Deutsche Telekom blocks TCP port 8085 - they're crazy, those Deutsche Telekom people. Because they sold their customers junk that can't be made secure, now a port is being blocked.
Linkblog - 6.6.2007 - 2.7.2007
Giant hogweed is being combated - "Giant hogweed, also known as Hercules' club, is poisonous and can cause second-degree burns. That's why road maintenance workers in NRW will be clearing the slopes of this plant in the coming weeks." - one could wonderfully make a bad science fiction out of this news ...
Linux-Smartphone OpenMoko available from July 2007 - doesn't sound so bad, especially the consumer version in October. It would be the perfect addition to my Nokia Tablet. Funny, Linux might become almost more interesting for me in this area than in the desktop area.
Police defused explosive device in London - Passersby discovered the vehicle. No surveillance cameras (in which the British are pioneers) and no telephone surveillance (in which they are also at the forefront). None of that silly security hocus-pocus, but simply and plainly passersby who found the car suspicious. What do you want to bet that this bomb find will now be used to justify further - ineffective - surveillance measures?
"Code kennt keine Fairness" - Larry Lessig on democracy in virtual worlds. And perhaps worth considering for the advocates of the eternal "Code is Law" approach on the net.
EU and USA have reached agreements on the transfer of flight passenger and financial data - the data trading continues. What can all be justified with the fight against terrorism and how the politicians' brains turn off (do they really believe that no economic espionage would be added to this, or do they just not give a shit?), is frightening. What do we actually have representatives of the people for, if they then behave like traitors to the people?
'Intel Core 2' - buggy as hell, according to Theo. And well, if that guy knows one thing, it's exploitable bugs.
Millionenschaden durch manipulierte Geldautomaten - if you're affected, have fun discussing it with the bank. Because they still assume that ATMs are secure and the customer is initially suspected of fraud. Because that's the best way to deal with customers who have a problem.
Ari Jaaksi on Nokia and Open Source and the N770 - very interesting excerpts from Ari Jaaksi's whitepaper on the opportunities in Open Source for large companies (in this case Nokia).
Kaczynski threatens the federal government over a caricature - the two Kaczynskis are the biggest caricatures themselves ...
The iPhone Matches Most of Its Hype - sounds good. The flaws would probably not bother me, as a phone is only used as a mobile internet access and only in the most extreme emergency for calling.
Banned By Gaussian - a software company for a product used in the field of theoretical chemistry refuses to sell their package to scientists and institutions working on competing open source solutions. Note, only working on them, not copying anything from the commercial product or similar - it is not a violation of copyrights, but merely that these persons or institutions use or support a software alternative.
"Heavy doping allegations against BDR" - looks like Scharping has messed this job up too. Well, one thing is clear: no one will accuse Scharping of doping, as sleepy as he comes across ...
Zwangsausschluss von Aktionären verfassungsgemäß - well, there politics and the constitutional court pull together - a capitalist - string. Nice how it is suggested to major shareholders that it is a corporate participation and not a capital investment - in times when financial investors, for pure capital interests, strip mid-sized companies, such an idea is simply laughable.
Full map of Europe in year 1000 - wouldn't that be something for the rider of the shockwave?
Google Mail will shut down due to data retention - sounds dramatic, right? Google as a champion of privacy and data protection. I'm laughing now. And those who think that Google is now fighting for its rights: sorry, but what they will probably do is simply block German IP addresses on their service. If at all.
Content filter for Second Life - given the current picture of LL's technical competence, such an announcement doesn't really inspire confidence.
Schäuble considers online searches "essential" - strangely, I feel far more threatened by the rolling madness in Berlin than by any Islamists. The Berlin Prolethicians, who support this nonsense, however, seem primarily threatened by their own population. Why else would they have such broad powers to investigate and examine any citizen at will? Does what is happening there still have anything to do with democratic order?
XGP - OS X IDE for GNU Prolog (which includes a native code compiler). Hmm.
Top speed limit for all EU cars from the factory? - fittingly with panic comments. Because the freedom of the German is measured by the top speed. Screw privacy and surveillance state, if we are only allowed to speed, Germans are happy. No matter how stupid the idea is in terms of traffic and the environment.
Binary marble adding machine - just so cool!
Paul Dowman » Ruby on Rails EC2 “Appliance” - maybe not a bad idea to play around with EC2.
Complaint against BBC over video format - "According to the BBC, one reason for the decision to use the Windows Media format was that the rights holders demanded that the films contain a 30-minute timebomb to prevent permanent access to the data. Only by complying with these conditions was the TV-on-demand service possible at all." - the logical reaction to this was probably unthinkable for the BBC: to simply scrap the whole project and publicly name the real culprits. Instead, they prefer to play the role of Microsoft's lackey.
Yahoo Censoring Open Source - if you need more reasons to kick Yahoo to the curb.
Music industry wants unrestricted access to user data - because the music industry is above the law. When will this madness end? I have already drawn my conclusions - by largely ignoring the meager work results of the music industry and preferring to stock up on new songs at Magnatune or Jamendo. It's much more exciting there.
Programming Experiments: Initial Release of my web tools - two small libraries, especially Weberl is interesting as it is based on OTP for configuration and structure and works with classic Erlang Behaviours. OTP thus offers very simple scaling to multiple web hosts.
An analysis of EOS-1D Mark III autofocus performance - Canon will probably need to improve this a lot.
Anthracite - MacOS X Software for Web Mining Automation. Looks nice, something like Pipes for the desktop.
Spamhaus.org relativizes nic.at listing - I think I've said before that I don't think much of spam list operators, because they all go crazy sooner or later. Of course, Spamhaus is more important than laws ...
Atomic bomb explosion in Czech breakfast television - cool action
"Skulptur Projekte Münster 07" - finally it's starting. I like the Skulpturprojekte - the integration of art and normal space is simply the right way. Museums are always so stiff.
Third View - Photos from the 19th century re-taken in 1970 and the 90s. Interesting Flash site.
Schneier on Security: Portrait of the Modern Terrorist as an Idiot - our Proletarians in Berlin should perhaps read this too. But for them, one would surely have to translate it into Bild-Speak ...
Anger about new Flickr filters - "If you use a Yahoo ID from Singapore, Germany, Hong Kong or Korea, you cannot turn off the safe search due to local business conditions. [...]" - it's time for a service that offers the features without this silly idea of censorship. Picasa is not an alternative - the features are just too meager, the interface too brittle.
Yahoo shareholders reject human rights proposals - "The shareholders of the internet service provider Yahoo have followed the board's recommendations and rejected two proposals at their annual general meeting (PDF file) that were intended to push the company towards greater human rights engagement. The proposals, supported by Amnesty International, demanded, on the one hand, resistance against censorship efforts in countries like China and, on the other hand, the establishment of a company-internal committee for human rights." - it's all about money, not about rights or the consequences of one's own greed. They just sell out dissidents to the governments of the countries where they smell big money. Doesn't matter, they're not shareholders.
ZFS is in MacOS X 10.5 - Golem.de - "ZFS is only equipped with read support and can only be used via the command line - integrated ZFS partitions cannot be written with Apple's operating system." - damn. That's useless.
Expert report confirms manipulability of voting computers - will certainly be ignored by the prolethicians in Berlin, just like all other facts.
httplib2.py - better HTTP library than the one in the standard library.
No labeling required: EU allows traces of GM in organic food - great. Because GM crap doesn't respect field boundaries, organic food is simply redefined and made even more meaningless than the EU organic label already is. All for commerce. The stupid little coins that are probably more important to corrupt politicians shoved up their asses by lobby groups than effective consumer protection ...
Media-Saturn parts ways with lawyer Steinhöfel - "The new head of the company, Roland Weise, is concerned about a better image in the public eye and towards the competition."
CSC possibly stops cycling sponsorship - «It would be a natural decision to withdraw, send Bjarne Riis a check and ask him to remove the company logo from the bikes. This would do more for CSC's image than they could pay in Danish kroner»
Reportage: Twenty in a Cage, 24 Hours of Light - "Many of the G8 critics taken into custody had to be released again. Because many were taken into custody solely due to 'suspicious hooded jackets, sunglasses, and scarves' or because of radios in their luggage, explains one of the duty lawyers."
Sun: ZFS becomes the new file system in Apple's Leopard - hopefully not just in the server version. HFS+ is somehow more of a hack than a file system.
Camino. Mozilla Power, Mac Style - and in new version out. Download.
MarsEdit - can also preview Markdown. Might be interesting for me, as I like to base my projects on Markdown.