APOD: 2005 January 21 - Metal on the Plains of Mars. Cool image - Opportunity finds parts of its own heat shield again. And even a small meteorite to boot. Maybe it will find Beagle sometime too.
Archive 15. February 2005
Bill Gates attempts to blackmail Denmark
Bill Gates tries to extort Denmark with Navision. After Microsoft bought Navision, the 800 jobs are now being used as leverage against the Danish government to bind it to Microsoft's wishes regarding the software patent directive in Europe.
When you look at which companies are in favor of the software patent directive and what methods are being used (extortion, bribery, lobbying, FUD) to push it through, it really makes you sick. These are practically mafia methods. And the motivation behind the whole thing is probably just as honest as the mafia's.
There's already the first Microsoft denial - so there must be something to the extortion story. In the article about the denial, there's also information about other companies that have put pressure on Poland. And apparently it worked in Poland - at least in part.
It's really disgusting what behavior these companies are displaying - Siemens is extorting the German labor market with the threat of moving its mobile phone division to Poland, for example, and is extorting the Polish government with the same jobs over software patents. The whole mess only works because politicians are unable to talk to each other and actually pursue common European goals - and thus put a stop to these games of the industry giants. Because every politician only wants to secure their own advantage and at most looks out for their own interests in their own country, companies can happily play countries off against each other.
Brandora, R/C X-UFO - hey, cool. Is it powerful enough to carry a small digital camera?
Vocational Training is Being Nationalized
DGB on Training Pact: "Vocational Training is Being Nationalized" - did anyone really believe this absurd training pact would prompt the economy to actually create apprenticeship positions? They're not even interested in training people themselves and thus securing the skilled workers they need. When there's a shortage of skilled workers, it's much easier to cry out for some ridiculous green card projects - and politicians are dumb enough to go along with it. And when you don't need people anymore because profits have risen, you just throw them out.
A mandatory levy is certainly problematic - not because of the levy itself, but because business executives will use it again as a flimsy excuse to lay people off because they supposedly wouldn't be competitive otherwise - but it's probably the only way to force the economy to actually train people.
Of course, the real solution would be if business executives actually used their brains again and maybe even rediscovered their social responsibility. But who still believes in that in times of Esser and Ackermann? Or the Daimler CEO without a Rolex, but with doubled salary despite declining profits? Does anyone really credit these rip-off artists with even rudimentary social competence?
By the way, the whole thing about competitiveness on the international market is quite a farce as an argument when Germany consistently keeps expanding exports and raking in record profits in export-oriented sectors. How does that work if our system is supposedly so uncompetitive on the international market?
Fischer becomes NRW election campaign issue - Rüttgers must really be at the end of his rope if he has to resort to a federal issue instead of regional topics for his campaign. But well-conducted campaigning has never really been his strength anyway. Not that it would be particularly difficult to find regional issues - after all, the Red-Green government in NRW provides plenty of ammunition for that. Only it seems the Union is just too dumb to exploit it - probably because they themselves have no idea how NRW's problems could be solved. But opening their mouths and screaming to be voted in, that they can do ...
::: heimstatt jochen wegner - FARMER POPPE AND THE GOOGLIFICATION and the dumbing down of professional journalism. Why do they present themselves as something special when in the end they do exactly the same thing as the bloggers? (via Schockwellenreiter)
Internet Explorer 7 beta due out this summer - and apparently only for Windows XP SP2. Great. This means all those heaps of broken Windows systems out there will continue running around with the messed-up IE versions. On the other hand - if you look at how IE has developed, do you even want a new version to spread?
junge welt vom 15.02.2005 - Hungerlohn für Nachhilfe reports on the displacement of normal employment relationships by one-euro jobs. It was to be expected that this measure, too, would not really create jobs, but ultimately destroy jobs. But it is already a mockery that among the first to abuse one-euro jobs is the public sector itself ...
Mozilla removes support for umlaut domains
Mozilla removes support for umlaut domains - in my opinion, the only right reaction. The IDN stuff is just nonsense without any real sense anyway. Sorry, but umlaut domains that only work on the web but not in email are just a disaster waiting to happen. And the technical implementation - the fact that only a small subset of Unicode can even be mapped - is also ridiculous. All just to boost domain marketing and stroke the egos of some idiots...
Neohapsis Archives - Full Disclosure List - #0258 - [Full-Disclosure] Advisory: Awstats official workaround flaw - I've now put that part behind password protection and that's the end of exploits. Without proper security measures, you can pretty much forget about awstats.pl - it seems to be a classic Swiss cheese...
News.Individual.DE no longer free from 1.4.
The news server news.individual.de will soon be a paid service because no sponsors could be found. I learned about this through Rabenhorst. It's really a shame that it can't continue to be operated for free. Well, the server's performance is so good that 10 euros is definitely worth it to me.
Check PageRank Authenticity
Check PageRank Authenticity - a nice little online tool for checking PageRank with simultaneous assessment of the authenticity of the PageRank.
What absolutely fascinates me about it: I actually have a PageRank of 6 with my weblog and a PageRank of 7 with the PyDS homepage. Wow.
phpOpenTracker is a live access analyzer for websites. It can be integrated directly into PHP applications or data can be collected from static websites via web bugs (small invisible graphics). You can use it to learn quite a lot about user behavior on websites. And Asymptomatic is currently working on a WordPress plugin for it, which will allow you to see the corresponding evaluations in the WP backend...
Less politics for more GEZ fees [raben.horst]
Less Politics for Higher GEZ Fees - great. Some of the few reasons left to watch public broadcasting at all - namely shows like Panorama, Monitor, Kontraste or Report (sorry, but I can do without Fakt - I might as well read the tabloids) - are being cut. Because the Tagesthemen is being moved - to make room for who knows what. In any case, for nothing that interests me. The only other reason that comes to mind for me with ARD is Tatort. And that's about it...
What am I paying GEZ fees for again?
WordPress 1.5 is out
and I updated it (I had a relatively current CVS version running). Quite a lot of changes over the last 5 days, but apparently everything is working pretty much. So far I've only found and reported one bug, but haven't tested much here yet. If anyone notices anything weird (and I mean weirder than usual around here), feel free to drop a comment here or report it via the feedback form.