Recent Comments

I was looking forward to seeing what the evil world conquering delusionalists came up with however http://www.ubuntume.com/ is marked as a domain for sale

The local name for this is the Internet Tax.

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/secret-government-briefing-admits-metadata-law-cost-and-warns-of-internet-tax-campaign-20141030-11e1v8.html

Metadata stored about a phone call could include the parties to the call, location, duration and time of the call, but not what was said.

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/government-shelves-controversial-data-retention-scheme-20130624-2oskq.html

On The Drum tonight: The AFP Commissioner admits data retention laws could be used against illegal downloaders, the Government moves to force a vote on its Direct Action plan and Nova Peris tells Parliament the release of her emails were part of an attempt to blackmail her.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-10-30/the-drum-thursday-october-30/5855562

The figure came from iinet. Next time google it before getting upset.

http://www.businessinsider.com.au/australian-data-retention-plan-will-cost-consumers-130-year-says-iinet-2014-8

Australian consumers could be paying more than $10 a month extra - $130 a year - just for internet access under the Government's data retention plan, announced yesterday by Prime Minister Tony Abbott, as part of new counter-terrorism laws.

Modelling by Australia's second biggest internet service provider, iiNet, on the expense of retaining metadata for two years will cost the company an additional $130 million a year - $10 million for electricity alone - which will be passed on to consumers.

Back in 2007, a Scaled Composites rocket engine test killed three people and injured three others:

http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/3854

Now, if they ever come out with a "Flying Spaghetti Monster" edition, I might have to install it, if only just for the sake of it! Agree this distro is silly, per my criteria, but then hey - to each his own. It seems this has a following, which is kind of amazing.

If FreeBSD installed with its own soundtrack, wonder what it would be? Tangerine Dream?

Nope... Totally different combat areas.

Seem like the the aims of "the right to be forgotten" and this style of "data retention" law are in direct conflict.

1. Whether the numbers are correct or not, you're confusing per-month with per-year. $100-200 per-year works out to $8.34-16.67/month, making your internet service $59-65/month.

I never did get over my teenage rebellion years. :-)
But if I ever wanted something like that.... I would never use something preconfigured like that.
Would spoil all the fun. And where is the individuality?

The people who would seriously use this seem to me like they have never gotten over their teenage rebellion years...

/oldmanyellingatclouds

To 1: Hardly prevents any terroristic acts. Terroristic acts are quite rare. In my eyes terrorism is a very weak excuse to observe the whole population.

To 2: Easy for them to restrict themselves just to meta data. Sound good in the public... and is 100% sufficient to enforce copyright.

To 3: There is no internet provider, who does not quickly responds to c. p. take down notices. C. p. is the only thing where practically every country agrees on. And how much c. p. is there? I surf the net for more than 30 years and did not stumble upon any. You cannot openly advertize it. You cannot have ads on c. p. sites. To catch c. p. users and producers a much better and totally sufficient way is to follow the cash flow.
Here a good example, what really is significant for certain groups:

http://falkvinge.net/2012/05/23/cynicism-redefined-why-the-copyright-lobby-loves-child-porn/

I'd bet that if we were able to follow most of the lobbying paths for data retention, we would in more than 90% of all case end with the MPAA and RIAA. I all countries.

Again, I am completely against all this crap but:
1. Terrorism: Data retention can show who contacted who and when and hence lead to new suspects. For example see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_data_retention
"The authorities in Spain and the United Kingdom have claimed that retained telephony data made a significant contribution to police enquires into the 11 March 2004 Madrid train bombings and the 7 July 2005 London bombings."

2. The article/legislation is about storing metadata only and not content. Stuff like 'Hey, wanna help me to blast a building tomorrow?' won't be stored.

3. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-10-30/turnbull-introduces-data-retention-bill-to-parliament/5853156
"For example, in a current major child exploitation investigation, the AFP has been unable to identify 156 out of 463 potential suspects because certain internet service providers do not retain the necessary IP address allocation records,"

Of course 90% of this is politician's bull... but there must be at least a bit of truth in it.

The main goal of this proposed law is not copyright. Every government's/leader's/dictator's dream is to have a complete control of their people so they can retain power. Surveillance is a step towards it. Copyright is just an additional bonus.

The data retention is part of anti-terrorism legislation and it will be used for a variety of investigations (counterterrorism, organised crime, counter-espionage and cyber security). Yes, copyright enforcement also gets mentioned but I don't think it is not the main goal.

But copyright enforcement is the only area where data retention works. Terrorism? If you already have suspects, you don't need a new law. If you don't have suspects, I doubt that data retention helps. Want to search a billion emails for: 'Hey, wanna help me to blast a building tomorrow?'. Up to now I did not hear of a single case, which has been prevented or solved by internet surveillance. Same for organized crime, etc. So yes, I think copyright enforcement is the main goal. IMHO counterterrorism, organised crime, counter-espionage and cyber security... you forgot child porn... are just smoke screens.

Two things in the summary are misleading:
1. I want to know where $100 to $200 figure came from? It is not in the linked article and, as far as I know, no cost estimates have been released yet.
And it definitely sounds WAY TOO HIGH. Does it mean my Internet bill will go from $50 to $250???

2. "The data will be used for copyright enforcement and to track the exact location of mobile phone users."
This is VERY MISLEADING as it sounds that the main goal is copyright enforcement. The data retention is part of anti-terrorism legislation and it will be used for a variety of investigations (counterterrorism, organised crime, counter-espionage and cyber security). Yes, copyright enforcement also gets mentioned but I don't think it is not the main goal.

Having said that, I completely disagree with the proposed laws as they are more than open for abuse. Even "metadata" has not been defined yet.

And I agree with Tanuki64's comment how such laws are inevitable. The whole world is slowly turning into a police state. Unfortunately resistance is futile :-(

Look at the original TechCrunch article. I just shortened their headline. Furthermore the 'war' between the new payment service providers is currently hottest between Apple and MCX with MCX members shutting out Apple's tech.

Why the Apple-specific headline?As the summary mentions there are other players in the game. Why not mention them?Or even better have a headline without trying to catch people's attention by playing on Apple fanboyism or Apple hate.

Like the TPP and its ilk. Keep putting it up and eventually it will get through.

Maybe. But I really think this is not the same. In their own shops they have at least on one site total control. As payment service provider they are only middleman between unreliable customer and unreliable vendors. Maybe I overestimate the problems, this certainly is not my area of expertise. Nevertheless, before I would use one of those services, I'd wait a year or two and watch the news. I trust neither Apple, nor Google. For different reasons. MCX? Never heard of them before... so they are somewhat of a blank slate to me.

... I dunno about that. Certainly Apple and Google have a lot of experience transacting with customers, taking their money and getting them something in return. Hardware, software, media (songs, movies, etc).

OK - that's not exactly the same thing, but it's a lot of closely related stuff.

In addition to that, Apple has let you buy stuff in their stores by just scanning it with your iphone. So they are acting as their own payment service provider.

A single person, no not really. But all they would need is a partner. As for Apple, whether two employees qualify or the entire company is an entity is a matter of semantics.

What I originally meant was that there may be more motive to this than just trying to steal some information. Is there a better name for that?

Can a conspiracy really consist of a single act performed by a single individual?

I think you need more than a single actor to commit conspiracy. Even if Apple did it, its not a conspiracy, unless they involved other persons or companies not part of Apple.

Sure, they weren't attached by one of the main competitors, but since the announcement there have been a lot of angry users that don't like this concept. It's at least somewhat likely that one of them is trying to take it down. CurrentC's incompetence only made it easy.

The happy face and wink have immediately set me at ease. ;)

Yes. Only delayed. Sooner or later this bill will go through. It is just a matter of time. Same in Germany. A data retention law was rejected several times, but is reintroduced in almost regular intervals. The interests behind these laws are powerful and they have to succeed only once. Once such a law is enacted, it is almost impossible to repeal it again.

In that case: $0. Fits perfectly in option 1.

No "I'm broke' option?

Due to action by political groups this bill has been delayed
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2014/oct/30/abbott-government-agrees-to-delay-data-retention-bill-until-next-year

Awww... come on. The polls are fun polls. So they deserve fun responses. And fun responses are a sure sign that I am feeling
happy. :-D

And if I find something interesting, I put it into the pipe. Promised. :-) <--- Happy face. ;-) <--- *wink*

Well, they said in their press release they were going to study and learn from this error, so hopefully this will be one of the things they study: maybe we shouldn't buy our parts used and rely on others for quality control.

That's like planning your mission using ebay as your supply stream!

I've got to say: Pipedotters sure get their knickers in a twist fast over these polls! Hope you have better results electing your democratic leaders!

Tell you what: if you've got exactly $100 in your pocket, buy me a coffee, relax, and carry about your day. Had I put $0-99, $100-$199, etc., you'd have worried about the cents.

Life is short - be happy, not anxious! That's a public service message from your friendly, volunteer editor. (And once you're feeling happy again, post some stories - the Pipe is dry!)

The consumer is not the customer, the real customers are all their criminal partners. If they truly cared about the consumer, they wouldn't allow these fraudulent transgressions; but they do, because they get a cut of the action. Think about that the next time your writing them a check...

Sure. But exact $100? Not more, not less? Come on... some programmers here. And this is a not so rare fringe case, which must be anticipated and correctly handled. :-D

Obviously the first option is the lower bounds, and the second is higher. So if you have anything over exactly $100 in value, even if it's just worth a fraction of a cent, I'd go for the second on. Only just barely $100 and the first will do...

So do I

...exactly $100 in my pocket, which is the correct option to chose? $0-$100? Or $100-$300? ;-)

If you look at the pipe history, you'll see the submission from the AC repeatedly said "web" server, and the editors simply corrected one of the two to FTP.

Changing the subject line after publication can break links, so I'd rather not, except in extreme cases.

one Samsung Note 3 already puts me in the highest category.

A graph of the depreciation of high-end electronics looks like a baseball's trajectory due to the pull of gravity when it rolls off a table... eg. Something like this:

* http://cfpa.berkeley.edu/Education/ISTATPage/MiddleSchool/image14.jpg

Like any good insurance adjuster, I'd use the depreciated replacement value. Amazon will sell you a used Note 3 in good/very good condition for under $350:

* http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B00F2SDM00/ref=dp_olp_used?ie=UTF8&condition=used

If you're figuring it any other way, you might need to include the full price of the 2-year service contract your device is on, too. You might also run into the complication of your credit/debit/ID cards being reasonably valuable to a thief, while having only minimal or perhaps zero replacement cost for you.

I think this one has bigger potential than the bash-bug recently discussed. Very few are passing stuff down to a bash shell unfiltered

I do not think you understand the mechanism for ShellShock.

Maybe I'm just not seeing the connection, but why does the summary talk about a web server if the issue is with FTP?Edit: Sorry for the doublepost, damn trains and tunnels. :-)

Maybe I'm just not seeing the connection, but why does the summary talk about a web server if the issue is with FTP?

That question isn't exactly off topic, but it's not hard to find out, either. Microsoft is getting a cut in royalties on Android (related to FAT, I think?). Try this:

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=microsoft+royalties+android

The BBC is reporting $1B per year from Samsung alone, which is a decent chunk of change. Good thing, since Win8 isn't selling at all /snark.

Luckily as I have my phone on my desk and not my pocket this is easy for me as I can't be bothered to do a currency conversion :-)

aria2 comes to mind, but yes, wget is used almost everywhere.

Note that it applies only to using wget with both an FTP connexion and recursive flags, which significantly reduces it's potential.

Not to say that it is not a serious one, it is, but it's not as bad as wget on a http url for a single file (which is something I do daily). Now, that would be really messy.

no nvidia chips will be purchased on behalf of me, family or customers until nvidia opens up(which may never happen). I don't care how well it performs.

this looks like it has potential as an easy way for regular office users to create a disk level backup of their pc but it appears that it's not really suitable for this currently as it hasn't seen a release since 2012. No github page with recent changes, no contact or donate information to make things happen faster. Is this project even alive? A user posts in sourceforge(weak) that the recovery doesn't recognize multiple partitions and therefore thoroughly borks the restore. i noticed similar nonsense with clonezilla and it's grub/partition handling on restore. These disk clone guis need to handle disk partitions and bootloaders competently and transparently for end users or else they are more of a liability than anything.

how much $ does MS receive from sales?