Abmahnung: GEZ untersagt "GEZ-Gebühren", "PC-Gebühren" und "GEZ-Anmeldung" - actually still on vacation, but it was just too good to ignore. It has probably already been driven through the blogosphere (after all, it's 5 days old), but this is really a knockout. Society for Restricted Cerebral Function - or what does GEZ mean again? I must have forgotten ...
Archive August 2007
Court Rules: Novell owns the UNIX and UnixWare copyrights! Novell has right to waive! - "That's Aaaaall, Folks! The court also ruled that "SCO is obligated to recognize Novell's waiver of SCO's claims against IBM and Sequent". That's the ball game. There are a couple of loose ends, but the big picture is, SCO lost. Oh, and it owes Novell a lot of money from the Microsoft and Sun licenses."
The Shakespeare Programming Language - oh. shit. Someone definitely had too much time and too much beer.
We all have agreed to comment spam - "In the legal correspondence of the last few days, the opposing lawyer even insisted that the consent of the two million bloggers is available". Well, if my blog is included, there is no declaration of consent. And given the number of blogs, I generally doubt this statement as well. Blog spammers are the lowest of the low.
BrandweekNRX: Red Cross sued over its - Red cross! - uh. Sue the Red Cross over its symbol? They've completely lost it. If they've had the sign for so long - why are they only noticing the similarity now? I mean, the Red Cross has been around for a few years too ...
MathTrek: Cracking the Cube - they can solve the Rubik's Cube in 26 moves. I needed 26 seconds back then.
New FCC rules may impact Linux-based devices - the FCC thinks that Security-by-Obscurity is a great idea for radio technologies. And undermines both Open Source projects and the security of wireless solutions. Idiots.
TidBITS: New iLife '08 Revealed - sounds quite nice. And the expansion of .Mac sounds as if it could be interesting now. Not because of the disk space etc. - I have that on my own machines cheaper. But because of the extremely simple integration into the iLife tools.
Free ERP and CRM solution for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X - yeah, yeah, I know, ERP is boring and dull. But since I've been working in the field for 20 years, it's naturally interesting for me to see what open source solutions there are.
Major setback for US voting machine manufacturer - wow. I'd love to see something like this here in Germany.
Light Blue Touchpaper » Electoral Commission releases e-voting and e-counting reports - The Commission’s criticism of e-counting and e-voting was scathing; concerning the latter saying that the “security risk involved was significant and unacceptable.” They recommend against further trials until the problems identified are resolved. - Grossbritannien auch. Und wann wacht unsere Politik auf?
m-e-c AS2 ::: Open source AS2 software - EDI transmitted over the Internet. RFC 4130.
real-time GPS shark hunting - funny idea, in which a player takes on the role of a researcher and studies sharks. The player moves research ships, which are real sharks with GPS transmitters, whose signals are incorporated into the online game accordingly.
Amazon FPS, Amazon Flexible Payment Service - I didn't know about this one yet. A payment service as a web service for integration into your own systems. And it explicitly supports micro-payments through the aggregation of sub-cent payments. Sounds quite interesting. Specifically, the possibility of using Amazon account balances as an alternative to credit cards or bank accounts opens up completely new possibilities - and Amazon accounts are quite widespread. Does this whole thing already work internationally? It should actually.
Multiverse - now available in version 1.0. Currently clients only for Windows, the server however in Java, and thus multi-platform. Competitor to Unity and TGE - although Multiverse definitely focuses on MMOG. Maybe interesting for tinkering projects.
Under house arrest - how the blogosphere is silenced with cease and desist letters and court proceedings. Sure, you can sometimes win in the next instance - but it costs to get there first. And in many cases, the legal protection insurance has a clause in the contract that excludes the matter at hand. How convenient.
US-Election computers cannot guarantee trustworthy elections - this will certainly be completely ignored. Because, it's only about elections.
Virtualization Rootkit Blue Pill available - here comes the fun.
Zypries intensifies criticism of online raids - hmm. Are there elections coming up somewhere? Or is the ongoing discussion just an expression of the summer doldrums?
EU lawsuit against German data protection laws - because the data protection officers are not really independent. Will it have any effect?
1.3 Megapixel USB Digital Microscope - doesn't look bad. Could be a nice toy.
Leica M8 Review: 1. Introduction: Digital Photography Review - to be honest, at that price, some of the quirks are simply not acceptable. Sorry. And for the Leica fans who might want to hit me: I myself have an M6 and am very satisfied with it. The M8 is simply not the digital M I had hoped for (and the poor rangefinder base plays a part in that).
Scan This Guy's E-Passport and Watch Your System Crash - e-Passport. A complete disaster.