gHacks technology news » Germany

German Web Censorship Law Passed

Martin — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 14:04:35 +0000

The German web censorship law passed the German Bundestag earlier today. This could mean that German Internet providers with more than 10.000 customers have to create filters based on a secret list that is provided by the German Federal Criminal Office. Users who access Internet sites that are included in the list will be presented with a stop sign instead of the website itself. The traffic details will be recorded but cannot be used for criminal prosecution. The police does have the right to check the data on suspicion.

The German Federal Criminal Office has the authority to add new websites and domains to the list. A website can for instance be added instantly if it is hosted outside of the European Union. A committee has been designated to perform spot checks on the list every three months.

The law itself was pushed mainly as a law to fight child pornography on the Internet. It was always denied that it would be used to censor websites for different reasons although some politicians have already mentioned that they would like to include violent video games or hate sites in the list as well.

Internet providers have the sole responsibility to provide the infrastructure and maintain the web censorship filters. This includes organizations like Universities but also some businesses with more than 10000 employees. The technique employed to filter websites that are on the web censorship list is simply blocking the domain name. Users who enter the IP can visit the site normally. (via Heise (German))

Is that the future ? Waiter free Restaurants

Martin — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 06:33:24 +0000

Companies try everything to reduce labor costs to a minimum by automating, which simply means replacing humans by computers, and outsourcing, which means producing in countries with lower labor costs, processes. The ideal world for them is a world without labor costs at all to maximize profits and please the shareholders.

A restaurant owner in Germany had the brilliant idea to replace waiters with a automated system that would send the food on rails right from the kitchen to the customer who ordered the dish. Customers order their dishes using a touchscreen that is also keeping them informed about deliver time and managing payments with an ATM like system.

The kitchen is located on the top floor of the restaurant and dishes are servered using the rail like system and gravity to reach the customers. No word however on how the plates are making their way up again after the visitor finishes his meal.

Baggers Homepage

Big Raid on German Edonkey Users

Martin — Tue, 23 May 2006 14:32:37 +0000

The German police searched the houses of more than 130 German edonkey users after logging actions on a popular edonkey server for more than two months. The police had a record of 40.000 IP addresses of which about 3500 could be traced back to German users. The police was not willed to reveal the servers name but admitted that the server itself was hosted in Germany.

According to heise online only the houses of users with more than 500 files in their share have been raided. About 14 gigabytes of data was saved in logfiles during the two month observation. About 800.000 file transfers have been logged as well. Rumors that emerged at the slyck forums point to dark-force-elite.org 85.25.134.173:4661 as the server which has been logged and probably is still logged.