Information der Betroffenen - It's The Law

Könnt Ihr Euch noch erinnern?

Am Freitag, dem 22. Juli 2011, kam es zu einem Hackerangriff auf den Webserver der GIS, zu dem sich die Internetaktivisten von AnonAustria bekannt haben. Nach einer gründlichen Untersuchung steht fest, dass rund 214.000 Datensätze gestohlen wurden, davon rund 96.000 mit Kontodaten. Die GIS hat alle betroffene Kundinnen und Kunden persönlich informiert. Jene deren Datensätze Kontoinformationen enthalten wurden darauf hingewiesen, ihre Kontobewegungen verstärkt zu beobachten.
Oder das:
Ein Hacker hat in der Nacht auf Mittwoch den Tiroler Spiele-Softwarehändler Gameware attackiert und nach Angaben des Unternehmens die Daten von rund 100.000 Kunden gestohlen.

Die Kunden wurden über die Attacke informiert und ersucht, ihre Passwörter zu ändern. Kreditkarten-Daten seien aufgrund einer komplexeren Verschlüsselung nicht betroffen gewesen. Die Betroffenen wurden darüber hinaus darauf hingewiesen, die Passwörter auch auf anderen Portalen zu ändern, wenn sie diese mehrmals verwenden.
Die Informationen der betroffenen Personen haben die Unternehmen nicht etwas freiwillig durchgeführt, sondern nur, weil es das Datenschutzgesetz 2000, Art. 2, § 24, Abs. 2a mittlerweile fordert:
Wird dem Auftraggeber bekannt, dass Daten aus einer seiner Datenanwendungen systematisch und schwerwiegend unrechtmäßig verwendet wurden und den Betroffenen Schaden droht, hat er darüber unverzüglich die Betroffenen in geeigneter Form zu informieren.

Eventuell sollte die Arge Daten für die Unternehmen gleich einen Musterbrief erstellen. ;)

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[Mittwoch, 20110831, 22:27 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


Die Telekom-Novelle, zwei Blickwinkel

Wischi-Waschi APA Meldung:

Der Ministerrat hat eine Novelle zum Telekommunikationsgesetz beschlossen, die für Konsumenten mehr Rechte in Bezug auf ihre Telefon-Verträge und besseren Schutz vor überhöhten Rechnungen bei Telefon- und Datendiensten bringen soll.
e-comm, Blog zum österreichischen und europäischen Recht der elektronischen Kommunikationsnetze und -dienste:
Aber manchmal geht es bei solchen Bestimmungen auch schlicht darum, einen dringend vorgebrachten Wunsch - hier der Branche - irgendwie zu berücksichtigen, sodass die Lobbyisten bzw Unternehmensvertreter dem Vorstand einen Erfolg heimbringen können

die Begrenzung der Mindestlaufzeit von Verträgen mit 24 Monaten scheint mir etwa vor dem Hintergrund des § 6 Abs 1 Z 1 KSchG für Verbraucher keine besonders großartige Verbesserung zu sein

Zu meiner Überraschung auch noch in die Regierungsvorlage geschafft hat es die richtlinienwidrige Bestimmung zum Umfang des Universaldienstes, die nicht mehr explizit den Anspruch auf einen Festnetzanschluss einräumt, was aber in der Praxis wohl kein Problem schaffen wird.

Die Aufhebung der Universaldienstverpflichtung der A1 Telekom Austria dürfte daher bald nach der Gesetzwerdung zu erwarten sein.

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[Mittwoch, 20110831, 22:12 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


Endlich vorbei: SCO vs. Linux

Das Copyright an Unix gehört Novell, nicht SCO.

Kristian Köhntopp fasst es schön zusammen:
Sich mit den Anwälten von IBM anzulegen ist eine unglaublich gute Idee, die der Idee, einen Feldzug in Rußland im Winter zu führen, in nichts nachsteht.

Die Firma muß feststellen, daß IBMs Anwälte, bei aller Drohkraft, nicht der eigentliche Endgegner sind: Es ist das Netz selber, die Masse der Geeks, die sich da mobilisiert und gegenhält.

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[Mittwoch, 20110831, 22:01 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


Hackerspaces - The Beginning

This book documents where the hackerspace movement was in December of 2008. In that way it’s a bit of a time capsule. It’s not an exhaustive book, but we hope there are enough stories in here to show that all your excuses for not starting up a hackerspace are invalid. Each group faced down their own dragons to bring their hackerspace into existence including floods, rats, and drama. If they can do it, so can you.

Hackerspaces – The Beginning (the book) (summer/fall 2010 edition)

via kyrah, astera.

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[Mittwoch, 20110831, 21:58 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


Finnsurf Trailer

Finnsurf Trailer from PABLO FILMS on Vimeo.

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[Mittwoch, 20110831, 21:53 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


Links for 2011-08-31

Acht Jahre SCO-Prozeß - Die wunderbare Welt von Isotopp

ich mit den Anwälten von IBM anzulegen ist eine unglaublich gute Idee, die der Idee, einen Feldzug in Rußland im Winter zu führen, in nichts nachsteht. … Die Firma muß feststellen, daß IBMs Anwälte, bei aller Drohkraft, nicht der eigentlich Endgegner sind: Es ist das Netz selber, die Masse der Geeks, die sich da mobilisiert und gegenhält.

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[Mittwoch, 20110831, 04:05 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


Links for 2011-08-30

IBM Shares Tips for Disaster Preparation

# Validate your data backup plan # Consider employees and the personal impact of a disaster # Develop various ways to communicate with employees, partners # Think about the „domino effect” when considering business risk # Plan for catastrophic events that could last a while # Think broadly

The death of books has been greatly exaggerated | Books | guardian.co.uk

For one thing, people are buying more and more books in Amazonia, and more and more of them are on Amazon’s ebook platform the Kindle. In May this year, Amazon announced that, for the first time, it was selling more Kindle versions of books than paperback and hardbacks combined, and (here’s the thing that doesn’t get quoted so often) sales of print books were still increasing.

Amazon also announced that, in the year to May 2011, it had seen the fastest year-on-year growth rate for its US books business, when expressed in volume and in dollars. This included books in all formats, print and digital. In the UK, less than one year after opening its UK Kindle store, Amazon.co.uk is selling more Kindle books than hardcover books. And again, this is while hardcover sales continue to grow.

DARPA wants a working manned starship for $500k • The Register

Bad-boy Pentagon boffinry bureau DARPA has now released the official solicitation for its „100 Year Starship” project, intended to get human beings making interstellar voyages within a century.

We’ve covered the 100 Year Starship push on these pages before, and the outline idea remains the same. A very small amount of US government seed money (to be specific, $500,000) will be provided by DARPA and handed out by NASA’s Ames campus in Silicon Valley. This tiny financial seed is intended to sprout and grow into a stupendous organisation able to harness and deploy the titanic resources necessary to deliver working interstellar transport.

Google, OpenDNS deploy DNS tweak for faster browsing

Dubbed „The Great Internet Speedup,” this cooperative effort involves deploying an extension to the Domain Name System, which is the underlying protocol that matches Internet domain names with corresponding IP addresses.

Proponents of the DNS tweak say it will decrease the latency end users experience when accessing videos and other large files, and that it offers CDNs a better ways to scale up their networks.

But others say the DNS protocol tweak creates architectural issues and privacy concerns, the latter stemming from the passing of parts of IP addresses in a DNS query. This change to the DNS protocol has been proposed as an experimental document to the Internet Engineering Task Force, but it hasn’t been adopted yet by the standards-setting body.

heise online - Oracle zieht Lizenz für freie Java-Verteilung unter Linux zurück

Mit einer kurzen Meldung hat Oracle die 2006 von Sun ins Leben gerufene „Operating System Distributor License for Java” (DLJ) in Rente geschickt. Unter dieser – nicht freien – Lizenz durften Linux-Distributoren bislang die Java-Versionen von Sun und später Oracle paketieren und verteilen.

gulli.com - news - view - Polen: Bald Kriegsrecht bei Cyber-Angriffen?

Polen erwägt derzeit die Einführung eines Gesetzes, das es der Regierung ermöglichen wurde, im Falle eines Cyber-Angriffs das Kriegsrecht auszurufen. Ähnliche Gesetzgebung existiert bereits in den Vereinigten Staaten. Unter IT-Sicherheitsexperten sind derartige Konzepte extrem umstritten.

The political party that wants to ban PowerPoint | Technology | The Guardian

Switzerland could become the first country to outlaw PowerPoint presentations if a new party runs in the October parliamentary elections. Matthias Poehm, founder of the Anti-PowerPoint Party, claims that €350bn could be saved globally each year by ditching the scourge of public speaking. Poehm believes that the software takes people away from their work and teaches them little. „There is a solution,” he says. „A flipchart.”

Fefes Blog

Was tut man als holländische CA, nachdem man erwischt wurde, wie man dem Iran Zertifikate für Google Mail ausgestellt hat? Das ist PR-technisch keine ganz einfache Situation. Man könnte sagen, naja, das ist der Iran, die hätten die halt sonst woanders gekauft. Und so haben wir ihnen Geld abgenommen, mit dem sie jetzt keine Raketen bauen können!1!!

DigiNotar geht einen anderen Weg. Hier ist ihre Presseerklärung. Und das ist Comedy Gold, sage ich euch! Nicht nur behaupten sie, die Zertifikate gar nicht ausgestellt zu haben, nein, sie pullen die „wir wurden gehackt!1!!”-Karte. Nun ist die Ansage, als CA, dass man gehackt werden kann, natürlich der ultimative Totalschaden.

London Transport: coming to a home near you | Life and style | guardian.co.uk

All aboard for London’s transport design icons. From railway signs to tube seats, the next stop could be your house

Masked Anonymous Protesters Aid Time Warner’s Profits - NYTimes.com

When members appear in public to protest censorship and what they view as corruption, they don a plastic mask of Guy Fawkes, the 17th-century Englishman who tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament.

What few people seem to know, though, is that Time Warner, one of the largest media companies in the world and parent of Warner Brothers, owns the rights to the image and is paid a licensing fee with the sale of each mask.

Chatbot Tries to Talk to Itself, Things Get Weird - IEEE Spectrum

A chatbot is a computer program that’s intended to fool us into thinking that it’s human. Historically, this has been a tricky thing to do, and for the last 20 years there’s been a $100,000 prize and gold medal waiting for the first computer program that can carry on a conversation indistinguishably from a human. Arguably (very arguably), this could also be the first computer program to demonstrate an artificial intelligence.

Cornell’s Creative Machines Lab decided to see what would happen if they put two chatbots face to virtual face and got them started talking to one another. Things didn’t go quite as crazy as might have been expected, but a fair amount of pointless argument, passive aggression, and random hilarity did ensue:

Fraudulent Google credential found in the wild • The Register

Security researchers have discovered a counterfeit web certificate for Google.com circulating on the internet that gives attackers the encryption keys needed to impersonate Gmail and virtually every other digitally signed Google property.

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[Dienstag, 20110830, 04:05 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


Links for 2011-08-29

Why Handwriting Must Die « NextNature.net

When a new writing technology develops, we tend to romanticize the older one. The supplanted technology is vaunted as more authentic because it is no longer ubiquitous or official. Thus for monks, print was capricious and script reliable. So too today: Conventional wisdom holds that computers are devoid of emotion and personality, and handwriting is the province of intimacy, originality and authenticity.

Aufregende Zeiten | law blog

Ich wage eine Prognose: Die Zeit von 1985 bis 201x, die wir vielleicht nur als leidlich aufregend empfanden bzw. empfinden werden, wird in den nur noch elektronisch abrufbaren Geschichtsbüchern künftiger Generationen einen ebenso großen Platz einnehmen wie das Römische Reich oder die Industrialisierung. Und zwar nicht in erster Linie wegen 09/11, sondern weil sich in dieser Zeitspanne der Herzschlag der Welt umstellte – von analog auf digital.

Reclaim Blogging – On Why Your Blog Still Is Your Best Personal Branding Social Tool | E L S U A ~ A KM Blog Thinking Outside The Inbox by Luis Suarez

Yes, it’s true that I have dumped a good number of social software tools out there on the Social Web in favour of G+ itself, or, at least, thanks to it I have reduced my involvement with those social tools quite a bit. But there are two of them that I am not ready, just yet, to kiss good-bye and move them into SNS. One of them is my Flickr account and the other one, of course, is my blog. This blog. And Hugh explains it very very well how I, too, feel about it overall on why I still think there is a place and a time for blogging out there on the Internet, as well as the Intranet, by the way. Here are a couple of noteworthy quotes from his blog entry I thought were worth while sharing across:

“The content on your blog, however, belongs to you, and you alone. People come to your online home, to hear what you have to say, not to hear what everybody else has to say. This sense of personal sovereignty is important.” [Emphasis mine]

The Art of Assembly Language Programming

So why would anyone learn this stuff, anyway? Well, there are several reasons which come to mind:
* Your major requires a course in assembly language; i.e., you’re here against your will. * A programmer where you work quit. Most of the source code left behind was written in assembly language and you were elected to maintain it. * Your boss has the audacity to insist that you write your code in assembly against your strongest wishes. * Your programs run just a little too slow, or are a little too large and you think assembly language might help you get your project under control. * You want to understand how computers actually work. * You’re interested in learning how to write efficient code. * You want to try something new.

SVA treibt Selbstständige in die Schuldenfalle - Wirtschaftsnachrichten - derStandard.at › Wirtschaft

Fast jeder fünfte Versicherte wurde gemahnt und knapp jeder zehnte exekutiert. Das System trifft die Wenigverdiener am härtesten, jetzt formiert sich Widerstand

H-P’s One-Year Plan - WSJ.com

Let’s say you were given a year to kill Hewlett-Packard. Here’s how you do it …

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[Montag, 20110829, 04:05 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


Software Freedom Day 2011 in Wien

Software Freedom Day 2011 in Wien

Wann/Date: 2011-09-17 12:00:002011-09-17 12:00:00
Ort/Location: Metalab, Rathausstraße 6, 1010 Wien

Am Samstag, dem 17. September 2011, finden auf der ganzen Welt Software Freedom Day Events statt, daher lädt das Wiener Fellowship zur Software Freedom Day-Party.

Der Software Freedom Day (oder kurz: SFD) ist eine global zelebrierte Feier für Freie Software. Das Ziel des SFD ist es, die Öffentlichkeit auf der ganzen Welt auf den Nutzen Freier Software in der Bildung, in staatlichen Einrichtungen, in der Wirtschaft und im privaten Bereich (kurz: überall) hinzuweisen.

Auch das Wiener Fellowship der FSFE will die Freie Software an diesem Tag feiern und daher veranstalten wir eine SFD Party im Metalab.

Programm:

  • Vortrag Matija Šuklje über „Freie Software und Recht”
  • Kaffee / Knabbereien (solange der Vorrat reicht)
  • FSFE Merchandise (T-shirts, Anhänger, usw.)
  • Gemütliches Beisammensein, unterstützt von Getränken und Musik

Als Einleitung für diesen Abend hält Matija Šuklje, unser neuer FSFE Legal Koordinator einen Vortrag über rechtliche Aspekte Freier Software. Im gemütlichen Teil werdet ihr alle möglichen interessanten Leute treffen und hoffentlich eine gute Zeit mit uns verbringen.

Wir freuen uns auf euer zahlreiches Erscheinen. Bitte leitet diese Einladung an alle potentiell Interessierten weiter. Außerdem wärden wir euch um eine Registrierung für den Software Freedom Day in Wien bitten.


hcalendar logo This content includes Microformats hCalendar information.

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[Samstag, 20110827, 11:36 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


Links for 2011-08-26

IBM Builds Biggest Data Drive Ever - Technology Review

A data repository almost 10 times bigger than any made before is being built by researchers at IBM’s Almaden, California, research lab. The 120 petabyte „drive”—that’s 120 million gigabytes—is made up of 200,000 conventional hard disk drives working together. The giant data container is expected to store around one trillion files and should provide the space needed to allow more powerful simulations of complex systems, like those used to model weather and climate.

A 120 petabyte drive could hold 24 billion typical five-megabyte MP3 files or comfortably swallow 60 copies of the biggest backup of the Web, the 150 billion pages that make up the Internet Archive’s WayBack Machine.

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[Freitag, 20110826, 04:05 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


How algorithms shape our world

Kevin Slavin argues that we’re living in a world designed for – and increasingly controlled by – algorithms:

The BBC made a rather apocalyptic story out of it – because there are only „bad” algorithms: When algorithms control the world

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[Donnerstag, 20110825, 22:49 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


Brompton World Championship 2011

The 6th Brompton World Championship was held on Sunday 21st August, in glorious sunshine; for the fourth year in a row it was held as part of the Breast Cancer Care Bike Blenheim Palace Festival of Cycling.

Despite the hot weather the rules for the event remained the same: helmets were an absolute must, as was a blazer or suit jacket, collared shirt and neck tie. Prizes were also awarded for the best-dressed, those that had managed to add an air of sartorial elegance to the proceedings

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[Donnerstag, 20110825, 22:45 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


Gratis WLAN von 123people? Da wäre ich vorsichtig.

Angeblich verorgt „123people” den Wiener Naschmarkt künftig (komplett ???) mit einem drahtlosen Internetzugang.

Also bei einem Unternehmen, das nicht einmal eine robots.txt berücksichtigt, wäre ich vorsichtig. Wenn überhaupt, würde ich dieses WLAN nur über eine VPN-Verbindung nutzen.

Und warum das eine APA-Meldung wert ist, versteh ich auch nicht – so ein Sommerloch haben wir ja auch wieder nicht.

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[Donnerstag, 20110825, 22:43 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


Politiker und die Angst vor dem Internet

Politiker haben es ja immer gern, wenn sie sich als tatkräftige, handelnde Personen darstellen können. Diesen Sommer haben einige Deutsche Abgeordnete und Regierungsvertreter etwas gefunden, gegen das sie vorgehen wollen: das Internet. Das Internet ist nämlich böse und gebiert Böses, wie zum Beispiel das Attentat von Norwegen. Und so versuchen Volksvertreter nun das Internet in den Griff zu kriegen. Der eine so, der andere so. NDR-ZAPP über den fragwürdigen Feldzug gegen ein Medium.

Via netzpolitik.org.

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[Donnerstag, 20110825, 22:38 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


Aliens Colonial Marines

Aliens Colonial Marines demo shown at Gamescom last week. I think I want to play this. :)

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[Donnerstag, 20110825, 22:35 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


Gratulation an die Profis von echobot.de

Wenn der Server eine Statusmeldung „304 Not Modified” zurückliefert muss das sicher ein Fehler sein – so dürften zumindest die „Programmierer” von echobot.de denken:

85.180.77.16 - - [25/Aug/2011:23:39:01 +0200] "GET /index.completerss20 HTTP/1.1" 304 - "-" "\"echofeed-devel (http://www.echobot.de)\""
85.180.77.16 - - [25/Aug/2011:23:39:03 +0200] "GET /index.completerss20 HTTP/1.1" 304 - "-" "\"echofeed-devel (http://www.echobot.de)\""
85.180.77.16 - - [25/Aug/2011:23:39:05 +0200] "GET /index.completerss20 HTTP/1.1" 304 - "-" "\"echofeed-devel (http://www.echobot.de)\""
85.180.77.16 - - [25/Aug/2011:23:39:07 +0200] "GET /index.completerss20 HTTP/1.1" 304 - "-" "\"echofeed-devel (http://www.echobot.de)\""
85.180.77.16 - - [25/Aug/2011:23:39:15 +0200] "GET /index.completerss20 HTTP/1.1" 304 - "-" "\"echofeed-devel (http://www.echobot.de)\""
85.180.77.16 - - [25/Aug/2011:23:39:18 +0200] "GET /index.completerss20 HTTP/1.1" 304 - "-" "\"echofeed-devel (http://www.echobot.de)\""

Nun, dank iptables ist auch dieses Problem – zumindest für mich – gelöst. Und als Unternehmen für „Online-Medienbeobachtung” kann ich diese Firma eindeutig nicht empfehlen.

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[Donnerstag, 20110825, 22:27 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


Links for 2011-08-25

Why IP Addresses Alone Don’t Identify Criminals | Electronic Frontier Foundation

First, an IP address doesn’t automatically identify a criminal suspect. It’s just a unique address for a device connected to the Internet, much like a street address identifies a building. In most cases, an IP address will identify a router that one or more computers use to connect to the Internet.

But in many situations, an IP address isn’t personally identifying at all. When it traces back to a router that connects to many computers at a library, cafe, university, or to an open wireless network, VPN or Tor exit relay used by any number of people, an IP address alone doesn’t identify the sender of a specific message. And because of pervasive problems like botnets and malware, suspect IP addresses increasingly turn out to be mere stepping stones for the person actually „using” the computer—a person who is nowhere nearby.

Why Secure Email Still Doesn’t Measure Up

Encrypted email should be the norm, not the once-in-a-lifetime event. We all know that we should use it. Haven’t we all been schooled that sending emails is like having a post card plastered to the wall of your local coffee bar? Haven’t all the various exploits with stolen credit cards and easily guessed passwords of Sarah Palin’s Yahoo account been warning enough? Apparently not.

Performance monitoring is Someone Else’s Problem • The Register

Douglas Adams obviously knew what makes an IT shop tick. In Life, the Universe, and Everything, he identified the Somebody Else’s Problem (SEP) field, which renders some things not so much invisible as unnoticeable.

IT departments are littered with SEPs because they make the whole tangled mess the average beleaguered IT manager has to deal with more workable. The politically astute sometimes call them “knowledge domains”, or “fields of expertise”, otherwise known as silos.

Facebook Just Killed Places

Remember Places, the Facebook Foursquare clone feature you probably didn’t use? I say probably, because Facebook just axed it entirely, BI reports, admitting inevitable defeat in the check-in war. It’s about time!

Das Blog ist tot, es lebe der Blog | Sprachlog

Nun, zunächst ist klar, dass Blog eine Abkürzung von Weblog ist, und darin ist das Wort log enthalten. Die deutsche Entsprechung Log(buch) ist ein Neutrum, und als das Wort (We)blog vor noch nicht allzulanger Zeit ins Deutsche entlehnt wurde, war es deshalb auch ein Neutrum.

Aber woher kommt dieser Trend zum Maskulinum? Nun, die semantisch motivierte Genuswahl, bei der einem Lehnwort das Genus der deutschen Entsprechung (oder des am nächsten verwandten deutschen Wortes) verpasst wird, ist nur eine von zwei Strategien. Die andere ist phonologisch: Das Lehnwort erhält das Genus eines lautlich verwandten Wortes. Das Wort Blog ist nun lautlich identisch mit dem Wort Block, beide werden [blɔk] ausgesprochen. Und Block ist ein Maskulinum. Je stärker die ursprüngliche semantische Verwandschaft zwischen Blog und Logbuch also in Vergessenheit gerät, desto mehr setzt sich die phonologisch motivierte Genuszuweisung durch.

Atom heart motherboard - As physical limits bite, electronic engineers must build ever cleverer transistors

Every time transistors shrink, they get closer to the point where they can shrink no further—for if the law continues on its merry way, transistors will be the size of individual silicon atoms within two decades.

More to the point, they have already shrunk to a size where every atom counts. Too few atoms can cause their insulation to break down, or allow current to leak to places it is not supposed to be because of a phenomenon called quantum tunnelling, in which electrons vanish spontaneously and reappear elsewhere. Too many atoms of the wrong sort, though, can be equally bad, interfering with a transistor’s conductivity. Engineers are therefore endeavouring to redesign transistors yet again, so that Dr Moore’s prediction can remain true a little longer.

Chinese accidentally show off cyberwar capability - We thought they didn’t do that sort of thing | TechEye

The Chinese government may have accidentally revealed how it secretly engages in cyber warfare.

Despite the fact that it denies that it does launch cyber attacks, a somewhat dull piece of military propaganda was screened on television which showed a Chinese military university engaged in cyberwarfare against the United States.

Stanley Kubrick invented the iPad in 1968 - Samsung cites prior art against Apple | TechEye

Samsung is claiming that Apple’s insistence that Steve Jobs invented the iPad is overturned by science fiction.

According to a new filing, Samsung has opposed the preliminary injunction Apple filed for in early July. It claims that Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 flick „2001: A Space Odyssey” and episodes of the British kids show „The Tomorrow People” both have designs similar to the iPad. The 2001 clip looks like it is running Android.

Kojo Home

Kojo is a desktop application that runs on Windows, Linux, and the Mac. It is a Learning Environment - with many different features that help with the exploration, learning, and teaching of concepts in the areas of:
* Computer Programming and Critical Thinking. * Math and Science. * Art, Music, and Creative Thinking. * Computer and Internet Literacy.

Clockwise/Spiral Rule

There is a technique known as the „Clockwise/Spiral Rule” which enables any C programmer to parse in their head any C declaration!

Java 7: What’s in it for developers | Application Development - InfoWorld

Officially known as Java Platform Standard Edition 7, Java SE 7 is the first big release of Java in more than five years and the first under Oracle’s stewardship. It offers improvements for running dynamic languages, programming, and file systems.

Comment: Winsome Carly Fiorina lends support to HP’s Apotheker - Failed senator spills no beans | TechEye

Carly Fiorina, who swept Compaq under HP’s rug, is something of a crystal ball. Having her on your side, some in the industry would argue, is a sure fire sign that there is a wrong decision being made. Giving Apotheker her full backing doesn’t bode well.

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[Donnerstag, 20110825, 04:05 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


Roboexotica 2011 will take place December 1-4, 2011

Roboexotica 2011 will take place December 1-4, 2011

Wann/Date: 2011-12-01 19:00:002011-12-04 23:59:00
Ort/Location: tba

Until what seems almost recently, no attempts had been made to publicly discuss the role of Cocktail Robotics as an index for the integration of technological innovations into the human Lebenswelt, or to document the increasing occurrence of radical hedonism in man-machine communication. Roboexotica is an attempt to fill this vacuum. It is the first and, inevitably, the leading festival concerned with cocktail robotics world-wide. A micro mechanical change of paradigm in the age of borderless capital. Alan Turing would doubtless test this out.

Roboexotica 2010 from A38 on Vimeo.

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[Mittwoch, 20110824, 13:45 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


Amazon gegen Apple - das ist Brutalität

Als ich die Ankündigung des kindle Cloud Reader – einer HTML 5 Anwendung, mit der man seine Kindle Bücher auch offline lesen kann – gelesen habe, hab ich mir noch nichts dabei gedacht. Erst ein wenig später wurde mir klar, was da eigentlich abgeht:

Amazon pinkelt Apple gerade ans Bein – und das sehr elegant.

Apple verlangt ja von allen, die eine Anwendung für das Iphone veröffentlichen wollen, 30 Prozent des Umsatzes – „Schönes Programm haben sie da. Wäre ja schade, wenn man das im Apple Store nicht finden würde …”. So natürlich auch von Amazon, für ihren Kindle Reader.

Nun gibt es aber auch (immer wieder ändernde) „Regeln” für diese Anwendungen, bei deren Nichtbefolgung sie aus dem Store fliegen. Eine dieser neuen Regeln besagt, dass alle „in-app sales”, also Käufe von Daten, Abos, … im Programm über den Apple App Store laufen müssen (sonst würde Apple ja nichts dran verdienen).
Amazon musste aufgrund dieser Regelung den „Kindle Store”-Link aus seiner Iphone Anwendung entfernen, der direkt den Kindle Store im Browser des Ipads startete. Benutzer müssen seitdem den Browser händisch starten und die Kindle-Store Adresse eingeben (und/oder sich ein Lesezeichen setzten), um ein Kindle-Buch am Ipad zu kaufen – von den Verkäufen sieht Apple weiterhin keinen Cent.

Bei Amazon ist man dadurch anscheinend drauf gekommen, dass diese Abhängigkeit von Apple und ihrem Apple Store keine gute Sache ist und man doch gerne selber die Kontrolle behalten möchte.
Daraufhin haben sie jetzt den kindle Cloud Reader veröffentlicht, der einfach im Browser (auch offline) läuft und daher auch keinen Apple Store, keine Freigabe von Apple, … benötigt, um am Ipad zu funktionieren.
Das war im Prinzip der ausgestreckte Mittelfinger, den Amazon damit Apple zeigte.

Man darf gespannt sein, was da als Nächstes folgt. Eine Anzeige bei der EU Monopolkommission? Ich hol mir mal Popcorn. :D

 

P.S.: Eine kleine Entschuldigung an Hr. Qualtinger für den Titel.

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[Mittwoch, 20110824, 13:40 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


What If Tim Berners-Lee Had Patented The Web?

Mike Masnick over at techdirt muses what would have happened, if Tim Berners-Lee had patented the web:

… And while many folks are talking about just how amazingly far we’ve come in just 20 years, Marco Arment (the InstaPaper guy) reminds us that if Berners-Lee had sought and received a patent for the web, it would just now be coming out of patent coverage.
 
That sets up an interesting thought experiment. Where do you think the world would be today if the World Wide Web had been patented? Here are a few guesses:
  • Rather than an open World Wide Web, most people would have remained on proprietary, walled gardens, like AOL, Compuserve, Prodigy and Delphi. While those might have eventually run afoul of the patents, since they were large companies or backed by large companies, those would have been the few willing to pay the licensing fee.
  • The innovation level in terms of the web would have been drastically limited. Concepts like AJAX, real time info, etc. would not be present or would be in their infancy. The only companies „innovating” on these issues would be those few large players, and they wouldn’t even think of the value of such things.
  • No Google. Search would be dismal, and limited to only the proprietary system you were on.
  • Most people’s use of online services would be more about „consumption” than „communication.” There would still be chat rooms and such, but there wouldn’t be massive public communication developments like blogs and Twitter. There might be some social networking elements, but they would be very rudimentary within the walled garden.
  • No iPhone. While some might see this as separate from the web, I disagree. I don’t think we’d see quite the same interest or rise in smartphones without the web. Would we see limited proprietary „AOL phones?” Possibly, but with a fragmented market and not as much value, I doubt there’s the necessary ecosystem to go as far as the iPhone.
  • Open internet limited by lawsuit. There would still be an open internet, and things like gopher and Usenet would have grown and been able to do a little innovation. However, if gopher tried to expand to be more web like, we would have seen a legal fight that not only delayed innovation, but limited the arenas in which we innovated.

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[Mittwoch, 20110824, 12:47 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


TwinCity Perl Workshop 2011

TwinCity Perl Workshop 2011

Wann/Date: 2011-11-04 09:00:002011-11-05 18:00:00
Ort/Location: Wien, Metalab & Bratislava

In Kooperation mit Bratislava.pm, die Neuauflage des überaus famosen TwinCity Perl Workshop: 4. November von 9:40 bis 18:40 im Hauptraum, am folgenden Tag in Bratislava.


hcalendar logo This content includes Microformats hCalendar information.

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[Mittwoch, 20110824, 12:22 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


Programming - What's in a name?

Coming from a job, where name and titles are very important, I sooo get Patrick McKenzie’s rant „Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names” (found via Charlie Stross).

So, as a public service, I’m going to list assumptions your systems probably make about names. All of these assumptions are wrong. Try to make less of them next time you write a system which touches names.
 
  1. People have exactly one canonical full name.
  2. People have exactly one full name which they go by.
  3. People have, at this point in time, exactly one canonical full name.
  4. People have, at this point in time, one full name which they go by.
  5. People have exactly N names, for any value of N.
  6. People’s names fit within a certain defined amount of space.
  7. People’s names do not change.
  8. People’s names change, but only at a certain enumerated set of events.
  9. People’s names are written in ASCII.
  10. People’s names are written in any single character set.
  11. People’s names are all mapped in Unicode code points.
  12. People’s names are case sensitive.
  13. People’s names are case insensitive.
  14. People’s names sometimes have prefixes or suffixes, but you can safely ignore those.
  15. People’s names do not contain numbers.
  16. People’s names are not written in ALL CAPS.
  17. People’s names are not written in all lower case letters.
  18. People’s names have an order to them. Picking any ordering scheme will automatically result in consistent ordering among all systems, as long as both use the same ordering scheme for the same name.
  19. People’s first names and last names are, by necessity, different.
  20. People have last names, family names, or anything else which is shared by folks recognized as their relatives.
  21. People’s names are globally unique.
  22. People’s names are almost globally unique.
  23. Alright alright but surely people’s names are diverse enough such that no million people share the same name.
  24. My system will never have to deal with names from China.
  25. Or Japan.
  26. Or Korea.
  27. Or Ireland, the United Kingdom, the United States, Spain, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Russia, Sweden, Botswana, South Africa, Trinidad, Haiti, France, or the Klingon Empire, all of which have “weird” naming schemes in common use.
  28. That Klingon Empire thing was a joke, right?
  29. Confound your cultural relativism! People in my society, at least, agree on one commonly accepted standard for names.
  30. There exists an algorithm which transforms names and can be reversed losslessly. (Yes, yes, you can do it if your algorithm returns the input. You get a gold star.)
  31. I can safely assume that this dictionary of bad words contains no people’s names in it.
  32. People’s names are assigned at birth.
  33. OK, maybe not at birth, but at least pretty close to birth.
  34. Alright, alright, within a year or so of birth.
  35. Five years?
  36. You’re kidding me, right?
  37. Two different systems containing data about the same person will use the same name for that person.
  38. Two different data entry operators, given a person’s name, will by necessity enter bitwise equivalent strings on any single system, if the system is well-designed.
  39. People whose names break my system are weird outliers. They should have had solid, acceptable names, like 田中太郎.
  40. People have names.

 
This list is by no means exhaustive.

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[Mittwoch, 20110824, 11:51 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


Dr. Martens

I’m from the „they are not your Dr. Martens, until they have drawn your blood” fraction, but for those that are more of the cissy kind, there is the „Broken-In” Collection:

The Broken In Process from drmartenssg on Vimeo.

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[Mittwoch, 20110824, 11:45 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


This is how you celebrate an award

As Cory Doctorow put it: The greatest moment in modern Hugo Award history, as Chris Garcia has a complete (and utterly charming) meltdown when he realizes that he’s won a Hugo for Best Fanzine for Drink Tank.


Video streaming by Ustream

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[Mittwoch, 20110824, 11:41 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


Links for 2011-08-24

Moserware: A Stick Figure Guide to the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)

A play in 4 acts. Please feel free to exit along with the stage character that best represents you. Take intermissions as you see fit. Click on the stage if you have a hard time seeing it. If you get bored, you can jump to the code. Most importantly, enjoy the show!

Design Fiction: Glitch Fiction in Paris Design Week | Beyond The Beyond

Glitch Fiction is the false error, the point of chute, the wormhole in the timeline,the ‘what could have been’?

At the edge between science fiction and reality, a series of thought-provoking, participative and speculative design projects will be revealed.

Come, test out and experience the fringe of design for yourself. Glitch Fiction mixes activist and experimental designs in a real office of wonders. Dreams, nightmares, near realities and hyper fantasies meet in the middle to explore the implications of current and emerging technologies through the presentation of fictional scenarios, parallel worlds, extrapolated tangents, cautionary tales and design fictions.

Inspired by science and technology the following proposals use design as a medium to speculate, be critical and stimulate debate around our human relationship to science and technology in our current, alternative and imagined future everyday lives.

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[Mittwoch, 20110824, 04:00 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


Links for 2011-08-23

BBC News - Turning electrical goods into pure gold

Jem Stansfield throws his own mobile phone in with bits of old computers and circuit boards in an attempt to create his own gold nugget but it is not an easy task - potentially lethal acids and temperatures of 1,000C are needed if the experiment is to work.

How to Make a Grappling Hook Gun With a Fire Extinguisher

As surprising as it is, there really is no where on the internet where I found any decent instructions on how to make a grappling hook gun. Figuring it would not be that hard to make, I decided to design and make one myself. After running into many problems, obstacles, and a few prototypes, I think I finally have a really solid version that definitely will impress all who use/see/build it. Naturally there are sure to be plenty of upgrades and other ways to accomplish what I did but I will share the parts and methods I used to make this particular launcher.

DevOps: What It Is, Why It Exists and Why It’s Indispensable

DevOps (a portmanteau of development and operations) is quite the buzzword now, and the discussion yielded many attempts to define it. One thing we agreed on: Unfortunately development and operations are two organizational entities that tend not to get along very well. In this post I’ll explain why DevOps represents a mental shift from „us versus them” to a more cohesive, results-oriented approach.

Goodbye, shitty Car extends Vehicle object-orientation tutorial

I propose a new rule for discussions of object-oriented programming: > **Anyone who brings up examples of Dog, Bike, Car, Person, > or other real-world objects, unless they are talking about writing a > clone of The Sims or something, is immediately shot**.

I feel that this new policy will improve the quality of the discourse enormously.

Wugazi • 13 Chambers by WUGAZI on SoundCloud

Wu-Gazi: Shaolin Ninja goes mosh-punk Here’s a great combo – take hip-hop’s finest Wu-Tang Clan and post-hardcore band Fugazi and mosh them together.

Why I’m not on Google Plus - Charlie’s Diary

Google are wrong about the root cause of online trolling and other forms of sociopathic behaviour. It’s nothing to do with anonymity. Rather, it’s to do with the evanescence of online identity. People who have long term online identities (regardless of whether they’re pseudonymous or not) tend to protect their reputations. Trolls, in contrast, use throw-away identities because it’s not a real identity to them: it’s a sock puppet they wave in the face of their victim to torment them. Forcing people to use their real name online won’t magically induce civility: the trolls don’t care. Identity, to them, is something that exists in the room with the big blue ceiling, away from the keyboard. Stuff in the glowing screen is imaginary and of no consequence.

I, Cringely » Blog Archive » Losing the HP Way - Cringely on technology

The decline of HP began, I think, with the spinoff of Agilent Technologies in 1999. Lew Platt was running HP and he thought the company was too diversified and really needed to concentrate on computers, storage, and imaging. So everything else was spun-off into Agilent. And while this made sense at the time and even today, there were unintended consequences of that spinoff — the loss of HP’s corporate soul. You see Hewlett Packard was in 1999 an instrument company that made a hell of a lot of money from printers, not a printer company that also built instruments. Hewlett and Packard were instrument guys: had they still been on the job in 1999 they would have gone with Agilent. If Packard was still alive in 1999 I doubt that the spinoff would even have happened.

Aktion ‘Freiheit statt Angst’ am 10.9. in Wien | unwatched.org

Ein breites gesellschaftliches Bündnis ruft auch heuer wieder in ganz Europa zu Aktionen und Demonstrationen für Freiheitsrechte, für einen modernen Datenschutz und für ein freies Internet auf.

Auf österreichischer Seite plant unwatched.org für Samstag, den 10. September 2011 eine Veranstaltung (#fsa11_vie) im Metalab in Wien.

Ziel ist es, unterschiedliche Organisationen und Akteure, die sich für eine freie, demokratische und offene Gesellschaft einsetzen, zusammenzubringen und über Möglichkeiten zur Stärkung der Zivilgesellschaft (in Österreich) zu diskutieren, Aktionen zu planen und Informationen auszutauschen.

SSL termination: stunnel, nginx & stud | Vincent Bernat

There are a lot of knobs you can use to get better performances from SSL: choosing the best implementation, using more CPU cores, switching to 64bit system, choosing the right cipher suite and the appropriate key size and enabling a session cache.

We will consider three SSL terminators. They all use OpenSSL behind the hood. stunnel is the oldest one and uses a threaded model. stud is a recent attempt to write a simple SSL terminator which is efficient and scalable. It uses the one-process-per-core model. nginx is a web server and it can be used as reverse proxy and therefore act as SSL terminator. It is known to be one of the most efficient web server, hence the choice here. It also features built-in basic load balancing. Since stud and stunnel does not have this feature, we use them with HAProxy, an high performance load-balancer that usually defers the SSL part to stunnel (but stud can act as a drop-in replacement here).

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[Dienstag, 20110823, 04:00 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


Using scponly To Allow SCP/SFTP Logins And Disable SSH Login

HowToForge has a nice HowTo online, on setting up scponly on a Debian system.

From my experience with scponly and Windows systems as a client (WinSCP), I would like to add:

You do not only need the
cp /lib/libnss_* -av /home/someuser/lib/
to fix the Command ‘groups’ failed with return code 1 error, but also

mkdir /home/someuser/dev
cp -a /dev/null /home/someuser/dev/

At least on Debian Lenny.

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[Montag, 20110822, 22:14 | permanent link | 1 Kommentar(e)


In case you are looking for a gift for me ...

The winners of the 2011 Hugo Awards have been announced:

  • BEST NOVEL: Blackout/All Clear by Connie Willis (Ballantine Spectra)
  • BEST NOVELLA: The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang (Subterranean)
  • BEST NOVELETTE: „The Emperor of Mars” by Allen M. Steele (Asimov’s, June 2010; also in audio)
  • BEST SHORT STORY: „For Want of a Nail” by Mary Robinette Kowal (Asimov’s, September 2010)
  • BEST RELATED WORK: Chicks Dig Time Lords: A Celebration of Doctor Who by the Women Who Love It, edited by Lynne M. Thomas and Tara O’Shea (Mad Norwegian)
  • BEST GRAPHIC STORY: Girl Genius, Volume 10: Agatha Heterodyne and the Guardian Muse, written by Phil and Kaja Foglio; art by Phil Foglio; colors by Cheyenne Wright (Airship Entertainment)
  • BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION, LONG FORM: Inception, written and directed by Christopher Nolan (Warner)
  • BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION, SHORT FORM: Doctor Who: „The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang,” written by Steven Moffat; directed by Toby Haynes (BBC Wales)
  • BEST EDITOR, SHORT FORM: Sheila Williams
  • BEST EDITOR, LONG FORM: Lou Anders
  • BEST PROFESSIONAL ARTIST: Shaun Tan
  • BEST SEMIPROZINE: Clarkesworld, edited by Neil Clarke, Cheryl Morgan, Sean Wallace; podcast directed by Kate Baker
  • BEST FANZINE: The Drink Tank, edited by Christopher J Garcia and James Bacon
  • BEST FAN WRITER: Claire Brialey
  • BEST FAN ARTIST: Brad W. Foster
  • JOHN W. CAMPBELL AWARD FOR BEST NEW WRITER [Not a Hugo]: Lev Grossman

Oh, and some time to read all that stuff would be a nice present, too. ;)

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[Montag, 20110822, 22:05 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


Es muss nicht immer Microsoft Office sein

Gulli berichtet:

13 Krankenhäuser in und um Kopenhagen werden im kommenden Jahr ihre Office-Software Palette vollständig auf LibreOffice umstellen. Rund 25.000 Mitarbeitern werden ab diesen Zeitpunkt mit der Software arbeiten. Die Krankenhauskette erklärte, dass dieser Schritt „aus langfristigen strategischen Gründen” notwendig wurde.
 
Der wohl wichtigste dieser strategischen Gründe wird das Ersparnis von 40 Millionen Dänischen Kronen gewesen sein, die ansonsten für Softwarelizenzen ausgegeben werden müssten. Umgerechnet entspricht dies einem Betrag von 5,3 Millionen Euro.

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[Montag, 20110822, 21:44 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


Links for 2011-08-20

Wenn die unten nicht mehr wollen - Berliner Zeitung

Die Welt wird sich in den nächsten Jahren gewaltig ändern. Die Vorstellung, ausgerechnet die Formen des wirtschaftlichen, politischen, kulturellen Zusammenlebens, die sich auch in Europa erst nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg durchgesetzt haben, würden das 21. Jahrhundert prägen, hat angesichts der demografischen und der Machtverhältnisse etwas Tollkühnes. Es wird neue Balancen von Volksbeteiligung, von Wirtschaftsmacht und Herrschaft geben. Die neuen Medien werden darin wichtige Rollen spielen.

5 Most-Ignored IT Security Best Practices – InformationWeek5 Most-Ignored IT Security Best Practices - security Blog

There’s nothing simple about enterprise security, but there are plenty of best practices that can keep most businesses safe from the most likely and pervasive threats. Unfortunately, according to a new study from research firm Echelon One and enterprise key and certificate management company Venafi, more than half of all IT departments are failing at some of the most important security practices. Here are the top 5 things your company could probably do better.

The epic unpopularity of Windows smartphones

Microsoft’s 1.7 million quarterly phone sales compare to 46.8 million for Android, 23.9 million for Nokia’s Symbian, 19.6 million for the iPhone and 12.7 million for BlackBerry. […]

The only major platform Microsoft is outselling is apparently HP’s WebOS, which doesn’t even show up in the rankings because it sold so poorly.

Millennials Aren’t The Little Devils IT Imagines – InformationWeekMillennials Aren’t The Little Devils IT Imagines - global-cio Blog

new research from GigaOM Pro and Isurus Market Research & Consulting, sponsored by IT support vendor Bomgar, suggests the Millennials have more respect for the IT organization than most of us give them credit for.

Why in the Hell Is Everyone Stealing Copper?

earch the news for „copper theft” and look through the headlines. LOOK. Why are there so many stories? Stealing wire to sell the copper? From a cell tower? What is this, the Great Depression?

Reports from the Department of Energy estimate that copper theft is responsible for $1 billion worth of damage every single year. The problem is so rampant that there’s a coalition to prevent copper theft. State laws are being passed left and right, requiring close monitoring of all copper sales. What gives? It’s the economy, stupid.

MOODY’S ANALYST BREAKS SILENCE: Says Ratings Agency Rotten To Core With Conflicts, Corruption, And Greed

The primary conflict of interest at Moody’s is well known: The company is paid by the same „issuers” (banks and companies) whose securities it is supposed to objectively rate. This conflict pervades every aspect of Moody’s operations, Harrington says. It incentivizes everyone at the company, including analysts, to give Moody’s clients the ratings they want, lest the clients fire Moody’s and take their business to other ratings agencies.

Moody’s analysts whose conclusions prevent Moody’s clients from getting what they want, Harrington says, are viewed as „impeding deals” and, thus, harming Moody’s business. These analysts are often transferred, disciplined, „harassed,” or fired.

In short, Harrington describes a culture of conflict that is so pervasive that it often renders Moody’s ratings useless at best and harmful at worst.

IBM CTO Mark Dean: My Main Device Is Now a Tablet

How the internet has all but destroyed the market for films, music and newspapers | Media | The Observer

The author of Free Ride warns that digital piracy and greedy technology firms are crushing the life out of the culture business

Socnet surveillance: trust no one

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[Montag, 20110822, 20:48 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


Links for 2011-08-22

Mach flott den Schrott 2

Für den einen sind es traurige Reste vergangener Hardware-Herrlichkeit, ein anderer sieht darin wertvolles Baumaterial: ausgediente Diskettenlaufwerke, unwirtschaftliche Drucker, ausgemusterte Server, Plotter, Terminals, Scanner und so weiter. Mit Erfindungsgeist, Mut, ein paar Werkzeugen und einem guten Schuss Humor machen findige Leute daraus sinnreiche neue Vorrichtungen, mit denen sie Alltagsprobleme lösen, oder originelle Kunstwerke, die zum Staunen reizen.

In einem neuen großen Wettbewerb unter dem Motto „Mach flott den Schrott” prämiert c’t die besten Schöpfungsakte aus den Hightech-Schätzchen von gestern.

Cities in Fact and Fiction: An Interview with William Gibson: Scientific American

Author of the cyberpunk novel Neuromancer, William Gibson​ talks about the relationship between his fiction and the contemporary urban landscape

IBM Redbooks | IBM System x Server Disk Drive Technology

In the server environments, disk storage is becoming more and more important, and the choice of hard drives is very broad - connectivity intefaces (SAS, SATA) and their speeds, rotational speeds, desktop vs nearline vs enterprise drives, form-factors and so on. How to choose the most appropriate HDD drive type?

The purpose of this document is to discuss currently available internal and external HDD storage interfaces for IBM® System x® servers and to provide recommendations on how to choose the right options to better fit business needs and application requirements. The document is organized into the following sections:

It’s little surprise Amazon and authors are cutting out the middleman | Ian Vince | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

After giving away their margins, publishers have let marketing and royalties for most of their writers slide

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[Montag, 20110822, 04:00 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


Systemwechsel

Je weniger in einer Gesellschaft systemrelevant ist, desto besser. Desto geringer die Einsturzgefahr des Ganzen.
 
Es geht nicht darum, Einstürze, Bankrotts also, zu verhindern. Es geht darum, sie möglichst früh, also möglichst kostengünstig passieren zu lassen. Das ist sicher keine linke Idee. Das ist aber auch keine rechte Idee. Das ist vernünftig. Es ist das Vernünftige, das schwer zu tun ist.

Die Welt wird sich in den nächsten Jahren gewaltig ändern. Die Vorstellung, ausgerechnet die Formen des wirtschaftlichen, politischen, kulturellen Zusammenlebens, die sich auch in Europa erst nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg durchgesetzt haben, würden das 21. Jahrhundert prägen, hat angesichts der demografischen und der Machtverhältnisse etwas Tollkühnes. Es wird neue Balancen von Volksbeteiligung, von Wirtschaftsmacht und Herrschaft geben. Die neuen Medien werden darin wichtige Rollen spielen.
 
Wir leben mitten in einem Systemwechsel. Wir werden einhundert Jahre brauchen, um zu begreifen, wie er sich abgespielt hat. Wir werden immer wieder versuchen, ihn mit den Begriffen rechts und links einzufangen. Das wird uns nichts helfen. Aber wir tun das schon sehr lange. Und wir haben noch keine Alternative.

Die Parolen sind Parolen des Übergangs. Parolen, hinter deren Kraftmeierei für jeden Hilflosigkeit zu spüren ist. Krawall ist kein Programm. Krawall ist ein Aufruf: Verunsichert, was euch verunsichert. Angezündete Autos sagen nichts, als dass es Menschen gibt, die sich nachts zusammentun, um Autos anzuzünden. Es sind Taten Einzelner, einiger weniger, aber darum sind sie nicht unpolitisch. Die angezündeten Autos sind Zeichen. Aber wir können sie nicht lesen. Wir wissen nicht einmal, ob es Zeichen einer Sprache sind oder Ausdruck einer Sprachlosigkeit. Wird uns etwas mitgeteilt oder geht es in erster Linie darum, den Freunden zu zeigen, was man fertigbringt? Rührend, wie wir versuchen, diese Flammenschrift zu lesen.

Wer vom Moritzplatz aus Richtung Naunynstraße geht, der findet ganz oben an einer Hauswand: „Revolution ist die einzige Lösung“. Mit drei Ausrufezeichen. Eine linke Parole. Eine dumme Parole. Die Revolution ist keine Lösung. Sie ist ein Fragezeichen. Danach ist alles wie vorher. Die Menschen sind dieselben. Die Lage hat sich nicht geändert. Keines der demografischen Probleme, kein Nahrungsproblem, kein Energieproblem ist gelöst. Danach findet ein Aufräumen statt, und dann beginnt die Suche nach den Antworten von Neuem.

Eurobonds lösen keines unserer Probleme. Sie zögern den Zusammenbruch hinaus. Es ginge aber darum, statt des durch das Hinauszögern vergrößerten Zusammenbruchs möglichst viele kleine zu erzeugen, in deren Mitte wir einigermaßen überleben könnten. Der von den Eurobonds kreierte Aufschub ist nur dann interessant, wenn wir ihn nutzen könnten, um abzustoßen, was uns beschwert. Wer garantiert uns das? Ach, was heißt garantiert? Wer sagt es uns auch nur? Wenn nach der Ausgabe der Eurobonds weitergemacht würde wie bisher, wären sie nur noch eine offene Flanke für die Spekulation auf den Abstieg Europas.

Arno Widmann in der Berliner Zeitung.

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[Samstag, 20110820, 22:29 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


Is Charly Stross' Memory Diamond Already Reality?

One of the great ideas, Charly Stross tosses around, is that of a Memory Diamond:

I’m throwing around fairly gigantic amounts of data in this talk – where are we going to store it all? The answer is, as Richard Fenyman put it in 1959, there’s plenty of room at the bottom. Let’s hypothesize a very high density, non-volatile serial storage medium that might be manufactured using molecular nanotechnology: I call it memory diamond. It’s a diamondoid mesh, within which the state of a single data bit is encoded in each atom: because we want it to be rigid and stable, we use a carbon–12 nucleus to represent a zero, and a carbon-thirteen to represent a one. How we read and write these bits is left as an exercise for the student of mature molecular nanotechnology, but we can say with some certainty that we can store Avogadro’s number of bits – 6 x 1023 – in 12.5 grams of carbon, or around 13 thousand terabytes in an ounce of memory diamond. Going by the figures in a report from UCSD last year, the average worker processed or consumed 3 terabytes per year, and there are around 3.18 billion workers; which works out at 23 tons of memory diamond needed to store everything without compression or deduplication. At a guess, once you take out cute captioned cat videos and downloads that annoy the hell out of the MPAA you can reduce that by an order of magnitude.
 
(So I conclude that yes, in the long term we will have more storage capacity than we necessarily know what to do with.)
Two completely different quantum systems were successfully joined at Vienna University of Technology (TU Vienna):
For jewellery, diamonds are supposed to be pure and flawless, but for quantum experiments, the opposite is required. Here, flaws in the diamond are desirable. When nitrogen atoms slip into the regular carbon structure of the diamond, the diamond becomes almost black, but it gains the ability to store quantum states. “We could show that in our quantum chip, quantum states can actually be transferred between the microwaves and the nitrogen-centers in the diamond”, Robert Amsüss (TU Vienna) explains. The more nitrogen atoms take part in this transfer of quantum information, the more stable the diamonds “memory” becomes.
Surprisingly, it turned out that also the angular momentum of the atomic nuclei can store quantum information. “This could be the first step towards a nuclear memory device”, Johannes Majer suggests.

This should make stuff like the mDisc obsolete.

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[Samstag, 20110820, 22:09 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


History repeating ...

Internet Explorer is most secure browser for malware, study shows

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is the most secure browser – by far – when it comes to blocking malicious software and websites that are known for tricking users into downloading malware, according to a recent study.
Hulu and MSN Caught Using Supercookies to Track User Data
The WSJ says that Hulu and MSN, among others, have been found using supercookies to monitor the info of those who visit their sites. Extremely difficult to detect and erase, supercookies can provide significantly more information than standard cookies.

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[Samstag, 20110820, 21:56 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


Repeat after me: DRM is bad for the customer -- Incident 22

heise berichtet:

Microsoft nimmt seine E-Book-Software Microsoft Reader vom Markt. Wie das Unternehmen auf der Projektseite angekündigt, ist ein Download des PC-Programms sowie der Windows-Mobile-App nur noch bis Ende 2012 möglich.

Wer sich in der Vergangenheit auf die Nachhaltigkeit von Microsoft und seiner E-Book-Initiative verließ und digitale Literatur im .lit-Format kaufte, für den kann das Aus des Microsoft Readers ernsthafte Konsquenzen haben.
 
Denn während sich kopierschutzfreie .lit-Bücher mit Gratistools wie Calibre problemlos in fortbestehende Formate konvertieren und anschließend auch auf elektronischen Lesegeräten wie dem Kindle lesen lassen, könnte für Käufer von Microsoft E-Books mit DRM der Bildschirm schon bald schwarz bleiben. Zwar wurde der .lit-Kopierschutz bereits vor acht Jahren geknackt, Nutzer des DRM-Removal-Tools bewegen sich jedoch in einer rechtlichen Grauzone.

Repeat after me: DRM is bad for the customer!

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[Samstag, 20110820, 21:45 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


„Ausgangssperre für Jugentliche” - Das nächste Sommerlochthema?

Unsere Politiker (auch die Innen) sind offensichtlich noch immer vom Thema „Ortstafeln” und „Mehr Überwachung” so abgelenkt, dass sie das nächste schöne Sommerlochthema – bei dem es noch dazu keine erntshafte Gegenlobby gibt – bis jetzt übersehen haben: Ausgangssperre für Teenager.

Spon berichtet:
Im Kampf gegen Vandalismus und Gewalt von Jugendlichen hat die Stadt Philadelphia eine nächtliche Ausgangssperre für Teenager verhängt. Ab Freitag dürfen Jugendliche unter 18 Jahren freitag- und samstagnachts ab 21 Uhr nicht mehr vor die Tür. Das teilte die Stadtverwaltung am Montag mit.
(man beachte, wie elegant hier das Foto eines Flashmobs in den Kontext des „Vandalismus” gestellt wird). Und auch in UK wird ähnliches überlegt:
And ministers are considering new curfew powers - to allow „general curfews” to be imposed on a specific area in England and Wales, rather than being linked to specific individuals, and to allow them to be imposed on more youngsters aged under 16.

Also die Schottermitzi hätte das schon längt aufgegriffen. Da hat Fr. Mikl-Leitner noch einiges zu lernen.

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[Mittwoch, 20110817, 20:51 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


Wiener Linien - Videoüberwachung darf nicht verlängert werden #3

Ich habe ja schon im Dezember und im Juli darüber geschrieben, dass die Wiener Linien heuer um eine Verlängerung ihrer Videoüberwachungserlaubnis ansuchen müssen.

Wenn die Datenschutzkommission auch nur ansatzweise ihrer Verpflichtung nachkommt, dürfte sie nach der Lektüre der BBC Meldung 1,000 cameras ‘solve one crime’ der Verlängerung nicht mehr zustimmen.

Cory Doctorow hat es in seinem Guardian Artikel „Why CCTV has failed to deter criminals” schön zusammengefasst:
We behave ourselves because of our social contract, the collection of written and unwritten rules that bind us together by instilling us with internal surveillance in the form of conscience and aspiration. CCTVs everywhere are an invitation to walk away from the contract and our duty to one another, to become the lawlessness the CCTV is meant to prevent.
 
After the London riots, one thing is certain: anyone promoting CCTVs for deterrence is most likely selling something, probably CCTVs.

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[Mittwoch, 20110817, 20:38 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


SPÖ imitiert wieder Grundrechtsschützer

Die Presse berichtet: SPÖ gegen Mikl-Leitners Antiterrorplan

„Das ist für die SPÖ äußerst problematisch. Ich kann mir nicht vorstellen, dass man ins Blitzblaue ermittelt und Freiheit und Grundrechte verletzt“, stellte SPÖ-Bundesgeschäftsführer Günther Kräuter am Montag im Gespräch mit der „Presse” klar.

Nur zur Erinnerung: die SPÖ hat sowohl dem Mafia-Pragraphen, als auch der Vorratsdatenspeicherung (auf EU-Ebene und in Österreich) zugestimmt. Denkt daran, falls wir wieder mal wählen dürfen.

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[Mittwoch, 20110817, 20:25 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


Smartphone: Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey Input Recognition

Two researchers from the University of California Davis, Hao Chen and Lian Cai, have successfully divined the keystrokes on an Android on-screen keyboard by measuring the wiggles, jiggles, and vibrations picked up by the device’s accelerometer. This is significant because the data from accelerometers is not thought of as a potential attack vector, and is thus freely available to any application on any smartphone or tablet.

A wiggly approach to smartphone keylogging

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[Mittwoch, 20110817, 20:05 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


London Calling!

Ken Jebsen über die Krawalle im Großraum England, die Ursachen und was das alles mit dem derzeitigen „Zustand” Europas und damit auch mit dem „Zustand” Deutschlands zu tun hat!

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[Mittwoch, 20110817, 20:00 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


Living In The Future XVIII

The Internet in 1995 on MTV News

Kurt Loder: „Are you jacked into the Internet? Are you one of those computer guys?”
David Bowie: „I did at one time; a couple of years ago. But I got so tired of the rubbish on it that I dropped out again.”

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[Mittwoch, 20110817, 19:53 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


Hollywood? Nein! Bollywood!

Ra.One

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[Montag, 20110815, 18:03 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


Could someone check if hell froze over?

I would leave rates for 99.7 percent of taxpayers unchanged and continue the current 2-percentage-point reduction in the employee contribution to the payroll tax. This cut helps the poor and the middle class, who need every break they can get.
 
But for those making more than $1 million — there were 236,883 such households in 2009 — I would raise rates immediately on taxable income in excess of $1 million, including, of course, dividends and capital gains. And for those who make $10 million or more — there were 8,274 in 2009 — I would suggest an additional increase in rate.
 
My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.
Warren Buffet in the New York Times

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[Montag, 20110815, 17:56 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


Netzausbau

Ist das Handynetz in der Provinz eigentlich so langsam zur Verhinderung von Bauernaufständen?Mon Aug 15 08:43:36 via Twitter for Android

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[Montag, 20110815, 17:42 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


Al Gore, Vint Cerf, Tim Berners-Lee and Cory Doctorow at the Campus Party Mexico 2011

Coy says about that video:
Back in July, I went to Mexico City to moderate a panel at the Campus Party conference, a massive LAN party/campout/hackathon/tech policy event. It was a long, long way to go, but it was worth it: my panelists were Tim Berners-Lee (who invented the Web), Vint Cerf (one of the most important figures in the invention of the Internet) and Al Gore (who, despite sneering misquotations, *was* very, very important to the formation of the Internet as we know it today).
 
We had a wide-ranging discussion, but kept circling back to the threats and promises for the net – copyright wars, privacy wars, government and grassroots. It was a *lot* of fun, and quite an honor, and I’m happy to see they’ve got the video online.

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[Montag, 20110815, 15:48 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


SIGGRAPH 2011 : Cory Doctorow's Keynote Address

Cory Doctorows talk was about the way that copyright can be made to work for creators in the digital age, and why it’s important for everyone that we don’t get it wrong:

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[Montag, 20110815, 15:43 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


Teufel oder Beelzebub?

I use Android because I don’t trust Google. Sure, I trust and like individual googlers, and admire many of the things the company has managed – but I don’t for one moment think that Google’s management is making its decisions in order to make me happy, fulfilled and free.

So why use Android? Because it requires less trust in Google than using iOS requires that you trust Apple.

I’d like an official Android version without the DRM, with complete source code, and with generally greater transparency into the device and its ecosystem. I like the alternative Android OS, CyanogenMod, because it has many of those things. Functionally, a CyanogenMod Android phone and a stock Android phone work in much the same way, but CyanogenMod phones fail better.

Android and iOS both fail, but Android fails better by Cory Doctorow

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[Montag, 20110815, 15:39 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


TESLA COILS IN LINZ !!!!!!!!

Tesla Orchestra, credit: Tesla Orchestra

Feuerbälle, Blitze, Musik, Tanz – das US-amerikanische Tesla Orchestra bietet großen, bietet dramatischen Zirkus. 2009 von Ian Charnas (US) an der Case Western Reserve University gegründet, bedient sich das Ensemble der zwei größten Tesla-Spulen der Welt um meterlange, gleißend helle Blitze mit bis zu 26 Kilowatt und einigen Millionen Volt zu erzeugen. Nicht genug damit steigt dann auch noch ein Tesla-Performer in den Ring um einen atemberaubenden Tanz mit den Blitzen zu wagen … Es wird ein einzigartiges Schauspiel, das sich von Mittwoch 31. August bis einschließlich Montag, 5. September 2011 allabendlich am Maindeck des Ars Electronica Center abspielen wird.

Brrrrrrrrrrrzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!!!!!!!!!

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[Freitag, 20110812, 17:44 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


MTV - anscheinend sehr prägend

MTV dürfte für eine gewisse „Generation” prägend gewesen sein. Man vergleiche Daniel Eberharters „58 VideosGastbeitrag auf Digioms Blog und meinen zum Thema MTV Music Television – Ein Nachruf.

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[Donnerstag, 20110804, 20:18 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


VfGH äußert Bedenken zu E-Voting

Der Verfassungsgerichtshof hält fest, dass jene gesetzlichen Bestimmungen, die E-Voting regeln, so gestaltet sein müssen, dass es – letztlich auch für den Verfassungsgerichtshof – möglich ist, die Einhaltung der Wahlgrundsätze zu prüfen. Bei der Wahlordnung scheint es so zu sein, dass dies nicht der Fall ist und vor allem die Vorgaben und Kriterien, wie die Wahlkommission die Einhaltung der Wahlgrundsätze prüfen soll, fehlen.

Prüfungsbeschluss (408 KB, PDF), via papierwahl.at.

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[Donnerstag, 20110804, 20:10 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)


Disclaimer

„Leyrers Online Pamphlet“ ist die persönliche Website von mir, Martin Leyrer. Die hier veröffentlichten Beiträge spiegeln meine Ideen, Interessen, meinen Humor und fallweise auch mein Leben wider.
The postings on this site are my own and do not represent the positions, strategies or opinions of any former, current or future employer of mine.
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