Jazzter Daily

Where twitter went wrong with the new look

2011-12-22T13:34:00.001+01:00

I have two things I very much dislike about the new twitter interface, and especially the iPhone App.

1) The new Discover page. Even though I decided to give it a fair go when it was introduced, it has so far delivered exactly zero useful results.
2) The 'Interactions' page. While the page might be useful when you are just starting out on twitter, once most of your real life friends are following you, whenever someone starts following you, 99 time out of a hundred it is a SPAM account, only following you in the vague hope of selling something. So it adds little or no value over 'just mentions'.

"Lies, damn lies and statistics|

2011-08-13T21:25:00.001+02:00

OK, now so now i have a profile up on Klout.

So What?

I know I am not a very frequent poster to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, Instagram or FourSquare, but that's OK. Based on my posts and the people who interact with me, Klout assigns me a score of 30 (out of a maximum of 100). Whatever.

Looking around at scores of some other "people" I notice that a twitter account with only one tweet, ever, in it's time line*, gets a score of 78. Then I know that Klout is just more of lies, damn lies and statistics.

I recall that there was some noise about Klout scores over on twitter a couple of weeks ago. Where people where concerned about how high they ranked in Klout. Apparently they didn't get Rule number 1 about Social Media: "It's about being Social" (i.e. not about influence).

*) All three of the "Long Cat" twitter accouns, which where created because somebody got clever with the three "avatars" so that they combine into a single picture.

Update December 14, 2011 I have deleted my Klout account a couple of weeks ago...

Auto-localisation revisited. Not only evil, also stupid

2010-09-07T13:44:00.001+02:00

A couple of weeks ago my employer switched its Dutch internet access to fiber technology and a different IP address.

From my 'auto localisation is evil' point of view, that's when things started to go wrong. My employer (Logica) is a global company and has operations in a lot of countries. The Swedish operation is actually very good in delivering hosting services to customers.

The problem arises because even though the Dutch offices are connected to the internet in the Netherlands and the Amsterdam Internet Exchange (AMS-IX), the new IP address belongs to a range of addresses which are administered by are Swedish office, registered to their street address in Sweden...

Then comes "auto-localisation is evil": All of internet now thinks that internet traffic actually comes from Sweden. When I type 'google.com' in my browser I get redirected to 'google.se'.

Now comes the actual STUPID! part. Google (and others) actually offer up advertising in Swedish, a language that most of my Dutch based colleagues (including myself) cannot understand. Thus a loss of income because nobody wants to click on ads they cannot understand. (Why anybody would want to click ANY ad is beyond me, but that is a different story).

Tablet PC Form Factor

2010-01-09T21:51:00.001+01:00

Later this month Apple is expected to introduce its long awaited tablet PC, probably called iSlate. I just read in the news that Microsoft showed "a couple" of these devices (even though, from what I read, they sounded more like technology demonstrators).

Cool, as an iPhone owner I can anticipate and appreciate my favorite device with a larger screen. (And may be finally the possibility to play Flash, Apple?)

However, one of the big advantages of the iPhone is that is is actually small enough to allow single handed operation. Or to hold it up and type with both thumbs.

Will the larger form factor of the tablet PC mean that you will always need both hands to operate the device, one to hold it up (hand/arm) and one to touch the screen? That if I want two "handed" typing I have to put the device down on a surface somewhere? How is that going to be useful?

Oh well, it will probably be positioned as a multimedia device, not one to do actual work on. Guess I'll just have to keep writing emails, tweets and blog posts on my iPhone then...

Or then again Apple is probably going to surprise all of us and deliver a device that is actually very useful as a writing tablet as well. (Not putting any pressure on you Mr. Jobs, none at all... ;-)

Let me know what you expect from a tablet PC in the comments.

Specialization of NGO's

2010-01-07T22:04:00.001+01:00

I came across this piece in my blog ideas folder on Evernote. Just for fun. Enjoy :-)

Instead of Non Governmental Organizations (NGO's) working in parallel or even competitive towards what should be the same goal. Why not have different NGO's specialized in different things. Like departments in a large company, several of these NGO's can, and need to, work together to achieve a single, common goal.

We should also allow companies to start NGO's of their own. Even we in the IT sector could start our own NGO's:

The Business Intelligence NGO (BINGO)
The Technical Architecture NGO (TANGO)

And especially for the Dutch, the Local Infrastructure NGO. (Could specialize in building canals, dikes and other waterworks.) (LINGO)

Further possible NGO's are:

The Consular Operations NGO (CONGO).

VMWare ESX 3.5 Licensing Catch-22

2010-01-07T14:15:00.003+01:00

Where I work at Logica we have a small test lab for testing and demonstrating ICT solutions.

It mainly consists of three server VMWare ESX cluster, a Linux based NAS/NFS server and an ADSL line to the outside world.

During the installation (at least) two VMWare best practices were followed:

Put the management environment "Virtual Center" on a virtual machine inside the cluster
Put the License Server in with the Virtual Center.

In case you are wondering. There is a 14 day grace period for the licenses which is persistent across reboots. Therefor it is possible to stop and start the virtual machine containing the Virtual Center without running into the problem that the license server is not available.

The VMWare environment hadn't been used to a while (about a month). Just before Christmas break 2009 I noticed that none of the virtual machines was functional anymore. Including the Virtual Center en License Server virtual machine.

So I could no longer manage the cluster. I needed to contact the VMWare servers individually.

Having found and connected to the one of the VMWare server currenly owning the correct virtual machine, I tried to start Virtual Center.

No Go. Because there were no licenses available (and the license server could not be reached).

It required the license server to obtain a license to start the license server.

Classic CATCH-22 problem.

Fortunately I found some License files used for a different setup. With these I managed to change the licensing of that single host so that it permitted me to start the virtual machine with Virtual Center and the license server on it.

Then I only needed to change the licensing back to the licensing server (and remove all traces of the temporary used license file).

Sigh. Why so complicated. Best Practices should never allow a CATCH-22 situation to exist.

Public Reactions to Terrorist Threats [Bruce Schneiers blog]

2009-11-18T12:47:00.001+01:00

Public Reactions to Terrorist Threats: "

Interesting research:

For the last five years we have researched the connection between times of terrorist threats and public opinion. In a series of tightly designed experiments, we expose subsets of research participants to a news story not unlike the type that aired last week. We argue that attitudes, evaluations, and behaviors change in at least three politically-relevant ways when terror threat is more prominent in the news. Some of these transformations are in accord with conventional wisdom concerning how we might expect the public to react. Others are more surprising, and more disconcerting in their implications for the quality of democracy.

One way that public opinion shifts is toward increased expressions of distrust. In some ways this strategy has been actively promoted by our political leaders. The Bush administration repeatedly reminded the public to keep eyes and ears open to help identify dangerous persons. A strategy of vigilance has also been endorsed by the new secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano.
Nonetheless, the breadth of increased distrust that the public puts into practice is striking. Individuals threatened by terrorism become less trusting of others, even their own neighbors. Other studies have shown that they become less supportive of the rights of Arab and Muslim Americans. In addition, we found that such effects extend to immigrants and, as well, to a group entirely remote from the subject of terrorism: gay Americans. The specter of terrorist threat creates ruptures in our social fabric, some of which may be justified as necessary tactics in the fight against terrorism and others that simply cannot.
Another way public opinion shifts under a terrorist threat is toward inflated evaluations of certain leaders. To look for strong leadership makes sense: crises should impel us toward leadership bold enough to confront the threat and strong enough to protect us from it. But the public does more than call for heroes in times of crisis. It projects leadership qualities onto political figures, with serious political consequences.
In studies conducted in 2004, we found that individuals threatened by terrorism perceived George W. Bush as more charismatic and stronger than did non-threatened individuals. This projection of leadership had important consequences for voting decisions. Individuals threatened by terrorism were more likely to base voting decisions on leadership qualities rather than on their own issue positions or partisanship. You did read that correctly. Threatened individuals responded with elevated evaluations of Bush's capacity for leadership and then used those inflated evaluations as the primary determinant in their voting decision.
These findings did not just occur among Republicans, but also among Independents and Democrats. All partisan groups who perceived Bush as more charismatic were also less willing to blame him for policy failures such as faulty intelligence that led to the war in Iraq.
[...]
A third way public opinion shifts in response to terrorism is toward greater preferences for policies that protect the homeland, even at the expense of civil liberties, and active engagement against terrorists abroad. Such a strategy was advocated and implemented by the Bush administration. Again, however, we found that preferences shifted toward these objectives regardless of one's partisan stripes and, as well, outside the U.S.

Nothing surprising here. Fear makes people deferential, docile, and distrustful, and both politicians and marketers have learned to take advantage of this.

Jennifer Merolla and Elizabeth Zechmeister have written a book, Democracy at Risk: How Terrorist Threats Affect the Public. I haven't read it yet.

Auto localisation is EVIL

2009-08-11T10:18:00.003+02:00

This post is "inspired" by a recent change in the Apple iTunes Store.

Up to a couple of weeks ago Apple decided to change the languague of the Dutch iTunes store to Dutch. Every interaction with the store changed from English to Dutch.

OK, So I live in the Netherlands (where we speak Dutch) and I use a Dutch based payment system (thus requiring me to use the Dutch store) and I am a native Dutchman. So the language in and of itself if not a problem. Besides of course that the actual translation is ... um ... not of a very high quality, and let's leave it at that for now.

The problem here is that everything else on my computer works in English: The Operating System and all the other applications. When I find Dutch translations somewhere I try to root them out. In Google this is configurable in my user account settings. For Cygwin this is configured by (not) setting the language environment variable.

Why?

Why should I want to eradicate all traces of "Dutch speaking" programs from my computer. That's easy. Two sides of the same coin actually:

Thing actually do get lost in translation. In my long history in IT - over 30 years now, I started early - I have found that I can understand error messages and descriptions better when they are in their original English than in translation.
Getting support by using the internet. Because Dutch is a relatively small language (we are apparently ranked 42nd with 21.7 million speakers). There will automatically be way fewer people who have the same problems with the software that I happen to run into. With the effect that the chance of finding a resolution to the problem is much better when I can Google for the original English error message. (Instead of trying to translate back from a translation. See Translation Equilibrium for the results of back and forth translation...

And, additionally, a lot of translations are indeed subpar.

Yes, auto-localisation rubs me the wrong way, in particular when there is no option to switch it off.

Great new book released!

2009-05-14T19:44:00.004+02:00

A couple of weeks ago I finished listening to the audiobook version of "Nina Kimberly The Merciless" by Christiana Ellis.

It is a very funny and entertaining book. It starts with the line: "Nina blushed, then cut the man’s head off...". If that doesn't get you interested, then just pickup the book because I say so...

Whet you appetite with the PDF from here. Or get the audio version over at podiobooks. And then go over to Amazon.com and buy the book already.

Voorsorteren op keuzevrijheid

2009-03-24T14:06:00.002+01:00

Open ource desktop wordt door veel organisaties gezien als een goedkoop alternatief voor dure softwarelicenties. Maar hoe moeilijk is het om open source software te implementeren? Het blijkt vaak minder makkelijk dan gedacht; de organisatie had bijvoorbeeld ruim van te voren stappen moeten zetten om haar architectuur aan te passen.

Wanneer een organisatie een volledig open source desktop wil invoeren of slechts een aantal applicaties, komen diverse aandachtspunten naar voren:

Technisch gezien kan, als er wordt uitgegaan van een ‘green field’-situatie, een volledige open source desktopomgeving worden ingericht.
Echter, meestal is er sprake van een of ander programma dat in stand gehouden moet worden, maar dat niet compatible is met welke open source oplossing dan ook.
Organisatorisch is men er vaak niet op voorbereid dat open source ook geld, middelen en inzet van menskracht kost en daardoor niet vanzelfsprekend goedkoper is dan closed source software. Vooral de kosten voor de migratie worden in eerste instantie wel eens over het hoofd gezien.
Een migratie naar open source programmatuur blijft nog steeds een migratie met consequenties voor compatibiliteit, de leercurve en de overige uitdagingen die het met zich meebrengt.

Toch wil men het vaak proberen om later meer keuzevrijheid te hebben in de aanschaf van software of ter vervanging van bestaande programmatuur.

Technische haalbaarheid ‘green field'

Een volledige open source ict-omgeving is, al enkele jaren, haalbaar, als mag worden uitgegaan van volledige nieuwbouw. De uitdaging zit dan meer in het laten wennen van gebruikers, beheerders én management aan een nieuwe omgeving. Om een praktisch voorbeeld te noemen: ze moeten leren om functioneel te vragen naar een tekstverwerker in plaats van specifiek naar ‘Microsoft Word' of 'OpenOffice.org Writer' of 'WordPerfect'. Voor gebruikers blijkt het vaak lastig, ze zullen hierin moeten worden geholpen. Helaas komt deze ideaal situatie in de praktijk zelden tot nooit voor.

Technische obstakels bestaande, te handhaven, programmatuur

Een andere uitdaging ligt in de compatibiliteit van programmatuur. Hoe omgaan met applicaties die wel gehandhaafd moeten blijven, maar die niet integreren met open standaarden en open source? Veel gebruikte argumenten om vast te houden aan die applicaties zijn:

Het is beleid om programma ABC te gebruiken voor functionaliteit XYZ.
Er is een lange termijn investering in de programmatuur gedaan.
De functionaliteit is dusdanig specialistisch en specifiek dat het alleen met programma Z uitgevoerd kan.

Sleutelwoorden uit de bovenstaande drie zaken zijn vet gedrukt. De sleutelwoorden duiden er echter op dat het niet zozeer technisch vraagstukken zijn, maar organisatorische. Deze problemen zullen dus ook in eerste instantie in de organisatie moeten worden opgelost en niet in de techniek.

Voorsorteren op keuzevrijheid

De organisatie moet gaan voorsorteren. Strategische en tactische ict-beslissingen moeten worden gebaseerd op het feit dat open standaarden ingezet moeten worden bij de aanschaf of ontwikkeling van nieuwe programmatuur. Standaard te gebruiken programmatuur zal in dit licht opnieuw bekeken en geëvalueerd worden.

Het betekent ook dat voor de inzet van open standaarden en/of open source op de desktop geïnvesteerd moeten worden voor:

Het oplossen van de technische obstakels, bijvoorbeeld door de bouw van een stuk maatwerk of door de aanschaf van een toepasbare 'converter'.
De conversie van de data en documenten.
Het opleiden van beheerders. Het beheren van een Linux-/Unix-omgeving is tegenwoordig niet zo zeer moeilijker dan wel vooral anders dan in een Windows-omgeving.
De opleiding of gewenning van gebruikers. Zoals bij elke migratie of upgrade van software zullen de gebruikers moeten accepteren dat de programmatuur die ze voorgeschoteld krijgen anders is dan dat ze voorheen gewend waren.

Deze investeringen gaan zich terug betalen bij een volgende migratie van software. Dan is immers vanwege het grotere gebruik van open standaarden ook meer keuzevrijheid in programmatuur. Ook de overstap naar andere programmatuur wordt gemakkelijker omdater gebruik wordt gemaakt van open standaarden.

Migratiescenario's voor open source desktop

Voor organisaties die toch, op relatief korte termijn, een open source desktop willen invoeren zijn er een drietal scenario's.

Scenario 1: Het nu reeds inzetten van open source programmatuur in de bestaande omgeving. Denk bijvoorbeeld aan de inzet van OpenOffice.org en Firefox om zodoende voor documenten en intranet al gebruik te maken van open standaarden.

Scenario 2: Een scherpe breuk maken met het verleden. Feitelijk wordt hiermee een ‘green field'-situatie gecreëerd. Dit betekent waarschijnlijk een grote desinvestering in bestaande programmatuur en is derhalve vooral nuttig als de meeste licenties toch aan vervanging toe zijn.

Scenario 3: Een gemixte omgeving. Voor moeilijkere programmatuur is er de optie om deze als server based computing (SBC) in te zetten. Hierdoor kunnen moeilijke applicaties (niet open source) op de server worden gedraaid, zonder dat aanpassingen aan de overigen open source werkpleken nodig zijn. Het is op deze manier bijvoorbeeld heel goed mogelijk om een op Linux gebaseerde thin client te bouwen die door middel van een SBC-client (Citrix, NoMachine, VNC) gebruik maakt van applicaties op de server.

Met name dit laatste scenario kan tot een snel succes leiden. Echter, zonder de hiervoor genoemde vooraf geschapen randvoorwaarden blijft het vaak steken bij een haalbaarheidsstudie of een technische proof of concept.

Wanneer overwogen wordt om een open source desktop te gaan gebruiken, zal aandacht moeten worden besteed aan het uitwisselen van documenten met externe partijen.

Zeker oudere werkplekken zijn nog vaak uitgerust met programmatuur die uitsluitend 'gesloten standaarden' documentformaten aankan. Het kan dan nuttig zijn om ervoor te kiezen om documenten te versturen als PDF. Een ander alternatief is om links mee te sturen waar programmatuur gevonden kan worden die wel met de open standaarden overweg kan, zoals document viewers of een conversie website.

If you live in “The Cloud” does the Operating System you use matter?

2009-02-04T16:58:00.001+01:00

Of course it does. not. does. ah…wait…ah… shucks.

Suppose you made the decision to work completely in the cloud. (Just for the sake of argument, say that you want to. I’ll get into that in another post).

So in short, you would be using:

Online mail service
Online calendaring service
Online word processor, and spreadsheet functionality.
Social Networking sites (LinkedIn, Live, FaceBook, Plaxo, MySpace, Mevio, a nearly endless list of posibilities
Other online services (games; research/reference; book a restaurant, your next holiday or tickets to a concert; find a location and plan your route to it; whatever is available).

Most of those sites will be capable of working with most modern browsers: Chrome, FireFox, Internet Explorer, Safari (alphabetical order ;-).

So then it shouldn’t matter on what Operating System said browser actually runs, now does it?

Well, it does matter. First of all, not all browsers are equal, neither are all operating systems. After having used Firefox extensively for a couple of years I can tell you, with some authority, that there is a small difference in experience with Firefox on Linux or Firefox on Windows XP. But the difference is small enough (smaller then the difference between the browsers).

No, the problem is going to be that you are going to want to do other things besides those in the cloud.

Easy things like playing music. Most WIndows, Macs and Linux will play audio out of the box or with minimal tweaking.
Slightly less easy things like playing DVD’s. While Windows and Macs will probably play DVD’s from the get go (or else will download the appropriate stuff when needed), a lot of linux distributions require you to jump through some hoops to get it.
Difficult stuff like communicating / synchronizing with your Phone/PDA. I’m very fond of my iPhone (no, Hans? really?) but I can only synchronize with it using iTunes which only runs on Windows or on a Mac and not on my personal OS of choice Linux.
Stuff like scanning documents and pages. Again, unless you are lucky and your scanner happens to be properly supported in Linux.
Stuff like working with Photo’s or movies. Everyone has a favorite program to work with photo’s or edit those movies. And a lot of those programs will be bound to a certain operating system. (I am going a bit out on a limb here, cause I don’t use much of this and Picasa will work on anything).

iPhone firmware 2.2.1 update woes

2009-02-03T21:21:00.002+01:00

After upgrading to the latest firmware on my iPhone (from version 2.2 to version 2.2.1) I noticed that my battery drained noticeably faster. After being fully charged I only worked with the iPhone for a couple of minutes to make a dent in the battery (visually, at say between 80% and 90%).

After a couple of days of this I remembered reading a similar article of this happening after the 2.2 upgrade. That was traced back to push notification in the e-mail settings. Apparently this setting got 'stuck' after the upgrade.

I had e-mail set to fetch every 30 minutes before the upgrade. Might that have been the same problem.

Apparently it was. After deleting both my e-mail accounts on the iPhone and re-enabling them the problem went away.

The Joy Of Using An Iphone: Fring

2009-02-03T11:35:00.001+01:00

Today I learned a new use for my iPhone, a finally learned to put the Fring application to good use.

Before today I considered it about as good as the google talk mobile interface (an iPhone optimized website). But with a much more cluttered user interface.

Well, the interface is still the same, but I finally found out what makes Fring really good. A friend of mine also started using Fring and we could link up using our Fring accounts. After that, if I want to contact him, fring will find the best way to connect to him, be itvgiogle talk, msn, or Skype or the Fring VoiP service.

What's even better is that even though the iPhones' screen goes dark after a minute or so, the application actually keeps ok running so my contacts can still reach me using chat even if I am not actively using my iPhone at the moment.

And both of these facts make Fring all of a sudden a very interesting application for me..

Posted with LifeCast

Space Needle in Seattle

2009-01-17T00:58:00.001+01:00

It certainly is a spectactular view from the Space Needle.

Happy New Year

2009-01-01T00:59:00.001+01:00

Gelukkig nieuw jaar
Best wishes for 2009.

Posted with LifeCast

Teammeeting (eating). The ISA team from Logica Public Sector

2008-12-19T13:51:00.005+01:00

The iPhone Experience

2008-12-19T13:51:00.004+01:00

Since Wednesday I am the proud owner of an iPhone 3G.
What I have seen so far makes me honestly believe that the iPhone (and possibly the Android, but I have no hands on experience with it) is actually a landslide in the mobile device area. The user interfa de of the Apple device combined with the hardware sensors and the enthousiastic developer community makes the iphone do things that seemed until recently only far fetched drems for any mobile device.

Even if the possibilities of some applications are (at the moment) still somewhat limited, they point the way to how extremely usefull a handheld mobile device can *really* be.

Testing From iPhone

2008-12-18T14:44:00.001+01:00

This is a blogging test from my iPhone.
Please ignore.

Geolocate this post

Posted with LifeCast

Lessons from Mumbai

2008-12-02T09:18:00.003+01:00

This is from Bruce Schneier's Blog. In short:

Spend the money and effort in counter-terrorism in the right way
Refuse to be terrorised

from Bruce's site:

Lessons from Mumbai

I'm still reading about the Mumbai terrorist attacks, and I expect it'll be a long time before we get a lot of the details. What we know is horrific, and my sympathy goes out to the survivors of the dead (and the injured, who often seem to get ignored as people focus on death tolls). Without discounting the awfulness of the events, I have some initial observations:

Low-tech is very effective. Movie-plot threats -- terrorists with crop dusters, terrorists with biological agents, terrorists targeting our water supplies -- might be what people worry about, but a bunch of trained (we don't really know yet what sort of training they had, but it's clear that they had some) men with guns and grenades is all they needed.
...
Specific countermeasures don't help against these attacks. None of the high-priced countermeasures that defend against specific tactics and specific targets made, or would have made, any difference: photo ID checks, confiscating liquids at airports, fingerprinting foreigners at the border, bag screening on public transportation, anything. Even metal detectors and threat warnings didn't do any good
...
If there's any lesson in these attacks, it's not to focus too much on the specifics of the attacks. ... Intelligence, investigation, and emergency response. We have to find and stop the terrorists before they attack, and deal with the aftermath of the attacks we don't stop. There really is no other way, and I hope that we don't let the tragedy lead us into unwise decisions about how to deal with terrorism.

Rowan Atkinson as a virtual drummer

2008-11-20T20:20:00.001+01:00

This is an old one, but never the less it is fun and very, very difficult to get right.

http://www.biertijd.com/mediaplayer/?itemid=3657

Or below for a youtube version.

Rowan Atkinson - Invisible Drum Kit

The Matrix -- Windows XP style

2008-11-11T21:44:00.001+01:00

Found this via Dvorak.org. Hillarious.

Original from at CollegeHumor.

Positivity.

2008-11-08T19:29:00.001+01:00

From an article on Canada One

Lately our everyday reality seems to leave little room for optimism. People around the world are suffering from very real natural and personal crises. Our TV's and newspapers are packed with sadness and fear.

In times like these it is very important to hold tight to a powerful life success tool – optimism.

Why optimism? Because optimism physically lights up a very important portion of your brain that increases your ability to create positive answers to challenges.

Positivity is good, of course, we all know that. But everyone can use a little dose of optimism every once in a while.

Also, there is this video by the Vietnamise Buddhist Monk Thich Nhat Hanh that basically tell you to find the thing you can be happy with.

"Star Wars" an a capalla tribute to John Williams

2008-11-07T14:38:00.001+01:00

O.M.G. This is Brilliant.

"Star Wars" - an a capella tribute to John Williams

Wordle -or- what my site looks like

2008-11-06T20:44:00.001+01:00

Funny. I kind of rediscoverd the site wordle.net. It can generate a word cloud a shown here (click through to see a bigger picture). This picture was created by giving it the RSS feed for this blog. I particularly liked this one because the word Ubuntu has kind of the same colour as the Ubuntu desktop.

During my experimentation I fed it the text of an article I am writing (in Dutch, for Computable magazine). It visually shown me that I was a little too fond of the word "moeten" (either must or shall in English). I feel another rewrite coming up...

So, what does your site looks like?

Ubuntu upgrade: The Day After

2008-11-04T12:12:00.001+01:00

After all the trouble of getting a "normal" KDE to run on Intrepid Ibex. I have now used this Ubuntu version for two days for regular work. The following issues arose:

No screensaver: apt-get install xscreensaver solved that one.
The upgrade killed my local Wiki installation (mediawiki).
OpenOffice.org is complaining that the Java installtion is non-functional.

The Wiki problem is tougher to get right since it wrote over the original files. The information is not lost. The database still exists and is still valid, but the code is jumbled and doesn't work anymore. I am now trying to decide whether I make the effort of restoring it or make the effort to go to a file based information system.

The advantage of a file based system is that searches are easier. I can use find/grep or Beagle or Google Desktop for Linux. It is easier to store whatever content you like, in whatever format you like.

The disadvantage of a file based knowledge / information system is that it is more difficult to make links between different pieces of the information. Using a tool like "Vim Outliner" might help a bit.

Ubuntu: The upgrade!

2008-11-03T13:18:00.001+01:00

Yesterday I took the plunge and upgraded my primary system to the latest and greatest Ubuntu release. (From the 8.04 "Hardy Heron" to the 8.10 "Intrepid Ibex" edition).

Why upgrade.

Well, several reasons actually. First off, I like to be able to use "the latest and greatest" versions of software. And I have the feeling that I (will) have better access to the latest and the greatest programs if I also use the lastest and greatest operating system version.

Secondly, if I advise people to try out Linux, I usually advise Ubuntu. For someone who doesn't have any experience in Linux this is the 'de facto' easiest Linux to start with. Therefore, I need to know if this lastest Ubuntu version is any good or if they should stick with the previous version and wait a bit longer.

Why upgrade my primary system.

Mainly because I didn't have a spare Ubuntu install around somewhere. I used to have a lot of additional hardware. But most of what I now have is not suited for (desktop) Ubuntu.
And also, in a small part, because this will force me to actually try the new version and see if it is any good.

What happened.

I nearly screwed up my entire system. That's what happened. But, this was only because I was already using a heavily customised Ubuntu configuration. I have lots of customizations in file in the /etc directory, the FVWM window manager with my own configuration which uses parts from all over the system.

During the upgrade Ubuntu told me several times that it had newer versions of configuration files from the "/etc" directory, but that I had manually modified versions. And if I would be so kind to select the version to use. Which in itself is a very nice gesture (no automatic overrides). But it forced me to checkout all the offered files. Most of which I still think I had never seen before.

Then I left my laptop alone for too long and the screensaver (xscreensaver) engaged. Which did lock the screen, but since the package was already removed by the upgrade, it would no longer unlock. (And I knew the upgrade was not yet complete).

Finally Ubuntu was ready to reboot.

*GASP* OMG

After logging back into the system I noticed that
* I had no panel on the bottom of my screen. (I used the KDE3 "kicker" panel there).
* NO NETWORK. Maybe because of the missing panel (because the network monitor applet which should have been able to guide me onto the network wasn't shown).

Fortunately I do know my way around a Linux system and was able to get networking backup in only half an hour. Only to discover that THERE WAS NO KDE3 ANYMORE!

After some searching on the internet for clues how to start kicker on KDE4 (impossible) or how to enable the KDE4 panel (called Plasma apparently), I discovered that KDE4 no longer has a standalone panel. It wants to install a "desktop" as well (which turns into a full screen application in FVWM). After killing the desktop with the '-nodesktop' option. It still INSISTED on putting op a desktop background anyway (a full screen window in FVWM).

After searching fruitlessly for information on how to make Plasma behave better (useless) or how to make Plasma look better (also useless). I went looking for information on how to upgrade Ubuntu 8.10 to KDE3, from KDE4.

This "upgrade" also caused problems, eventually nearly dead-locking the package manager. This was only solvable by manually selecting all KDE packages and marking them for complete removal. After that I could install kde3.

Phew.

Finally.

So now I finally have Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex. Everything seems to work as usual, so far. I'll keep you posted about my experiences with it.

Just one of those coincidences, more ubuntu and music players

2008-10-30T14:24:00.002+01:00

I was just looking at Manhattan (New York) in Google Earth with the 3D representation of the buildings, trying to find my way "through the air" when my music player (Amarok) produced the song: "Looking for a place to land" by Dakota Moon.

And for a moment it really felt as if I was trying to find a place to land in downtown Manhattan.

I have been using Ubuntu almost exclusively on my laptop since mid April 2008. I like it very much. I use the 8.04 version on my Lenovo T61 laptop and look forward to trying out the 8.10 version. Although I have kept to original Windows XP installation that came with the machine around, I don't use it much. I mainly run Windows to install the MMPs (Monthly Microsoft Patches). However, that may change when I buy an iPhone).

I have tried just about every music player I could find in the Ubuntu archives. With fancy names like Banshee, RhythmBox and SoundJuicer or cryptic ones like XMMS, Xine and gmplayer. There is just one that, in my opinion, takes the price. Amarok.

Current book: The Dark River by John Twelve Hawks

2008-10-29T21:45:00.001+01:00

I am currently reading "The Dark River" by John Twelve Hawks. This is book two of the "The Fourth Realm Trilogy". This book, like the first one is a good read so far (I am about half way through).

These books can be read as "just another well told story", because they are. There is however also the layer that serves as a warning against over zealous and ubiquitous monitoring of the daily lives and activities of each and every one of us.

As the ancient Romans used to say. "Who guards the guardians". And if you think that "the Government" is entitled to know everything, because you don't have anything to hide and it helps to catch the terrorist, you're just naive. (See this article and this one from Bruce Schneier's blog)

How to become a famous blogger

2008-10-29T16:51:00.002+01:00

(From the ProBlogger blog)

So you want to be a famous blogger?

Cartoon Blogger Dave Walker has the secret on how to do it:

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

Hard questions at the heart of open source security

2008-10-28T15:58:00.001+01:00

(from ZDNet's Open Source blog)

"A wise man once explained the security conundrum in a way we can all understand: The good guy must protect every possible hole. The bad guy must find just one." ... "and the real question we should be asking, is open source software inherently more secure or less secure than proprietary"

You know, that's a very good question. It is always assumed that open source software is more secure following the "more eyes make better software" principle.

This article continues to explain the difference and the difference seems to be the 'Joe Average' programmer ("the semi-good guys").

It’s the role of semi-good guys I want to emphasize. These are programmers who are not security experts, who may be adding to the code in some other way, but who since they see the code have the opportunity to both find and patch potential exploits.
I liken them to a neighborhood watch, like the one which protected my street for many years. A local police officer marveled at how our crime rate was 30% less than that of the blocks on either side. We watch each other, I said.
Proprietary programs don’t have many semi-good guys. The code is invisible except to those authorized to see it and those who break the law by looking at it.

The final comment is priceless:

In this way the open source paradigm goes far beyond software. It may be why many security experts fight it so hard inside software. If their assumptions are wrong there, could they be wrong everywhere?

Windows Live does OpenID

2008-10-28T09:34:00.001+01:00

Well, has Microsoft finaly seen the light? This (from Mike Walkers blog) seems to indicate so.

It looks like the Windows Live product teams are giving some love to OpenID with committed support open authentication standards. There is no doubt that the OpenID specification has matured and has an increased use in the industry.

However, the next quote (two paragraphs down) makes me wonder a bit.
You will soon be able to use your Windows Live ID account to sign in to any OpenID Web site!
So I can use a Windows Live ID for OpenID, but what about the other way around (an already existing ID in Windows Live?).

We'll wait and see.

Bruce Sterling says the iPhone is the postmillennial Leatherman

2008-10-18T21:22:00.002+02:00

Bruce Sterling got it quite right.
Like all digital technologies, the iPhone has yet to achieve the
hard-grained, Spartan elegancies of the steely Leatherman. It makes up
for this with its cannibal appetite for other tools. Leathermans will
disappear—I commonly give mine away—but iPhones devour other tools, digesting them into virtualized application services:
phone, camera, e-mail, Web browser, text-messaging, music and video
players, whole planet-girdling sets of urban Google maps, house keys,
pedometer, TV remote, seismometer, Breathalyzer, alarm clock, video
games, radio, bar-code scanner … the target list grows by the day.

Nederlands muzikaal talent

2008-10-17T22:14:00.001+02:00

(Sorry, it's a local "Dutch" subject only")

Gisteravond gezien op "De Wereld Draait Door". Nieuw (voor mij althans) muzikaal talent van eigen bodem. Esther Groenenberg. Haar nieuwe clip "Oh meisje" is al ruim 400.000 keer bekeken op YouTube.

Books, books and even more, er..., books.

2008-10-17T11:08:00.002+02:00

I have been reading a lot lately.
Scott Sigler: Infection. Science Fiction Horror story by podcaster/author Scott Sigler. (See the "ad" voor Ancestor in the left bar of the site. Good, if you like blood and lots (and lots) of violence in your fiction every now and then.
David Weber and Linda Evans: Hell hath no fury and Hells Gateway. GOOD. If you like David Weber at all, you'll like these.
Orson Scott Card: Invasive procedures. As can be expected from the long time master. A good piece. Not spectacular, but good 'nuf for me.
I am currently reading: Sara Douglass : Serpent Bride. The first book in a new trilogy, in the same "universe" as the BattleAxe and StarMan trilogies. Axis Sunsoar is back as well.

Book stil on the "to read" stack:
Peter F. Hamilton : The timeless void. (Again, it is a HUGE book).
Cory Doctorow : Little Brother

The addiction is over

2008-10-16T16:28:00.002+02:00

I finally got enough of playing WarZone2100. Is have played the games all the way through several times now and by now I know exactly what to do where. I once played it in full cheat mode for good measure, but even that bores after a while.

Now I am back to a good old favourite. Einstein. A logic puzzle game.

Quote of the Day

2008-10-15T22:06:00.002+02:00

My Linux' fortune program gave me the following quote this evening:

When you live in a sick society, just about everything you do is wrong.

Think about that one for a second... , and be vigilant for any signs...

Books, again

2008-09-01T15:10:00.002+02:00
I have finished reading David Weber's "Off Armageddon Reef". It... is... good.

A stunning mix of high space-age and pre-industrial revolution age elements.

Buy it, read it, love it.

Chinese proverb

2008-08-15T13:44:00.001+02:00
A wise person makes his own decisions, a weak one obeys public opinion.
-- Chinese proverb

(offered by my linux' fortune program this moring)

What I am reading

2008-08-13T20:49:00.002+02:00
I am currently reading 'Off Armageddon Reef' by David Weber.
I'll let you know how I like it (I like it so far, but I'm not even one third through the book).

Pot and Kettle?

2008-08-13T20:22:00.003+02:00

This image was too good not to republish.

Books I have been reading

2008-08-11T15:13:00.003+02:00
I have just finished reading a couple of books over the holiday:

Old Man's War by John Scalzi. Debut novel by Scalzi. Very, very good 'space opera' Science Fiction. I first read this as a free book from tor.com. When I bought the sequel, I also bought this book in paperback. That's how good the book is.
Ghost Brigades, also by John Scalzi. (The sequel... :-). Holds up the standard set by the first book (see above). Makes me want to buy the next book. (But then, I am a "sucker for sequels").
Empire by Orson Scott Card. Story about the outbreak of a Civil war in the United States of America, set in the 'near future'. Good book.
The entire Covert One series (all five books) originally created by Robert Ludlum.

Addicted: WarZone2100

2008-08-11T14:10:00.003+02:00
When looking for a game to play to divert my spare time. I found Warzone2100 in the Ubuntu repositories (Games, universe).

Warzone is a game that reminds me a lot of the Command and Conquer type of games that where mighty popular some time ago.

Ubuntu continued: Dropped GNOME in favour of FVWM2

2008-08-11T13:59:00.006+02:00
Ubuntu now works officialy 'good enough' for me. Sure, its probably more of a resource hog than Slackware will be on the same hardware (but I now use the Lenovo T61, dual core, with 2 GB of RAM, so what, linux never uses the swap file anyway). On the other hand, there are a lot of application immediately available from the repositories.

The only thing I did change is that I went back to using FVWM as my window manager, dropping GNOME and even the beautiful Compiz visual effects.

I found that I prefer the configurability that FVWM gives me. Something which is unparalleled on any other window manager. (Of course, you need to be almost a programmer to be able to configure it exactly the way you want to. Finding out what to put where in the ASCII config file can be a daunting prospect for newbies).

Ubuntu still going strong

2008-07-14T21:47:00.004+02:00
I am still very impressed with Ubuntu 8.04 so far.
Since I had it more or less configured to my liking I haven't touched the Slackware install on my laptop.

The only thing I changed in Ubuntu was the default Window Manager. I switch from the default gnome session to using fvwm2 and my own highly customized configuation (more than 10 years of fine tuning the config).

I did find that Ubuntu is less stable than Slackware (i had two hang-ups with it today). But in most other things it beats Windows XP, on the same hardware, hands down. (For example, unplugging the network and plugging in another one takes Windows at least 15 minutes to even recognize the change. Ubuntu takes at most 15 seconds.

Giving Ubuntu another go. New Ubuntu and new hardware

2008-05-03T21:14:00.002+02:00

I have recently been issued a new laptop. This new laptop of course needed to be configured three ways from tomorrow to fit my needs.

The laptop itself is rather impressive compared to what I had before:
Lenovo T61.
100GB SATA Harddisk
Intel Core Duo (two 2.2GHz cores).
2GB RAM
Intel 4965 Wireless
Intel WSXGA screen @ 1680x1050 resolution.
Of course, me being me, I tried to install the latest Slackware version (12.0), while it installed flawlessly, I couldn't get the wireless network card to work properly. (I tried the way of installing the latest Linux kernel (2.6.24) which has the driver build in. Eventually the wireless network connects, but it generates a lot of errors before doing that.

Also, the graphics card didn't work "quite" right.

Because at about the same time Ubuntu 8.04 released and I decided to give it a try (after my disappointing experiences on my previous laptop (an IBM T42). See a previous log entry)

In one word: WOW.

Wireless works, out of the box, immediately.
It is very complete.
Compiz works out of the box.

There are (of course?) some things that don't work or otherwise disappoint me:
VMWare (Server) won't "play" my factory installed Windows XP partition (VM freezes during boot).
By default (at least as it was installed on my laptop) USB memory sticks or USB disks were not recognized.
Even after installing the usb disk support (using synaptic, not very uesr friendly), it doesn't always work unless I use a USB hub (but it may be hardware related).
Still, for now I will use it as my Main working platform. That way, I can finally stop carrying two laptops to work and concentrate on making the laptop install (and slackware) "Just so" to my taste.

French police drops Microsoft to adopt Linux

2008-01-31T09:35:00.001+01:00
I found an article on CNNMoney.com:

It seems that the French Police is now throwing out everything Microsoft in order to go to the Linux operating system.

I remember that a couple of years ago the French police already moved away from Microsoft Office to use OpenOffice.org

The debate on privacy versus security

2008-01-29T14:00:00.000+01:00

Since 9/11, approximately three things have potentially improved airline security: reinforcing the cockpit doors, passengers realizing they have to fight back and -- possibly -- sky marshals. Everything else -- all the security measures that affect privacy -- is just security theater and a waste of effort.

From Bruce Schneiers blog

If there's a debate that sums up post-9/11 politics, it's security versus privacy. Which is more important? How much privacy are you willing to give up for security? Can we even afford privacy in this age of insecurity? Security versus privacy: It's the battle of the century, or at least its first decade.

In a Jan. 21 New Yorker article, Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell discusses a proposed plan to monitor all -- that's right, all -- internet communications for security purposes, an idea so extreme that the word "Orwellian" feels too mild.

The article (now online here) contains this passage:

In order for cyberspace to be policed, internet activity will have to be closely monitored. Ed Giorgio, who is working with McConnell on the plan, said that would mean giving the government the authority to examine the content of any e-mail, file transfer or Web search. "Google has records that could help in a cyber-investigation," he said. Giorgio warned me, "We have a saying in this business: 'Privacy and security are a zero-sum game.'"

I'm sure they have that saying in their business. And it's precisely why, when people in their business are in charge of government, it becomes a police state. If privacy and security really were a zero-sum game, we would have seen mass immigration into the former East Germany and modern-day China. While it's true that police states like those have less street crime, no one argues that their citizens are fundamentally more secure.

We've been told we have to trade off security and privacy so often -- in debates on security versus privacy, writing contests, polls, reasoned essays and political rhetoric -- that most of us don't even question the fundamental dichotomy.

But it's a false one.

Security and privacy are not opposite ends of a seesaw; you don't have to accept less of one to get more of the other. Think of a door lock, a burglar alarm and a tall fence. Think of guns, anti-counterfeiting measures on currency and that dumb liquid ban at airports. Security affects privacy only when it's based on identity, and there are limitations to that sort of approach.

Since 9/11, approximately three things have potentially improved airline security: reinforcing the cockpit doors, passengers realizing they have to fight back and -- possibly -- sky marshals. Everything else -- all the security measures that affect privacy -- is just security theater and a waste of effort.

By the same token, many of the anti-privacy "security" measures we're seeing -- national ID cards, warrantless eavesdropping, massive data mining and so on -- do little to improve, and in some cases harm, security. And government claims of their success are either wrong, or against fake threats.

The debate isn't security versus privacy. It's liberty versus control.

You can see it in comments by government officials: "Privacy no longer can mean anonymity," says Donald Kerr, principal deputy director of national intelligence. "Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguard people's private communications and financial information." Did you catch that? You're expected to give up control of your privacy to others, who -- presumably -- get to decide how much of it you deserve. That's what loss of liberty looks like.

It should be no surprise that people choose security over privacy: 51 to 29 percent in a recent poll. Even if you don't subscribe to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, it's obvious that security is more important. Security is vital to survival, not just of people but of every living thing. Privacy is unique to humans, but it's a social need. It's vital to personal dignity, to family life, to society -- to what makes us uniquely human -- but not to survival.

If you set up the false dichotomy, of course people will choose security over privacy -- especially if you scare them first. But it's still a false dichotomy. There is no security without privacy. And liberty requires both security and privacy. The famous quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin reads: "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." It's also true that those who would give up privacy for security are likely to end up with neither.

This essay originally appeared on Wired.com.

Ubuntu SUCKS

2008-01-16T21:29:00.000+01:00

Just so you know, I am a big fan of linux and I use linux exclusively.

I was also going to be enthusiastic about using Ubuntu as the linux for ordinary people.
Then two things went wrong for Ubuntu. They were the last two (yes two) Ubuntu releases.

The 7.04 "Feisty Fawn" release didn't boot on my laptop. Because the shifted to a different mode of accessing the hard disk (IDE disks are now also handled like SATA and SCSI disks).

But, by installing a previous version and "upgrading all the way" I could still run this version.

Then the 7.10 "Gutsy Gibbon" was released. Hah. Improvement. It boots on my laptop. Unfortunately there are still (other) problems with accessing the harddisk. Ubuntu turns OFF the hard disk's DMA, this gives me a 'sustained' disk read speed of just over 2MB per second. When I boot with my regular linux distribution (Slackware 12.0) I get speeds of over 38MB per second, on the same device.

When I issue the command to turn DMA on: hdparm -d 1 /dev/hda, this FAILS and tells me I do not have permission to set this parameter. Come again? I am 'root' the absolute master of all things on this system.

On the internet several possible work-arounds are given. None work (although I think that it is still related to using the SATA drivers to drive my standard IDE harddisk).

This means that for the last two releases Ubuntu, the Linux for Ordinary People was flawed in such a way that it became all but unusable for 'ordinary people'.

UPDATE (2008-11-03)
I have since written much more about Ubuntu (version 8.04 and 8.10)
Giving it another go
Changing the window manger (no GNOME, no KDE)
Made it my main system
The Upgrade! (to Ubuntu 8.10)

Long time, no blog

2007-12-24T11:45:00.000+01:00
I haven't been updating this blog in a great good while.

Why?

Nothing to say, I guess. I talk to the people that matter to me often enough to do without blogging anything.

I am not particularly extrovert, I don't need to tell the whole world about my opinions. Most of my work is governed by NDA/privacy/security agreements so that I can't write about that. I get most - if not all - of my work related news from the internet, other people can get it there as well. Besides, the news that I do find interesting shows up in the sidebar here anyway (and in its own, seperate RSS feed.

Most of my private life I consider just that, private.

In short, even though I read (and actually like) other people's blogs, I don't understand the need to write one.

Yeah! Computers in the European Union should be sold without OS

2007-09-24T15:02:00.001+02:00

Globalisation Institute - Brussels' most popular think tank website - Unbundling Microsoft Windows

Computers in the European Union should be sold without a bundled operating system, according to this submission to the European Commission. It says that the bundling of Microsoft Windows with computers is not in the public interest, and prevents meaningful competition in the operating system market.

The submission comes after the Commission won a ruling supporting its existing antitrust action against Microsoft in the European Court of First Instance. The Institute argues that cheaper competitors are unable to benefit from their lower cost because consumers have already been forced to buy Windows. Windows’ dominant position both has slowed technical improvements and prevented new alternatives entering from the marketplace.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Use more open source, people!

2007-09-20T11:40:00.001+02:00

Victor Keegan: Ignoring open source is costing us dear | Technology | The Guardian

Firefox, the browser that dared to challenge the supremacy of Microsoft's Internet Explorer, has just reached 400m downloads - and deservedly so. It now claims a market share of nearly 20% in the UK and 30% in Germany. Firefox, part of the admirable Mozilla Foundation, is based on open source, created and improved on by volunteers all over the world. The cooperative spirit that infused the open source movement is now taking over the world as people and corporations collaborate on music, videos, products or the Wikipedia. All of which makes it scandalous that the open source movement has not taken off in the UK as it has in other countries.

Powered by ScribeFire.

HP to also sell Linux PCs?

2007-09-20T10:58:00.001+02:00

This could be good news

HP To Expand Effort On Linux PCs - Software - IT Channel News by CRN and VARBusiness

Hewlett-Packard, the world's Number 1 PC maker, will try selling pre-loaded Linux on PCs in several countries as it expands a test program -- evaluating a market that some competitors have already entered -- and moves its personal computer business into a new generation of form factors and functionality.

Powered by ScribeFire.

I saw the "New York Voices" perform live last Friday

2007-09-12T16:59:00.000+02:00
Last friday we went to the Pure Jazz festival in The Hague (Den Haag for Dutch people). (Sorry, the site is in Dutch).

We went there on purpose to see the "New York Voices" perform live. It was, as expected, spectacular.

For those of you who don't know. The New York Voices are a Vocal group that perform Jazz music in the style of "Lambert, Hendricks and Ross" and "The Manhattan Transfer". See their own website (follow link) for more details.

I was turned on to them 17 years ago by a couple of friends who had heard about them from friends from a student exchange program in the United States. I went to their first concert in the Netherlands at the illustrious North Sea Jazz festival in, 1990.

They are absolutely fantastic. If you are in anyway "into" this kind of music. You must try and see them live sometime.

What I am reading: September 12 update

2007-09-12T16:26:00.001+02:00

I have finished reading the "Tristan Betrayal" (see previous post).
It was an "OK" book. Not overly spectacular, but a solid piece, which required only a little bit of conscious suspension of disbelieve.

I am now reading "In Death Ground" by David Weber and Steve White. So far it is a good read, but I am not even halfway through the book. I'll keep you posted.

What I am reading

2007-08-30T22:05:00.001+02:00
It has been a while and I am already a couple of books on.

I finished reading Robert Jordan's Knife of Dreams" (Amazon.com). This is one very good book (if you have read all 10 that came before). I found it a page turner and can't wait for the final volume in the Wheel of Time series.

I have read David Webber's "Shadow of Saganami" which tells the story of "the next generation" in the Honor Harrington universe (Honorverse). Those who where taught by Steadholder/Duchess/Admiral Harrington. As usual with the Honor Harrington books, this is a good and solid book.

I am curently reading a "Robert Ludlum" book The Tristan Betrayal. The name between quotes, because it is a new book by Robert Ludlum who has died in 2001. Nevertheless it is a good book so far. It "only" took about 20 pages to really get into it, even if that was mostly World War II-era stuff. I am now about one third into the book. (But as you can see I can take the time out to write this log).

Is Microsoft bound by GPLv3?

2007-08-30T21:43:00.001+02:00

It's going to be an interesting winter, watching this develop.

» Is Microsoft bound by GPLv3? | Open Source | ZDNet.com
When Microsoft agreed last fall to distribute Novell “get out of court free” tickets, did it make itself subject to GPLv3? (Image from FSF Europe.)

Microsoft says no, no, no. The Free Software Foundation says yes, yes, yes.

Ultimately a court will have to settle this, which may be what the FSF is looking toward. The recent decision calling open source licenses contracts, subject only to the redress due on any other contract, may actually help the FSF in making this argument.....

(click the link above for the full article and all the links)

Doing the terrorists work for them.

2007-08-30T12:20:00.001+02:00

Welcome to the land of the free and the home of the brave.

This is actually doing the terrorists "work" (spreading terror) for them. Refuse to be terrorized people!

Moment of TSA surrealist zen @ LAX: Xeni - Boing Boing
I walked from the arrival gate towards baggage claim, and when I was about halfway there, all of a sudden about a dozen or more TSA personnel and private security staff appeared, shouting STOP WHERE YOU ARE. FREEZE. DO NOT MOVE. Not just at me, but all of the travelers who happened to be wandering through the hallway at that moment. Some of the TSA guards then backed up against walls in the hallway, and sort of barked at anyone who tried to move a few feet away from their "spot," like towards chairs to sit down or whatever. One TSA guard jogged ahead, back towards the arrival gates (United, this was Terminal 7). At first I assumed maybe it was some weird security drill? A few of us asked what was going on, and got terse answers, like, "Security review." WTF? 5 minutes passed. 10, 15, 20. The two teen Japanese tourists about ten feet behind me looked utterly dazed -- welcome to America, guys. I was really jetlagged and cranky, wanted to move a few feet and sit down, but the TSA lady nearest me kind of snapped at me to stop and stay frozen where I was when the order went out. After 30 minutes, the TSA people said, okay, you may leave now. And everyone unfroze, and went and got their bags. No explanation. I guess I should have pressed for an explanation, or demanded to know why we were being held without our consent and without a provided reason, but I was really tired and just wanted to get the hell out of there and go home. Perhaps I was wrong to have just walked away.

Hasta la Vista, Microsoft!

2007-08-30T10:10:00.001+02:00

Yes my friends, positive stories about Linux are now surfacing in the mainstream media.

Linux: Hasta la Vista, Microsoft! - Independent Online Edition > Sci_Tech

Linux already powers everything from supercomputers to mobile phones. Google runs more than 10,000 Linux servers. Amazon.com switched to Linux and saved a cool $17m. The French National Assembly has started using Ubuntu on more than 1,000 computers. And since the blockbuster movie Shrek, the Dreamworks studio has been using Linux to render its 3D graphics and special effects.

Sony has contracted a new case of rootkit

2007-08-28T16:15:00.001+02:00

*Sigh* When will they ever learn?

Dvorak Uncensored » Deja Vu: Sony Using Rootkits Again

A line of USB drives sold by Sony Electronics installs files in a hidden folder that can be accessed and used by hackers, a Finnish security company charged Monday, raising the specter of a replay of the fiasco that hit Sony’s music arm two years ago when researchers discovered that its copy protection software used rootkit-like technologies.

Microsoft Sharepoint. The worst enemy of Open Standards

2007-08-28T15:58:00.001+02:00

Finally, the rest of the internet world is waking up to the scary future of Microsoft Lock In.
I have been saying stuff like this to my customers like over a year ago.

» The lock-in battle shifts to Sharepoint | Open Source | ZDNet.com

On the surface SharePoint is merely a document management system which lets everyone in your company share and find Office documents easily. But critics like our own Matt Asay call it a Trojan Horse, which will bind companies which deploy it to Microsoft forever.

Who needs enemies when "friends" overreact like this?

2007-08-28T10:26:00.001+02:00

The (real) terrorists have won again. People are terrorised by even simple things. And worse, when the mistake is found out still prosecute.

Schneier on Security: Stupidest Terrorist Overreaction Yet?
Stupidest Terrorist Overreaction Yet?

What? Are the police taking stupid pills?

Two people who sprinkled flour in a parking lot to mark a trail for their offbeat running club inadvertently caused a bioterrorism scare and now face a felony charge.

The competition is fierce, but I think this is a winner.

What bothers me most about the news coverage is that there isn't even a suggestion that the authorities' response might have been out of line.

Mayoral spokeswoman Jessica Mayorga said the city plans to seek restitution from the Salchows, who are due in court Sept. 14.

“You see powder connected by arrows and chalk, you never know,” she said. “It could be a terrorist, it could be something more serious. We’re thankful it wasn’t, but there were a lot of resources that went into figuring that out.”

Translation: We screwed up, and we want someone to pay for our mistake.

Microsoft Office XML Formats? Defective by design

2007-08-27T12:44:00.001+02:00

It seems Microsoft has been bad, again, with Office OpenXML format specification.

First of all, the specification is full of ambiguities and at least three different ways of handling international information, all incompatible.

Secondly, the documents produced by Office 2007 do not conform to the proposed standard.

All copies of Windows XP and Vista are now illegitimate

2007-08-25T21:56:00.001+02:00

Clearly there are still some security issues with WGA.

Boing Boing: Microsoft WGA servers down; all XP and Vista installs being marked as counterfeit
DRM bites again: the Microsoft Windows Genuine Advantage servers (which every XP and Vista install phones home to) all failed sometime earlier today.

The result? Every single Windows XP and Vista installation -- except possibly those with volume license keys -- is being marked as counterfeit when it tries to check in. Installations which are flagged as counterfeit switch to a "reduced functionality mode" which results in features like Aero and DirectX being disabled.

Perception of Risk. Often completely out of whack

2007-08-22T23:09:00.001+02:00

Bruce Schneier is investigating how we humans perceive risks. Here he found yet another item.

Schneier on Security: Perceptions of Risk
Newsrooms are full of English majors who acknowledge that they are not good at math, but still rush to make confident pronouncements about a global-warming "crisis" and the coming of bird flu.

Bird flu was called the No. 1 threat to the world. But bird flu has killed no one in America, while regular flu -- the boring kind -- kills tens of thousands.

Is this an explanation for the 'disconnect' between politicians and those they govern?

2007-08-20T11:21:00.001+02:00

This guy writes about something calles unconscious conspiracies. Basically you take a small, close knit group. Then you 'isolate' them from the other world (for example by using secretaries, spokespeople etc). In this group an idea, a fact or a meme can quickly get a life of its own in such a group, whether or not it has any relation to reality.

Viridia.org » Blog Archive » Unconscious Conspiracies

Powered by ScribeFire.

Movie Review: Chain Reaction.

2007-08-18T22:30:00.001+02:00

Chain Reaction is a somewhat older movie (1996 according to IMDb) with Keanu Reeves and Morgan Freeman.

Watched this movie on DVD on August 18 2007. Bought the DVD, for only €4.99 (see, put low price tags on DVD and people will buy them).

Nice action. Nice explosions. Story is a bit weak.

I give it 6 out of 10.

Parting PC Magazine editor HATES MS-Vista

2007-08-18T22:11:00.001+02:00

It took him only 9 months to go from total addict to total adversary. Welcome to the world of Free and Open Source Software my friends.

Passing the Torch - Columns by PC Magazine

Maybe it was something in the water? I've been a big proponent of the new OS over the past few months, even going so far as loading it onto most of my computers and spending hours tweaking and optimizing it. So why, nine months after launch, am I so frustrated? The litany of what doesn't work and what still frustrates me stretches on endlessly.

I could go on and on about the lack of drivers, the bizarre wake-up rituals, the strange and nonreproducible system quirks, and more. But I won't bore you with the details. The upshot is that even after nine months, Vista just ain't cutting it. I definitely gave Microsoft too much of a free pass on this operating system: I expected it to get the kinks worked out more quickly. Boy, was I fooled! If Microsoft can't get Vista working, I might just do the unthinkable: I might move to Linux.

The lure of the conspiracy theory

2007-08-14T19:36:00.001+02:00

Cutting Edge Political Commentary The Razor
Was Princess Diana the victim of drunk driving or a plot by the British royal family? Did Neil Armstrong really walk on the moon or just across a film set in Nevada? And who killed President John F. Kennedy - the Russians, the Cubans, the CIA, the mafia… aliens? Almost every big event has a conspiracy theory attached to it. The truth, they say, is out there - but where exactly? Perhaps psychology can help us find at least some of the answers.

Whether you are a dyed-in-the-wool conspiracy theorist, a confirmed anti-theorist, or somewhere in between, one thing’s for sure: conspiracy theories pervade modern culture. Thousands of films, talk shows and radio phone-ins are built around them. US lecture tours from prominent theorists such as radio host Alex Jones can draw audiences of tens of thousands, while books raking over the evidence sell millions of copies worldwide. The internet documentary Loose Change, which claims that a CIA plot lay behind the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington, is approaching its 10-millionth download.

Vista prevents users playing high def. content

2007-08-13T22:10:00.001+02:00

Is this sickening or what. Glad I went completely Microsoft free.

PC World - Vista Prevents Users Playing High-Def Content

Content protection features in Windows Vista are preventing customers from playing high-quality video and audio and harming system performance, even as Microsoft neglects security programs that could protect users, computer researcher Peter Gutmann argued at the USENIX Security Symposium in Boston Wednesday.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Bloodcast: This story contains lots and LOTS of ....

2007-08-13T20:41:00.001+02:00

My favorite podcasting author is at it again.

Scott Sigler audio novels: BloodCast

KISSYMAN is a story I was inspired to write after reading “Devil in a Blue Dress” by Walter Mosley. This is not the hard-science horror stuff that is my bread and butter, but rather a hard-boiled detective style take on an illegal immigrant from another era in America’s history. No science (unless you count psychology), but it does, indeed, get us back on the “lots and lots of violence” tip.

Microsoft Office Open XML does not get fast track to ISO standardization

2007-08-12T08:30:00.001+02:00

Too many inconsistencies in the format.

Microsoft one vote short of fast-track OOXML ISO standardization

Executive board members of the International Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS), the organization that represents the United States in ISO standardization deliberations, recently held an internal poll to determine the position that the United States should take on Microsoft's request for Office Open XML (OOXML) approval. With eight votes in favor, seven against, and one abstention, the group was one vote short of the nine votes required for approving OOXML ISO standardization.

Powered by ScribeFire.

If you were a terrorist, how would you attack.

2007-08-11T08:10:00.001+02:00

This person probably got his idea from a contest run by Bruce Schneier. This time it got a lot of attention for it being in the New York Times.

If You Were a Terrorist, How Would You Attack? - Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog

Hearing about these rules got me thinking about what I would do to maximize terror if I were a terrorist with limited resources. I’d start by thinking about what really inspires fear. One thing that scares people is the thought that they could be a victim of an attack. With that in mind, I’d want to do something that everybody thinks might be directed at them, even if the individual probability of harm is very low. Humans tend to overestimate small probabilities, so the fear generated by an act of terrorism is greatly disproportionate to the actual risk.

The sad thing is that he had to explain himself because of all of the hate mail he got.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Security guru Bruce Schneier interviews with the TSA Administrator

2007-07-31T17:33:00.001+02:00

Bruce really knows what today's security (physical as well as computer) is all about. He displays LOT of common sense when dealing with counter-terrorist actions.

If you are serious about taking the red pill you should check his comments on the issue.
Schneier on Security: Conversation with Kip Hawley, TSA Administrator (Part 2)

I don't want to even think about how much C4 I can strap to my legs and walk through your magnetometers. Or search the Internet for "BeerBelly." It's a device you can strap to your chest to smuggle beer into stadiums, but you can also use it smuggle 40 ounces of dangerous liquid explosive onto planes. The magnetometer won't detect it. Your secondary screening wandings won't detect it. Why aren't you making us all take our shirts off? Will you have to find a printout of the webpage in some terrorist safe house? Or will someone actually have to try it? If that doesn't bother you, search the Internet for "cell phone gun." It's "cover your ass" security. If someone tries to blow up a plane with a shoe or a liquid, you'll take a lot of blame for not catching it. But if someone uses any of these other, equally known, attack methods, you'll be blamed less because they're less public.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Recently discovered on the PodSafe Music Network

2007-07-30T16:45:00.000+02:00
The Lascivious Biddies. A very nice mix of jazz, pop and humor.

What ever happened to Web engineering?

2007-07-27T15:40:00.001+02:00

I found this article over at IBM's website.
The cranky user: What ever happened to Web engineering?
Does it ever occur to you that today's Web developers could learn a thing or two from traditional computer programming? The cranky user talks about the foundations of software engineering and asks where in the Web those best practices have disappeared to.

Well, I think it has something to do with the fact that it takes so darn long to become a really good programmer any (no matter what you program) and that programming the web often does not provide programmers with sufficient clues that the program should have been written better (
"In the old days, when men were real men, women were real women and green furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real.....Oh, sorry".
It used to be that when a C program contained an error or a "dangling pointer" it pretty well just crashed on you. Today these web programs have an entry in the log file and continue to run.

Of course even with an unforgiving language it takes a while before somebody becomes a real programmer. Forget all the "Teach yourself ABCD in 24 hours". See here (Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years).

OK, I probably have been around on the IT scene for way to long. My CV lists 19 years of experience in the Unix operating system.....Darn it.

But I still like it. Not because it is particulary easy to get things done, but because of the shear level of control it gives me.

Some thoughts on the failure of TSA

2007-07-26T16:25:00.000+02:00
This excellent opinion isn't mine. I am usually not that eloquent. This comes straight from Jerry Pournelle's blog:

Essay from Dave Mackett, President, Airline Pilots Security Alliance ( http://hotair.com/archives/2007/07/16/a-pilot-on-airline-security/ )

Excerpt:

"Almost six years after 9/11, it is inexcusable that — in an environment where TSA misses more than 90% of weapons, RON aircraft are not secured, and ground employees are not screened — fewer than 2% of our airliners have a team of armed pilots aboard, fewer than 5% have air marshals, and the flight attendants have no mandatory tactical or behavioral assessment training. $24 billion dollars later, we are not materially safer, except in the areas of intelligence that prevent an attack from getting to an airport. Once at the airport, there is little reason to believe the attack won't succeed."

We have crippled the airlines, infuriated passengers, made air travel an ordeal to be endured, and we are hardly safer than we were without any of this nonsense.

Of course we have found means of employment for people whose abilities make it unlikely that they could find any other useful work.

Does anyone think that the present TSA could prevent an intelligent person from bringing down an airplane if the attacker was determined to do it and expected to be killed in the attack? Our crack inspectors may be able to prevent idiot attacks, but neither they nor people a lot smarter than they can manage to save an airplane once a group with resources and determination decide to destroy it.

Meanwhile the lobbies of airports, including those long security lines at Dulles and Washington National, are enormously vulnerable to idiot attacks, particularly if the attackers don't mind being killed; but in fact it wouldn't be that hard to take out several hundred people at National on a Friday afternoon (lots of important people in those lines!) without being killed. I am sure any one of you can think of scenarios.

We need to rethink our anti-terrorist strategies and tactics with some cold-eyed rationalism. What do the measures cost us? Including in national dignity: at the moment the TSA is indistinguishable from an organization whose major purpose is to humiliate the people and make certain Americans understand they are subjects and not citizens. How easily can they be circumvented by intelligent and determined people? What new targets do our security measures create?

It is pretty clear that you can't stop intelligent and determined people from destroying airplanes if the attacker doesn't mind being killed. You can prevent the airplanes from being taken over and used as cruise missiles against other targets. We all know how that can be done. Strong cockpit doors, armed pilots, air marshals not dressed in 3-piece suits and short haircuts on randomly selected flights. We all know how that can be done.

We need to assess the real threats and deal with those. When we do, we will find that one of our more powerful weapons is our citizenry. If we really believe in freedom and the republic, we would enlist the citizens in this war on terror. Actually, we clearly don't believe in any of the ideals we want to export to other nations. Instead, we disarm the citizens, express horror at the notion that people can assist in protecting themselves, and we allow conspirators to set up the citizens and then sue hell out of them. It is as if we are determined to progress from republic to empire.

US wants trucks mounted with frikkin' laser beams. I feel a story idea forming

2007-07-25T11:39:00.001+02:00

I ran across this article on the internet today.

US wants trucks mounted with frikkin' laser beams | The Register
US wants trucks mounted with frikkin' laser beams Raygun lorries to beam enemy shells out of the sky By Lewis Page → More by this author Published Monday 23rd July 2007 15:43 GMT Find your perfect job - click here from thousands of tech vacancies US arms and aerospace manufacturer Boeing announced on Friday that it had landed a contract to develop truck-mounted laser cannons for the US Army. As part of the Army's High Energy Laser Technology Demonstrator (HEL TD) project, Boeing will produce a "rugged beam control system", which will be mounted on a monstrous 20 tonne Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck.

After reading the article I again noted the abbreviation "HEL TD" and I could just see an Escape Pod flash story coming along, titled "HELL TD".....

Now if only I could write fiction... :-(

Powered by ScribeFire.

Jerry Pournelle: Three things are pretty clear about Iraq

2007-07-25T10:14:00.001+02:00

That just about says it all. Jerry Pournelle is a computer technology and science fiction writer and has been (still is?) an advisor for the US Military.

Current View
Three things are pretty clear about Iraq:

o If we leave in a hurry, it will come apart, and there will be civil war. I doubt those who call for US intervention in Darfur will agitate for us to go back in. The Turks will probably intervene in the Kurdish zone of Iraq. In Baghdad those who collaborated with the US and/or the US backed coalition government will probably be killed, some quickly, others over time. Their families are not likely to survive either.

o The Civil war will be our fault. We broke it.

o Any rational analysis of the situation would have reached these conclusions before we invaded. It was not only predictable but predicted.
Powered by ScribeFire.

Secret list of buildings you can't photograph

2007-07-24T20:19:00.001+02:00

Big Brother strikes again....

Boing Boing: Secret list of buildings you can't photograph
The bottom line is that McCammon was caught in a classic logical trap. If he had only known the building was off-limits to photographers, he would have avoided it. But he was not allowed to know that fact. "Reasonable, law-abiding people tend to avoid these types of things when it can be helped," McCammon wrote. "Thus, my request for a list of locations within Arlington County that are unmarked, but at which photography is either prohibited or discouraged according to some (public or private) policy. Of course, such a list does not exist. Catch-22."

For crying out loud. In the Netherlands it used to be "every citizen is expected to know the law". But how can you do that when you are not allowed to know what is forbidden and what is not?

Coupled with the ubiquitous surveillance everybody is guilty of something at some point. Makes it easy for somebody in control to have something over everybody's head. Does that sound like big brother from Mr. Wells "1984" or not?

Technorati Tags: privacy, security, big brother

What I am reading

2007-07-24T15:08:00.001+02:00
I am currently reading "Knife of Dreams" (Amazon.com) by Robert Jordan. This is the eleventh (!) volume in the Wheel of Time saga.

I was on page 95 this morning. When I turned the page, there came the start of Chapter 1.

Contrary to the previous volume this book has gripped me from the first couple of pages and certainly seems set for "Great Things^(tm)". Of course, if the prologue runs for 95 pages, the rest of the book might turn out to be disappointing.

I'll keep you posted.

Terrorist Watch List: 20,000 False Alarms

2007-07-24T10:55:00.001+02:00

Sad, sad, sad:

Schneier on Security: Terrorist Watch List: 20,000 False Alarms

Terrorist Watch List: 20,000 False Alarms

Why does anyone think this makes security sense?

The Justice Department's proposed budget for 2008 reveals for the first time how often names match against the database, reporting that there were 19,967 "positive matches" in 2006. The TSC had expected to match a far fewer number 14,780. The watch list matched people 5,396 and 15,730 times in 2004 and 2005 respectively.

The report defines a positive match as "one in which an encountered individual is positively matched with an identity in the Terrorist Screening Data Base, or TSDB."

It's not clear from the report whether those numbers include individuals whose names only coincidently match one of those on list, such as when Sen. Ted Kennedy was confused with a former IRA terrorist also named Kennedy.

The watch list has been hounded by these mismatches, which have included small children, former presidential candidates, and Americans with common names such as David Nelson.

How do I know they're all false alarms? Because this administration makes a press splash with every arrest, no matter how scant the evidence is. Do you really think they would pass up a chance to tout how good the watch list is?
When are 'the people' going to understand that scheme's like this just won't do any good.
From the comments:
A man walks on the street, and sees another man, wildly waving his hands. "What are you doing?" "I am scaring away tigers." "But there are no tigers here." "See? It works!"

Fool the senses. This is an optical illusion.

2007-07-24T10:53:00.001+02:00

I didn't believe this one my self. Then I saved the picture on my laptop and looked at it again. If you look at the figure she starts turning clock-wise all of a sudden. If you follow her shadow, you will see that she was turning counter-clockwise all along.

The Spinning Silhouette Optical Illusion

Link to the animation

The Spinning Silhouette Optical Illusion

This is a very bizarre optical illusion. At first glance the spinning lady appears to be circling in a clockwise motion. But if you look long enough - she will appear to change direction and start spinning counter-clockwise.

For me the switch didn't just happen - I had to look at her shadow and picture it going counter-clockwise. After about a minute, my brain flipped and the lady just started spinning backwards. Actually - I can't seem to convince my brain to get her to start going clockwise again. But it is pretty wild when you see the switch happen.

This is a tough one and it takes a lot of focus.

The Spinning Silhouette Optical Illusion

Big brother: We not only want to spy on you 24/7. You will pay for our expense as well

2007-07-24T09:53:00.001+02:00

Big brother is watching you, and making sure you pay for the expense as well.

US Senate trying to force colleges to buy snoopware for copyright enforcement
From BoingBoing:

EFF's Derek Slater sez, "Major copyright holders are backing a legislative proposal to make colleges do their dirty work. The Higher Education Act is supposed to make going to college more affordable, but, under a last-minute amendment, certain schools would risk losing federal funding for student aid if they don't divert funds away from education and toward policing corporate copyrighted content on their campus network. Twenty-five schools will annually be singled out, required to police their students with 'technology-based deterrents' (read: network surveillance technologies), and forced to provide evidence to the Secretary of Education about their efforts to stop file sharing. This amendment may come up for a vote tomorrow or later this week

Ransomware

2007-07-23T16:18:00.001+02:00

OK, These kind of schemes have been around for quite a while (like 10 years or so). But one of the comments in this thread just took the crown: software that encrypts your data, and then charges you for the decryption key? I thought that was called Microsoft Office?

Read more on:
Schneier on Security: Ransomware
Ransomware

Computer security people have been talking about this for years, but only recently are we seeing it in the wild: software that encrypts your data, and then charges you for the decryption key.

Escape Pod this week.

2007-07-23T15:24:00.001+02:00

Escape Pod is always good for a good "read". This one I thought especially good: "In a world where we have created TOOTHBRUSHES that are so intelligent and self-aware that they can want something for themselves".
“I read an interesting forum post last night,” my electric toothbrush told me over its low burr. “Thiff ouff thew be thood,” I said through my mouth of foam. “It was!” he replied. “Using readily available components, Monkeymonkey turned his Intellibrush into a milk frother.” I spit into the sink and set my toothbrush in its white ceramic charger. “What would I do with a milk frother?” “Make cappucinos,” my toothbrush said, with a hint of resignation, as I rinsed and spit again. “I don’t drink cappucinos,” I said. “You could start!”
from Escape Pod

Steeds meer Open Source. Met vandaag: Heerenveen

2007-07-23T14:43:00.001+02:00

Friesch Dagblad - Microsoft de deur uit: dat scheelt Heerenveen veel geld
Enkele Friese gemeenten zijn bezig met een overstap naar open source software. Sinds enkele jaren probeert de rijksoverheid alle gemeentes aan te sporen om de open en veelal gratis software te gaan gebruiken, maar veel diensten houden nog vast aan duurdere software zoals Microsoft Office.
Dat een overstap gunstig kan uitpakken, hebben ambtenaren van de gemeente Heerenveen gemerkt. Heerenveen is bezig om over te schakelen van Microsoft-programma’s op de kantoorsoftware van OpenOffice.org. De voornaamste reden van de overstap is de kostenbesparing. ,,Op jaarbasis scheelt het ons 135.000 euro aan licenties voor Microsoft-programma’s”, zegt Tjeerd Bouma, hoofd automatisering van de gemeente Heerenveen. Daar moeten nog wel omscholingskosten van af en kosten voor het overzetten van bestanden. ,,Maar dan nog houden we er veel geld aan over.”
Op dit moment staat OpenOffice.org op 100 van de 350 computers van de gemeente. Volgend jaar, als de licentie afloopt, moeten alle ambtenaren overgeschakeld zijn op het open source-programma.

It's official: Google is now bigger than Windows.

2007-07-23T14:39:00.001+02:00

Hah!

Google revenue edges past Windows'
It's official: Google is now bigger than Windows.

Tweede Kamer mogelijk naar Open Source

2007-07-23T14:36:00.001+02:00

Kijk, dit soort berichten doet een mens goed.

Automatisering Gids, Tweede Kamer niet naar Vista, overweegt open source

You are being watched. Is it big brother or "just" everybody.

2007-07-23T10:19:00.001+02:00

Even though it is over 10 years old, it is still a chilling and sobering thought, but I fear he has a point. And the only people who can do something about this are you and me. All of us, together. If the surveillance can't be stopped, at least make sure we know it is being used in a transparent way.

David Brin's Official Web Site: "The Transparent Society" (Chapter One)

iPhone vulnerable like any other browsing platform

2007-07-23T09:27:00.001+02:00

Boing Boing: Report: security flaw lets hackers pwn iPhone

The iPhone is now like three weeks out in the field and already the first exploits are available.