Thursday, April 23, 2009

Three things i want to share with you all today;

Ubuntu 9.04 has been released, it's not a LTS release but i think it is a welcome update to 8.10, certainly for netbook users since 'Netbook remix' is now an official separate version.

A website got blocked by court order in Belgium. It's a website reporting in which neighbourhood previously convicted pedophiles live. No exact addresses are given, so you don't know who the offender is. I'm not a proponent of these kind of tactics which are basicly censoring. However what shocked me more is that there is a Belgian law that allows this since 2001, it's allowed by law to disable access to data on computerised systems when; it's subject of a crime and/or are in disturb civil peace or vice - scary.
The reasoning is that they fear actions towards the pedophiles if people find out there is one living in their neighbourhood. First, how does that website gather its information? I guess it is publicly available somewhere, if this information is not publicly available then how did they get their hands on it? But, and i recon this is the case, if the data is freely available somewhere already, this site is just taking that information and publishing it in an easily accessable format. in that case the blockade of the website must be lifted!

Bundled sales are now allowed in Belgium, previously this was not allowed by law. Thus, special deals like an iphone for 1 euro when signing a contract with a mobile provider were previously not allowed. I'm still not sure if i'm pro or contra, as always this can have benefits to customers, but in some cases you might even end up paying more or are tricked into an expensive scheme.

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