Slashdot Mirror

Symbolon http://defensieweblog.blogspot.nl/2013/04/aivdmivd-project-symbolon.html

Argo II http://webwereld.nl/beveiliging/78311-regering-bevestigt-tapprojecten-aivd-en-mivd

http://www.scribd.com/doc/114019639/Brandbrief-techbranche-aan-Teeven-over-Thuiskopie
In English, link published on http://www.webwereld.nl/

Yeah, and just last month, Dutch minister Verhagen and Secretary Teeven declared they would reject any ACTA clones. (Dutch).

However, these are politicians promising things, so they should be reminded of their own words.

KPN didn't discover it themselves. An ICT company did (accidentally even), and reported the flaw to an IT site (webwereld.nl) instead of contacting KPN directly.

Dutch link: http://tweakers.net/nieuws/82955/kpn-maakt-blunder-met-standaardwachtwoord-z-adsl-accounts.html and http://webwereld.nl/nieuws/111057/140-000-kpn-adsl-accounts-lek-door-welkom01-fail.html

Windows 1 vs. Windows 8: http://blog.webwereld.nl/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Win8-Metro-history-WinUI.jpg

The Dutch solution: just use some existing authentication scheme. A few days ago, CapGemini proposed a report to our government, and one of the proposals in it was to see if we could integrate DigiD with.... wait for it.... Facebook Connect (article in Dutch). DigiD is a digital identity scheme used by citizens to access Dutch government services like internal revenue and municipal services which require authentication. Hey, at least a Facebook account is free, right?

Another source, in Dutch

In response to the news, Gemnet's parent company KPN, has revoked a thousand certificates. Dutch original

Shape and size? The natural results of designing a case around a screen, CPU, RAM, battery etc.

Don't forget that Apple actually lied in court by showing distorted images making the sizes look the same when they are quite different. The previously did the same thing with the Galaxy Samsung S phone so this is a well tried tactic by Apple

Well, I'm not going to defend Real-Player, but a Dutch new article about the issue suggests Real initially assumed the site was actively distributing the software. They came back on that in court, so now there is just linking left. It makes them look kind of stupid, complaining about illegal software but not being able to determine where the actual download is from.

My gut feeling is Real will loose this (and they should), and in the Netherlands this means REAL will most likely have to cough up the the legal fees for this bloke.

http://webwereld.nl/nieuws/107630/apple--gehele-galaxy-lijn-moet-uit-de-schappen.html

http://translate.google.se/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=sv&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwebwereld.nl%2Fnieuws%2F107630%2Fapple--gehele-galaxy-lijn-moet-uit-de-schappen.html

Apple is actually seeking a ban on all of the Galaxy products, including the original tab and the Galaxy S2 smartphone, in The Netherlands.
This is not just a ban from Samsung importing them. It's a ban on retailers to sell them (i.e. they need to recall them) and distributors distributing them (to other countries). So that 'good advertising' would only last for as long as they're still allowed to sell it - which might be until mid October if they're unlucky.

In addition Apple demand that in Samsung's recall notice to distributors and retailers, they make note that the product infringes on Apple IP.

It seems very much a "Let's demand the ridiculous - any toning down by the judge will then fall in our favor" type move, but I'm sure they're actually quite serious.
Source: http://webwereld.nl/nieuws/107630/apple--gehele-galaxy-lijn-moet-uit-de-schappen.html

Apple isn't scoring any brownie points with these demands, that's for sure. One major online news site's (nu.nl) comments are replete with negative comments toward Apple, even from avid Apple fans, and they're not doing much better over at the #1 tech news site for NL/BE (tweakers.net).

Not that I think it'll impact Apple's bottom line in any way. ha.

I have no doubt that they would extend this to the EU.

Google responded to a query from a dutch newsite regarding this issue.

Source: http://webwereld.nl/nieuws/107318/google-verbant-belgische-kranten--uitgevers-woest.html

Relevant quote, translated:
``We regret having taken this action, and are open for future cooperation with members of Copiepresse. Would we keep the material in our index, we risk fines up to 25,000 euro per incident. We would be pleased to include Copiepresse in our index if they declare they want to be included on Google Search and refrain from potentional charges``, Google declares to Webwereld.

Original response in dutch:
``"Het spijt ons dat we dit moeten doen, en we staan open voor samenwerking met leden van Copiepresse in de toekomst. Zouden we het materiaal in de index houden, dan riskeren we boetes tot 25.000 euro per inbreuk. We nemen Copiepresse graag weer op in de index als ze aangeven op Google Search te willen verschijnen en afzien van potentiële boetes", verklaart Google tegenover Webwereld.``

That is a good question, http://webwereld.nl/nieuws/65374/pvv--europa-moet-acta-tegenhouden.html#source=news_overview
English version here:
http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http://webwereld.nl/nieuws/65374/pvv--europa-moet-acta-tegenhouden.html%23source%3Dnews_overview&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com&twu=1&usg=ALkJrhhFg6Snqu6B-En7s9sHYbDhEdrr0Q
suggest that PVV are also against ACTA.

Both parties are in general against the Union, so I assume they are just voting no to everything placed for a vote by the parliament.

But I am a little surprised by the "no" votes from the Netherlands.

Especially because all 3 dutch "no" votes were from the "Party for Freedom" (PVV). This same party was against ACTA last monday (dutch article), MEPs emailed on what they were smoking.

T-Mobile in Netherlands is tolerating it because they simply can't stop it. The standard iPhone rate includes all traffic (starting at 30 euro a month with 150 minutes+150 sms). Here is an easy way in dutch how to set up tethering. Here's the article about the tolerating, also in dutch. ;-)

"This seems one of the cases when an Idling corporation wans to get money out of work done by someone else.
The corporation did not have a product that people wanted, a person makes such product and now the corp wants the idea and the money I presume."

Deja-vu, this is same reason the dutch railways (NS) wanted http://www.naquah.net/trein/ removed from the store (according to http://webwereld.nl/article/view/id/53098 (in dutch)). But a half year later there still is nothing to be found for iphones at the ns.nl.

Message from the netherlands, and this has been in the news for a couple of days over here as well.
The i aint going into whether or legal system is good, if our priorities are screwed up, whether our sentences are too high or too low, but just a little feedback from the dutch sources.
please dont hold me for not using the proper words for everything, i will try to explain this as good as I can.
The sentence the 2 boys got was for stealing property with violence.
The motivation of the judge was that like with real-life property you had to go thru some kind of effort to obtain these items and being able to use them afterwards, therefor it is property and had some kind of value(ingame gold, status, emotional)
His motivation for calling it theft was that the boy who got beaten and threatened wasnt able to use the "property" after this, saying his property wasnt within reach for him and therefor stolen.

I hope this clearifies any questions about how the judgement was made.

sources(in dutch):
http://games.fok.nl/news.php?newsid=27831
http://tweakers.net/nieuws/56315/jongeren-veroordeeld-tot-werkstraffen-wegens-diefstal-virtuele-goederen.html
http://webwereld.nl/articles/53099/taakstraf-ge-ist-voor-digitale-diefstal.html

I'm a european, and about every european country has their tech blog, for example heise in germany, and tweakers or webwereld in holland. 'Limiting' point is, they're all in the language of the respective country. For the rest they're pretty good, news can be in there faster than it would on slashdot, and they're all moderated, therefore no junk as with digg. So the quality is ok, I just don't have the time to read them all and find the comment moderation system on slashdot the most pleasant and efficient to read.

Umm why do you think the average virtualization rule of thumb for virtualization is 4x vm's / cpu, when the average utilization of those individually is much less than 25% (actually around 5-10%)? Hello it's headroom, you don't dump bazzillions onto one and run it upto 100% utilization at all time, you run it from 10% up to 50% leaving you ample headroom.

Businesses buy excess superfast machines all the time, majority of businesses in datacenters lease their equipment. Every three years you get to buy a system 3x as fast for an application that was having acceptable response time. A datacenter having 1000x old 700mhz systems, when they go to replace them they can buy 1000x new 4ghz systems, do a massive consolidation effort getting different apps to try and play nice with different libraries or you can virtualize them onto a smaller ammount of servers.

According to gartner the average utilization rate is ~5-10% for x86 servers, the average rate is so damn low saying 75% could be virtualized is a conservative statement, not an aggressive one.

http://www.cioinsight.com/article2/0,1540,1914946, 00.asp
http://www.webwereld.nl/articles/41675/gartner-ene rgy-costs-at-forefront-of-it.html

The Dutch 'Secret' Service (AIVD) recenlty lost a memorystick containing 'secret' documents:

in Dutch: http://www.webwereld.nl/articles/39418
from an Italian newspaper: ( http://www.intesatrade.it/IntesaTrade/News/Dettagl ioNotizieOggi/1,3243,2@1332658,00.html )

The report comes a day after the Defense Ministry said it had lost a computer memory stick containing confidential Military Intelligence Agency data. In December, a Dutch district court sentenced a former AIVD translator to four and a half years imprisonment for passing on state secrets to alleged terrorists. Last year, a secret service employee left several CD-ROMs of confidential intelligence in the trunk of a rental car.

Microsoft ontwikkelt samen met MTV een muziekdienst genaamd Urge. De iTunes-tegenhanger komt standaard in de opvolger van Windows XP, Vista, te zitten.

It was Dutch, actually.

http://www.webwereld.nl/articles/38285

I have here an article which specifically stated that the discs with the rootkit on it from Sony will be in store in The Netherlands in 2006. (sorry it's in Dutch)

Does this mean that NL again misses out on an opportunity? :)

No seriously, I think that this is a good decision, but just a tad too late. And I hope that the lawsuits continue, otherwise they will never learn from this.

Let this be an example to the media maffia.

Check this out:

http://www.webwereld.nl/articles/38285

Someone in the Netherlands claims to have found certain strings from Lame's source code in Sony's app. Did Sony steal LGPL'd code?

"Nonetheless, the spokesmen of Sony BMG Nederland says that Xcp will be introduced in Europe, and therefore also in the Netherlands, in 2006."

The article further contains no less then 17 dubious features of the Sony software, basically the same ones as circulated the news lately. However, number 15 is interesting. Blankesteijn claims he received spam after entering his e-mail adres in the request form for the Xcp removal software:

"15. Not only is this [filling in a form] in-necessary complicated and time consuming, Beet (the magazine) immediately received spam from Sony BMG containing an advertisement for their multimedia software. It turns out somewhere along the road you could have clicked on a link to Sony MBG's privacy policy. There it says your mail address can be added to marketing lists. But is very well possible that the user will not notice this link. In any way, nowhere is asked for permission to do this, which will make this way of handling illegal in many countries."

Another interesting Dutch headline involves the discovery that the rootkit contains parts of LAME, a LGPLed mp3 encoder. A translation can be found here.

It is unclear what LAME is used for in the kit, but according to it's about page, Lame can also be used for decoding. In that sense, this usenet post by a first4internet employee shows that the company producing the rootkit at least has an MP3 player, which of course might be part of the Sony rootkit:

"I am currently writing an MP3 player with lots of bells and whistles including a wave editor, fades, reverbs etc. What I now need is to be able to protect the files it creates. I have already written the routine to convert the MP3 into a WMA file. Does someone have some simple C++ code which can write Microsofts DRM v1 properties that the user whishes to set (i.e. 3plays 4 copies etc) over the unprotected file to make it protected. There may be some cash on offer here if its easy to use! All I need is a procedure that performs this."

And if you're thinking you're safe for these kind of kits because you're on a mac, well, it might not be for long. Of course this is pure speculation, but at least one F4I employee is asking questions about mac programming issues...

According to this article (Dutch) on the CD Get Right With The Man of Van Zant there are strings from the library version.c of Lame. The following strings are found: "http://www.mp3dev.org/", "0.90", "LAME3.95", "3.95", "3.95 ".

Also in the program go.exe their is an array called "largetbl", which is part of tables.c of libmp3lame. Can anyone confirm these findings?

LAME is licenced under the LGPL. Could this mean more trouble for Sony because of a license violation?

You're absolutely right. Just last week FFII and Nutzwerk settled in a German court about, amongst others, FFII referencing to the translation of a Dutch article by WebWereld, also published in English on the site of the author, Brenno de Winter. De Winter published statements by Nutzwerk CEO Holzer where he called FFII Chairman Pilch a "catagoric lyar".

WebWereld reports(Dutch) that in the settlement FFII and Nutzwerk agreed that FFII stops commenting on Nutzwerk and Nutzwerk stops sueing them.

An interesting detail about Nutzwerk is that they used to maintain a link farm in order to get high ranks in Google. Amongst the files in the farm, was a file scheiss_juden.htm which was apparantly meant to increase the probablility googling jew haters would find their anonymity services. According to a German article, the link farm was set up as to allow only web-crawlers to the farm contents and at some point Google had 51.000 links pointing to the Nutzwerk site. At this moment only 908 remain, after apparantly the Google cache has been wiped.

Now some fun: Google for the combination of "Rene Holzer" (Nutzwerk CEO) and "Michael Koustiniko". You'll probably find this post, where Mr. Koustiniko signs as "Rene Holzer". Digging a little further shows that our friend used this alias to advertise his products.

What's also interesting is that in their previous legal actions against Cobion AG, during which 2 of Nutzwerk's software patents were invalidated, Nutzwerk was represented by Günter Freiherr von Gravenreuth, an attorney well known in the computer scene. For instance, he was was behind the much publicised Tanja campaign where he tricked computer users into sending a list of pirated software to "Tanja", on the receiving of which he sent them a cease and desist notice along with a request for payment, he shut down emule.de (German), extorted SuSE, demanded Linus Torvalds to drop the Linux name and last but not least was involved in the cases around MobiliX as the registrar of the trademark Obelix.

Pretty much true I guess... And it can get even worse, I can tell you.

Last week the police over here in the Netherlands lost 78 email addresses of terrorist suspects, that were found after they arrested the terrorist that murdered Dutch cineast Theo van Gogh. The reason: the emails and email addresses were on a hotmail account that was not used for more than 30 days and deleted by Microsoft!!!. For real. Check for example here (in Dutch)...

Yes, you can read it here http://www.webwereld.nl/nieuws/20607.phtml but I hope you can read Dutch! :-)

here

Besides that, I wonder this means they (=Brinkhorst) is actually going to vote or will abstain which would basically mean yes.

Several high-profile groups and a number of lawyers have already noted that linking to copyrighted material is not illegal, and as such the copyright enforcement organisation might be in over their heads on this one. This article (in Dutch) quotes a copyright lawyer warning that the copyright enforcement organisation that is behind the raid is probably going to end up having to pay a large sum in compensation.

There have been a bunch of rumours about a car accident involving some free software folks today. Since there seems to be no central place for all information I am trying to gather all information here.

If you have any other information please drop me an email at wichert@wiggy.net

All mentioned times are in CEST (UTC +0200).

• There has been a car accident returning from a trip to bring Richard Stallman (RMS) from SANE 2004 to Paris. (confirmed by several sources)
• they collided with a truck which merged onto their lane while driving in fog (unconfirmed)
• Exact time of the accident is unknown. It was on the morning of September 30th before 09:00.
• Richard Stallman was dropped off in Paris and no longer in the car (confirmed by Rop and Richard).
• At the time of the accident Hans Bakker (mclightje), Edwin Hermans (madeddie), and Sebastian S. (webmind) were in the car. (confirmed).
• The car belongs to Rop Gonggrijp, who lent it to the travelers. RMS was staying with Rop during SANE. (confirmed by Rop)
• Hans Bakker (photo, homepage) did not survive the crash. (confirmed by girlfriend)
• Edwin Hermans has a broken hip and has been transfered to a different hospital for surgery. Sebastian is (or was by now) in surgery for broken bones but is not in critical condition.

• This Yahoo France accident report is from another accident which occured later and the car was traveling in the wrong direction

• Webwereld (Dutch)
• NedLinux.nl (Dutch)

It's in the dutch news too. http://www.webwereld.nl/nieuws/19639.phtml

Of course you're correct in this in theory. But nowadays a lot of laws are made on a more or less ad-hoc basis. Something happens, ie the WTC-bombing, and politicians throw up one or more new laws. What is criminal and what is not is not only decided by the politicians but also by the flood of media-attention something gets. There's talk about making cryptography illegal, so should we just adhere to that law? The governement in Orwell's 1984 had the same opinion, if you're not doing something illegal why would you mind? I mind knowing the governement (or someone else) is watching my every move. In Holland where I live the governement is talking about instituting a new intelligence agency which has the right to spy on people even if they're not suspects of a crime. Also the governement is going to pass a law which obliges ISP's to record all email- and surfingtrafic and store it for a year. If that's going to be the "democratic moral" then I'd rather be someone who resists the "society". Last (cheap shot on /. of course), what if linux is stated as "criminal" because it infringes on patents, shouldn't we use it anymore and hand over our life to ie microsoft? And I'm not wearing a tin-foil hat (yet), I'm carrying my cellphone with me day and night, so every step I make could be tracked if the governement wants to. Sometimes though I start wondering if I should put my cellphone someplace safe or just get rid of it. The direction the whole law-making process is going is scaring me more and more.

Just al little extra info, the dutch minister says he won't retract his vote. The dutch parlement now might try to force him to do so, or send a letter to the commision to retract the vote. It's not yet clear how this is going to end. More info is available on Webwereld (dutch link, sorry).

The Inquirer: "A plan by the European Council of Ministers to force the continent wide adoption of the Directive on Software Patents suffered a blow yesterday when the Dutch Parliament ordered a minister to withdraw the country's support".

Groklaw says "The Dutch parliament is making news. It has just withdrawn its vote for the Directive on Software Patents. It's a proof-of-concept vote, you might say, the first time such a move has been taken in the history of the EU, demonstrating that other countries are free to do the same, as we reported on June 22.".

In Germany, Heise covers the story. In the Netherlands, the story is making headlines all over the place, lik e for example on webwereld and Tweakers.net.

This sudden change of direction is a long story, in which a classic case of desinformation of the Parliament triggered a whole process of debates and motions.

Not reading the article is normal for Slashdot users but the original submitter clearly stated that known mailservers of the providers are white listed.

See http://virbl.bit.nl/ for more details.

And this Graph for the amount of virusses sent per (dutch) provider that were blocked using this system.

Alex

Update, 1:15 PM: It seems that this is a 'bug', sais a spokesman of Google. A mailbox of 1000 GB is not in consideration.

No, you don't have to:
Tweakers.net
Webwereld.nl

I'm not really good at translating but I'll give it a try
Loosely translated from a article on WebWereld (dutch IT news site)

Dutch judge prohibits the use of the trademark Lindows
This conclusion was made by the Dutch judge Sj. Rullmann in Amsterdam on Thursday.

Microsoft claimed during court that Lindows violated its trademark and that the name Lindows is too confusing in comparison to its own product Windows.

"Lindows profits unlawfully from the success of Windows because Lindows.com too explicitly puts its product in the market as a product which is capable of running both platforms", according to the judge.

[I don't even understand the next line in Dutch but I'll try: ] Moreover Lindows distinguishes itself [huh?] from Windows because of its name [and] Lindows takes unjustified advantage from the [fuck knows: undistinguishablility?] and reputation of the brand Windows.

Lindows.com is summoned to cease the violation of the trademark infringement on the brand Windows. The software company of Michael Robertson is also no longer allowed to advertise in the Netherlands.

Furthermore the four resellers in the Netherlands must stop with the sale and advertisements of Lindows products.

Also the judge ruled that Lindows must ensure that internet users from the Benelux [BElgium NEtherlands LUXembourg] can no longer access the site www.lindows.com.

This verdict corresponds to earlier rulings of judges in Finland and Sweden. There the use of the names LindowsOS and Lindows became prohibited in December as well.

Lindows.com could change its name in the Benelux. According to Erik Vollebregt Clifford Change, the question whether this will happen is uncertain because the sales in the Benelux are not high, but it is up to the lawyer's office of Lindows.com [in the USA]

Vollebregt: "We just sent the sentence to USA. Hence it still must be determined whether Lindows thinks it makes sense and money worth spending to appeal to the verdict"

A few days ago it appeared in Dutch webmags that QuoteOffice (a .NET based virtual office tool, offered for free in a basic version and for some 20 euros in a PRO version) stops. Not because they ran out of money, but because of technical problems. (see WebWereld (Dutch). They didn't completely disclose what kind of tech probs they had though. Funny thing is the case is still listed on the MS site as a good example on how to use .NET. :)

The alleged perpetrator in the article (Martijn Bevelander) was hailed as a young Bill Gates in dutch media in 1999. A popular newspaper (Telegraaf, think of The Sun, not of The Sunday Times) ran an article (dutch), quoting the 19yo: "Even at primary school I announced I was going to be famous & rich!"

In other news (dutch) today, Bevelander denies being involved with the spammers' front, Cyberangels. He threatens the BBC (boy, will they be scared) with litigation, "our resources to end this nonsense are endless." Which is remarkable, as his company went broke in 2002.

However, simple checks by Webwereld (public files at the local chamber of commerce) reveal a link to MegaProvider, Bevelander's current set-up. Bevelander, who claimed earlier to be an investor in the spammers' operation, now dismisses this as "something from his past."

--

It has just been discovered that research causes cancer in rats.

I'm a network engineer for a medium-sized ISP in The Netherlands. Martijn Bevelander has been operating in de dutch ISP world for years now. Previously most people saw him as a huge clown; his daddy (some chief somewhere) seems to always fund his playing in the internetworld while he manages to get all his companies to go broke.

His staff continues to show their good knowledge on the Internet: see this mail where one of his noc monkeys notifies the operators on the Amsterdam Internet Exchange of a new announcement from Bevelander Internet Services: 192.168.0.0/16. Perhaps this was just a sneak preview into the future?

The dutch media have reported on several occasions on him: check this link from Webwereld.

Insiders still laugh on his ignorance regarding security. He used to have his printers wide open connected to the internet, resulting people to send complete black pages to it. Another great story is how he continued to buy new 3com switches after he failed to change the administrators access to them and someone from the outside shutdown't his uplink port. Yeah Martijn, they were all broken.

So far he was just a joke. The troubles started when his company Bevelander Internet Services got broke and he quickly setup a new company called Megaprovider. After most of the customers were transferred, he sold the empty remains to Concepts ICT. Appearantly Megaprovider is not doing to good as well, seeing his Cyberangels adventure.

One of his well-known associates, Joshua Dodds, is known as a true DDoS-kiddo, DoS'ing everyting and everyone who says a bad thing about him on IRCnet. I guess they will never learn...

I just heard this morning from Dutch MEP Erik Meijer that the voting about this issue will be postponed again until september. So we have some more time to react.

For Dutch readers, here is an interesting discussion about the proposal for software patents:
http://www.webwereld.nl/nieuws/15381.phtml

A list of Dutch MEPs including most email addresses can be found here:
http://www.vosoft.nl/parlementariers.html

Slightly offtopic but IMHO very important: the juridical department of the EU has approved a new proposal for allowing software patents in the EU just this week. If it's up to the person responsible for preparing the decision making - Arlene McCarthy from british labour - this will be decided on in the the europarliament on the 30th of june. Please sign this petition to help stop this nonsense. I unfortunately only have a dutch link to the story (here).

Vodafone starts filtering SMS-spam as of sometime this month. Here's more information but it's in dutch... I'm not sure if it's happening in the Netherlands only btw.