EU Guide for Migration to Open Source

Come on then, politicians and government officials: it's time to save taxpayers' money. Please read this.

At heise online news you can find the original article.

Found: Code for Search Engines

Another well-researched article. While Google has not disclosed its algorithms, Google does not sell search result placements. The advertising that appears on Google based on search queries is clearly marked as such and visually completely separated from the search results. There's really nothing to criticize about that. Nevertheless, the article criticizes that selling search results would be a lucrative business for Google.

Do journalists even bother to research anything anymore?

At tagesschau im Internet you can find the original article.

Saban demands advertising ban for ARD and ZDF

I demand a speaking ban for stupid company bosses. He's already spouted this nonsense before and then thought he could offset it by providing 1 or 2 hours of educational programming (P1120). Ridiculous. Who would want someone like that to educate anyone? Quite apart from the fact that the idea that 1 to 2 hours of poor educational broadcasts could offset all television advertising by public broadcasters is completely absurd. I found the original article at RP-Online: Multimedia.

Software patents: IT association calls EU back to the ''right path''

Great class. Who does this Bitcom crowd actually represent? Hardly the mid-market software industry in Europe, because it would suffer massively from patent mania. Same goes for Open Source.

At heise online news you'll find the original article.

Trojan Horse of Nuclear Wars

320 tons of uranium used in Iraq? Disgusting. War zones as final storage for nuclear waste.

At Telepolis News you can find the original article.

US Patent on System Administration via Internet

And yet another patent the world doesn't need.

At heise online news you'll find the original article.

Windows Collides with Copyright

What nonsense. Where did they get this crap from? Are there only monkeys sitting at the keyboard at Spiegel? Do I now have to formally apologize to the monkeys?

(Jens already had a laugh about that too) At Spiegel Online: Netzwelt there's the original article.

Censorship in Düsseldorf

I overlooked something at Heise. Thanks to the SWR for pointing it out in his blog. Without proper censorship, nothing will come of banana republic Germany. The censorship efforts of the Düsseldorf government president—completely ignorant of any facts, evidence, or technical background—are entering the next round, this time targeting search engines. It's also nice how the government president's spokesperson leaves it open whether action would also be taken against trademark violations. Lovely how they make it clear from the outset that this is absolutely not about protecting citizens, but about a pure demonstration of power by the government president responsible for media law in North Rhine-Westphalia, with the clear intention of implementing a general internet censorship system. So that opinions conform nicely with the district government. How they deal with critics and how they get administrative assistance from public prosecutors' offices in other federal states can be seen well in the proceedings against Alvar Freude. Of course, we all now trust the Düsseldorf district government to not abuse this censorship tool. And pigs can fly. At Der Schockwellenreiter I found the original article.

End of Innocence?

Well, that's quite a mess what happened with the Elfe. Something like this just shows once again that in Germany many people couldn't care less what they destroy, as long as they get their legal right. Completely irrelevant whether the behavior is excessive. Completely irrelevant whether they ruin their own reputation, like the company that's sending cease-and-desist letters to the Elfe (no, I won't link the company, that shouldn't get referrer traffic either). The only thing that matters is flexing your power muscles, no matter how ridiculous and pathetic the behavior is, no matter whether someone's livelihood is destroyed in the process, no matter whether you get anything out of it or not. Whether it's the neighbor's cherry tree, the mutt from across the street or just your own crappy homepage or domain. No matter how ridiculous and absurd, you have the law on your side, so just keep hammering away. Where this is leading us Nico asks: well, the last word will probably go to the same people who profit the most from all this madness: the lawyers. Because ultimately it will always end up with lawyers - whether it's because of court proceedings or legal advice. Ever heard the saying about putting the fox in charge of the henhouse? How is a workable legal situation ever supposed to emerge in the area of trademarks, brand rights and patent hysteria, as long as lawyers are making such good money off these things? As long as cease-and-desist letters in these areas can be used as actual extortion attempts, which many people are simply helpless against (because the whole thing is so convoluted and absurd)? At Nochn Blogg. you can find the original article.

Campaign for Genetically Modified Food

Cool class. Great idea. So that the garbage still gets pushed by retail. And all just because it's about money again - what the consumer wants is irrelevant once more.

At Telepolis News you can find the original article.

Childless people should pay more for nursing care insurance

Great - where are we supposed to pay for everything else?

At tagesschau im Internet you can find the original article.

Controversy over ankle monitors for school truants

Things are really getting completely ridiculous now. Who else is in favor of muzzles for brainless politicians like these two? Shackles for school truants, it can hardly get more absurd. Geis and Schönbohm should be put in the public pillory, just like they apparently imagine it for school truants.

At RP-Online: Wissenschaft I found the original article.

Taxpayers'' Association: Cut politicians'' pensions

Exactly!

At RP-Online: Politik I found the original article.

Union Youth Wants Radical Reforms

I hope all these cowards from the Junge Union get a taste of their own medicine through their own stupidity. But as children of wealthy parents, it's easy to run your mouth. Putting the whole thing under the heading of intergenerational justice is really the last straw.

At tagesschau im Internet you can find the original article.

Is Too Much Coffee to Blame for Blair's Heart Palpitations?

So. So our coffee is too strong for the British.

I found the original article at RP-Online: Politik.

AppleInsider - IBM introduced its POWER5

I'd like to have that in my desktop computer - when will the Power5 upgrade board for Apple's blue-white G3 be available?

Here's the original article.

CDU line: Merkel prevails against Koch

Koch wants the coup and Merkel saves the republic. And pigs can fly. To whom besides me do these supposed discussions seem terribly staged and orchestrated?

At RP-Online: Politik I found the original article.

Domain names and license plates: Countermeasure against cease-and-desist letters

Hey, things are still going round

At heise online news you can find the original article.

Online Backup for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises

Looking at the key figures of the offering, one does indeed look rather bewildered: the price of EUR 11.90 per month includes only 500 MB. An (expensive) CD blank costs EUR 1 and holds 700 MB.

Apart from that, the costs are quite hefty when you consider typical disk usage patterns (the usual collector-and-hunter scenario of a typical user). Let me take my own notebook's hard drive as an example: 30 GB in use. If I subtract the operating system and installed applications, a good 20 GB remains. Of that, another 8 GB is music (all originals, so no comments here!), which I can also subtract - still leaves 12 GB. Of that, another 2 GB or so of accumulated downloads that don't necessarily need to be backed up. 10 GB remain that I can't quite categorize, so sorting through them would be more work than I'm comfortable with. A lot.

But I can't afford to pay for 10 GB per month at T-Com's prices: that's EUR 11.90 for the first 500 MB and then EUR 5.80 for every additional half GB, so a total of EUR 122.10 per month for the storage. Plus I still have to pay EUR 200 for the initial upload of all the data - and if I don't have a flat rate, I also pay the internet costs on top.

If I back up these 10 GB to multiple DVDs, I need 2-3 media (if you organize it yourself it's usually not optimal, so one medium more) - for a total of around EUR 10 for the media at expensive prices.

And the duration of the backup won't be any faster than uploading via the rather thin upstream channels of typical DSL connections. 128 KBit/sec is about 7.5 MB per minute, or about 450 MB per hour - so 22 hours for the backup over the line, if it's free and unoccupied and no disruptions occur.

And the argument about the lack of qualified staff for backup: if you want to back up the data with T-Com's solution over DSL, and you don't want the costs to eat you alive, and the whole thing needs to run overnight, an employee must select the data and prepare it for backup - gathering it in directories, or structuring the directories accordingly, etc. But that's already the biggest part of the work in any backup - figuring out which data should be backed up and how. The rest is just one click with today's backup solutions for end users and the necessary frequent changing of DVD or CD blanks (or MO or tape if the user prefers reasonably reliable backups).

Somehow I have the feeling that T-Com has calculated things a bit strangely here. Sounds similar to Apple's calculation with .Mac Backup. Except that Apple didn't want to back up mass data over the internet in the first place, but only settings and selected file areas; Apple's backup program backs up mass data like pictures and music locally to hard drives by default.

A usable backup solution on the internet would really be nice. But so far I haven't seen one that would have made sense for DSL users...

The original article is on heise online news at this link.

SPD relies on administrative software based on Microsoft Business Solutions

It's not the first bad decision by the SPD

At heise online news you can find the original article.

Report: Online Banking Cracked

A general problem in networks: tools that allow session hijacking make it possible to position themselves between connections. The key point is that the connections are routed transparently through this program: the user doesn't notice it. This also works across switches - the corresponding programs steal the connection via ARP spoofing and then insert themselves in between. The only solution here is a consistent migration to protocols that work with mutual certificates and encryption - where both server and client ensure that they are communicating with the correct partner. But even here, attack vectors are still possible. Absolute security in networks where you have no control over the infrastructure does not exist.

By the way, the technology behind the attack is quite interesting: first, ARP spoofing is used to steal the connection. Then all connections are routed through the intermediate computer. In doing so, the computer presents itself to the server as the client, and vice versa. Encryption is therefore only useful if the protocol regularly performs checks using a shared secret and if the two partners identify themselves to each other using asymmetric methods. Still, the man-in-the-middle can often impersonate the other by using data from a transparently passed-through connection to replay it later (this can crack some encryption setups).

Ultimately, the problem can only be solved at the lowest level - securing connections at the lowest protocol level. Only when appropriate security mechanisms are in place at the IP level can we even hope to get this problem under control.

In the meantime, admins can provide some protection by using ARP watchers and monitoring programs to detect when such attacks occur. But this too is only a very shaky and unreliable tool, since the admin theoretically has to regularly review all protocols - and the signs are often only very minimal (such as the brief appearance of an unknown MAC address in the network).

At RP-Online: Multimedia I found the original article.

Federal Election: Westerwelle calls himself top candidate

The man is really not embarrassed by anything. As if he hadn't already made himself the class clown during the last fun election campaign

I found the original article at RP-Online: Politik.

Do 28 Million US Citizens Suffer from Bloating?

Is Prozac the Cause of the Ozone Hole?

At Telepolis News you can find the original article.

Porn providers protest against child protection on the web

Well, we could also introduce official registration for entering video rental stores and sex shops, which would be similar to the demanded stricter controls for internet sex offers.

Not that I particularly want to defend the porn industry - after all, it is one of the main causes of the spam problem (after all, this is an area where the click-through rate is significantly higher than in all other advertising sectors - men really do think more with their pants than with their brains), but the demands to tighten age controls are really absurd: who is going to go to their post office or T-Punkt and present their ID there for registration for an X-Check-ID? Sure, the postal workers don't know what that is anyway. Obviously.

The real problem behind this is something else entirely: the inability of authorities and similar institutions to understand that the internet is simply not a regional event. Stricter age control laws will be just as impossible to enforce across borders on the internet as the already planned opening hours for erotic content on the internet.

Youth protection is something that cannot be enforced through this type of prohibition - only through education and enlightenment. Because with the increasing interconnectedness of the world, there will always be content that is illegal in one country but available from other countries. Even absurd attempts like those of the Düsseldorf government president will change nothing about that.

Either we finally accept this content and its distribution as a social problem and address it at that level (through education and enlightenment already in schools), or we criminalize the entire internet and tinker around with pointless and ineffective filtering attempts, waste money on these absurd projects, hand the state far too powerful censorship tools and rights, and make ourselves look ridiculous internationally.

The latter is the path that politicians are currently taking in Banana Republic Germany - it's also much easier, besides you get the necessary censorship rights for free anyway. Then you can also use them right away for politically unpopular opinions.

At heise online news there's the original article.

Study: Every third school truant becomes criminal

It's certainly much easier to criminalize children right away than to actually deal with the causes of school truancy.

After all, performance pressure is being put on children much earlier these days. If you don't learn anything, you're nothing, you're just worthless. So what are children supposed to do when they have problems in school? Those who perhaps can't cope with all the pressure? Let's just throw every struggling student into a reform institution, because after all, they'll eventually skip school out of frustration and despair, and eventually they'll become criminals.

Our school system is as inhumane as our entire society. And in doing so, we're sacrificing children on the altar of our materialism. We'll probably only realize that our own future is being destroyed a few generations from now, when it's too late...

I found the original article at RP-Online: Science.

Copyright Against Critics

A nice demonstration of how absurd the DMCA is: a manufacturer of voting systems wants to hide behind it and cover up its errors and manipulation possibilities for the voting systems. In the long run, I'm sure society's higher interest in voting machines will prevail—I wouldn't even credit the USA with letting this slide. But it points to a general problem with all the copyright tightening, patent demands, and user restrictions that have been increasingly demanded recently: the end user not only receives fewer usage rights, they also receive fewer control options. And it's made far too easy for manufacturers to hide behind various laws and cover up shoddy work, deliberate manipulation, and misuse of market power. Another reason to preferably use open source systems for critical systems.

At Telepolis News you can find the original article.

On the Beatification of Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, alias Mother Teresa

|KK| An article about Mother Teresa and her role (or rather, lack thereof) in providing care for the needy and disaster victims in Calcutta and the great lie of her entire life.

In the end, only one conclusion remains here: the friendly smiling men and women of the church have only one interest: power. It's not about the welfare of people, it's not even about the welfare of their own followers, it's only about the power of the church. And Catholics will soon celebrate Mother Teresa's success in this field — the defense of the Catholic Church's power position — with her beatification.

That this constitutes idolatry according to their own teachings is apparently just as uninteresting as the fact that the public and their own people were lied to for decades.

At Telepolis News you can find the original article.

PowerBook buyers complain about display defects

Ugh. But that's not nice. Apple really shouldn't be making such mistakes anymore - they've noticed often enough by now that they run into problems with too-short testing phases for their devices (I'm just thinking of the exploding lithium batteries in the Powerbook 5300 devices).

At heise online news you can find the original article.

SCO vs. Linux: War chest refilled

So the entire SCO anti-Linux campaign is now running on borrowed money. How stupid does a bank have to be to finance such nonsense? And how dumb does a company executive have to be to take such a ride? Linux will definitely outlast SCO - it's only a matter of time before SCO runs out of steam. There are no new products from SCO, no new system releases, and the alleged worldwide Unix market is simply not being contested with any SCO systems - it doesn't help that SCO still claims that Unix belongs to them (which by almost all relevant perspectives isn't true anyway, since they have neither the copyright nor the patents). But what fascinates me is the persistence with which they continue their kamikaze flight and the stupidity with which others climb aboard this kamikaze flight.

At heise online news there is the original article.

Cease and desist notices due to license plates in domain names

I think that's unfair: if someone starts such an absurd rip-off, they should at least be able to keep it going long enough for people to get properly worked up about the mess. Where will it end, Sodom and Gomorrah!

At heise online news there's the original article.

Atom API

What bothered me about Mark Pilgrim's article, I wrote here. There are several things in the article that don't match what I would expect from a professional explanation of the Atom API on http://xml.com/. It's a shame, but it will probably contribute more to further division than to mutual acceptance between the two API camps. At Der Schockwellenreiter you can find the original article.

BND employee arrested for espionage

Quite amusing when a spy gets arrested for espionage. But well, if he also transports the classified documents in the wrong direction ...

At tagesschau im Internet you can find the original article.

Bush recognizes parallels to 'Arnie'

Do they both have a pea-sized brain?

At tagesschau im Internet you can find the original article.

The Impressive Thing About Today ...

... was the inability of our Bundestag officials to conduct two votes without mixing up the ballot boxes.

First Look: Belkin Media Reader For iPod

Well - the thing is so big that they might as well have included the card reader with the drive in the first place. I mean, what's the point if the card reader is just as big as the iPod, and if the card reader needs extra batteries on top of that? Somehow not as great as it sounded. And the problems with the transfer didn't inspire confidence either - since when do you have to reformat a CF card if you deleted it while reading? Very dubious.

At iPoding there's the original article.

War on Terror Battle with Satan

And the UN gave such a madman a mandate?

At RP-Online: Politik I found the original article.

Truck toll: Contract is being disclosed

Anything else would be unacceptable either.

At heise online news you can find the original article.

Microsoft Receives Patent for Cookies

And once again, a patent that the world absolutely does not need.

At heise online news you can find the original article.

Rollup package for Windows XP heralds new update policy from Microsoft

Cool. Security updates only once a month. That's how Windows security issues are addressed.

At heise online news there's the original article.

Prosecutor threatens net activist with occupational ban

This is taking on highly absurd proportions these days. This is abuse of power in its most literal sense. This has nothing to do with rule of law anymore, it's the worst kind of state arbitrariness. Usually something like this only appears in reports by Amnesty International or the UN about so-called banana republics. Well, it seems we're not far from that anymore. Torture was already described as a viable means (P405). Recommended is the documentation on http://odem.org/ - there's a bit more information about it there. At heise online news there's the original article.

Telekom complains about massive devaluation of telecommunications secrecy

I'll say just one thing: Bananenrepublik At heise online news you can find the original article.

Toll basket for the Bundestag

Hold on: the company has a contract with the federal government, but refuses to let parliamentarians (who are, after all, a not entirely insignificant part of the federal government that has the contract with Toll Collect) see the contract? Can it get more absurd? How much evidence does it take to show that more than just stupidity is at play here? And why doesn't the federal government, as the second party to the contract, simply make its copy available to Parliament? Given the sum of money involved, it surely can't be the case that the government is operating without public oversight by Parliament (and with an explicit refusal to allow such oversight!).

I found the original article at TAZ.

Phonak: Seville becomes Hamilton''s right hand

That promises a lot for the next tour. After all, Hamilton was fourth in the tour despite injuries, and Sevilla is no slouch either.

At RADSPORT-NEWS.COM - Nachrichten-Gesamtübersicht you can find the original article.

Saban conducts string concert on N24

And in a flash, Rupert Murdoch could also secure broadcasting slots in Germany. Not exactly a pleasant thought. But probably almost predictable if you consider the connection between Saban and Murdoch (P1359). I found the original article at dotcomtod.

Vulnerabilities in Exchange Server

Interesting that Microsoft assumes that no one is crazy enough to connect an Exchange server directly to the Internet without a firewall - To protect against attacks from the Internet, port 25 should be blocked on the firewall

At heise online news there's the original article.

Stopping Spam

Paul Graham examines and evaluates all known methods of responding to spam. As an overview of possible (and also possible future) solutions and an initial assessment, it's quite useful.

Here's the original article.

The Resurrection of SimplyGNUstep - OSNews.com

SimplyGNUStep is now based on Debian Sarge (the upcoming Debian version). So it's simply just a collection of Debian packages with current GNUStep applications. The previous project of the same name aimed to be a full distribution, with its own directory structure, just like NextStep was organized. I find the current incarnation much more sensible though - having yet another package system and yet another distribution doesn't really make sense, especially when Debian already offers everything in very usable form...

Here's the original article.

Cease-and-desist senders and profiteers: Lawyers speak out

Lawyers discussing a possible reason why lawyers operate as scammers on the Internet. It is simply the way it is: when blow flies appear in small quantities, they are useful. When the quantities become too large, they become a nuisance.

At Telepolis News there is the original article.

Karlsruhe rejects lawsuit against table prayer in kindergarten

But banning headscarves, that's what Mr. Koch wants (and is allowed) to do ...

At RP-Online: Politik I found the original article.

Mobbing due to unpopular website

Great - nonconforming opinions are apparently not even allowed to be held privately at Dresdner Bank. My expressions of opinion would probably also meet with disapproval at Dresdner Bank. Always stay nice and conformist with management, never speak up - that seems to be what is expected in times of high unemployment. Following any rules apparently doesn't apply to bank executives. They resort to the lowest drawer of mobbing and oppression. Our economy is built on such people. Doesn't that give us all courage? But what can one expect in terms of behavior from such a bank ... At Telepolis News there is the original article.