129a: Lesereise behind bars - "The Schrader case also raises questions and initially offers two possible interpretations: Either the accusation of political justice is correct or the investigators have botched things in an incredible way. If an alleged guerrilla can travel in and out of the country for years - what does that say about the protection against real terrorists?"
Archive 14. December 2007
Amazon Web Services: SimpleDB - interesting service by Amazon, databases for structured and unstructured data via REST and SOAP. With the typical Amazon payment model for web services. Also interesting is the rumor that it was implemented with Erlang.
heise online - Extended police surveillance powers demanded - "The SPD interior expert Dieter Wiefelspütz spoke out against the proposal of the CDU politician and warned in the newspaper against 'constantly calling hysterically for new laws'" - what do you want to bet that the Special Democrats, when push comes to shove, will flip again like dominoes? They make a lot of noise, but act? Hypocritical posturing, nothing more.
Shoe-Fitting Fluoroscope - "According to Williams (1949), the machines generally employed a 50 kv x-ray tube operating at 3 to 8 milliamps. When you put your feet in a shoe fitting fluoroscope, you were effectively standing on top of the x-ray tube. The only “shielding” between your feet and the tube was a one mm thick aluminum filter. Some units allowed the operator to select one of three different intensities: the highest intensity for men, the middle one for women and the lowest for children."