...with his assessement of today's pervasive 'murkin "security theatre".

Doesn't anyone else remember, back during the Cold War, when we used to laugh at the Soviets for barring photography of bridges, dams, trains, and other items of "strategic importance"? It made no sense as a security countermeasure then, and it makes no sense as one now.

That's him on the New York subway planning to ban photography in the tunnels and stations as "aiding terrorists". Idiots.

As always, his CRYPTO-GRAM monthly is a scaringly good read.

"The United States has expelled two Iranian security guards employed by Tehran's United Nations offices after the mission was repeatedly warned against allowing its guards to videotape bridges, the Statue of Liberty and New York's subway, U.S. officials said on Tuesday."

The explanation seems to be limited to this:

"These individuals were moving around New York City and essentially taking photographs of a variety of New York landmarks and infrastructure and the rest," U.S. envoy Stuart Holliday told reporters at U.N. headquarters."

Link to the Reuters article

Having a cold sucks. Having a sore, runny and blocked nose sucks. Going through tissues by the crate sucks. Having to lecture despite that sucks.

But, I've got network access again. That doesn't suck :-)

I've also taken the time to start a new pot of homebrew; the water heater is the only convenient spot where it's warm enough for proper sustained fermentation.

...then I don't know:

Bringing up a new, far-reaching law proposal, having no hearings on it at all for just under 3 months, then getting it passed by senate without a single debate: what's that? democracy? I don't think so.

The target? anybody using P2P sharing systems, not just copyright violators. The name? the PIRATE act. The benficiaries: the Content Cartel.

More on this

I'm talking about the "Speedtouch Home/Pro" which I got cheap from a friend.
click here for the rest of the story...

My (lack of) luck with ISPs in this place is a bit odd, but then people call Oz a developing country wrt Internet access and pricing. The following account of the last 3 years may be boring.
click here for the rest of the story...

The weekend of 12./13.6. we spent at Killarney, camping, freezing a bit in the cold evenings, and as usual flying.
click here for the rest of the story...

Yesterday I added this to my /etc/emacs/site-start.el

(defun browse-url-mozilla-firebird (url arg)
  (shell-command 
   (format "mozilla-firebird -remote 'openURL(%s, new-tab)'" 
           url)))
(setq browse-url-browser-function 'browse-url-mozilla-firebird)
(global-set-key [S-mouse-3] 'browse-url)

and wohee, no more cut-n-mispaste. All hail emacs. Now where do I find something similar for trn (/me can't stand gnus)...

As mentioned in my other posting there's this absolutely insidious law proposal floating around. Ernest Miller haspublished a superb rebuttal.

Link to Ernest's rebuttal

It's been a while since the last diary updates, mostly due to the lack of network access at home. Boy, this sucks so badly...
click here for the rest of the story...

19. Juni 2004 13:24
Kreidefresser
HelpDesk

Der Prozess steht auf des Messers Schneide,
Da frisst der gute Blepp gleich Kreide.
War da was mit Copyright?
Das war doch gar nicht bös gemeint!

Die GPL ist null und nichtig?
Na ja, so ist das nicht ganz richtig!
Man hat SCO bestohlen?
Da sprach man doch nur in Symbolen!

Die freie Welt, sie wird verteidigt?
Nein! McBride war nur beleidigt,
Als IBM nicht wollte kaufen,
Das war natürlich dumm gelaufen.

Und jetzt will man sich besinnen,
Um neue Kunden zu gewinnen,
Doch denk ich, daraus wird nichts werden,
Denn Darl sitzt auf den falschen Pferden!

Schlussbemerkung:
So soll es allen Geiern gehen,
Die nach Belieben Recht verdrehen,
Die auf fetten Ärschen hocken,
Wissen eins nur: abzuzocken.

Link zum heise newsticker

So this is The Day and I'm roughly halfway down my life track. But somehow this half does not exactly inspire any sense of expectation for the next half.

MS is sueing a brasilian government employee who's had the audacity to think that MS is a bunch of evil people, and gasp said so: he's being quoted as saying that MS follows a strategy of sowing Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. Well, I say so, too: MS shall roast in hell, they'll be the first against the...nevermind, forget the HHGTTG.

His simple quote is the basis of MS's lawsuit, and this stinks to high heaven. Ah well, I don't buy MS products anyway, and publicity nosedives like that one will make sure that less and less thinking people do.
Link to Lessig's discussion of the issue

/ol recently brought up an ancient argument regarding time metrics and the net which might be a successful compromise for the ugly warts that software patents are.

Postulating the idea of Internet Time, we could look at a term for Internet-relevant patents of about 3 realtime-years. 3 years seem to be suitable: not exactly nothing and thus likely good enough to give the inventor time to exploit his leadership, but not enough to block a competitor forever. Given such a proposal, you wouldn't have to argue that software is a different field of technology where patents do not make sense. The only line of argument to cover is that the rate of development for software and the like is so much faster that a patent term of 20 realtime-years corresponds to over 100 years in other areas. A real-world analogy: should a car maker really need a license to build a diesel engine today?"

(argument translated and paraphrased by me.)

This very idea can also be found here.

...meint zumindest die deutsche Rechtsprechung. Ich bin sicher die Österreichische variante ist genauso hirnrissig und verkneif mir das 'saupreussen, gsöchte!'...

"Der Wertsack ist ein Beutel, der auf Grund seiner besonderen Verwendung im Postbeförderungsdienst nicht Wertbeutel, sondern Wertsack genannt wird, weil sein Inhalt aus mehreren Wertbeuteln besteht, die in dem Wertsack nicht verbeutelt, sondern versackt werden."

Link zu mehr Details

"Five days after arguing that the Eolas browser plug-in patent should be invalidated as obvious, Microsoft pocketed a patent of its own for 'Computer programming language pronouns', which covers the use of ellipses, blanks, and ditto marks as substitutes for names in a computer programming language. Perhaps the USPTO was won over by the patent's eloquent conclusion: 'Eliminating names is a substantial benefit as programmers dislike creating names.'"

Link to this glorious patent

This article on Perl's special variables has reassured my view of the world: all software sucks, plenty. For example, the ".." operator in scalar context is a mighty beast with plenty of tentacles.

But I still like Perl most, compared to all the other scripting languages.

A very interesting speech by Cory Doctorow, given at MS Research a couple of days ago. The boiled-down version:

"Here's what I'm here to convince you of:
1. That DRM systems don't work
2. That DRM systems are bad for society
3. That DRM systems are bad for business
4. That DRM systems are bad for artists
5. That DRM is a bad business-move for MSFT"

Link to the article

For friends I've recently produced a website for a paragliding competition with a dark green theme. Which doesn't look too bad (for me being not a design person), so I added it as an optional stylesheet to the main site. Enjoy.

Tomorrow, Senator Orrin Hatch (R - UT) will introduce one of the most blatant attempts at copyright maximalization ever attempted - the INDUCE Act.

Now this stinks so badly out of every possible orifice that I don't include anything more here. If you want something to puke, look at the discussion at Corante.

So verislime of recent sitefinder !fame are tasked with running the upcoming RFID register. Time to dig up those Ham-on-steroids plans...
News Link
RMS about zappers

Ha, userfriendly tools start to emerge: c't has plans for an RFID detector online which would cost about e15 to build, and the german FoeBuD is already presenting the betas of its blocker box.

Jun  9 02:03:04 elephant kernel: Unable to handle kernel paging request at virtual address 809c4000
Jun  9 02:03:04 elephant kernel: tsk->{mm,active_mm}->context = 0000001f
Jun  9 02:03:04 elephant kernel: tsk->{mm,active_mm}->pgd = fc028800
Jun  9 02:03:04 elephant kernel:               \|/ ____ \|/
Jun  9 02:03:04 elephant kernel:               "@'/ ,. \`@"
Jun  9 02:03:04 elephant kernel:               /_| \__/ |_\
Jun  9 02:03:04 elephant kernel:                  \__U_/
Jun  9 02:03:04 elephant kernel: dumper(11972): Oops
Jun  9 02:03:04 elephant kernel: PSR: 04800fc7 PC: f0030448 NPC: f003044c Y: 00000000    Not tainted

This is what you don't want to see in the logs of a remote box. Sigh, Linux 2.4.x on sun4m does leave a bit of stability to be desired...

Almost a year after I've moved inty my house, I've finally found the time and willingness to prepare a couple of images.
click here for the rest of the story...

Coldcalling bastards. I got three of the suckers yesterday, but nowadays I'm about as happy to waste their time as they like to waste mine: I simply answer their initial "greeting" and put the handset down besides the phone. (another way of sucking their time is to interject "please hold a second" and then putting down the handset, works about as well.)

...

About two or three minutes later they've usually given up givin their spiel to thin air and I hang up. That at least gives me the illusion of them losing valuable time for other coldcalls and thus tones down my murderous anger about those assholes^W^W^W^W^W^W^W^Wmakes me happy.

About 1% of this JBOD would do me fine, TYVM...
Link to the system the disks belong to

You'd think so. And you'd be wrong.

Case in favour: yesterday the TV news (SBS, my favourite TV broadcaster here) showed the latest, earthshattering, really important piece of Austrian news: that a boat in the Seegrotte had capsized and a couple of tourists had drowned.

The commentator had a slightly hard time pronouncing "Hinterbrühl", but apart from that this is nothing short of amazing (it also tells you something how much interesting Austrian news items there are).

The answer is SEVEN:

• One to deny that a lightbulb needs to be replaced.

• One to attack and question the patriotism of anyone who asks questions about the lightbulb.

• One to blame the previous administration for the need of a new lightbulb.

• One to arrange the invasion of a country rumored to have a secret stockpile of lightbulbs.

• One to get together with Vice President Cheney and award a one million dollar no-bid contract to Halliburton Industries for supplying a lightbulb.

• One to arrange a photo-op session showing Dubya changing the lightbulb while dressed in a flight suit and wrapped in an American flag.

• And finally one to explain to Dubya the difference between screwing a lightbulb and screwing the country.

Source: monochrom bagasch

Apparently something died somewhere in the kitchen walls or the space behind the oven; whatever it is, it smells. Badly. And with the Aussie tradition of tiling shoddily (only the visible surfaces, abutting to the kitchen cabinets), I can't remove the plinth even if I wanted to find out more about the stink. FSCK. Guess I'll be moving the kitchen renovation plans forward a little bit :-(

now with (still) zero net access at home, i'm again caught in one of my addictions: reading. currently i'm mostly reading some e-pulp, baen e-books on the palm.

reading stuff on the palm, with my trusty folding keyboard attached, all that on a comic book on my lap and me lounging in a comfy chair, and life's good - or fair at least.

...not that i'd need any, but independent scientific support is nice to have.

"The researchers, at the New York Hospital Medical Centre of Queens led by Dr Steven Nurkin, looked at ties worn by doctors, their assistants and medical students at a teaching hospital in New York and compared them with ties worn by the hospital security staff. Almost half the ties (47.6%) worn by clinicians were found to harbour potential disease-causing bacteria. "Studies such as this remind us about what we may bring to our patients' bedside," Dr Nurkin said. "By increasing our awareness and making simple behavioural changes we may be able to provide a better quality of healthcare." The researcher said their study questioned whether wearing a tie was in the best interests of patients.

Link to the story

I travel a lot and one of my favorite destinations leads North from Kiev, towards so called Chernobyl "dead zone", which is 130kms from my home. Why my favorite? Because one can take long rides there on empty roads. The people there all left and nature is blooming. There are beautiful woods and lakes. In places where roads have not been travelled by trucks or army vehicles, they are in the same condition they were 20 years ago - except for an occasional blade of grass that discovered a crack to spring through. Time does not ruin roads, so they may stay this way until they can be opened to normal traffic again........ a few centuries from now.

Elena's story

Seems her story is a little bit, ahem...embellished. Anyway.
Link to boingboing posting