AVM warns of restrictions for proprietary kernel modules:
The consequence for AVM would be to stop supporting Linux. A reaction to the email is not yet available. The kernel developers are likely to be little bothered by AVM's threat, as their goal of keeping the kernel and its entire environment free seems to take priority due to their mixed experiences with proprietary drivers. Alternatives to AVM exist, and GPL drivers for AVM hardware are not excluded, even if they do not come from AVM.
Exactly that: Alternatives exist. It's time for the alternatives to pay off with better Linux support - then maybe AVM will also become reasonable. The binary modules without source cause more trouble than joy.
HOWTO: Bluetooth GPS and GPSDrive on the Nokia 770 - because someone recently told me that the Nokia 770 is useless without a navigation system: here it is.
CIA presents dubious evidence against Iran
A report by the ARD magazine "Report Mainz" (tonight at 21.45 on Das Erste) sheds new light on the nuclear dispute with Iran. One piece of evidence in the chain of evidence presented by the US government against Tehran's nuclear program is an Iranian laptop allegedly containing data for the construction of an atomic warhead. However, a US nuclear weapons expert found no evidence of this in the computer documents.
The US administration could really come up with new approaches, couldn't they? After all, the CIA has also served as a scapegoat later on: once is an accident, twice is stupidity ...
... but I feel uncomfortable with such ideas:
Companies should in the future acquire the electronic equivalent of a stamp if they want to be sure that their email reaches the recipients. For fees of up to one cent per message, the mails sent via the service provider Goodmail Systems will be forwarded without spam filtering and confirmed as received.
When will emails from private individuals no longer be delivered unless they go through one of the large providers participating in the payment system? When will citizens' networks or privately operated providers be excluded because they cannot belong to the club of payers?
The possibly upcoming argumentation is simple: only those who pay to a central authority for their website will be enabled for HTTP access in the mandatory proxy of the large providers - because otherwise they are suspected of being a phishing site. And soon, outside of email, some sites would simply no longer exist. It also fits perfectly with the efforts of telcos and cable providers in the USA, who also want to deliver paid content (i.e., content paid for by the telcos) on a priority basis.
Apart from the fact that I definitely trust my own filters more than filters operated for payment by some company on the net. When will there be the first scandal that a spammer has bought access? My statistical spam filter on my server is not corruptible - not perfect, but also not corruptible.
In the establishment of further central filters and control points, I see a real danger to the structure of the Internet - how quickly companies are bought, one could see in recent times. And even if a company like Yahoo today possibly - due to the necessary positioning against Google - is a bit on a cozy course with the user, who guarantees that a media giant does not take over the whole thing? Not everyone is as incompetent as Time Warner ...
Not that anyone thinks our Austrian neighbors have better chip passports than our Dutch neighbors:
When reading the passports on an official reading device, the data can be eavesdropped on by third parties from a short distance with relatively modest effort and then quite easily decrypted.
The electronic data that can be captured corresponds to the [name, date of birth, place of residence, etc.] noted in the passport in writing, but the passport photo is also included in the form of a JPEG.
Well, we will probably have a lot of fun with the idiotic tags in passports in Germany in the long run ...