Lebowski Fest West
There is a Lebowski Festival. Unbelievable. I'll have to drink a White Russian for that. And don't pee on the carpet!
Archive 4. March 2006
MANaOS 0.1.2 is out - MiniMo for Nokia 770 is slowly coming along. Ok, the installation is still a bit awkward (as root rights are required), but as a preview already quite nice.
Net Neutrality and Reality
Good points from Doc Searls in "[Net Neutrality vs. Net Neutering[0]":
The carriers' plan from the beginning has been to convert the Net into a paid content delivery system--of some kind. That's all they were ever able to imagine. That's why they've screwed Net Neutrality from the beginning, offering crippled asymmetrical service to customers whom they expected only would consume, never producing much more than clicks that brought down more to consume. Most of us have never known anything but an asymmetrical relationship with the Net, which is why so many of us barely can imagine what it means to be a producer as well as a consumer in the Net's end-to-end world. A couple of days ago, a woman I know--middle class, white collar--told me she doesn't like the Net because "I don't like mass media in general".
ADSL, modems with limited upstream, dynamic IPs for dial-up users without even attempting to reassign the same IP, forced disconnects with IP changes on DSL flat rates - net neutrality does not exist for many users. Sure, you can get a free blog somewhere - but you always remain a second-class network user. The simplest thing - running your own site on your home computer - is hardly available to any network user.
The flip side of the coin: would we (we = sysadmins) want all those people at home to run servers who are not even able to protect their Windows rudimentarily against attacks? What would a network look like in which every user is also a producer and runs the necessary software - would the attacks and break-ins be enough incentive for manufacturers to make the software user-friendly so that the security level would be higher, or would the chaos be even greater, with a few million more zombie computers?
Is it an alternative to encourage people to rent root servers or to pool with friends and rent one together - knowing full well that most of them have no idea about administration and, given the current state of server software, are more likely to catch additional holes than plug them and thus unwittingly participate in spam distribution, DOS and other network nasties? Would server hosts take better care of and secure the systems if they rented more of them to clueless users?
Or would this just be another September that never ends?
Does eBay taste good?
Are they really that enthusiastic about the decision of the OLG Cologne regarding identity verification in online auctions? After all, this is quite a heavy blow against online auctions - for sellers, a whole new problem arises:
According to the judges of the OLG, no valid purchase contract was concluded by submitting the offer using the defendant's account. In principle, the person who invokes a validly concluded purchase contract must prove that the other party to the contract has actually become a contracting party. The burden of proof thus lies with the plaintiff, who, however, did not refute the statements of the defendant during the hearing.
Given the rather sloppy security mechanisms on eBay and other auction platforms, this is, in my opinion, only right. Because as long as eBay still allows JavaScript in descriptions, the system remains manipulable and the security that someone has actually placed a bid is simply not given.
Principia Discordia the book of Chaos, Discord and Confusion Fnord! - Hail Eris, All Hail Discordia!
SharedAppVNC - interesting VNC variant that only replicates application windows, not the entire desktop. Also with special OS X support.
UFRaw - a free raw converter based on DCRaw and LittleCMS. Sounds quite interesting.
Back to the Concentration Camp Chickens
Several federal states want to overturn the ban on laying hen batteries:
In several federal states, there are efforts to overturn the ban on laying hen batteries. Spokespeople for the ministries of agriculture in Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia confirmed a report by the news magazine "Der Spiegel" that there is broad support for the reintroduction of small cages for laying hens. According to the report, the initiative is also supported by Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
Great. What a fantastic idea. Let's just turn back the clock. What, there were once reasons to move away from battery cages? Doesn't matter, who cares. Great, the cages meet the EU requirements - but your intelligence is below the minimum requirements for humanity. So that animal cruelty becomes standard again - no matter how undignified it is for a supposedly intelligent and sentient being as the perpetrator. The main thing is that the money flows. Everything else doesn't interest anyone.