Slashdot Mirror

Yes, but EM radiation doesn't respect state borders. It doesn't matter how hard you wish for the theory to work, the practice demands a broader scope. It's part of why broadcasts were one of the first things the EU started regulating when Europe started economically uniting.

Being opposed to censorship because "public airwaves" is a weak concept is fine. Thinking you can just ditch the structure because your political philosophy says you can is, well, silly.

EU's been targeting optical drive makers as well (last year):
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-12-830_en.htm?locale=en

Another case was in 2004:
http://bonizack.com/in-re-optical-disk-drive-products-antitrust-litigation-mdl-no-2143

I also think there was one in the late 90's, but google-fu is failing me.

Which connector does the EU mandate?

None, which blows your whole argument.

There's a voluntary agreement ("Memoradum of Understanding") with many cell phone manufacturers to standardize on micro USB, but it's not mandated. They are now discussing making it a mandate, but that hasn't happened.

I tried to find not premoderated comments on any of EU officials blogs to give them a taste, no luck :(

But look what I've found, granma that's responsible for EU's 'digital agenda' (WTF is that?) wants our views on what she calls 'Internet governance'. http://ec.europa.eu/commission_2010-2014/kroes/en/content/internet-governance-i-want-your-views

I think the GP might be in Europe. The EU thinks the GP's views is possible "reality".

http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-12-1448_en.htm

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-27/samsung-submits-commitments-in-eu-antitrust-probe-almunia-says.html

Do you live in Korea?

http://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/exchange/eurofxref/html/eurofxref-graph-usd.en.html

The euro started at about $1.17, in 1999. It's now about $1.35. The highest value was close to $1.60, just before the 2008 crash.

that high of $1.60 was due to Khadaffi trading his oil in euros..... ;)

http://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/exchange/eurofxref/html/eurofxref-graph-usd.en.html

The euro started at about $1.17, in 1999. It's now about $1.35. The highest value was close to $1.60, just before the 2008 crash.

Your post makes an assumption, and follows to conclusion based on that assumption. The website says:

"The Sakharov Prize is intended to honour exceptional individuals who combat intolerance, fanaticism and oppression. Like Andrei Sakharov himself, all the winners of the prize have shown how much courage it takes to defend human rights and freedom of expression."

As far as I can tell, Malala wrote for BBC as a 12 year old and had a documentary about her by the New York Times, which isn't much of a fight against oppression. She began giving interviews and became a spokesperson, and got shot. Most of the actual work since then was by other people on her behalf, until a UN speech in July. Not sure that really fits the bill.

Snowden claims he intentionally got a job where he could get secrets, actively violated the law and abused his privilege, left a job in Hawaii and pole-dancing girlfriend, and is now fleeing the very government that, as he damned well knows, has the ability to find him anywhere. He certainly is no free man at this point, and knew what he was getting into. That took far more courage than surviving a shooting.

Malala's father showed courage, based on the few interviews and articles I read, and would be my vote before Malala.

Not trying to diminish her message, but the award is rather specific about its purpose, and it's not about awareness or motivating change. It is about honoring/rewarding the people who motivate and effect change.

Last week, Caspar Bowden testified at a hearing in the European Parliament, and presented a report on the NSA surveillance to the European Parliament's Committee for Fundamental Rights LIBE.

Link to the report: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2009_2014/documents/libe/dv/briefingnote_/briefingnote_en.pdf

Link to the Youtube-video with Bowden's statement and the following Q&A (63 min): http://youtu.be/qa83l2_ZzEo

Since like forever, the old men who are afraid of their womens getting loose have used the Korans, Bibles, Talmuds, etc to control their womens. Fear and Freedom don't mix well. Let's all be a little more brave and learn to tell all the batshit religious crazies to fuck off. I don't care if they do raise hell and blow stuff up - eventually there won't be enough left of them to matter.

I seem to recall various atheist countries that were afraid of their people getting loose used Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Kim Jong Il, and others to control their people. One of the pioneers in suicide bombing were the Tamil Tigers, an essentially secular movement. Batshit crazy is crazy no matter the source. If Europeans don't get their birthrate up, eventually there won't be enough of them to matter. Guess who has the higher birth rate? Native European are on the self-chosen path to extinction, and they will take their values with them. The immigrants don't share them even though they share the land which may eventually be theirs.

No Babies?

In the 1990s, European demographers began noticing a downward trend in population across the Continent and behind it a sharply falling birthrate. Non-number-crunchers largely ignored the information until a 2002 study by Italian, German and Spanish social scientists focused the data and gave policy makers across the European Union something to ponder. The figure of 2.1 is widely considered to be the “replacement rate” — the average number of births per woman that will maintain a country’s current population level. At various times in modern history — during war or famine — birthrates have fallen below the replacement rate, to “low” or “very low” levels. But Hans-Peter Kohler, José Antonio Ortega and Francesco Billari — the authors of the 2002 report — saw something new in the data. For the first time on record, birthrates in southern and Eastern Europe had dropped below 1.3. For the demographers, this number had a special mathematical portent. At that rate, a country’s population would be cut in half in 45 years, creating a falling-off-a-cliff effect from which it would be nearly impossible to recover.

Fertility statistics

This should be more of a case for EU Commissioner for Competition who works on competition policy, mergers and cartels. Just sent an e-mail to register a complaint, I hope this gets investigated.

This should be a high profile case for investigation by the EU commissioner for industry. In the end Nokia was a EU company which was the victim of a hostile takeover from a US company. We should al send a formal complaint to this guy http://ec.europa.eu/commission_2010-2014/tajani/contact/commissioner/index_en.htm

Sadly even the Guardian reported the story, parroting the Press Association's version, without thinking to check what the EC actually had to say about it.

Even without the oh-so-typical use of imperial units, it took me all of 2 lines into this bit of "news" to know exactly which newspaper it came from.

Lo and behold, it is indeed nothing more than the semi-regular bit of foaming at the mouth by the Telegraph: a notoriously europhobic rag whose sole raison d'être seems to be lamenting the glory of ole Britannia and play into the fears and pet hates of their readership (in no particular order: immigrants, the youfth of today, loud music, feminists, the EU, anybody who dares criticising the Royal Family etc).

As usual, the article is full of weasel words and rightful indignation, with little evidence to back up the claim that any such plan exists, as more than the inconsequential suggestion of some external consultant, somewhere, somehow (the closest I have found to a non Telegraph/Daily Mail-related source about that story, is this page on an official EU's website, which clearly states that its content does not reflect the opinion of the commission, let alone anywhere near the stage of an official EU proposal).

But at least the "editors" of Slashdot and a couple other lazy online websites get a nice click-whoring controversy out of this, the usual crowds can rush in and start pointing out why this is a horrible idea so typical of the EU, the Telegraph gets some extra publicity and their readers get their weekly dose of EU paranoia (and must feel really powerful, when none of these scary directives ever make it into law). Everybody's happy.

You're on the right track, but it's actually even worse than that. More relevant quote from EU spokesman:

" The Commission has not tabled – and does not have in the pipeline – even a non-binding Recommendation, let alone anything more. The Commission has supported past research into ISA. There is a current stakeholder consultation and study focusing on speed limiting technology already fitted to HGVs and buses. One aspect of that is whether ISA could in the long-term be an alternative. And a second consultation on in-vehicle safety systems in general. Taking account of the consultation results, the Commission will publish in the autumn a document by its technical experts which will no doubt refer to ISA among many other things. That is all."

Source: http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/reports-of-brussels-big-brother-bid-to-impose-speed-controls-are-inaccurate-beyond-the-limit-2/

And it's not that the British newspapers publishing that drivel have the excuse of being misinformed or anything. It's ludicrous to think the EU has any concrete plans of doing such things in the first place - all these so-called "journalists" would need to do is think how much public support a measure like this would get (very close to zero), how good this would be for the careers of the politicians involved, and of the horrible mess that would ensue with countries' individual schemes of speed limits, including Germany.... The same thing goes for the /. editors - listen up guys, if something sounds too sensational to be true, it usually is. Also, some healthy skepticism is in place with news coming form certain sources - one would think the editors should by now be aware of the abysmal reputation of some UK news outlets...

The vast majority of these 30,000 causalities are in the former eastern block countries on roads dangerous by design.

In the more developed countries the number of fatalities per km driven is very low and setting the max. speed to 70mi (~113 km) would not change anything.

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/tra_tra_acc_inc_car_cra_fat_rat-inc-car-crashes-fatality-rate

http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php/Road_safety_statistics_at_regional_level

Motorway density and risk
Statistically, the numbers of road deaths are particularly low for many regions with high traffic volumes. This is true especially of many regions in western Germany and England, in particular around major cities, and of most parts of the Netherlands. Especially around major cities and transport hubs (e.g. seaports), high traffic volumes cause congestion, which reduces average speeds and, therefore, also the likelihood of fatalities when accidents do occur. A closer look at this phenomenon also reveals that many of these regions tend to have high motorway density. In general, motorways are much safer than secondary roads. Furthermore, mainly transit traffic uses existing motorways, thus keeping the number of road fatalities in these regions relatively low, despite high total traffic volumes. In fact, the quality of the roads in these countries is especially high, contributing to the low number of accidents. By contrast, fatality rates are high in regions with low motorway density, such as all of Romania, Hungary and the Czech Republic except their capitals, the whole of Bulgaria, Poland, the Baltic Member States, some of the eastern federal states of Germany and many rural areas in France and Spain. These data strongly suggest that the high proportion of traffic using motorways is an important factor behind the low number of road fatalities in many regions.

http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/reports-of-brussels-big-brother-bid-to-impose-speed-controls-are-inaccurate-beyond-the-limit-2/

--
Reports in the press today suggest that the EU intends to bring forward “formal proposals this autumn” to introduce automatic speed controls -known as “Intelligent Speed Adaptation” or ISA, into cars. This is quite simply not true and the Commission had made this very clear to the journalists concerned.

The Mail on Sunday for example, uses a quote from a Commission spokesman but chooses to leave out the first and most important sentence given to the paper’s reporter, which was this:

“The Commission has not tabled – and does not have in the pipeline – even a non-binding Recommendation, let alone anything more.”

For the record, the rest of the quote supplied said this:

“The Commission has supported past research into ISA. There is a current stakeholder consultation and study focusing on speed limiting technology already fitted to HGVs and buses. One aspect of that is whether ISA could in the long-term be an alternative.

And a second consultation on in-vehicle safety systems in general. Taking account of the consultation results, the Commission will publish in the autumn a document by its technical experts which will no doubt refer to ISA among many other things. That is all. (NB such “staff working documents” are not adopted by the Commission at political level and have no legal status.) Nothing more is expected in the foreseeable future.

It is part of the EC’s job – because it has been mandated to do so by Member States, including the UK – to look at, promote research into and consult stakeholders about new road safety technology which might ultimately save lives. This is done in close cooperation with Member States and the UK has generally supported such efforts.”

It might also seem strange to some that the UK government -if the press reports are accurate at least in that respect – apparently objects so violently to even being consulted about a range of future ways in which lives could be saved on Europe’s roads.
--

What is this trash doing on Slashdot? Seriously the whole article is utter crap, there are no plans for any kind of speed limiters to be fitted to vehicles.

Here's the full quote from the EU commission in question:

The Commission has not tabled – and does not have in the pipeline – even a non-binding Recommendation, let alone anything more.

The Commission has supported past research into ISA. There is a current stakeholder consultation and study focusing on speed limiting technology already fitted to HGVs and buses. One aspect of that is whether ISA could in the long-term be an alternative.

This is just standard right-wing anti-EU drivel. I think Reddit user Dwilip put it best:

Standard Tory playbook by unknown junior minister looking for some cheap column inches.
Find EU report
Make up something ridiculous
Claim you are going to block it
Get your mate at the Torygraph to write about
It never happens
Say you personally stopped it
Print it in you leaflets, cite Torygraph article as evidence

In Europe, only the people of Denmark pay more than Germans and most of Europe pays ~40% less than Germans.

I'm from Denmark, and no, we're not. You are quoting figures with a tax that has nothing to do with production of electricity from renewables.

Breakdown here for all of Europe.

Please stop spreading misinformation.

I think you fail to account for a big difference between the EU and the USA: the USA has much more long-distance freight movement. I assume -- tell me if I'm wrong -- that someone sending food across California doesn't ship it by rail. The extra time + logistics (farm - road - rail - road - shop/warehouse at worst) isn't worthwhile.

Europe has much less inter-state freight movement, and thus there's less advantage to rail freight. See: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php/Freight_transport_statistics (and, as it points out, there's a lot of freight carried by sea, and no statistics on that).

The blue and yellow diagram shows that most freight in western European countries is national, which means the maximum distance is less than the average width of a US state.

The whole EU moved 2.3 trillion tonne-km by all transport modes. Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_usage_statistics_by_country#Freight_rail_by_billions_of_tonne-kilometers shows the US moved 2.4 trillion tonne-km by rail alone!

So the doctor didn't even do a rapid strep test, and told her to take a mild OTC antibiotic for a couple days, and you think you got "good care"? LOL

First: don't know that it was strep. "Sore throat" can be lots of things. Any doctor should be able to do a RADT which gives ~70% accuracy.

Second: Tyrozets are fucking chump medicine. Enjoy your antibiotic-resistant resurgence after only using a mild antibiotic for a couple days on this infection.

Third: Four days isn't enough of a standard course of antibiotics.

Fourth: If 4 days of Tyrozets did the trick, your girlfriend most likely had a mild (viral) respiratory infection (or simply a tough reaction to the dry, recycled air of the airplane you rode over in), and would have been better off just taking the analgesic lozenges without antibiotics.

Fifth: 4-5 days of antibiotic treatment is typical when you have strep. What your "nurse" girlfriend had was likely not strep, and thus wasn't affected by the antibiotics.

Sixth: OTC antibiotics are exactly the reason why AMR microbes are becoming such a concern in Europe - to the extent that a commission recently wrote a report urging, among other things the elimination of OTC antibiotic medication.

That Irish doctor did you, your girlfriend, and the citizens of Europe, no favors by not even doing a "somewhat inaccurate" Rapid Strep Test to verify that an antibiotic was called for. But yeah, tell us all about how Ireland is a magical land where nobody gets sick, and unnecessary medication rains down from the trees.

"95% of intra-German Internet communications are routed via a switch in Frankfurt."
From the EU "Temporary Committee on the ECHELON Interception System"
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//NONSGML+REPORT+A5-2001-0264+0+DOC+PDF+V0//EN&language=EN
How will SSL be "harder and more expensive" for the NSA/GCHQ if a friendly German agency just hands over the keys again?
Seems like the West German post war telco system was designed to track Soviet/East German contacts via a few central locations.
Why would the US need to "break in" if they where in on the design and have a great generational working relationship with German telcos and intelligence agency staff?
i.e. "still doesn't prevent governments from getting information"

(14) A person having a right to use a computer program should not be prevented from performing acts necessary to observe, study or test the functioning of the program, provided that those acts do not infringe the copyright in the program.

(15) [...]Nevertheless, circumstances may exist when such a reproduction of the code and translation of its form are indispensable to obtain the necessary information to achieve the interoperability of an independently created program with other programs.
It has therefore to be considered that, in these limited circumstances only, performance of the acts of reproduction and translation by or on behalf of a person having a right to use a copy of the program is legitimate and compatible with fair practice and must therefore be deemed not to require the authorisation of the rightholder. An objective of this exception is to make it possible to connect all components of a computer system, including those of different manufacturers, so that they can work together. [...].

Fair question! I've not been able to track down a source which exactly matches my understanding; ruling C-157/03 appears to deal with some related aspects, and this analysis of Directive 2004/38/EC (not a brilliant source without provenance) in section 8.2 talks about the elimination of "residence cards" for foreign EU citizens. That's the best I've been able to find in about 45 minutes.

EU rules go some way to fixing that, for flights within/from the EU. After two hours, I think they owe you a meal [voucher], at some point they have to provide a hotel room (on a return ticket when you're stuck away from home).

The budget airlines can still cause a problem, but even they generally follow the rules while complaining loudly.

http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/passenger-rights/air/

The UK has a EU treaty obligation to Sweden to honor its arrest warrants. The UK had Assange under arrest and allowed him to escape. Assange is still in the territory of the UK hiding in an embassy. It is up to the UK to take him into custody again. If they don't watch Assange's location continuously, he will escape. I think referring to Sweden as "a bully "across the pond"" is a bit extravagant. Sweden is a fellow member of the EU since 1995. The "special relationship" that is relevant here are the EU treaties. This information has been made clear many times. It is puzzling why you don't recognize this.

The UK has a EU treaty obligation to Sweden to honor its arrest warrants. The UK had Assange under arrest and allowed him to escape. Assange is still in the territory of the UK hiding in an embassy. It is up to the UK to take him into custody again. If they don't watch Assange's location continuously, he will escape. I think referring to Sweden as "a bully "across the pond"" is a bit extravagant. Sweden is a fellow member of the EU since 1995. The "special relationship" that is relevant here are the EU treaties. This information has been made clear many times. It is puzzling why you don't recognize this.

http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php?title=File:Youth_unemployment_rates,_2008-2011Q3,_(%25).png&filetimestamp=20120127135533

What do you say to the families that depended on child labor to support the family?
They said they can't stay in business without putting the children to work. And the business feeds the children.

It's a bit of a strawman, but the parallels are there. It's bad for everyone in the long run to make put children to labor, it'd be a lot better for society to them to get some learning and not suffer the horrible abuse that historically came with child labor.

I'd say that if they were family owned businesses, and the children in question were from the family, that they are already exempt to a number of provisions of the child labor laws:

http://smallbusiness.chron.com/child-labor-laws-family-businesses-60987.html

Agricultural jobs (e.g. family farms) are exempt from all FSLA provisions completely, including the operation of equipment like tractors, and also if there are fewer than 500 man days of work performed on the farm per year, they are also exempt from minimum wage requirements.

Sure, your friend is employing 53 people. But in today's age, going without insurance means going without healthcare. Which means that everything that's serious is an ER visit rather than "hey you should have those pulled sometime in the next year".

That's not the same as "without healthcare". Also there is a significant resurgence in health co-ops in rural communities, as the doctors don't like managed care any more than the patients. This either means pay-as-you-go with no insurance involvement at all, or monthly payments to the co-op for the promise of some minimal amount of preventative treatment.

Which is really fucking expensive to everyone else.

On a per-item basis, rather than expensive all the time, with the payments largely going into the pockets of large insurance consortiums like AIG, whose executives are currently sitting on their yaughts lighting their cigars with $100 bills from the bailout money they've received.

It's understood that there needs to be the bottom rung of the ladder for the have-nots. They need their niche to fill, and, well, shitty jobs for them to do. But we don't want companies that grow off employing the bottom rung. If your friend is at the point where he's employing 50+ people, his company is big enough to start treating them like real employees.

He does; he pays a portion of the insurance costs for each employee. The mandate requires that he pay full freight, and requires that the plan cover certain aspects which means it's no longer employee cafeteria style, and the decision for "just major medical, large deduction", et.c, is out of their hands. Luckily this doesn't kick in for under 50 employees until 2015, and hopefully 2 years is enough to restructure the business into profitability. Or, since he's close to early retirement age, just calls it quits and shuts things down anyway. Where will those people get their insurance then?

U.S. unemployment rates are currently only trending downwards because people fall off the end of the unemployment insurance, and are no longer counted as unemployed. That doesn't mean that they have jobs. I know people who have basically given up looking for work entirely after a year of unemployment, and they aren't counted either. If we did our statistics the same way, we'd be in the same ballpark as European nations (e.g. France: 11.0%, Spain: 28.8% - source http://ec.europa.eu/ 2013 numbers).

I'm not saying "don't have universal healthcare"; hell, Nixon was the first president to try to get it enacted, and Teddy Kennedy said at the end of his life that his one big regret was not working with Nixon on getting it implemented. But I am saying that it needs to be a general benefit, not something tied to the employer so that insurance companies can continue to pro

This experiment is already done on a much wider scale . - whit the EU and the US as experimental subjects, so to speak. One banning the use of antibiotics for growth enhancement, and one doesn't. A natural experiment, if you want. And there have been pages upon pages of written summaries, reports, studies, etc on the topic, and comparisons, and what not. There even is a transatlantic study group, TATFAR, and here is a visual summary detailing the EU efforts: http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/press/news/130516a.htm EU legislation on animal nutrition banned the use of antibiotics used for growth promotion in animal feed from January 2006. In 2009 the Panel on Biological Hazards assessed the public health significance of meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in animals and foods. It concludes that livestock-associated MRSA represents only a small proportion of all reported MRSA infections in the EU with significant differences between Member States. So the conclusion seems to be that bannin growth enhancing antibiotic use is a crucial step in preventing the rise of resistant microbiota in those conditions, but (of course) not enough to stop the evolution of resistant strains in, for example hospital environments...

I am sure Germany has all words to do with anything controlled/remote logged due to acts like:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Herrhausen
beam of infrared light or triggers via photographic flash units, engineering of shaped metals or RC are well known and any keywords around that tech would be tracked.
You also have movies like The Dead Pool.
West Germany has always had huge database options, resident registration and lots of cash.
The tracking and tapping of East German spies/helping the USA/UK would have made West Germany think about easy call tracing during all national telco upgrades.
A physical location eg one "Internet exchange point" for all intra-German Internet traffic would make tracking ~95% of the German internet trivial.
As mentioned by the European Parliament: Temporary Committee on the ECHELON Interception System (pdf).
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//NONSGML+REPORT+A5-2001-0264+0+DOC+PDF+V0//EN&language=EN

Oh yeah, Snowden re-revealed shocking facts that were already in a much-cited 12-year-old European parliment report and the media jumped on it because there didn't seem much better to report. So Obama found himself in hot water, so he goes "Look over there! The greatest challenge of our generation!"

Now what's the important point and what's the distraction?

Oh please, what kind of fantasy workd are you living in? The NSA has been doing this kind of stuff since the 1960s, through many R and D presidencies. There was a huge stink about it in in 2001 after the publication of a number of reports, in particular this one. It's an interesting read; there's very little Snowden revealed that wans't already in that 12-years-old report. Yet now it's suddenly all Obama's fault. Guess he should have been more effective at suppressing the renewed media attention? Also, how is him trying to go through with it a lie? I didn't hear him say: "yeah I put this plan together for shits and giggles, so don't worry, I'm not going to go through with it."

Since peaking in 2005, US carbon emissions have dropped a gigaton [eia.gov] per year. This was mainly due to switching almost half of coal-powered to electricity to cheaper and cleaner natural gas.

You are only counting CO2. We really don't know how much CH4 has been released due to natural gas drilling in the US. Moreover CH4 is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. We have no effective CH4 release monitoring system.

There has been a recent uptick in global CH4 levels which is odd because levels had been leveling out starting in the 1980's...

41. Source web pages are kept on host servers connected to internet. The publisher of source web pages can make use of ‘exclusion codes’ (27) for the operation of the internet search engines. Exclusion codes advise search engines not to index or to store a source web page or to display it within the search results. (28) Their use indicates that the publisher does not want certain information on the source web page to be retrieved for dissemination through search engines.

And footnote 27 about those "exclusion codes" says:

27 – A typical current exclusion code (or robot exclusion protocol) is called ‘robots.txt’; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robots.txt or http://www.robotstxt.org/.

Now I know that almost all Slashdotters already know about this, but if this passes then it means that (in the EU) it is written in law that a search engine spider isn't allowed to use stuff that you kept out with your robots.txt file.

War on terror? Surveillance emerging *Since the 9/11 attacks?*

You have a poor grasp on history, my friend, and one that's been much shaped by political rhetoric from one side or the other (doesn't matter which) about 9/11 being some sort of meaningful turning point for the NSA.

The NSA has been intercepting anything that was technologically feasible since 1945, when it was still the Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA). Read up on Projects SHAMROCK and MINARET (which have nothing to do with Ireland or MENA, despite the names). If it crossed wires, the AFSA/NSA was reading it or recording it. If it had a frequency, they were listening. Anything, anywhere, anytime. They still are. Nothing has changed for the NSA.

Spy agencies spy. That's what they do. Spying on foreign leaders at conferences like the G20 is pretty much the Superbowl of what they do. And they all do it: Russians, Germans, Brits, Americans, Frogs, anyone with the capability to bug each other (and the G20 is basically the top group of countries with the technological know-how, financial support, and proactive sense of initiative to do just that). The Europeans have known for years that they were all intercepting any communications they could: see the table in section 2.5 of the explanatory statement to this July 2001 (before 9/11) report on ECHELON from the European Parliament. Anyone not too poor or too small to do so was intercepting anything they could get their hands on.

If you think 9/11 has anything to do with "increased" surveillance, you've been sold a bill of goods. Surveillance was always as complete as was technologically feasible, and that's how it will be in the future as well, and it's got nothing to do with national borders or allegiances: it's a game that no first-world country is not playing. The quintuple alliance of US/UK/Canada/Australia/New Zealand (and sometimes the Dutch for a sixth hand) just happens to be the best at the game, which is why they can read things that other countries haven't gotten access to yet. "Yet" being the operative word.

CAPTCHA: puppets

It applies to the manufacturer.

No, it doesn't, where the hell did you get that idea from? http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:31999L0044:en:HTML

Article 5

Time limits

1. The seller shall be held liable under Article 3 where the lack of conformity becomes apparent within two years as from delivery of the goods. If, under national legislation, the rights laid down in Article 3(2) are subject to a limitation period, that period shall not expire within a period of two years from the time of delivery.

that 6 months applies only in some countries and it's about you having received the thing as broken.

why use some obscure german article for trying to explain an eu wide issue? so that apple would seem less full of shit trying to convince people that their mandatory warranty was just 6 months to sell them more? hell, why not just link to apple who explains that the warranty is two years in eu: http://www.apple.com/uk/legal/statutory-warranty/ - and you need to contact the seller to claim it which is normal(and in many cases it's apple themselves).

http://ec.europa.eu/consumers/ecc/consumer_topics/buying_goods_services_en.htm

now if you want to buy insurance on your product that's another thing, but applecare doesn't provide that much of an useful insurance(or cheap insurance).

The EU doesn't have a two year warranty. I was going to explain it, but Udo Schmitz did a much better job if you look a bit further down.

ok and this is how apple explains it. EU-wide Consumer Laws: Claim period: 2 years (minimum) from date of delivery, 5 years in Scotland and 6 years in the rest of the UK.

http://www.apple.com/uk/legal/statutory-warranty/

He doesn't explain it too well, actually. don't eat so much apple pie.

I buy a product inside eu then someone is going to cover for the two years warranty - the consumer on these issues should always be able take the issue with the entity that sold the product to them. that's just logical and covers cases where the manufacturer has no presence inside our country, so I take it back to the compu-parts-are-us who sold it to me and they either fix it or give me a new one. for two years.

some companies provide their own systems(like koss) where you can go to just any random place that handles them. but of course the shops shove the issue on the importer if they aren't the importer themselves and those importers shove the issue of who covers the bill to the manufacturer unless it's some noname chinese they don't have an on-going relationship with.

(though phones tend to go around here to a single company for warranty issues, no matter where you buy them..).

http://ec.europa.eu/consumers/ecc/consumer_topics/buying_goods_services_en.htm

The 2-year guarantee
If a product turns out to be faulty or not as advertised (‘non-conformity’), you have a 2-year guarantee, which means the seller must repair or replace it free of charge.
The 2-year guarantee is an EU-wide minimum, and the laws in some EU countries may offer you longer limitation periods.

some countries have limits on how quickly you must ask for the replacement, though those are few afaik and even then it doesn't really remove the 2 year guarantee after 6 months.

and of course some people argue that warranty is different than guarantee but guarantee is one better.. now applecare does form some sort of insurance afaik and that's a wholly different thing(however what's the point of having multiple insurances on the same item, provided that you have other insurance?).

It applies to the manufacturer.

Monkey spunk. Your contract is with the seller, not with any of his suppliers, subcontractors etc.

http://ec.europa.eu/consumers/ecc/consumer_topics/buying_goods_services_en.htm

"Always try to contact the seller first: under your 2-year guarantee, the seller is liable if the product turns out to be faulty or not as advertised. "

I do hope you're not European

I do hope you're not a practicing lawyer.

I must admit I wondered which side commissioner de Gucht is on--certainly not on the side of the European people.. bloody USA shill..

Technical nit-pick. They are not "introducing new genes into the ecosystem," they are taking genes that already exist in the wild and adding them to a species' genome. Believe it or not, this happens all the time all over the place naturally thanks to viruses, bacteria, and allows for artificial transduction in laboratories. Most of the time, they aren't even doing this, instead they are knocking out existing genes, removing them from the genome to produce desired results.

But on a broader level, I appreciate what you are trying to say, but your argument that GMOs are dangerous because we don't fully understand the ecosystem also applies to hybridization (which has been going on for 10,000 years), artificial selection, pharmaceuticals, any moden farming technique, any chemical we add to our environment--even as a byproduct of our lifestyles, and pretty much any technology anywhere. There is no rational reason to single GMOs out as Frankenstein's monster, especially with scientists all over the world monitoring their effects--which 25 years of research have found to be pretty benign.

Except that under EU law, it is.

Google, Apple and Amazon are not doing anything wrong. They are in business to make money for their stockholders of which many I bet are UK citizens. In some jurisdictions they are legally REQUIRED to operate their enterprises to the best legal advantage of their stockholders.

Those UK citizens pay taxes on the dividends and capital gains they realize from owning stock in these companies. Not only that but these companies provide extremely useful services to UK citizens thereby enriching their lives.

They ALSO employ many people who ALSO pay taxes on their wages, and by being employers relieve the state from having to pay for the upkeep of these people who would otherwise be on the dole.

Not only that but there are other taxes on value added transactions that result from the economic activities involved. Consumption based taxes are generally viewed to have the least negative impact on economic growth of any taxes.

Then of course there is the whole question of the macroeconomics of the situation. It is generally held that taxes on businesses are inefficient in terms of encouraging economic growth. Such policies are not productive overall to the economy. This is why business taxes in Europe are generally relatively low. It is conscious sound policy decision based on scientific analysis of the economic facts.

http://ec.europa.eu/europe2020/pdf/themes/02_taxation.pdf

In other words this is a completely RUBBISH article in every way possible.

It is possible to successfully read the data exchanged with a NFC card up to 2 meters away. Just have a decent snooping device in your backpack or handbag and you can sniff the transactions of other people.

You can have a transmitter with decent power at 13.56MHz that you turn on when you get in an area with NFC readers and see how many checkouts that fails to work.

There are a few other listed security issues too with NFC cards here: MMN-o | Blog, for those that aren't able to read Swedish - use the online translator.

Yet more reading:
Study on Public Transport Smartcards – Final Report
Do contactless cards expose you to fraud?

Anyway - when it comes to NFC there are different types of cards, some are simple and doesn't have any encryption at all (E.g. Mifare Ultralight), some have an encryption which is very weak and is cracked within minutes (Mifare Classic) and some are running DES, but I expect that it has a few weaknesses too since the exchange between the card and reader is easy to snoop.

Given that Comcast already makes a chuck of its money by injecting ads into digital cable streams, I wouldn't put it past them.

(I'm assuming this is in the USA) Are you saying that this company is doing this, and it is *not* illegal in the USA? Why are they allowed to tamper with the stream? WTF! It's not their data, now is it?
THIS (http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-09-570_en.htm) is how you should deal with such criminal behaviour.

The numbers I found in a quick search suggest that EU-wide there is still a small population growth, but pretty close to zero. The import/export balance (PDF, see graphs on page 2) for raw and processed products combined seems to be roughly zero as well, but in terms of raw materials the EU is still net importing agricultural products. To say Europe is going to "become almost entirely dependent on the outside world" doesn't match these figures though.

===
Europe, Stay away from the obesity vendors and there will be enough food to last 10 more generations. You do not want GMO crops.
a) If you bring them, your pollination from bees and other flying insects will drop substantially
b) You will have, perhaps, a higher yield crop, but not repetitive. You will be forced to purchase seeds every year.
c) Genetically modified wheat is stated (I have no proof) to show that GMO wheat is much more absorbed by the body and leads to weight gain, for the same quantity of ingested food.
d) Your pasta loving Italians are slim today, but with GMO, in 20 years they will be as Obese as Americans and Canadians. Welcome to heart-attack and other chronic illness land.

The numbers I found in a quick search suggest that EU-wide there is still a small population growth, but pretty close to zero. The import/export balance (PDF, see graphs on page 2) for raw and processed products combined seems to be roughly zero as well, but in terms of raw materials the EU is still net importing agricultural products. To say Europe is going to "become almost entirely dependent on the outside world" doesn't match these figures though.

Why not continue this story with further 'count down' stories?

ANYTHING to push another MS related post to the FP. Every day/week. We can't live here at /. without MS stories!

Has there been a new Microsoft related post today?

Of course!

Let's all celebrate proprietary monopolies!

Let's replace the Microsoft logo, which used to be a Borg logo, with a friendly Care Bear with the Windows logo on his chest! Let's market these toys so we all have Microsoft Care Bears on us all of the time - with bluetooth! When we rub his belly a beam shoots across the room to the latest Slashdot story about another Microsoft news or not news happening!

Dell and HP should sell out to MS: Why not own the OEMs?

Finally:

Spanish Linux users launch legal challenge to Microsoftâ(TM)s secure boot

@ http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/view/31499/spanish-linux-users-launch-legal-challenge-to-microsofts-secure-boot/
@@ http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/view/24199/rsa-2012-malware-gets-the-boot-in-windows-8-notes-charney
@@ http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/26/us-microsoft-eu-idUSBRE92P0E120130326
@@ http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Secure-Boot-complaint-filed-against-Microsoft-1830714.html
@@ http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getAllAnswers.do?reference=E-2013-000162&language=EN
@@ http://www.hispalinux.es/node/758
@@@ http://www.nbcnews.com/id/51329950/ns/business-us_business/t/exclusive-open-software-group-files-complaint-eu-against-microsoft/
@@@ http://newyork.newsday.com/business/technology/microsoft-target-of-hispalinux-open-source-software-users-in-complaint-to-eu-1.4909950
@@@ http://www.mobilenapps.com/articles/8058/20130327/linux-users-file-complaint-against-microsoft-over-secure-boot-windows.htm
@@@ http://rcpmag.com/articles/2013/04/01/spanish-complaint-windows-8-secure-boot.aspx
@@@ http://www.eitb.com/en/news/technology/detail/1297786/hispalinux-microsoft--hispalinux-files-complaint-microsoft/

Lock yourself in, boys! (At the BIOS level) We're in for a heck of a ride!

Mark me troll because you know it's true and you enjoy lying to yourself.

"LOOKS LIKE MEAT IS BACK ON THE MENU, BOYS!"

The logo for MS should be a plate of Soylent Green and a rainbow behind it.

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