Cassini Finds Signs of Liquid Water on Saturn's Moon - Enceladus may have liquid water. And so much of it that it can throw it around ...
Archive March 2006
Got the hang of Lego hats
The Lego »Mindstorms NXT« firmware is becoming open source - and this is the only way it could happen. Lego earns money from selling the construction kits and the software is enhanced by fans. This was already the case with the RCX - only the developers had to disassemble a lot of bytes to figure out how the thing works. With the NXT, things could get significantly better.
The memory equipment (256 MB Flash) and the CPU (Arm 7) also sound very good. This will be a pretty interesting device, the new robot building block.
Merkel's New Buddy?
So completely crazy as Kaczynski is Merkel should be able to handle this well after her experiences with the American counterpart ...
P.K.K. - Purzel-Kollektiv Kübelreiter - I find purzeln cute.
Shit hits Fan with Debian?
When Joey throws in the towel - and does so publicly - then the story must really be hitting the fan. Because normally he just quietly fades away ...
Waterfall 2006 - International Conference on Sequential Development - the Waterfall development model is back!
Mac OS X Security Challenge
The Mac OS X Security Challenge by the University of Wisconsin is a much more realistic variant of the rather dubious "30-minute hack" that is currently haunting the press and blogs. Because on the box hacked in 30 minutes, the attackers had a user account - it was therefore a simple privilege escalation, not a remote hack. The latter is quite different to set up, as you first have to get access to the machine.
Nevertheless, Apple should of course also take privilege escalations seriously - because, for example, on publicly accessible computers there are already some attack scenarios that are quite problematic - especially with alleged security features. For example, the encrypted home directory becomes a farce if multiple users can be logged in at the same time on the computer - the home directory is opened and mounted when the first user logs in, the second user can then simply look in. Apple should already improve at such points, of course also at the points where an unprivileged user can get root rights - because these are attack vectors for viruses and Trojans.
Hey, I don't feel like having similar nonsense like under Windows in the long run, so make sure you close the holes at Apple!
Aries - Environmental Products, The Specialists in Biological Pest Control - some information about biological warfare against moths.
MP3 Python Module - simple lib for accessing MP3 information.
OPUS - Zivilrechtliche Ansprüche gegen unerwünschte Mitbenutzer von privaten Funknetzen - even with unprotected networks, there are claims for the operator against unwanted users.
aspectes.tigris.org - Aspect Oriented Programming for JavaScript.
CPU/MEM with swap on/off - the load plugin for the Nokia 770 to display memory and CPU load in a version that can enable/disable swap (provided you have set it up accordingly).
Hmm.
Would you please not shoot at the thermonuclear weapons?
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!
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.
Land of the Stupid and Unfree
Remember this for the next discussion with the America lovers who always tell you how free and great life is there. Because the Americans have just thrown away not entirely unimportant parts of their constitution.
Larry's Distorted Reality
I sometimes really wonder what kind of herb Larry Ellison smokes to come up with such nonsense:
"Open source becomes successful when major industrial corporations invest heavily in that open source project," Ellison said at a Tokyo news conference. "Every open source product that has become tremendously successful became successful because of huge dollar investments from commercial IT operations like IBM and Intel and Oracle and others," he said.
Yes, financial support from companies has indeed benefited one or another open source project. But to conclude that without this financing the projects would not be successful is completely crazy. On the contrary: many companies only invest in projects that have already become successful without external help. Smaller projects with less visibility have no chance of getting money from large IT companies - these are sometimes supported by companies, but then usually by companies that have directly started this project or market direct products based on it.
But of course, with the successes that a number of open source database systems have, he naturally has to rattle loudly and talk nonsense so that no one notices how pathetic Oracle really is by today's standards.
Data greed is awesome?
One can almost see the drool dripping from the corners of the mouths of the police officials and the minister when reading the article about the Federal Constitutional Court ruling on the seizure of computers and emails. Funny, how the politicians only mention in passing that the seizure itself was absolutely not in order - instead, they immediately start screaming for legal extensions so that even more can be collected.
The restriction of the Federal Constitutional Court - that seizures must be proportional and appropriate - can certainly be forgotten, because no one will take that into account. And with the constant change in communication structures towards electronic means, one can then safely consider the secrecy of telecommunications as a done deal.
Why I Don't Like PHP Software
Wordpress is indeed one of the better systems written in PHP. And what happens? There are several sloppy programming practices found within it. Yes, I know, this happens in other languages too. The point is: the Wordpress programmers are relatively well qualified and relatively careful in their work - and yet such problems occur. Among other things, because in PHP the sources lie within the server root, meaning files that are actually only used internally are accessible via HTTP. And because PHP solutions do not inherently perform input validation and proper text quoting. No, sorry, but I simply do not like such a mess.
Sacrificing Jobs on the Altar of Stock Prices
The Deutsche Telekom presents record figures - but because the stock price is poorly valued, 32,000 jobs have to be cut. How, companies also have a responsibility? Nonsense, ownership only obliges to want more ownership. Stock prices don't buy telephones, order DSL, and download music from silly second-rate online offers.
Make a gardener out of it
And then with Monopolgarantie. Extremely clever decision, will definitely give a huge show. Which ultimately proves that ICANN does not care about the interests of the user on the Internet, nor the interests of the alternative registries.
Censorship by Lawyer
The expected abuse of the - not yet final and legally specialized - judgment against Heise for use as a censorship hammer. And no, not even the judge himself meant that his judgment could be generally applied to forums, but what do lawyers care. Somehow, threatening, intimidating, and extorting money from people used to be considered a sign of the mafia ...