Week In Review 7W2010 (MWC Edition)
Symbian^3 will be bringing 2007 to phone near you till the end of the year. Nokia decided to delay their smartphone plans even further by announcing Maemo+Moblin=MeeGo with Intel. SE claims to have no business sense by turning down the GooglePhone. Windows Mobile is no more. Microsoft came to terms with the fact Windows Mobile was a turd, broke clean and emerged with Windows Phone 7 Series which is about 10 years of Windows Mobile. I don’t care much about homescreen grid designs and figuring out what’s sensitive in an interface with 0 cues is kinda hard but the thing, on demo, seems on par with people are doing this year. Lets see how it actually works out in real hardware.
On ACTA news, a leaked Mexico report surfaced. (ed: seeing everything about ACTA is secret I’m taking all claimed leaked documents as real, as opposed to my normal stance on this kind of stuff) And seems like public officials have been lying about what’s going on regarding enforcement policy. Not only that but the EU Data Protection Supervisor put forward a statement about ACTA where he, amongst others, regrets the [unelected] Commission handles the negotiation on it’s own without involving the citizen privacy ombudsman and reminds the Commission all agreed legislation must respect the EU law regarding data protection, privacy and citizens rights in general. In summary, the EDPS views widespread monitoring private citizens Internet activity as IP enforcement tool in interference with the right to private life and against case law established in the European Court of Human Rights. This is particularly relevant when currently, in Portugal, members of governing party are being publicly accused in the media of widespread corruption and (ironically) maneuvering to control said media based on leaked wiretaps generated on other investigations. Their defense is leaking said wiretaps is in violation of their right to private life. Sadly, the value of the right to private life seems to depend on who’s life it is and what lobby is on the other side.
Remember kids, riped DVDs don’t have annoying junk so are better.
France probably has a rampant child pornography problem we’re not aware of and trumps all other issues France is facing now. That’s the only reason for trying to pass an Internet censorship law through a special fast tracked ‘urgent’ process. All to protect the children of course.
Speaking of child porn, administrators at a US school used laptop cameras to spy on students at home. It would be nice, for a change, to bring the full force of the law to bear on this power abusing perverts instead of just using kids as strawman in political censorship laws.
