 million) has been saved by the
city of Munich, thanks to its development and use of the city's own Linux
platform. The calculation of savings follows a question by the city council's
independent Free Voters (Freie Wähler) group, which led to Munich's municipal
LiMux project presenting a comparative budget calculation at the meeting of the
city council's IT committee on Wednesday. The calculation compares the current
overall cost of the LiMux migration with that of two technologically equivalent
Windows scenarios: Windows with Microsoft Office and Windows with OpenOffice.
Reportedly, savings amount to over €10 million.
€10 million in
savings is about USD 10 million in savings, for a single city! Given the economy
of the EU, this may mean something for the
future.
--- ______
IMANAL
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