Saran999

I still don't get it... please, may you make some sketch for me?

How sad...

Weird... follow their advice and contact customer support... at least you may gain a free laugh!

Here's a fun video from the Everything Apple Pro blog. It's a race between iPhones. Every model is lined up, powered off, powered on and otherwise tested. Which one is fastest? We'll let you see for yourself but here's one spoiler alert: The tester concludes that if you already have an iPhone 5, there's no need to upgrade. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8eSrdgTHhK0 There are, of course, other reasons you might want one of Apple's newest phones...

Just in time for the impending shutdown of the federal government, Microsoft’s Windows Azure today received the thumbs up from the feds. In a blog post this morning, Microsoft federal chief technology officer Susie Adams announced that Azure was granted Provisional Authority to Operate (P-ATO) status from the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program’s (FedRAMP) Joint Authorization Board. That’s one step away from a full Authority to Operate (ATO) status, but Microsoft doesn’t seem bothered: Adams called the certification an “honor” in a press release. FedRAMP certification means the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, and the U.S. General Services Administration deem the platform secure — at least from nefarious hackers outside the NSA — which will help Microsoft snag lucrative government contracts (Amazon Web Services’ CIA contract is worth $600 million). Microsoft was unwilling to reveal any details surrounding current discussions with government agencies, but it pointed to San Jose’s adoption of Azure as proof of governmental interest in its cloud offerings. Beginning June 2014, FedRAMP’s security requirements will become mandatory for cloud-service providers seeking to provide IT to government agencies, so cloud vendors are racing to attain the highly coveted status. HP, Akamai, AT&T, and a few other vendors have already received their P-ATO status from the FedRAMP, while Amazon Web Services boasts a full ATO status. The federal government is working on a number of projects with Amazon, Microsoft, and other cloud providers to bring their IT infrastructure to the cloud. But if U.S. lawmakers fail to avert a government shutdown by midnight — which would be the first in 17 years — it could lead to significant delays in this infrastructural transition.

For the first time in 17 years, we’re staring down the barrel of an imminent government shutdown. Why? Congress must pass laws in order to spend money, but so far the Republican-led House and Democrat-led Senate have not been able to agree on a bill to fund the government. And so, by law, when Congress proves unable to agree on how to fund large sections of the federal government, those sections must be shut down when spending powers expire at midnight tonight. Here’s what you need to know: Adversaries in Congress, who have been unable to reach agreement on a budget for years, are even at odds over what a stopgap measure might look like to avert the crisis, so a shutdown seems virtually certain. When this happens, many federal agencies will be forced to shut their doors and send their employees home. Thousands of “non-excepted” workers will be out on furlough until the end of the shutdown, and “essential” workers will have to work without pay. More than 800,000 out of over 2 million federal workers will be sent home. The economy will certainly suffer. Uncertainty is a curse for all business owners — the ability to plan effectively for growth relies on stability in the policy areas that impact their business. The impact of sequestration and the credit-rating downgrade have already taken their toll, and the markets have again taken a hit over the last two weeks. For context, the last four-week shutdown in 1995 cut GDP growth by 0.5% But how does this affect the tech economy? As Engine highlighted with its most recent research, new and young tech-sector businesses play an outsized role in job creation and economic growth. As a result, the impact of a shutdown on this high-growth sector could reverberate back around the economy as a whole. Here’s how a shutdown could impact the technology sector, in particular: 1. Every company in America that does business with the federal government would be affected by late payments, and all government contractors will be out of a job. This would be felt at Microsoft and Google with their big government contracts, right down to workers who provide government IT services to small businesses. 2. We will experience delays to passport and visa services. H-1B visas, for example, will not be processed during the shutdown. 3. The FCC will be offline. That means no spectrum management, no consumer protection, and no enforcement of competition rules. 4. The Small Business Administration approval of small business loans will be disrupted. Depending on how long the shutdown lasts, applications could get backlogged with small businesses feeling the pain long after the government reopens. 5. Requests for information under the Freedom of Information Act will be put on-hold, creating another backlog. 6. Public information — from the webpage of a specific government agency, for example — might be taken offline. 7. Between the shutdown and the debt-ceiling limit that hits on October 17, the IPO market could be knocked-around, with delays expected, and a ban on new filings. This will be bad news for Twitter and other tech companies currently trying to enter the market. 8. The District of Columbia, whose budget is controlled by Congress in a manner similar to the federal government, will be affected in a much deeper way than other communities as basic civil services from transportation to trash collection may be impacted. Mayor Vincent Gray has said he will use reserve funds to keep District services up-and-running, but that fund may only last for two weeks. This shutdown would also have serious ramifications for District businesses, from our friends at 1776 and other startups, to larger businesses that service the infrastructure of the government. 9. In two small victories, the U.S. Patent and Trademark office will remain open to process applications, and the U.S. Postal Service will also maintain operations. The final impact of any shutdown will be determined by how long it lasts and how expansively President Obama interprets the necessary function loophole that could allow some parts of the government to stay open, even without a budget. But a government shutdown is also an economic shutdown, and as bad as this looks right now, it will only get worse as we gear up for the debt-ceiling limit to hit on October 17. In the meantime, find out as much as you can, and brace yourself for a rocky few weeks.

From the mind of eccentric playboy John McAfee — founder of McAfee Antivirus — comes a “new and revolutionary technology” that will reclaim our lost privacy, he says, and restore the ability of college students to get all the free movies and music they want. “I cannot imagine any college student not standing in line to buy one of these,” he said. The product is a $100 “D-Central” gadget that will allow its users to create a small local-area wireless network dynamically, which people can use to communicate and share anonymously without the risk of being tapped by the NSA, the FBI, or any other three-letter agency, McAfee said. He’s been working on this product for years, slowly, but with increasing speed in the past few months. The device does not replace the Internet, but it adds another layer to it — a lower layer. Every local network created with D-Central would be in constant flux, either privately or publicly, with users joining and leaving as they choose and as their location changes. D-Central will communicate with your Android or iPhone smartphone, tablets, and laptops, and would have the ability to tell new joiners what files you might want, as well as share any files you have — MP3, videos — with friends, acquaintances, and complete strangers. The D-Central website, currently just a teaser … With a range of about three blocks, your network will change constantly, and files will be share completely anonymously. D-Central does connect to the Internet, but those uplinks and downlinks are completely anonymized. Clearly this is one of the recording industry’s worst nightmares, but McAfee says that if it becomes illegal in the U.S., he will simply sell it overseas. D-Central has a unique and novel encryption method, which the NSA and other surveillance agencies have never seen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=e89ODlB1MIA The product is six months away from shipping, McAfee said. It’s not just the NSA McAfee is worried about. He said that, with just a little bit of personal information, black-hat hackers — such as he himself — can within three days “turn on a camera” on your laptop and watch you do whatever you’re doing. McAfee came to public attention recently in a not-safe-for-work video about how to uninstall the antivirus software that still bears his name. He no longer owns that company, but the 68-year-old sell-described drug experimenter and philanderer still seems to have the passion to create and build companies. The question, of course, is whether such an eccentric genius who said he had likely done more drugs than the entire room of listeners could probably carry still has the capability to put together a quality, functioning gadget — and the company that can commercialize it.

bringing

run

Granted, and when your desire is high enough and you crave for it, you don't have anyone that will grant your wish I wish to become Admin in CyberPhoenix board team

Here's what we're gonna do: Person 1: Gives a 5-8 letter anagram. Person 2: Unscrambles it and tells one of the possible correct words. Then give another 5-8 letter anagram. Don't scramble it so it gets too hard. My scramble, a very easy one to begin with... luadepor

In 5 months you don't loose anything... perhaps you get more inspired!

Granted.... but your other body parts are removed! I wish I had a date with Rosamund Pike

perhaps... Oblong? If yes, then I offer mndoiad

doing

AMD’s next-gen R7 and R9 series Radeon graphics cards may have gotten all the attention at the company’s GPU 2014 event this week, but in the long run, a somewhat boring new technical addition may end up meaning more for AMD and PC gaming itself: the company’s newly announced “Mantle” application programming interface (API). A low-level revolution We have to get the technical details out of the way before I can describe Mantle’s potential bounties. I’ll keep it brief! Mantle takes advantage of AMD’s unique position as the graphics provider for the Wii U, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 consoles, and (some) PCs. Mantle’s low-level API, paired with Mantle graphics drivers, grants developers direct access to AMD’s Graphics Core Next (GCN) GPU hardware features, which allegedly allows developers to achieve a far higher level of hardware-optimized performance than is possible with OpenGL and DirectX. In fact, AMD claims Mantle can issue nine times as many draw calls per second as those “high-level,” non-hardware-specific APIs. That’s a major leap in performance. Just as impressively, that programming language carries over across consoles and PCs alike—assuming said PCs are running GCN-based Radeon graphics. In short, Mantle is a clever (and aggressive) way for AMD to leverage its next-gen console wins. “The opportunity that we see is to get that [tight, low-level] fit and level of optimization, or something close to it, in PC games,” Radeon technical marketing manager David Nalasco told PCWorld when I asked him how the Radeon heart in next-gen consoles could improve PC gaming. “If you’re developing a game or a game engine and want to port it over to the PC, you don’t have to start over from scratch with your optimization. You’re starting from a base that has CPU cores that are much more similar, GPU cores that are much more similar, and other feature sets that are much more comparable.” What that means for you is simple: better performance in games that utilize Mantle, assuming you have a Radeon graphics card or APU (accelerated processing unit). High-level APIs simply can’t match the chops of low-level ones. Check out the following tweet from Johan Andersson, the technical director for the Frostbite engine that powers Battlefield 4 and other games from Electronic Arts’ Digital Illusions CE (EA DICE): "[With Mantle] there’s the potential to have a better experience on a smaller card because you’re not necessarily going through the size and girth of DirectX and OpenGL," says Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy and a former AMD VP. "But also, there’s the potential to give you a better experience on a bigger card, in that you can take special features to the max." The API could also stimulate the fledgling, yet promising SteamOS operating system if—if—AMD tightens the tech’s ties to OpenGL. Valve is already touting SteamOS’s performance efficiencies compared to Windows, and Mantle could just be icing on the cake. Steam Machines, with its focus on a ten-foot interface and gamepad play, would also be a natural fit for console ports. Moorhead expects Mantle to be used mostly by console developers looking to bring their GCN-optimized titles over to the PC. AMD rival Nvidia, however, has been working closely with Valve to optimize OpenGL support for SteamOS, so Valve might not embrace Mantle enthusiastically. That shouldn’t preclude AMD from offering Mantle support for the open-source SteamOS, though. Roadblocks ahoy While the promise of tight, nearly metal-level hardware optimization and easier cross-platform development carries a lot of appeal, it remains to be seen whether Mantle and its firm ties to AMD products will be adopted by developers that are used to ubiquitous high-level APIs such as DirectX and OpenGL. Remember, the majority of discrete PC video cards out there today come from Nvidia, and Intel’s integrated CPU visuals are the most-used graphics around, so Mantle support would have to be in place alongside DirectX or OpenGL for PC games. (The next-gen consoles also support DirectX.) That won’t be cheap. AMD told reporters that the Mantle API is open, however, so Nvidia could also theoretically embed the technology in their GPUs as well—though given the animosity between the two companies and the fact that Nvidia’s GPUs use a vastly different architecture than AMD’s GCN, the odds of that happening are virtually nil. "I wouldn’t be surprised if Nvidia follows suit [with its own low-level API]," says Moorhead. It’s certain that at least one major game maker will embrace AMD’s tech. EA DICE’s Frostbite 3 engine will default to Mantle—not DirectX—in Windows rigs running GCN-based graphics cards and APUs, with the blockbuster Battlefield 4 set to be the first title to support the technology after a December update. That’s a huge win for AMD, and it could just be the tip of the iceberg. The company claims that developers have been asking for low-level GPU access, and AMD has been working hard to increase its profile with game makers. The Never Settle promotional series bundles free, big-name games with Radeon graphics cards. "I think a lot of this came out of the Never Settle bundles they’ve been doing," says Moorhead. "More than just bundling [games], it got them closer to developers. And when you combine getting closer to developers with Never Settle on the PC side, and then getting closer to developers on the game console side, it made sense to bring out Mantle today." Questions abound Time will tell whether Mantle proves successful. We’ve seen proprietary-ish low-level drivers like Voodoo’s Glide API before, and they’ve since gone the way of the dodo in favor of the high-level DirectX and OpenGL. Simply put, low-level APIs are highly dependent on specific hardware, and compatibility issues irked developers enough to drive them into the arms of device-spanning, high-level solutions. DirectX provided a standard playing field. The API field is far less diverse than it was in the days of yore, however, and the pace of DirectX development seems to have slowed dramatically at Microsoft. Pair that with the fact that Mantle will already be a known entity with developers coding for the Xbox One and PS4, and the API’s strong-sounding performance benefits, and developers could be increasingly motivated to muddle with Mantle as the AMD user base grows along with the next-gen consoles. Battlefield 4 will be the first game to utilize the Mantle API. Potential abounds, but so do questions: How will Mantle’s claimed performance stack up in the real world? Will it be enough to convince developers to use Mantle even though they’d still need to do a proper DirectX port to satisfy Nvidia gamers? What happens as consoles grow long in the tooth and PC graphics grow ever more powerful and feature-rich? Do we need splintered, proprietary graphics technologies, even if individual solutions are more powerful? We’ll know more in a couple of months. AMD says it will delve into Mantle in far greater detail at its 2013 Developer Summit in November. One thing’s for certain: Between Mantle and SteamOS, it’s an exciting time to be a PC gamer.

Facebook is leading a revolution in how enterprise hardware is built. This is the new Group Hug Board, the most disruptive idea, yet. It turns a motherboard into a Lego-like assembly project where you can pick all the pieces, even the main processor, and snap them together. About two and half years ago, it launched the Open Compute Project (OCP) to create "open source" data center hardware. That means hardware vendors like HP, Dell and Cisco, who basically own the $150 billion data center hardware market, no longer control the product designs. Customers like Facebook and Goldman Sachs do. This is the "Open Rack," one of the first OCP hardware projects ... Because customers are the designers, OCP's hardware projects use fewer materials, cost less and perform better than what traditional vendors typically offer. This is an OCP project called the "AMD Roadrunner." It's a motherboard that will fit in a regular rack. It's a way to use the OCP servers with racks an enterprise already owns. Because they are "open source" projects, anyone can help with the designs and OCP gives the designs away for free. An enterprise can take them, modify them, and send them out to contract manufacturers, who are standing by to build them. There is an Open Vault for "cold" storage. Those are files that aren't accessed very often but need to be kept anyway. Cold storage needs to be high capacity and cheap. The OCP project has lead to about a dozen game-changing new pieces of hardware. Put it all together on an Open Rack and it looks like this

Derrick, Thomson and Thompson, Magnum, and Poirot are the newest recruits at a Dutch police department. These Rotterdam rats have been trained to keep the streets clean and are expected to save the police both time and money. Police inspector Monique Hamerslag is in charge of the project, which is overseen by Mark Wiebes, head of the police "innovation" center. In a statement to AFP, Wiebes said, "As far as we know we're the first in the world to train rats to be used in police investigations." Detective Derrick and his rat partners cost just £8 each and are capable of being trained to identify an impressive range of odors—including drugs and explosives—within ten to 15 days. In contrast, a police dog costs thousands of pounds and requires a minimum training period of eight months. The training procedure is straightforward: the rats are kept in a cage with four metal tea strainers attached inside, one of which contains gunpowder. When the rat recognizes the smell, it is rewarded with a "click" and a small treat. Eventually the rat will learn to move towards the smell instantly. In a demonstration it takes Derrick just two seconds to locate the offending odor. Quickly identifying specific gunpowder traces is particularly useful. A laboratory test is expensive and time-consuming, which can provide an opportunity for potential offenders to get away. Hamerslag began fleshing out the idea when she was studying to join the police force. She observed that rats were used to clear landmines in war-torn countries and was inspired to train rodents for detective work. However, rats are inherently shy animals, which means certain investigatory methods used in the past must now be revised with the rats in mind. Unlike dogs, rats aren't natural predators and are easily frightened, "It's best to bring the smell to the rats and not the other way round," said Hamerslag. As strange as rodent detectives may seem, they aren't the only unconventional animals used by law enforcement. The Defense Advanced Research Laboratory has been training bees to sniff out explosives since the late 90s. The same methods used to seek out molecular hints of pollen can be, in theory, exploited to detect small particles of explosives. Santisuk Further east, five-year-old Santisuk—a macaque monkey—joined the police force in Thailand to improve community relations. Dressed in his bespoke uniform, with a yellow badge proclaiming "Monkey Police", Santisuk's duties include checkpoint control and helping residents pick up coconuts. Officer Lemon And finally Officer Lemon was employed by the Yoro police station in Kyoto, Japan, making him Japan's first police cat. Lemon helps to keep Japanese officers happy and is frequently called out to situations that involve suspicious phone calls, as he is said to have a calming effect on the victims.

Android doesn’t really have an AirPlay equivalent – its Miracast and Mirrorlink technologies are similar, but lack the kind of opportunity Apple’s tech provides to build second screen experiences that work independently of what’s being shown on the original. That’s why Solution57 created their Remote Application Framework (RAF for short), which goes even further, making displays attached to Android devices work more like displays attached to traditional desktop PCs. Using RAF, Android devs can build experiences that run an app on a remotely connected display while also running separate software on the host device. The host device runs all the apps, and the receiving one displays its contents. UI is completely separate on both devices, which means that a user can play games while also running GPS on a second attached display. It’s a single system, with who separate displays, just like when you plug a monitor into your MacBook Pro. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dEd-mRSeNOA It’s not exactly the same, though – the connected display still needs to be running some kind of OS itself, which is why RAF is being touted initially as a feature for in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) systems. You can imagine how a GM or a Nissan could implement this kind of functionality easily, no matter whether they’re using an IVI based on QNX or any other non-Android software, allowing users to either opt for their own in-built tools, or have an experience where their Android phone can take over entirely, just like Apple is proposing with its iOS in the Car feature introduced with iOS 7. It doesn’t require any special changes to Android or the individual apps themselves to work, but Solution57 Director Rafal Malewski tells me in an interview that it would help greatly with adoption if RAF became part of the Mirrorlink official specifications. “For automotive integration between mobile and IVI, to get proper penetration, we need this to get adopted as an extension to the Mirrorlink spec,” he explained. “We have initiated contact to the Car Connectivity Consortium to see if they are interested in picking up the technology.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5bfNjG5tBQQ Meanwhile, Solution57 is already in talks to a couple of OEMs for non-IVI use of the remote tech. It’s in use in consumer-facing VNC clients that work on Android, iOS, QNX, Windows and Linux, and there are all kinds of potential applications Malewski sees as possible, including for secondary displays on wearable tech, or on smart controllers for Android-based gaming consoles and smart TVs. Ultimately, Solution57 wants to see this adopted as a built-in technology by Google, which they’d likely hope would happen via an acquisition of the Danish firm. Currently, it’s available for OEM licensing, and the first devices with RAF integrated should start shipping around the middle of next year is all goes as planned, per Malewski.

With so many companies developing wearable smart devices, it seems like it's only a matter of time before Deus Ex-style body augmentations are being widely discussed. It's kind of scary to think about having just a smartphone's features on or in your body, but what if things reached sci-fi proportions? Are you happy with being "only" human or would you be open to getting some enhancements? If the former, is there a deeper ethical reason behind your stance? For everyone else: would you be an early adopter and how far would you go? How about X-ray vision or another tech that could be easily abused?

Gaming house Valve has completed its trio of announcements for the week with news of a planned wireless game controller that replaces the traditional thumb-controlled mini joysticks with two force-feedback touchpads and a programmable screen. The touchy-feely future of gaming? The two touchpads will give players much finer control of movement and action than traditional designs, Valve claims. Underneath the pads are dual linear resonant actuators, tiny weighted electro-magnets that can be programmed to give a variety of force-feedback sensations and can even be used to turn the touchpads into primitive speakers as a "parlour trick," the company states. The Steam Controller also uses a central high-resolution touch-enabled screen that can display maps, allow users to scroll through menus, or just add extra buttons as needed for individual games. The screen can also be displayed on the main monitor so you don’t have to stare down at your controller during play. "The Steam Controller is designed to work with all the games on Steam: past, present, and future," Valve said in a statement. "Even the older titles in the catalog and the ones which were not built with controller support. (We’ve fooled those older games into thinking they’re being played with a keyboard and mouse, but we’ve designed a gamepad that’s nothing like either one of those devices.)" That's not to say the controller is entirely buttonless. The handset will have 16 physical buttons, eight of which can be used without taking your thumbs off the touchpads. But, just as the iPhone largely eliminated buttons from smartphones, Valve is hoping the same can be done with controllers. Player can still use a mouse and keyboard, should they prefer. Suggested settings could prove handy Valve is releasing 300 early builds of the controllers with the beta versions of its Steam Machine gaming consoles, announced on Wednesday, which run the Linux-based SteamOS that was launched on Monday. The beta Steam Controllers won’t have the screen included, and will be connected to consoles via USB rather than wireless, but a full API will be released to developers at the same time for the finished kit. "The Steam Controller was designed from the ground up to be hackable," Valve said. "Just as the Steam Community and Workshop contributors currently deliver tremendous value via additions to software products on Steam, we believe that they will meaningfully contribute to the design of the Steam Controller. We plan to make tools available that will enable users to participate in all aspects of the experience, from industrial design to electrical engineering." The final hardware is promised for next year, and Valve is also predicting other companies will be releasing consoles based around SteamOS in the same timeframe. No mention was made of cost, but given the design of its hardware, Valve may have difficulty competing on price with other controllers. The news of the controller has gaming boards chattering, but there had been many (including this hack) who had been hoping Valve would be announcing a new version of Half-Life. It has been nearly nine years since the last release of the popular first-person shooter and Gordon Freeman needs to come out of stasis one more time, at least.

Google has declined to make required changes to its privacy policy, France's privacy watchdog said today. The French data cops added that they will slap the ad giant with sanctions. The Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL) - on behalf of the European Union's Article 29 Working Party - headed up an investigation of Google's controversial revision of its terms and conditions for netizens in March 2012. In June this year Google was ordered to comply with authorities in France, after the CNIL ruled that the multibillion-dollar advertising corporation had breached the country's Data Protection Act, and ordered Mountain View to comply with the law or face sanctions. At the same time, data cops in the UK, Spain, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands also launched enforcement actions against Google setting similar deadlines for the company. By July, Britain's data regulator (the ICO) - known for its lighter touch compared to its European counterparts when it comes to imposing fines - threatened Google with the "possibility of formal enforcement action" if it failed to tweak its privacy policy to make it "more informative". Meanwhile, the French watchdog said today that "Google contests the reasoning of the CNIL and has not complied with the requests laid down in the enforcement notice [issued on 20 June]." The data authorities in France had ordered Google to comply with its national law by defining specified and explicit purposes; to inform users about how it was processing their data; to define retention periods for the information it holds; to not proceed, without legal basis, with the "potentially unlimited combination of users' data"; to fairly slurp and mine passive users' data and get consent before storing cookies on their device. But Google has declined and criticised French data protection legislation by claiming the law is not applicable to its online services. "The Chair of the CNIL will now designate a rapporteur for the purpose of initiating a formal procedure for imposing sanctions, according to the provisions laid down in the French data protection law," the watchdog said. At time of writing, neither the UK's Information Commissioner's Office nor Google had returned The Register's request for comment.

In the latest round of increasingly-hyperbolic leaks about what spy agencies are doing with data, reports are emerging that the NSA has been graphing connections between American individuals. Moreover, it's using stuff that people publish on their social media timelines to help the case along. According to this item in the New York Times, the NSA extended its analysis of phone call and e-mail logs in 2010 “to examine Americans' networks of associations for foreign intelligence purposes”, something that was previously prevented because the agency was only allowed to snoop on foreigners. While great emphasis is given to the use of software to “sophisticated graphs” of the connections between individuals, the latest “Snowden revelation”, for the leaker handed the paper some documents, seems to be more about whether the NSA persuaded its masters that it should be able to feed vast sets of phone and e-mail records into its analysis software without having to “check foreignness” of the individuals covered by a search. More spooky but less surprising: the NSA seems to have worked out that if punters are already publishing information about themselves on social networks like Facebook or Twitter, it might be able to scoop that information into its databases (and from there into its analysis) without a warrant. In the outside world, The Register notes that the mass collection and analysis of Twitter information is used by all sorts of people, nearly always without government oversight or warrant, to provide everything from detecting rainfall to earthquakes. Other so-called “enrichment data” cross-matched by the NSA can include “bank codes, insurance information … passenger manifests, voter registration rolls and GPS location information … property records and unspecified tax data”, some of which may be more troubling since each of these carries different privacy expectations. A “foreign intelligence justification” is needed for the data collection, and the NYT notes NSA spooks weren't allowed to use any data they could get their hands on: “Analysts were warned to follow existing “minimization rules,” which prohibit the N.S.A. from sharing with other agencies names and other details of Americans whose communications are collected, unless they are necessary to understand foreign intelligence reports or there is evidence of a crime.” The project, called Mainway, receives “vast amounts of data … daily from the agency’s fiber-optic cables”, the article states. Which demonstrates that the NSA hasn't get gotten around to implementing either RFC 1149 http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1149.txt or its successor, RFC 2549. http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2549 While The Register would not try to minimize the legitimate concern that a vast amount of information can be derived from communications metadata alone, beyond the name of the project, it's hard to see what's new in the latest leak.

“Germany is a country of freedom.” That’s the inspiring title Chancellor Angela Merkel is using to push an eight-point program aiming to protect online privacy through German parliament. After facing criticism for not taking a strong enough stand on the NSA spying scandal, Merkel’s political party CDU introduced the new project to parliament a month ago. Yesterday, the first concrete steps to consolidate the plan were made. One potential change would see Germany suspend administrative agreements with the U.S., Britain, and France. The agreement means these countries are allowed to use their German-based forces to investigate mail and telecommunications networks in cases where their secret or intelligence services believe it is necessary in the interest of security. The second proposal would make surveillance by businesses a lot harder by introducing a new procedure for transferring data, meaning businesses that want to send data from country to country would have to receive authority to do so from Brussels. It would also mean it’d be more difficult to get accesses to such data; businesses will need to have concrete suspicions to do so. German Minister for Economics and Technology, Philipp Rösler, establishing himself further as the champion for startups of current government, also pushed for new Europe-wide initiatives to improve innovation and digitalisation. He’s in talks with the EU commission to work on more secure cloud computing and better cooperation between the digital economy and established industries. Ripe time to create alternatives to US comms companies Germany's new Vice Chancellor, Economic Minister and Chairman of the Free Democratic Party, FDP, Philipp Roesler, left, sits next to Chancellor Angela Merkel, right, during his first cabinet meeting in his new position at the chancellery in Berlin, Germany, on Wednesday, May 18, 2011 “We have to show that we’re competitive and can become system leaders in the information and communications technology industry. We need a strong European IT industry that can offer alternatives (to U.S. companies). We need an information and communications technology strategy that encourages top-level research, the development of digital technologies and allows optimal growth conditions for businesses and innovative startups in Europe”, Rösler said in a media release. However, a spokesperson for opposing party, SPD, criticised the eight-point program, claiming it “bypasses the essence of the matter: to set a clear boundary for the NSA that the mass surveillance of Germans must be stopped.” The party said the goals of the program are too vague and that the current ruling party has still not taken a clear position on data protection.