Archive 23.1.2006 - 6.2.2006

It all seems so familiar

CIA presents dubious evidence against Iran

A report by the ARD magazine "Report Mainz" (tonight at 21.45 on Das Erste) sheds new light on the nuclear dispute with Iran. One piece of evidence in the chain of evidence presented by the US government against Tehran's nuclear program is an Iranian laptop allegedly containing data for the construction of an atomic warhead. However, a US nuclear weapons expert found no evidence of this in the computer documents.

The US administration could really come up with new approaches, couldn't they? After all, the CIA has also served as a scapegoat later on: once is an accident, twice is stupidity ...

lambda remains in Python

Let's just keep lambda - GvR gives up

Call me a pessimist ...

... but I feel uncomfortable with such ideas:

Companies should in the future acquire the electronic equivalent of a stamp if they want to be sure that their email reaches the recipients. For fees of up to one cent per message, the mails sent via the service provider Goodmail Systems will be forwarded without spam filtering and confirmed as received.

When will emails from private individuals no longer be delivered unless they go through one of the large providers participating in the payment system? When will citizens' networks or privately operated providers be excluded because they cannot belong to the club of payers?

The possibly upcoming argumentation is simple: only those who pay to a central authority for their website will be enabled for HTTP access in the mandatory proxy of the large providers - because otherwise they are suspected of being a phishing site. And soon, outside of email, some sites would simply no longer exist. It also fits perfectly with the efforts of telcos and cable providers in the USA, who also want to deliver paid content (i.e., content paid for by the telcos) on a priority basis.

Apart from the fact that I definitely trust my own filters more than filters operated for payment by some company on the net. When will there be the first scandal that a spammer has bought access? My statistical spam filter on my server is not corruptible - not perfect, but also not corruptible.

In the establishment of further central filters and control points, I see a real danger to the structure of the Internet - how quickly companies are bought, one could see in recent times. And even if a company like Yahoo today possibly - due to the necessary positioning against Google - is a bit on a cozy course with the user, who guarantees that a media giant does not take over the whole thing? Not everyone is as incompetent as Time Warner ...

Ösi-Pässe also vulnerable

Not that anyone thinks our Austrian neighbors have better chip passports than our Dutch neighbors:

When reading the passports on an official reading device, the data can be eavesdropped on by third parties from a short distance with relatively modest effort and then quite easily decrypted.

The electronic data that can be captured corresponds to the [name, date of birth, place of residence, etc.] noted in the passport in writing, but the passport photo is also included in the form of a JPEG.

Well, we will probably have a lot of fun with the idiotic tags in passports in Germany in the long run ...

BMW kicked out of Google

Just freshly chased through the blogosphere, the pig, already caught German BMW Banned From Google. Well, if you engage in search engine spamming, you might get kicked out of Google. Some marketing guys probably wanted to be too clever again.

Console Password Manager - very interesting tool, stores passwords encrypted with GPG and uses existing GPG keyrings. This way you can also encrypt password files for others (e.g. shared passwords in the company for multiple admins). And it runs on the console.

The End of the Internet?

A frightening observation of telecom activities in the USA. Those who think this doesn't concern us: many carriers in Europe are US subsidiaries. And those that are purely EU companies are often telcos themselves - and therefore similarly "susceptible" to megalomania. The efforts of telcos and cable providers are therefore definitely critical - especially in the discussion of Quality-of-Service configurations on the Internet, there are indeed technical means to restrict or prevent citizen communication. Only registered network blocks and registered protocols would get the corresponding bandwidths, P2P protocols would be restricted - the entertainment industry would immediately be on board, after all, this would factually slow down data exchange. And how quickly the bandwidths for citizen networks, private internet projects, weblogs operated outside large providers, etc. would be restricted, everyone can imagine for themselves.

Not a nice vision of the future. Especially because we are dependent on the reason of a state and a government that starts wars with fabricated motives and forged evidence, whose government is even more driven by lobbying than the one in Germany, which spies on its own citizens under the guise of "fight against terrorism" and grinds away their freedoms and whose current president allegedly receives his inspirations from God ...

Bielefeld Rail Theft

Not only does Bielefeld not exist - the tracks in Lohra don't exist either:

According to police reports, the company had commissioned two firms with forged orders from the railway. The workers had work to do for at least two weeks. The tracks laid on steel sleepers were completely torn out of the ballast. Afterwards, the tracks went to scrap dealers. A ton of scrap currently costs 200 euros.

Well, if I had to come up with a joke, I wouldn't think of the idea that you could steal tracks. Reality can only be that absurd ...

Signs of Intelligence

JPEG-Patent is being reviewed:

The US Patent and Trademark Office has agreed to review the so-called JPEG patent with the Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT). This is evident from a statement by the non-profit organization. In November 2005, they had submitted a formal application to review the patent of the company Forgent with the number 4,698,672 from 1987. PUBPAT believes that the technology was not new at the time. Now the patent office has responded that PUBPAT has raised "fundamentally new questions of patentability." The organization estimates the chances to be good that the patent will be declared invalid.

It would be very good if this patent would disappear. Because even if the open-source area has not been directly affected so far - with such patents, it is simply a matter of time before this area is also targeted. And to go through the mess that ran with GIF really doesn't have to be.

Book Review -- The Debian System: Concepts and Techniques | Linux Journal - interestingly sounding book about the concepts in Debian.

The Lie of Information Freedom

What the Federal Foreign Office understands by freedom of information:

The applicant requested a decree of the Federal Foreign Office to the visa offices dated November 22 of the previous year with the file reference 508-1-516.20. Such decrees are the daily tools of consular officers in the more than 150 visa offices worldwide, attaching the document to an email should take such an officer a few minutes of work.

And what was the bill for this request? 107.20 euros. For a copy of a standard document. So much for the proportionality of the prices for information access. Exactly what I already expected is happening - the Freedom of Information Act is becoming an absolute farce.

Fischertechnik and the Mac

Fischertechnik now has a robot kit that runs on Mac OS X. As usual with Fischertechnik: significantly more professional programming options, a significantly more professional-looking device, and a significantly higher overall price than Lego. Somehow a shame - I used to like Fischertechnik, but the stuff was simply too expensive to own in sufficient quantities. And again here - 255 euros just for the interface, it doesn't help that the construction kit itself only costs 170 euros. And autonomous robots are not possible with it, the whole thing is wired.

So I will probably continue to wait for Mindstorms NXT, because I already have a lot of material for Lego. And the RSXe are also fun.

Internet Tablet Talk - Gnumeric 1.6.2 Released - Spreadsheet for the Nokia 770 Tablet. Wow.

Head in the Sand

Ostrich policy in the EU Commission:

The EU Commission currently does not consider it necessary to conduct a compatibility study on the effects of the directive on data retention without suspicion, which was decided by the EU Parliament in December.

Because one does not want to know what effects one's own idiotic decisions can have. Then one can claim afterwards that one did not know it beforehand. And planning ahead - where do we end up there?

One feels somewhat abused ...

... if the monthly traffic statistics show 1.79 GB for normal visitors, but 1.83 GB for bots and stuff. And if you then realize that 1 GB alone was wasted on the Google bot, 0.5 GB on Inktomi and still 125 MB on the MSN bot. Somehow it seems that the whole internet is mainly read by bots, not by humans: bots had 235071 page views, humans only 114158 page views.

If there is ever a Terminator, it will probably be controlled by an internet search engine ...

Mandelbrot Set - Labix - Example source code that draws little apples with PyGame on the Nokia Tablet.

Nokia 770 Internet Tablet

Well, here it is. Very nice piece - since Tuesday I have it. It's really fun - the integration of Bluetooth and WLAN is quite well done, the device can connect with any WLAN. Even WPA and WPA2 - both also with certificate - work. When pairing with Bluetooth phones, it is a bit stubborn and picky, but with some persistence it also worked with my Motorola E398.

The installed software is quite usable - the browser is a stripped-down Opera, very user-friendly and quite complete in its support of HTML, CSS and JS. However, it lacks some of the nice features of Opera for the desktop - especially it does not save passwords that you have entered. Which is rather inconvenient for a device without a keyboard, if you have to enter passwords again and again.

The hardware itself is well made - lies nicely in the hand, is significantly smaller than I would have expected and you can tell that the manufacturer has experience with small devices. However, they could have given the tablet a scroll wheel so that you don't always have to take the pen and the touchscreen to scroll through web pages. The cursor keys jump from link to link on the page, so they are not directly usable for normal browsing. With touchscreens I am always a bit skeptical about long-term usability - many of them have defects and calibration problems (with heavy use rather earlier than later) sooner or later.

The possibility to add more software is of course great - especially very easy to solve. You simply click on a Debian package and it installs it. Games, tools, applications - there is already quite a lot. Even a complete Python port with all libraries for on-board development of Python programs with GUI for the tablet is available. However, you should probably get a Bluetooth keyboard for this - this funny fabric keyboard might be quite interesting for this.

Well, the next version of the software should also support VOIP and IM - this could become even more interesting if you combine it with a Bluetooth headset, this could be quite a practical device for telephony as well - at least if a free WLAN hotspot is available.

It could be that I will now start writing an organizer software with Django - because then I could access it everywhere via the device and also use it from normal computers. Probably more practical in the long run than all these not really functioning synchronization solutions.

Send Münte into Retirement

He wants to introduce the retirement age of 67 earlier than planned. Sorry, but in times when we have record numbers of unemployed people and those over 45 are considered difficult to place and those over 55 are considered unplaceable, raising the retirement age to 67 is an absolute audacity. Especially when you look at the Hartz IV regulation with the gradual reduction of private savings and securities. Is the late retirement now supposed to guarantee that every normal employee becomes a welfare recipient before retirement?

As long as people in our country cannot actually work until retirement, it is an absolute audacity to extend this time even further.

Betrayed, Monitored, and Sold

Government wants to sell data to the economy - Name, address and date of birth from the identity cards. They must have a screw loose?

Biometric passport insecure

Biometric passport hacked - ok, first only the Dutch one, but:

The new German ePass, which has been issued since November of last year, is also equipped with RFID technology. It is encrypted with 56 bits, which experts also consider to be too little.

56-bit encryption is definitely not enough today - and if some components of the key are then also determined algorithmically from the data of the passport, the disaster is perfect. The result is exactly the opposite of the desired result: the whole technology becomes less secure in the end, because a chain is only as secure as its weakest link.

So far, the weakest link is the human being - a human being has to judge whether a passport belongs to a user. With higher automation and electronic queries, this will shift - the human being will shift responsibility to the machine. People are like that - they trust the computer more than their own eyes. But if the biometric passport is weak, the overall result will be weaker than manual control and human control.

Blowhard

'Nuff said:

The trend issue 3/2006, which the iBusiness editorial team is currently preparing, incidentally includes an outlook on the future after the currently much-discussed Web 2.0: Premium members will find out next week what awaits us with Web 3.0!

Eiffel For OS X - what you see is what you get. Only this terrible background graphic on the site ...

Just-In-Time Scheme

plt-scheme gets a JIT Compiler - which should provide a significant boost for DrScheme, the best Scheme in the world. So far, it has been a purely interpreted system with its own virtual machine - and that was already damn fast. But a JIT compiler can bring a lot, especially for larger string mountains or list gobblers and number tangles. It will be exciting to see how this compares to e.g. Gambit-C and Chicken.

Overweight

Are the iLife and iWork application bundles from Apple: iLife 06 takes up 7.2 GB in the full installation and iWork 06 takes up 3 GB in the full installation. If you install both, you have a clean 10 GB less disk space. Ouch. That's a lot.

ApplicationCatalog - Maemo Wiki - Applications for the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet

Springer and the Ministerial Permit

Springer was apparently against ministerial approval - but that was not about them:

"There is no room for the application of ministerial approval in the press market for constitutional reasons," it says in the paper. At that time, it was about the acquisition of the Berliner Verlag by the Holtzbrinck Group.

This time, they will certainly be able to explain in detail why everything is completely different now.

Domain-Engel becomes cheeky

When alleged domain angels threaten blog hosts with a lawyer, there's usually a sorehead behind it. In this case, it's probably a bird unknown to me so far, but who has apparently already been noticed before - and this time wants to get at Lanu (from DotComTod and BooCompany) presumably because of their postings about him - and, due to the lack of an imprint, now thinks he can force Dirk Olbertz (the one from blogger.de) to disclose the data.

It will certainly be exciting to see what happens next - another attempt to suppress opinions with a lawyer. Whether the noise spreading through the blogs will improve his already spoiled reputation of the domain grabber again is rather questionable.

But when you then see that a legal counsel is also involved, nothing surprises you anymore.

Knitting Fashion - Knitting with Knitting Machines, Knitting Design, and Knitting Patterns - everything about machine knitting. Yes, yes, I know, it seems a bit out of place here

ThoughtFix on the Nokia 770: USB Power Injector 2 - external battery pack for the Nokia tablet - also usable for other devices with USB powering (iPod etc.). For DIY.

Football Canvases and Websites

The Netreaper thinks I should drum up some support for Nordwalde so they can get a new WM screen to watch football. Okay, I'm not really sure why I should do that to the people of Nordwalde, but okay - I don't live there anymore.

What really excites me, however, is the great voting function, which asks for a Captcha before voting. Which only contains uppercase letters and numbers. Which are hard to distinguish because a particularly stupid font was chosen. And the kicker: you're not supposed to use capital letters. Is this a Captcha with a built-in intelligence test?

Well, never mind, if you want to drive the Nordwalde people crazy, just vote for the screen there, so hordes of crazy football fans can stand around and watch football. Best during the final, and best if Germany is out early and no one knows what to do there anymore.

Guido van Rossum and Web Frameworks

Guido van Rossum asks about web frameworks - nothing exciting in itself. He just hasn't done anything with them before and wants to inform himself. He makes some claims that aren't quite accurate (e.g., that Django's template language is similar to PHP), but given the likely brevity of his "looking into" it, it's forgivable.

It gets funny in the comments on his post. Mountains of frameworks, all of which aren't finished. Piles of comments like "take XYZ, it's great and in the next few months it will definitely be usable" - especially often TurboGears is suggested.

Sorry, what? If I'm looking for a web framework, I don't want one that will be usable in a few months. I want one that is usable now and for which there are clear statements about its fitness right now. We really don't need any more web frameworks that won't be finished.

I don't have anything against a variety of frameworks - it makes life exciting and interesting because you never know if you've bet on the right framework - but there are certainly more than enough unfinished frameworks that are pitched by their users as if they were the best thing since sliced bread.

By the way, I use Django for exactly these reasons: the stuff has been in use for quite some time and has proven that it is suitable for large sites and high loads. It was developed from real applications and is not the byproduct of some unimportant Web2.0 thing of which I have never heard outside the TurboGears clique. It was also not cobbled together by a kid alone who thinks he's the new Einstein and believes he's the only one who knows how frameworks should be. And it's not a project that has been dead in principle for over a year because the author has long since moved on to something else. And it's only called 0.9 at the moment because API changes and cleanup work are pending in the guts (which would be appropriate for any project that has been developed for two years in live operation) - not because it's only 90% finished.

Of course, after this Artima post, everyone will look at GvR and wait to see what he chooses. And of course, all the web framework authors will jump up and down and want to make themselves noticed. And of course, every word will be analyzed and rubbed in the other's face. And a whole series of projects will make short-term quick-fix changes because they hope GvR will choose their framework. All of which is a really insane waste of time. Sometimes these kids in the OSS projects really get on my nerves.

"Brother Johannes" has passed away

Even though I certainly did not always agree with his opinions and stance, with the death of Johannes Rau a significant part of NRW political history comes to an end.

After all, the man shaped a large part of my conscious engagement with politics - most of that time as the Minister President of NRW. He will definitely be missed - even if he was sometimes a rather conservative hardliner, and his sermons were annoying on more than one occasion. Somehow, he still belonged to NRW.

PythonForMaemo - Python for Maemo - Using Python on the Nokia 770 Tablet (the shipping confirmation arrived today, hopefully the device will arrive soon).

twill: a simple scripting language for Web browsing - a Python scriptable Web client. Interesting for automated page requests and for specialized robots. Possibly also for testing web applications.

We still struggle

implementing equal rights for homosexuals:

Gay civil servants with a registered partnership do not receive a supplement like married couples. This was decided by the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig. The registered partnership is not a marriage, but an independent marital status, the judges decided. The legislator can favor marriage over other communities in terms of remuneration. This does not violate the principle of equality nor the anti-discrimination prohibition under European law. (Case No.: BVerwG 2 C 43.04).

Rarely have I read such a far-fetched justification. We simply define everything as we please, which saves the state money and to hell with the equal rights of homosexuals. Discrimination does not only occur when one group is treated worse than others, but also when one group is treated better than others. It is absurd that the legislator may favor a heterosexual marriage over a homosexual marriage - and exactly the reason why the registered partnership is not a full equivalent to marriage, even if some politicians claim otherwise.

Brain Farts from Former Ministers

Former Minister Scholz will discuss German nuclear weapons - hopefully no one else. There are already far too many nuclear weapons in the world, we certainly don't need German atomic bombs. Sometimes you really wonder what kind of idiots are running around in politics. There is no other appropriate response to nuclear threats than total nuclear disarmament. If someone drops atomic bombs on a country, it is completely irrelevant for survival whether the attacked state also has atomic bombs - and no, the threat scenario is complete nonsense if you are not also willing to use these monstrosities. And that's where the madness begins.

Interesting Hybrid from Olympus

Olympus introduces a SLR camera with preview image - either via an auxiliary CCD with AF support or with mirror lock-up via the main CCD. The latter, in my opinion, manufacturers could have installed for a long time - because for macro photography it would be a real blessing if you could get preview images with the normal chip for the first settings.

Slight Exaggerations in the Netzzeitung

The title Smallest Earth-like planet discovered is a bit strange. Okay, if you define "Earth-like" as "orbits a sun and is not a gas planet or ice lump," it might fit. But what does such a definition bring then? 5.5 times as large as Earth, the distance to the sun 3 times as far, the sun weaker than Earth's, and the temperature at minus 220 degrees - sorry, that's really not particularly Earth-like ...

Game Protocols and Firewalls

If someone wants to check out Second Life:

Second Life needs to connect to ports 443/TCP, 12035/UDP, 12036/UDP, and 13000-13050/UDP. You should configure your firewall to allow outbound traffic on those ports, and related inbound traffic.

Ok, so TCP is fine with NAT firewalls - but apparently it also wants all those UDP ports inbound. And why does a game client need 51 UDP ports in a block? And why so many UDP ports at all? Do game designers ever think about what they're doing? In the case of Second Life, apparently not ...

Torvalds: insert foot into mouth

Linus claims to know again - this time about licenses:

The new license requires that all keys necessary to run the software must be delivered with the software, for example in the case of Trusted Computing systems that may require a signature of the programs. In Torvalds' opinion, the regulation also covers the private keys of Linux developers and he is not willing to publish his private key.

Yeah, sure, if I interpret a license in the most absurd way possible, I might come up with such an outlandish idea with enough idiocy. If he now only proves to me that his private key is necessary to make the kernel runnable (because that's what it's about in the corresponding section of the GPL v3), then I would agree with him. However, it's going to be difficult, because so far I have always been able to run all Linux kernels without ever needing any key.

You can be against the switch to GPL v3 - there is definitely a problem with the license change in the kernel with the extremely many contributions and authors - but the above "reason" is simply ridiculous.

Should Windows source be disclosed?

Microsoft gives in to EU in antitrust dispute:

In the antitrust dispute with the EU Commission, the software manufacturer Microsoft has now given in and will disclose the source code of the computer operating system Windows.

Let's wait and see how this disclosure will look. Will every Windows license holder actually be able to view the sources? And will the sources match the system? And which parts of the source will be left out? Will the EU Commission be able to recognize such deceptive packaging?

Opera Mini: Free HTML browser for mobile phones launches worldwide - Golem.de - definitely better than the primitive built-in browsers. However, of course - due to Java - not necessarily the fastest.

Stigmatization of adolescents already in the report cards

Great, NRW is bringing back headnotes:

According to the plans of the North Rhine-Westphalian state government, teachers should evaluate the "work and social behavior" of students, and this should be mandatory for all classes up to and including the tenth grade. Points such as "willingness to learn and perform" and "readiness to take responsibility and independence" should be graded with classic school grades from "very good" to "insufficient." However, characteristics such as "endurance and resilience" and "cooperativeness and team spirit" should also be mentioned in the report card, as well as special school and extracurricular commitment such as voluntary work in youth groups.

So that students are as well-behaved as possible in school. You engage politically, but unfortunately in a different direction than your teachers? Doesn't matter, you'll just get a bad grade in social behavior. What, you won't get a job later because no one wants you? Doesn't matter, there are already hundreds of thousands of unemployed young people, you can just throw you in there. You don't want to engage in church groups or similar because all these groups in your town are just cross fanatics anyway? Doesn't matter, bad grades in extracurricular commitment certainly won't be a problem in job hunting. What, you have problems with your classmates and are excluded by them, for example because they don't like your skin color or nose shape? You're just not cooperative enough and not a team player.

There are good reasons why these dreadful headnotes have been abolished. Social behavior is simply not gradable - even less so than knowledge or performance (here, the concentration on a few key moments in the school year is already a problem - real knowledge is not evaluated, but performance at the time of the exams).

But of course, they are incredibly practical if you want to breed compliant yes-men. "Child, just don't cause any trouble at school, the grade for social behavior can decide your later job" - I can already hear some parents "straightening out" their children. Left-wing youth group? No way, job-threatening. Slip-ups in life? Catastrophe, can only be smoothed out with years of brown-nosing the teacher.

Oh yes, we are getting the best school system in Germany in NRW. The question is just for whom the school system should be the best - probably not for the students.

T-Online is not allowed to store usage data

Let's see how long the ruling against T-Online's data storage will last:

The effect of the Darmstadt ruling may be short-lived. Because the EU Parliament decided in December to log all internet and telephone connections in advance, there will also be a corresponding law in Germany. However, it is questionable whether the so-called data retention is compatible with the Basic Law.

Basic Law? What Basic Law? Does that still matter to any politician? We don't have a constitutionally compliant budget, the customs authority's surveillance activities have been extended despite a contrary ruling, and what else has undermined the Basic Law recently. What is a little data retention in comparison?

GVU allegedly sponsored pirates

With so much audacity from the rights extortionists, one can hardly think of any further comment:

After joint research by the computer magazine c't and the news portal onlinekosten.de, indications suggest that the GVU may have overstepped the bounds of what is permissible in its investigations against copyright infringers. The editorial teams received hints from a GVU-affiliated informant some time ago, which have since been confirmed by a second source. According to these reports, the GVU regularly paid at least one administrator of a central exchange server in the warez scene. In this way, they obtained log files and thus access IP addresses of this so-called "box." In addition, they are said to have contributed hardware to equip the platform.

Jean-Remy von Matt unnerved - envious for that

It's quite amusing when an alleged communications professional lets his envy show so clearly:

Many of you write that I scored an own goal with my email. Okay, maybe one. But how many own goals are you scoring right now by picking up my buzzword "Toilet Walls of the Internet" in part indignantly, in part gleefully, spreading it in the sense of agenda setting? At Technorati.com, the search term was temporarily ranked 3rd!

Well, that's just the way it is - there are also others who can exploit a term. And in the blogs, the toilet wall is simply more popular than the you-are-German-language nonsense.

And about the alleged "apology" - sorry, but that is an apology that you can also read from politicians - meaningless, vague, and the only statement you can derive from it at best is a defiant "but I'm right!" Tja, Marketinghansel. Big mouth up front, but only a sensitive soul and no clue behind it.

Microsoft Closes the Gates Against OSS

First, only signed drivers should be accepted:

What Microsoft markets in its documentation as a security gain and as an indispensable feature for Digital Rights Management (DRM) has a bitter aftertaste: So far, only those who equip themselves with corresponding certificates from Verisign and pay around 500 US dollars per year for this can create such a signature.

But from signed drivers (with which open-source drivers will already have a real problem) to signed applications is not far. And for open source projects, it is usually not so easy to get the money for certificates.

pyvm home - another Python implementation. Its own bytecode interpreter and a Python compiler written in Python. Sounds almost like PyPy meets Parrot - though retaining the Python bytecode.

APRESS.COM: Practical Common Lisp - now also available as a free PDF download (go to the Free Download page and download it there).

Bill Clementson's Blog: Update on Termite (A Lisp for Concurrent/Parallel Programming) - Information about Termite, a Scheme based on Gambit-C with the concurrency features of Erlang. Sounds very interesting, check it out when the code is released.