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Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

ACTA Failure Inspires The Most Clueless Column Ever | Techdirt - 2 views

www.techdirt.com/...ost-clueless-column-ever.shtml

acta failure clueless column media politics ignorance culture freedom

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 14 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 14 Jul 12
     
    [from the do-these-people-think? dept Last week was a good week for those who believe in the internet and culture, with the rejection of ACTA being a key moment in Europe, on par with the rejection of SOPA in the US six months earlier. Of course, as we saw with the defeat of SOPA, a number of ACTA supporters who haven't come to terms with why the public was so upset are lashing out. One of the more outspoken responses against the EU Parliament's decision came from Ewan Morrison for The Guardian, in a piece that I honestly read over a few times to make sure it wasn't satire. I don't think there's a single truly accurate statement in the entire thing. It sets the bar of misinformation so high that I think from now on I will compare any clueless article to the newly developed Ewan Morrison scale of wrongness, with this column scoring a perfect 10 out of 10. Let's explore why. ...]
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Connected Continent: a single telecom market for growth & jobs - Digital Agenda for Europe - European Commission - 0 views

ec.europa.eu/...gle-telecom-market-growth-jobs

europe connected single telecom market european commission agenda jobs growth

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 03 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 03 Apr 14
     
    "In the face of the deep crisis affecting its economy and society, Europe needs to tap into new sources of growth in areas that will reinforce its competitiveness, drive innovation and create new job opportunities. " [Key information: Communication Regulation Recommendation Impact assessment Press release - Watch the press conference Memo Speech: We must act now - time for a Connected Continent Press conference opening remarks by Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the EC in charge of Digital Agenda Statement by Ryan Heath, Spokesperson for Digital Agenda on the Telecom Package Tags: Telecoms telecoms single market growth and jobs]
Gary Edwards

» 21 Facts About NSA Snooping That Every American Should Know Alex Jones' Infowars: There's a war on for your mind! - 0 views

www.infowars.com/hat-every-american-should-know

NSA-Patriot-Act-NDAA NSA-Whistleblower PRISM Echelon-SIGINT

shared by Gary Edwards on 19 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 19 Jun 13
     
    NSA-PRISM-Echelon in a nutshell.  The list below is a short sample.  Each fact is documented, and well worth the time reading. "The following are 21 facts about NSA snooping that every American should know…" #1 According to CNET, the NSA told Congress during a recent classified briefing that it does not need court authorization to listen to domestic phone calls… #2 According to U.S. Representative Loretta Sanchez, members of Congress learned "significantly more than what is out in the media today" about NSA snooping during that classified briefing. #3 The content of all of our phone calls is being recorded and stored.  The following is a from a transcript of an exchange between Erin Burnett of CNN and former FBI counterterrorism agent Tim Clemente which took place just last month… #4 The chief technology officer at the CIA, Gus Hunt, made the following statement back in March… "We fundamentally try to collect everything and hang onto it forever." #5 During a Senate Judiciary Oversight Committee hearing in March 2011, FBI Director Robert Mueller admitted that the intelligence community has the ability to access emails "as they come in"… #6 Back in 2007, Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell told Congress that the president has the "constitutional authority" to authorize domestic spying without warrants no matter when the law says. #7 The Director Of National Intelligence James Clapper recently told Congress that the NSA was not collecting any information about American citizens.  When the media confronted him about his lie, he explained that he "responded in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful manner". #8 The Washington Post is reporting that the NSA has four primary data collection systems… MAINWAY, MARINA, METADATA, PRISM #9 The NSA knows pretty much everything that you are doing on the Internet.  The following is a short excerpt from a recent Yahoo article… #10 The NSA is suppose
Gary Edwards

Two Microsofts: Mulling an alternate reality | ZDNet - 1 views

www.zdnet.com/n-alternate-reality-7000016916

Microsoft microsoft-monopoly Judge-Thomas-Penfield-Jackson

shared by Gary Edwards on 19 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Judge Jackson had it right. And the Court of Appeals? Not so much
  • Judge Jackson is an American hero and news of his passing thumped me hard. His ruling against Microsoft and the subsequent overturn of that ruling resulted, IMHO, in two extraordinary directions that changed the world. Sure the what-if game is interesting, but the reality itself is stunning enough. Of course, Judge Jackson sought to break the monopoly. The US Court of Appeals overturn resulted in the monopoly remaining intact, but the Internet remaining free and open. Judge Jackson's breakup plan had a good shot at achieving both a breakup of the monopoly and, a free and open Internet. I admit though that at the time I did not favor the Judge's plan. And i actually did submit a proposal based on Microsoft having to both support the WiNE project, and, provide a complete port to WiNE to any software provider requesting a port. I wanted to break the monopolist's hold on the Windows Productivity Environment and the hundreds of millions of investment dollars and time that had been spent on application development forever trapped on that platform. For me, it was the productivity platform that had to be broken.
  • I assume the good Judge thought that separating the Windows OS from Microsoft Office / Applications would force the OS to open up the secret API's even as the OS continued to evolve. Maybe. But a full disclosure of the API's coupled with the community service "port to WiNE" requirement might have sped up the process. Incredibly, the "Undocumented Windows Secrets" industry continues to thrive, and the legendary Andrew Schulman's number is still at the top of Silicon Valley legal profession speed dials. http://goo.gl/0UGe8 Oh well. The Court of Appeals stopped the breakup, leaving the Windows Productivity Platform intact. Microsoft continues to own the "client" in "Client/Server" computing. Although Microsoft was temporarily stopped from leveraging their desktop monopoly to an iron fisted control and dominance of the Internet, I think what were watching today with the Cloud is Judge Jackson's worst nightmare. And mine too. A great transition is now underway, as businesses and enterprises begin the move from legacy client/server business systems and processes to a newly emerging Cloud Productivity Platform. In this great transition, Microsoft holds an inside straight. They have all the aces because they own the legacy desktop productivity platform, and can control the transition to the Cloud. No doubt this transition is going to happen. And it will severely disrupt and change Microsoft's profit formula. But if the Redmond reprobate can provide a "value added" transition of legacy business systems and processes, and direct these new systems to the Microsoft Cloud, the profits will be immense.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Judge Jackson sought to break the ability of Microsoft to "leverage" their existing monopoly into the Internet and his plan was overturned and replaced by one based on judicial oversight. Microsoft got a slap on the wrist from the Court of Appeals, but were wailed on with lawsuits from the hundreds of parties injured by their rampant criminality. Some put the price of that criminality as high as $14 Billion in settlements. Plus, the shareholders forced Chairman Bill to resign. At the end of the day though, Chairman Bill was right. Keeping the monopoly intact was worth whatever penalty Microsoft was forced to pay. He knew that even the judicial over-site would end one day. Which it did. And now his company is ready to go for it all by leveraging and controlling the great productivity transition. No business wants to be hostage to a cold heart'd monopolist. But there is huge difference between a non-disruptive and cost effective, process-by-process value-added transition to a Cloud Productivity Platform, and, the very disruptive and costly "rip-out-and-replace" transition offered by Google, ZOHO, Box, SalesForce and other Cloud Productivity contenders. Microsoft, and only Microsoft, can offer the value-added transition path. If they get the Cloud even halfway right, they will own business productivity far into the future. Rest in Peace Judge Jackson. Your efforts were heroic and will be remembered as such. ~ge~
  • Gary Edwards on 19 Jun 13
     
    Comments on the latest SVN article mulling the effects of Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson's anti trust ruling and proposed break up of Microsoft. comment: "Chinese Wall" Ummm, there was a Chinese Wall between Microsoft Os and the MS Applciations layer. At least that's what Chairman Bill promised developers at a 1990 OS/2-Windows Conference I attended. It was a developers luncheon, hosted by Microsoft, with Chairman Bill speaking to about 40 developers with applications designed to run on the then soon to be released Windows 3.0. In his remarks, the Chairman described his vision of commoditizing the personal computer market through an open hardware-reference platform on the one side of the Windows OS, and provisioning an open application developers layer on the other using open and totally transparent API's. Of course the question came up concerning the obvious advantage Microsoft applications would have. Chairman Bill answered the question by describing the Chinese Wall that existed between Microsoft's OS and Apps develop departments. He promised that OS API's would be developed privately and separate from the Apps department, and publicly disclosed to ALL developers at the same time. Oh yeah. There was lots of anti IBM - evil empire stuff too :) Of course we now know this was a line of crap. Microsoft Apps was discovered to have been using undocumented and secret Window API's. http://goo.gl/0UGe8. Microsoft Apps had a distinct advantage over the competition, and eventually the entire Windows Productivity Platform became dependent on the MSOffice core. The company I worked for back then, Pyramid Data, had the first Contact Management application for Windows; PowerLeads. Every Friday night we would release bug fixes and improvements using Wildcat BBS. By Monday morning we would be slammed with calls from users complaining that they had downloaded the Friday night patch, and now some other application would not load or function properly. Eventually we tracked th
Paul Merrell

Mozilla Sets New Plans for Do Not Track Browser | Adweek - 0 views

www.adweek.com/...ad-do-not-track-browser-150487

privacy digital-privacy tracking-cookies Mozilla

shared by Paul Merrell on 21 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Much to the disappointment of the digital advertising establishment, Mozilla is going ahead with plans to automatically block third-party cookie tracking in its Firefox browser. Mozilla first announced its Do Not Track browser in February, only to back off in May saying it needed to do more testing. But that didn't stop a growing chorus of loud protests from the advertising community, which argued that the browser would choke off the ad-supported Internet. The Interactive Advertising Bureau's general counsel Mike Zaneis called Mozilla's browser nothing less than a "nuclear first strike" against the ad community. No date has been set for when Firefox will turn on the feature, but advertisers, which have been regularly meeting with Mozilla and were hopeful for a compromise, are already lashing back at Mozilla.
  • "It's troubling," said Lou Mastria, the managing director for the Digital Advertising Alliance, which manages an online self-regulatory program called Ad Choices that provides consumers with the choice to opt-out of targeted ads. "They're putting this under the cloak of privacy, but it's disrupting a business model," Mastria said. Advertisers are worried that Mozilla's plans could be the death knell to thousands of small Web publishers that depend on third-party targeted ads to stay in business. Nearly 1,000 signed a petition urging Mozilla to change its plans.  "One publisher said that 20 percent of their business would go away. That's huge," said Mastria. "Mozilla is really picking business model winners and losers."
  • Not all cookies will be blocked under Mozilla's latest plans for its proposed browser; there will be exceptions. Through a partnership with the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, the two are launching a Cookie Clearinghouse. Overseen by a six-person panel, it will determine a list of undesirable cookies and then block those. "The Cookie Clearinghouse will create, maintain and publish objective information," Aleecia McDonald, director of privacy at CIS, said in a statement. "Web browser companies will be able to choose to adopt the lists we publish to provide new privacy options to their users." But others say the approach is far from objective. "What these organizations and the privacy groups that back them are really saying is 'let us choose for you because we know best,' " said Daniel Castro, a senior analyst with the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. "The proponents of this model have claimed they are empowering users. ... This is basically Sarah Palin's 'Death Panels' but for the Internet."
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Advertisers have so far resisted some of the Do Not Track proposals advocated by privacy groups arguing they are technological solutions that could quickly be rendered obsolete by the fast-moving Internet economy. When Micosoft launched its Do Not Track default browser, advertisers said they would not honor it. Meanwhile, members of the World Wide Web Consortium's tracking group, represented by advertisers, privacy groups and other stakeholders, have been unable to reach consensus about a universal Do Not Track browser solution. In Congress, where baseline privacy legislation has moved at a glacial pace, Mozilla's news gave Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) more ammunition for his Do Not Track Online Act. Introduced earlier this year, the bill hasn't gotten much traction and only has one co-sponsor, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). "With major Web browsers now starting to provide privacy protections by default, it's even more important to give businesses the regulatory certainty they need and consumers the privacy protections they deserve," Rockefeller said in a statement. "I hope this will end the emerging back and forth so we can act quickly to pass new legislation."
  • Paul Merrell on 21 Jun 13
     
    Cookie Clearinghouse. Overseen by a six-person panel, it will determine a list of undesirable cookies and then block those.
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

EU Starts Geo-Blocking Antitrust Case Against U.S Movie Studios - TorrentFreak - 0 views

torrentfreak.com/ainst-u-s-movie-studios-150723

EU starts geoblcking antitrust case against US movie studios intellectual property enforcers don't agree themselves

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 23 Jul 15 - No Cached
    • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.
      Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 23 Jul 15
       
      # ! Oh, Oh: #IntellectualProperty 'Enforcers' # ! don't agree even among themselves...
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 23 Jul 15
     
    [ By Ernesto on July 23, 2015 C: 41 Breaking The European Union has today launched an antitrust investigation against several large U.S. movie studios and Sky UK. The European Commission wants to abolish geographical restrictions and has sent a statement of objections over the geo-blocking practices of six major US film studios including Disney, Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. ...]
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Federal court rules in favor of NSA bulk snooping, White House happy - RT USA - 3 views

www.rt.com/...313740-federal-court-nsa-spy

federal court rules favor nsa bulk data communications snooping spying citizens legal :(

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 28 Aug 15 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 28 Aug 15
     
    "Despite the opposition of the US public and lawmakers to NSA surveillance, the courts keep handing the Obama administration the license to snoop. A US appeals court just threw out a 2013 verdict against the NSA, to White House approval. "
  • ...1 more comment...
  • Paul Merrell on 28 Aug 15
     
    I've read the court's decision. The article in RT overstates the breadth of the court's holding very substantially. The court did not throw the case out. Instead, by a 2-1 vote it vacated the district court's grant of a preliminary injunction and remanded the case for further proceedings including for the lower court judge to decide whether discovery should be allowed. The third judge would have thrown the case out. The decision does, however, steepen the slope the plaintiffs must climb to prevail in a renewed effort to obtain an injunction. That is regrettable, in my view. The article states: "The decision vindicates the government's stance that NSA's bulk surveillance programs are constitutional, the White House said Friday." In fact, the court's decision does not even touch on the topic of the program's constitutionality, reaching only the issue of standing. The article should either have omitted the statement or pointed out the error in the government's statement.
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 01 Sep 15
     
    # ! thank You, Paul, for the observation. anyway, what it seems is that Citizens worldwide are going to be spied... judges aside, and -I'm afraid- not always with 'security issues' in the Agency's mind...
  • Paul Merrell on 01 Sep 15
     
    I agree, Gonzalo. Most of the "terrorist" groups the U.S. claims to be concerned with were in fact created by the U.S. Terrorism is simply the easiest means for the government to defend these surveillance programs. But the disclosures that the NSA spies for other purposes just doesn't get the coverage in mainstream media that might otherwise force changes. It's the Politics of Fear.
Paul Merrell

After Two Years, White House Finally Responds to Snowden Pardon Petition - With a "No" - 1 views

firstlook.org/...sponds-snowden-pardon-petition

surveillance state Snowden pardon petititon Obama

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • The White House on Tuesday ended two years of ignoring a hugely popular whitehouse.gov petition calling for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden to be “immediately issued a full, free, and absolute pardon,” saying thanks for signing, but no. “We live in a dangerous world,” Lisa Monaco, President Obama’s adviser on homeland security and terrorism, said in a statement. More than 167,000 people signed the petition, which surpassed the 100,000 signatures that the White House’s “We the People” website said would garner a guaranteed response on June 24, 2013. In Tuesday’s response, the White House acknowledged that “This is an issue that many Americans feel strongly about.”
  • Monaco then explained her position: “Instead of constructively addressing these issues, Mr. Snowden’s dangerous decision to steal and disclose classified information had severe consequences for the security of our country and the people who work day in and day out to protect it.” Snowden didn’t actually disclose any classified information — news organizations including the Guardian, Washington Post, New York Times and The Intercept did the disclosing. And the Obama administration has yet to specify any “severe consequences” that can be independently confirmed.
  • The White House on Tuesday ended two years of ignoring a hugely popular whitehouse.gov petition calling for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden to be “immediately issued a full, free, and absolute pardon,” saying thanks for signing, but no. “We live in a dangerous world,” Lisa Monaco, President Obama’s adviser on homeland security and terrorism, said in a statement. More than 167,000 people signed the petition, which surpassed the 100,000 signatures that the White House’s “We the People” website said would garner a guaranteed response on June 24, 2013. In Tuesday’s response, the White House acknowledged that “This is an issue that many Americans feel strongly about.”
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • The Snowden response was one of 20 responses to what the White House called “our We the People backlog.” The White House had been criticized for avoiding uncomfortable topics despite their popular support. On Twitter, the responses to the Snowden response, some from signers of the petition, were highly critica
¡%@&# Dizzywizard

Google's Schmidt: People Upset With Street View Can Always Move | John Paczkowski | Digital Daily | AllThingsD - 1 views

digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/...ographing-your-house-then-move

google people schmidt ericschmidt wtf? privacy internet news spys streerview

shared by ¡%@&# Dizzywizard on 25 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • ¡%@&# Dizzywizard on 25 Oct 10
     
    WTF? do no evil? why does he come out with such statements ??
  • ¡%@&# Dizzywizard on 25 Oct 10
     
    wtf?
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Attachmate says openSUSE lives, UNIX copyrights not sold to MS - 0 views

arstechnica.com/...-copyrights-not-sold-to-ms.ars

Attachmate openSUSe UNIX Linux copyrights not sold to MS

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 30 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 30 Nov 10
     
    [A lot of unanswered questions lingered after Attachmate announced that it has negotiated an agreement to acquire Linux vendor Novell earlier this month. The company has since issued official statements to clear up several notable points of concern. Attachmate intends to continue developing the SUSE platform and will support the community-driven openSUSE project. The company has also confirmed that it has retained the UNIX copyrights, the intellectual property at the heart of the SCO dispute. ...]
Paul Merrell

Microsoft Loses E.U. Antitrust Case - washingtonpost.com - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...AR2009011604570.html

Microsoft Opera DG Competion MSIE Windows antitrust tying

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Jan 09 - Cached
  • It ordered the software giant to untie the browser from its operating system in the 27-nation E.U.
  • The commission's investigation into Microsoft's Web-surfing software began a year ago, after the Norwegian browser-maker Opera Software filed a complaint. Opera argued that Microsoft hurt competitors not only by bundling the software, in effect giving away the browser, but also by not following accepted Web standards. That meant programmers who built Web pages would have to tweak their codes for different browsers. In many cases, they simply designed pages that worked with market-leading Internet Explorer but showed up garbled on competing browsers.
  • At the time of the complaint, Opera said it was asking E.U. regulators to either force Microsoft to market a version of Windows without the browser, or to include other browsers with Windows.
  • Paul Merrell on 17 Jan 09
     
    The Post too says that DG Competition ordered the unbundling of MSIE from Windows. But again no attribution for the statement. They also leave the impression that Opera's complaint regarding the undermining of open web standards was upheld, something not stated in either the Microsoft or DG Competition announcements. So the questions of the day are: [i] did the Commission order the unbundling of MSIE from Windows; and [ii] did the Commission also rule on the undermining of open web standards. The latter question could be of critical importance in the still ongoing proceeding regarding the ECIS complaint in regard to the undermining of ODF by Microsoft pushing OOXML.
Paul Merrell

Microsoft Ordered to Delete Browser - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...17soft.html

Microsoft Opera DG Competion MSIE Windows tying antitrust

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Jan 09 - Cached
  • BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union said Friday that Microsoft’s practice of selling the Internet Explorer browser together with its Windows operating system violated the union’s antitrust rules. It ordered the software giant to untie the browser from its operating system in the 27-nation union, enabling makers of rival browsers to compete fairly.
  • Paul Merrell on 17 Jan 09
     
    The Times goes farther than the DG Competition announcement, saying that Microsoft has been ordered to untie MSIE from Windows throughout the E.U. No source is attributed for the statement. The DG Competition announcement does not state what remedy it proposes to order. So take this report with a grain of salt. The Times is well capable of error.
Paul Merrell

EU/Antitrust cases from 39514 to 39592 - 0 views

ec.europa.eu/...by_nr_79.html

Microsoft DG Competition antitrust MSIE tying

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Jan 09 - Cached
  • COMP/39.530 - Microsoft (Tying) Microsoft 14.01.2008 MemoAntitrust: Commission initiates formal investigations against Microsoft in two cases of suspected abuse of dominant market position 14.01.2008 Opening of Proceedings Concerns economic activity: C33.2
  • Paul Merrell on 17 Jan 09
     
    When the DG Competition statement of objections regarding the tying of MSIE to Windows appears, it should appear here, under COMP/39.530.
Paul Merrell

Connecting the Globe: A Regulator's Guide to Building a Global Information Community - 0 views

www.fcc.gov/...welcome.html

connected world interop regulation incentives disincentives

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Jan 09 - Cached
  • Paul Merrell on 13 Jan 09
     
    Mid-Clinton-era government document giving the overview of the then-current U.S. government strategy for building a connected world. Chapter IX, "The Internet," is a particularly interesting short read, particularly the central nature of the "hands off" regulatory policy that anticipates minimal regulatory involvement. The policy statement does not rule out regulation, but suggests that it should be the minimal amount of regulation necessary to make things work.
Gary Edwards

AppleInsider | Intel says iPhone not capable of 'full Internet' - 0 views

www.appleinsider.com/..._capable_of_full_internet.html

x86 wintel powerpv atom arm apple intel openCL openGL

shared by Gary Edwards on 02 Jan 09 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 02 Jan 09
     
    "If you want to run full internet, you're going to have to run an Intel-based architecture," Wall told the gathering of engineers. He said the "iPhone struggles" when tasked with running "any sort of application that requires any horse power." When i read this, the proverbial light went on. The WinTel empire was based on business software applications requiring a DOS-Windows OS running on Intel x86 architecture. The duopoly became legendary for it's efforts to maintain control over all things software. This statement however says something else. Intel believes that the Web platform is the platform of the future; not Windows! Intel is determined to promote this idea that the Web runs best on an Intel architecture. Interesting change of perspective for partner Microsoft.
Gary Edwards

Sun Labs Lively Kernel - 0 views

research.sun.com/lively

chrome javafx lively-kernel ria silverlight webkit

shared by Gary Edwards on 08 Sep 08 - Cached
  • Main features The main features of the Lively Kernel include: Small web programming environment and computing kernel, written entirely with JavaScript. In addition to its application execution capabilities, the platform can also function as an integrated development environment (IDE), making the whole system self-contained and able to improve and extend itself on the fly. Programmatic access to the user interface. Our system provides programmatic access from JavaScript to the user interface via the Morphic user interface framework. The user interface is built around an event-based programming model familiar to most web developers. Asynchronous networking. As in Ajax, you can use asynchronous HTTP to perform all the network operations asynchronously, without blocking the user interface.
  • Gary Edwards on 08 Sep 08
     
    "The Sun Labs Lively Kernel is a new web programming environment developed at Sun Microsystems Laboratories. The Lively Kernel supports desktop-style applications with rich graphics and direct manipulation capabilities, but without the installation or upgrade hassles that conventional desktop applications have. The system is written entirely in the JavaScript programming language, a language supported by all the web browsers, with the intent that the system can run in commercial web browsers without installation or any plug-in components. The system leverages the dynamic characteristics of the JavaScript language to make it possible to create, modify and deploy applications on the fly, using tools built into the system itself. In addition to its application execution capabilities, the Lively Kernel can also function as an integrated development environment (IDE), making the whole system self-sufficient and able to improve and extend itself dynamically....." Too little too late? Interestingly, Lively Kernel is 100% JavaScript. Check out this "motivation" rational: "...The main goal of the Lively Kernel is to bring the same kind of simplicity, generality and flexibility to web programming that we have known in desktop programming for thirty years, but without the installation and upgrade hassles than conventional desktop applications have. The Lively Kernel places a special emphasis on treating web applications as real applications, as opposed to the document-oriented nature of most web applications today. In general, we want to put programming into web development, as opposed to the current weaving of HTML, XML and CSS documents that is also sometimes referred to as programming. ...." I agree with the Web document <> Web Application statement. I think the shift though is one where the RiA frames web documents in a new envirnement, blending in massive amounts of data, streaming media and graphics. The WebKit docuemnt model was designed for this p
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

No, Department of Justice, 80 Percent of Tor Traffic Is Not Child Porn | WIRED [# ! Via Note] - 0 views

www.wired.com/...percent-tor-traffic-child-porn

tor traffic pornography official statistics false lies stiffle people's right privacy spurious interests politics

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 31 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • The debate over online anonymity, and&nbsp;all the whistleblowers, trolls, anarchists, journalists and political dissidents it enables, is messy enough. It doesn’t need the US government making up bogus statistics about how much that anonymity facilitates child pornography.
  • he debate over online anonymity, and&nbsp;all the whistleblowers, trolls, anarchists, journalists and political dissidents it enables, is messy enough. It doesn’t need the US government making up bogus statistics about how much that anonymity facilitates child pornography. At&nbsp;the State of the Net conference in Washington on Tuesday, US assistant attorney general Leslie Caldwell discussed what she described as the dangers of encryption and cryptographic anonymity tools like Tor, and how those tools can hamper law enforcement. Her statements are the latest in a growing drumbeat of federal criticism of tech companies and software projects that provide privacy and anonymity at the expense of surveillance. And as an example of the grave risks presented by that privacy, she cited a study she said claimed an overwhelming majority of Tor’s anonymous traffic relates to pedophilia. “Tor obviously was created with good intentions, but it’s a huge problem for law enforcement,” Caldwell said in comments reported by Motherboard&nbsp;and confirmed to me by others who attended the conference. “We understand 80 percent of traffic on the Tor network involves child pornography.” That statistic is horrifying. It’s also baloney.
  • In a series of tweets that followed Caldwell’s statement, a Department of Justice flack said Caldwell was citing a University of Portsmouth study WIRED covered in December. He included a link to our story. But I made clear at the time that the study claimed 80 percent of traffic to Tor hidden services related to child pornography, not 80 percent of all Tor traffic. That is a huge, and important, distinction. The vast majority of Tor’s users run the free anonymity software while visiting conventional websites, using it to route their traffic through encrypted hops around the globe to avoid censorship and surveillance. But Tor also allows websites to run Tor, something known as a Tor hidden service. This collection of hidden sites, which comprise what’s often referred to as the “dark web,” use Tor to obscure the physical location of the servers that run them. Visits to those dark web sites account for only 1.5 percent of all Tor traffic, according to the software’s creators at the non-profit Tor Project. The University of Portsmouth study dealt exclusively with visits to hidden services. In contrast to Caldwell’s 80 percent claim, the Tor Project’s director Roger Dingledine pointed out last month that the study’s pedophilia findings refer to something closer to a single percent of Tor’s overall traffic.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • So to whoever at the Department of Justice is preparing these talking points for public consumption: Thanks for citing my&nbsp;story. Next time, please try reading it.
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 02 Feb 15
     
    [# Via Paul Merrell's Diigo...] "That is a huge, and important, distinction. The vast majority of Tor's users run the free anonymity software while visiting conventional websites, using it to route their traffic through encrypted hops around the globe to avoid censorship and surveillance. But Tor also allows websites to run Tor, something known as a Tor hidden service. This collection of hidden sites, which comprise what's often referred to as the "dark web," use Tor to obscure the physical location of the servers that run them. Visits to those dark web sites account for only 1.5 percent of all Tor traffic, according to the software's creators at the non-profit Tor Project."
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 02 Feb 15
     
    [# Via Paul Merrell's Diigo...] "That is a huge, and important, distinction. The vast majority of Tor's users run the free anonymity software while visiting conventional websites, using it to route their traffic through encrypted hops around the globe to avoid censorship and surveillance. But Tor also allows websites to run Tor, something known as a Tor hidden service. This collection of hidden sites, which comprise what's often referred to as the "dark web," use Tor to obscure the physical location of the servers that run them. Visits to those dark web sites account for only 1.5 percent of all Tor traffic, according to the software's creators at the non-profit Tor Project."
Paul Merrell

European Lawmakers Demand Answers on Phone Key Theft - The Intercept - 0 views

firstlook.org/...gemalto-heist-shocks-europe

surveillance state Gemalto SIM-card-keys

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • European officials are demanding answers and investigations into a joint U.S. and U.K. hack of the world’s largest manufacturer of mobile SIM cards, following a report published by The Intercept Thursday. The report, based on leaked documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, revealed the U.S. spy agency and its British counterpart Government Communications Headquarters, GCHQ, hacked the Franco-Dutch digital security giant Gemalto in a sophisticated heist of encrypted cell-phone keys. The European Parliament’s chief negotiator on the European Union’s data protection law, Jan Philipp Albrecht, said the hack was “obviously based on some illegal activities.” “Member states like the U.K. are frankly not respecting the [law of the] Netherlands and partner states,” Albrecht told the Wall Street Journal. Sophie in ’t Veld, an EU parliamentarian with D66, the Netherlands’ largest opposition party, added, “Year after year we have heard about cowboy practices of secret services, but governments did nothing and kept quiet […] In fact, those very same governments push for ever-more surveillance capabilities, while it remains unclear how effective these practices are.”
  • “If the average IT whizzkid breaks into a company system, he’ll end up behind bars,” In ’t Veld added in a tweet Friday. The EU itself is barred from undertaking such investigations, leaving individual countries responsible for looking into cases that impact their national security matters. “We even get letters from the U.K. government saying we shouldn’t deal with these issues because it’s their own issue of national security,” Albrecht said. Still, lawmakers in the Netherlands are seeking investigations. Gerard Schouw, a Dutch member of parliament, also with the D66 party, has called on Ronald Plasterk, the Dutch minister of the interior, to answer questions before parliament. On Tuesday, the Dutch parliament will debate Schouw’s request. Additionally, European legal experts tell The Intercept,&nbsp;public prosecutors in EU member states that&nbsp;are both party to the Cybercrime Convention, which&nbsp;prohibits computer hacking, and home to Gemalto subsidiaries could pursue investigations into the breach of the company’s systems.
  • According to secret documents from 2010 and 2011, a joint NSA-GCHQ unit penetrated Gemalto’s internal networks and infiltrated the private communications of its employees in order to steal encryption keys, embedded on tiny SIM cards, which are used to protect the privacy of cellphone communications across the world. Gemalto produces some 2 billion SIM cards a year. The company’s clients include AT&amp;T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint and some 450 wireless network providers. “[We] believe we have their entire network,” GCHQ boasted in a leaked slide, referring to the Gemalto heist.
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  • While Gemalto was indeed another casualty in Western governments’ sweeping effort to gather as much global intelligence advantage as possible, the leaked documents make clear that the company was specifically targeted. According to the materials published Thursday, GCHQ used a specific codename&nbsp;—&nbsp;DAPINO GAMMA — to refer to the operations against Gemalto. The spies also actively penetrated the email and social media accounts of Gemalto employees across the world in an effort to steal the company’s encryption keys. Evidence of the Gemalto breach rattled the digital security community. “Almost everyone in the world carries cell phones and this is an unprecedented mass attack on the privacy of citizens worldwide,” said Greg Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy &amp; Technology, a non-profit that advocates for digital privacy and free online expression. “While there is certainly value in targeted surveillance of cell phone communications, this coordinated subversion of the trusted technical security infrastructure of cell phones means the US and British governments now have easy access to our mobile communications.”
  • For Gemalto, evidence that their vaunted security systems and the privacy of customers had been compromised by the world’s top spy agencies made an immediate financial impact. The company’s shares took a dive on the Paris bourse Friday, falling $500 million. In the U.S., Gemalto’s shares fell as much 10 percent Friday morning. They had recovered somewhat — down 4&nbsp;percent — by the close of trading on the Euronext stock&nbsp;exchange. Analysts at Dutch financial services company Rabobank speculated in a research note that Gemalto could be forced to recall “a large number” of SIM cards. The French daily L’Express noted today that Gemalto board member Alex Mandl was a founding trustee of the CIA-funded venture capital firm In-Q-Tel. Mandl resigned from In-Q-Tel’s board in 2002, when he was&nbsp;appointed&nbsp;CEO of Gemplus, which later merged with another company to become Gemalto. But the CIA connection still dogged Mandl, with the French press regularly&nbsp;insinuating&nbsp;that American spies could infiltrate the company. In 2003, a group of French lawmakers&nbsp;tried unsuccessfully&nbsp;to create a commission to investigate Gemplus’s ties to the CIA and its&nbsp;implications for the security of SIM cards.&nbsp;Mandl, an Austrian-American businessman who was once a top executive at AT&amp;T, has denied that he had any relationship with the CIA beyond In-Q-Tel. In 2002, he said he did not even have a security clearance.
  • AT&amp;T, T-Mobile and Verizon could not be reached for comment Friday. Sprint declined to comment. Vodafone, the world’s second largest telecom provider by subscribers and a customer of Gemalto, said in a statement, “[W]e have no further details of these allegations which are industrywide in nature and are not focused on any one mobile operator. We will support industry bodies and Gemalto in their investigations.” Deutsche Telekom AG, a German company, said it has changed encryption algorithms in its Gemalto SIM cards. “We currently have no knowledge that this additional protection mechanism has been compromised,” the company said in a statement. “However, we cannot rule out this completely.”
  • Update: Asked about the SIM card heist,&nbsp;White House press secretary Josh Earnest said he did not expect the news would hurt relations with the tech industry: “It’s hard for me to imagine that there are a lot of technology executives that are out there that are in a position of saying that they hope that people who wish harm to this country will be able to use their technology to do so.&nbsp;So, I do think in fact that there are opportunities for the private sector and the federal government to coordinate and to cooperate on these efforts, both to keep the country safe, but also to protect our civil liberties.”
  • Paul Merrell on 24 Feb 15
     
    Watch for massive class action product defect litigation to be filed against the phone companies.and mobile device manufacturers.  In most U.S. jurisdictions, proof that the vendors/manufacturers  knew of the product defect is not required, only proof of the defect. Also, this is a golden opportunity for anyone who wants to get out of a pricey cellphone contract, since providing a compromised cellphone is a material breach of warranty, whether explicit or implied..   
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

OFE: 'Continued discrimination in IT procurement' | Joinup - 0 views

joinup.ec.europa.eu/...-discrimination-it-procurement

OFE OpenForum Europe discrimination IT procurement

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 17 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 17 Jul 14
     
    "Submitted by Gijs Hillenius on July 16, 2014 ( Cancel rating Poor Okay Good Great Awesome ) 5/5 | 1 votes | 63 reads | Public administrations across Europe continue to discriminate in their IT calls for tender by asking for specific brands and products, concludes OpenForum Europe, and organisation advocating for an open, competitive ICT market. "Thousands of small IT firms are excluded from competing in the public procurement process by restrictions such as the naming of trademarks in calls for tender", said Graham Taylor, OFE's CEO, in a press statement."
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Italian Parliament Publishes Draft Internet Bill Of Rights | Techdirt - 0 views

www.techdirt.com/...aft-internet-bill-rights.shtml

italian parliament draft internet bill of rights rights bill Europe W@rld

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 21 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 21 Oct 14
     
    "For several years, Techdirt covered the twists and turns of the "Marco Civil" saga, Brazil's bill of rights for the Internet, which finally passed back in March. Rather depressingly, this welcome move seemed to be something of a one-off, but now the Italian Parliament has announced its own draft bill of rights. Here's the introduction (original in Italian -- pdf): ... Statement of Rights on the Internet ...
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