Archive 12. February 2004

"Domain Kidnapping" is Back

Really cool, the rip-off artists at Verisign want to exploit their special status as root registry again - they've learned nothing from the last debacle. So it looks like wildcard blockers for TLDs will have to be built into the nameservers after all.

At NETZEITUNG.DE Internet you can find the original article.

Television: For They Know Not What They Do

A quality code for public broadcasting corporations? That would be an approach. However, I doubt that it will produce any usable result - the broadcasting corporations are far too entangled with other interests. I increasingly doubt whether the public broadcasting corporations are even serious anymore about their actual mandate - ultimately, they're only chasing ratings. You can see this nicely over and over again in how they squander millions on ridiculous football broadcasting rights.

Moreover, there is no longer any political support for public broadcasting - politicians are only eyeing the money and letting themselves be manipulated by media moguls like Saban or Murdoch and put to work for their power interests.

Of course, it would be nice to end up with an offering comparable to the BBC (curiously, BBC content is apparently being bought primarily by private television stations at the moment and unfortunately only served in ad-interrupted snippets), but I don't believe that will happen in the foreseeable future. And I base this claim on the existence of all these dreadful quiz shows, tralala music programs, public stupefaction events (including silly carnival sessions) and similar aberrations of public entertainment ...

I found the original article at DIE ZEIT: Feuilleton.

Firefox is quite nice, but ...

... I find it somewhat annoying that I can't use bookmarklets anymore that open their own windows. These custom windows end up behind the current window as a matter of principle. Really inconvenient, that.

Gravenreuth Law Firm Issues Cease and Desist to P2P Portal emule.de

Pretty cool, yet another rip-off attempt with an already existing domain. Hopefully the Gravenreuth law firm will fall flat on their face with this.

At heise online news you can find the original article.

Konica Minolta Maxxum 7 Digital

Took quite a while for Minolta to enter the DSLR world.

At Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com) you can find the original article.

Mars Express sends new photos

Beautiful images.

At WDR: Landung auf dem Mars you can find den Originalartikel.

PalmSource dropping Mac support

Bah. Idiots.

At Gizmodo you can find the original article.

Polaroid launches new Polaroid material

This is almost even more amazing than the announcement of the digital Leica M: Polaroid is bringing a new format for Polaroid film to the market that is specifically designed for medium format cameras. Old film backs can be adapted, or you can also get new film backs. Also included is the ingenious positive-negative material again (here as 85 film), with which you can simultaneously produce a positive and a negative using the instant image process.

Here's the original article.

The Omni Group - Applications - OmniWeb - Beta

Hey, the Omniweb beta is really great. Ok, there are still issues, but it's a beta after all. But the new user interface is really slick. And the implementation of tabs in Omniweb is pretty cool - I could get used to this browser, even though I'm actually a Safari fan. By the way, the feature that lets you open a textarea in its own window is really nice when, like me, you edit your weblog through the web browser. Finally, better editing options than with these boring textarea peepholes...

Here's the original article.