On the topic of software patents, I also contacted the BMWA by fax. While the BMJ sent a polite and factual - albeit, in my opinion, somewhat dreamy and detached from reality given Minister Clement's course - response, the BMWA adopts a tone that I find somewhat snippy (annoyed?):
Dear Mr. ..., thank you for your fax dated March 06, 2005, in which you address the adoption of the directive on computer-implemented inventions in the first reading.
I do not share your criticism of the procedure at all.
The purely formal adoption of a text already decided is absolutely usual, indeed mandatory, due to the linguistic diversity in the EU. This is also the view of the Member States, which had or have substantive concerns. This has nothing to do with disregarding democratic rules of the game. The directive is, by the way, by no means adopted yet.
We are certainly in agreement on the objective. I can assure you that the positive economic development of the software industry is close to my heart. However, the often-expressed claims that patent protection for software would be newly introduced or expanded are factually incorrect. Despite all criticism in detail, one should "keep the church in the village".
The German software industry has developed economically well under the existing legal framework with computer program patents. This will not change fundamentally through international harmonization. We are explicitly not taking the path in Europe that is rather progressive and, above all, hostile to small and medium-sized enterprises, as in the USA. The two legal systems differ significantly here.
Yours sincerely on behalf of
Thomas Zuleger
Well. Suspension of democratic decisions and ignoring one's own federal parliament is for Minister Clement just mandatory. Great. Really gives me confidence that we will be well represented by this minister on this issue ...
Reading through the report at Heise, it all sounds rather like collusion in favor of VeriSign - the biggest rip-off merchant in the domain business. Pretty absurd, the whole allocation, if indeed the company that has been accused of unfair practices in recent times (pre-registration of IDN domains without basis, wildcard A-record on .com) gets the contract. I suspect the problem with deNic was simply that it is not a US company, because Internet administration is still far too US-centric.
Friday 08.09.2000: Drips and drips - The three protocolists save their cynicism for the sequel - about the book Helmut Kohl, the power and the money from the Steidl publishing house. I'll probably have to get it.
Easier access for intelligence agencies to accounts and travel data demanded - what is a right-wing agitator against informational self-determination and data protection actually doing in the SPD? Oh yes, I forgot, Otto Orwell is also in the SPD. Strange party, calls itself "social" and has a bunch of asocial people sitting in Berlin ...
Study certifies Windows as more secure than Linux - of course, if I compare the security of RedHat and Windows and find out that the company RedHat is even slower than Microsoft, then I conclude that Linux is less secure than Windows. Because it is completely unthinkable that people who operate servers either run essential packages from upstream or get their patches from elsewhere. And there are naturally no other distributions than those of a company that charges exorbitant prices for open source and otherwise behaves in business more like Microsoft. And all of this financed by Microsoft. This is certainly a very relevant study.
The fact that it is nowhere considered whether the respective errors could actually be used for attacks and whether they are relevant for the scenario at all - who cares. Let's just throw everything into one pile. The fact that Microsoft does not publish all bugs and therefore an objective assessment of open bugs in Windows is completely impossible - who cares. The fact that it is nowhere independently documented when Microsoft was first aware of a bug and therefore an assessment of the actual duration during which one was unprotected from the respective bug is not possible - who cares. The fact that Microsoft has recently introduced bugs again (I recall the LAND attack), which had been around for a long time and that this casts a pretty bad light on their development methodology - who cares.
But how they now believe that anyone could see this as an objective measurement of vulnerability and why such things are labeled under the keyword "Research", I find really ridiculous ...
The SimCam: Film and Digital Camera Simulator is a camera simulation for photography beginners: you can play around with aperture and shutter speed and take virtual photos and then see how the result looks. Relationships such as depth of field, camera shake, correct exposure, film speed, etc. become directly tangible, even without a camera. Fun idea.
Terms and conditions for blocking phone numbers published - hmm, funny idea. Let's see how practical this will be.
Missed the all-around view. Anyone who also wants to check out the toy: theoretically, I should be able to send invites. If you think I actually should have passed you an invite and really want one to check it out: speak up. Oh yeah, you need a Yahoo ID for that. Oh, and if you want an invite even though I've never linked to your blog here or know you from anywhere: at least come up with an interesting reason why I should invite you.