Söder: 300,000 Emails Are Not Spam - and knowing how to deal with criticism:
However, the CSU seems to be at least unsettled by the criticism on their own election campaign site. More than 100 partly very critical comments about the email action had been posted in the official party blog «blog4berlin.de». In response, the CSU initially deleted some of the comments on Tuesday afternoon. On Thursday, the comment function, which is essential for blogs, was completely turned off.
Oh yes. First, they want to spam people - and sorry, but this excuse that they had signed up is quite absurd in view of the further plans to have these people provide more numbers - and then deal with the criticism in Bavarian style and simply turn it off. Great.
This time it's a Japanese space probe that will hopefully provide many interesting images and data with its landing on an asteroid. Cool. And far more interesting than silly repair tours of the space shuttles ...
Even the CDU is sending out spam:
Approximately 300,000 to 400,000 Germans are receiving an email from the contest provider "Play and Win" these days. They are advertising to vote for the CDU in the upcoming Bundestag election on Sunday. However, this is not entirely accurate: upon closer reading, it is simply election advertising by the Union.
Upon closer reading of the spammer's comment, it is simply spam. Scum.
Peter Lustig goes into retirement:
Löwenzahn, the series that sweetens a Sunday visit to friends with children - or your own children - is ending! Peter Lustig is retiring to well-deserved rest (probably he will open an inventor's workshop instead).
Really a shame. Somehow, this remnant of the hippies and eco-freaks was always cute to watch - and so beautifully cozy. Even if it was of course uninteresting for me back then, as I was naturally an iron-clad mouse fan. But I've had the one or other encounter with Peter Lustig through my nephews in the form of games and books - and I quite liked it. I can't imagine that something like this could be revived - the TV makers are too stupid to give such a rather strange concept a chance. A shame actually - it was always better than the silly American concepts and Americanized children's shows that you see today while channel surfing on vacation.
Tobias Straub on RFID in passports:
Straub, who as an employee of the company FlexSecure was involved in developing the signature architecture for the new passport, assessed the security properties of Basic Access Control with 56-bit keys and a passport lifespan of 10 years as insecure and the concept of a non-secure radio interface in general as unsuitable. Only the Extended Access Control, which should come with the introduction of fingerprints by the end of 2007 at the latest, would make a cryptographically secure system possible. Referring to BSI tests in which passports could be read bit-exactly from a distance of 2 meters, with error correction and additional antennas from 10 meters, Straub explained: "If I use RFID, I already have a threat with it". Compared to a contact-based SmartCard, RFID is not a security feature but an insecurity feature, said Straub, who now works at the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology in Darmstadt.
But we are sold the nonsense of Otto Orwell as a great security facility.
Here the state also provides backing to a voting machine manufacturer and keeps the inspection reports under lock and key due to alleged protection of know-how:
That the BMI keeps the inspection reports under lock and key weighs heavily, especially in light of a waiver of an additional vote recording independent of the electronics, criticizes Wiesner: "Neither the voter nor the election committee in the polling station can determine which software is actually used in the polling station and how secure the devices used are against manipulation." Consequently, the form for the election record does not even provide for the alleged program version to be recorded.
For me, this is just as dubious as the same nonsense in the USA. Voting computers must - if they are to be trustworthy - withstand public discussion. The alleged know-how protection of the manufacturer must not be valued higher than the citizen's right to information on how the vote counting is conducted. It is simply absurd what the BMI is doing here - but what else can one expect from the authority of Otto Orwell?
Here's the translated Markdown body:
Here's the translated Markdown body:
Kate Bush plans a comeback. Okay, there probably won't be a second "Babooshka," but still.
And onwards:
Only then did I realize: I couldn't care less. It's been a while now - I couldn't care less what Patalong or the other idiots write there: I know how the game works with them, I've experienced how they steal, influence, and trick, I've overheard that they don't have the guts, I've followed it long enough and written about it for a year. It doesn't matter anymore. SPOn doesn't matter anymore, at least not to me.
SPOn has been out of my feed reader for a long time, only appearing indirectly through other blogs and sometimes through Google News searches. Current information about the day's events is provided by Tagesschau and Netzzeitung. And all the many blogs that I read and that give me the necessary pointers on where I should read next ...