So Microsoft released its brand-new product 'Surface', a small desktop that runs a desktop, which means that a specially prepared Windows PC is used for providing a digital desktop experience. You might view videos, do funny games, have some user experience somewhere between iPhone and Windows etc.

I'm not that impressed. In principle it's the old desktop metaphor, only the desktop became a bit more colourful and it looks a bit more playful. It's a consumer machine that doesn't leave the well-known paths of common GUIs. I never thought I was working in such an innovative environment, when we developed a pioneer device in 1993: one of its features included a 3D display. It was meant to break the desktop metaphor.

There is not much left to be said on the spying scandal at Deutsche Bahn, the case is clear. Thousands of Germany's railway enterprise have been spyed in sort of a dragnet, where masses of personal data have been transferred to a detective agency that has already been involved in a similar action at German Telekom. Not only was the Bahn's data protection officer left unaware of this initiative, the works council was not involved as well. Of course, representatives of Deutsche Bahn told to the public that everything was legally correct.

Legally correct - so they obviously think - is trying to intimidate the German blogger who wants to shed light on this outrageous scandal: after publishing an internal Bahn memo on the spy action, the maintainer of netzpolitik.org was receiving a letter of demand to remove the memo and any excerpts. That's the data policy of a self-proclaimed global player!

That memo is indeed dynamite - you may find it at WikiLeaks in the meantime, and even a German politician is hosting it on his web site. Let's see if Bahn lawyers try to admonish him too. (Source)

Too bad! The recent Berkman Center for Internet and Society study detests many of its contractees: it says the Internet isn't as bad as politicians and the media see it. Not even measurements against the permanent seduction of minors (which is an overrated problem according to the study), would have the desired effects. All in all a very important study with refreshing statements! It will soon disappear in the poison cabinet. (Source)

A very cool tool for simulating the effect of Tilt-Shift lenses: TiltShiftMaker. Recommended.

At least once in ten years somebody tries to prove that programming languages are obsolete and the future is for non-programmers. Every guy with a sort of technology epiphany tries to ring the death bell on classic programming. No comment. (Source)

Nobody would think uncozy republics in eastern Europe are capable of maintaining newly gained virtues like freedom of speech; otherwise one would be bothered about Latvia's fight on freedom of speech, when an economist got arrested because he dared to criticize the policy of his government. But South Korea is no better, as the blogger Minerva obviously transgressed the common sense. Spreading of rumours seems to be the next big thing after throwing bombs and copying music, so to say.

As of January 1, Germany's government has access to Internet connection data of any user in order to be well prepared in the fight against terror. If you've been at this web site at least once, you know the author's attitude on this. After terrifying the public through bad terrorists, the newest law initiative aims for the fight against child pornography. I think that child pornography is forbidden in every country, in Germany even the accidental request for such a web site is criminal. But for our government that is not enough and now representatives of our administation are discussing with German ISPs on how to install filter in order to prevent users from access to illegal sites.

Of course it's not against child porn, its just another means for filtering the web. Today we filter the already criminal sites, tomorrow we'll filter anything that doesn't fit in our stuff. What happens to false positives is another question for the one who gets caught erroneously. (Source)

There are some reasons why my posting frequence slowed a bit down in the last months. Many of the IT news I've read in these weeks seemed to me like a replay of yesteryear's news. No big deal about this: while experts still wonder why women still don't want to have a career in IT, others gave a surprisingly simple answer already months ago: it just doesn't work out. No matter how big the personal sacrifices are, women still experience the glass ceiling in IT jobs that hinders them having success, and they make - of course - less money than their male collegues too. That's the big topic now and so it will be next year. And again you will find intelligent and not so intelligent explanations of that simple truth.
The other big thing is the crisis. Or call it stagnation. I mean: where's the next big thing? It's not Web2.0, that's for sure. All big players are staring on the crisis like a rabbit on the snake and hope that the crisis will be over soon. I don't know more about it than everybody else, but I guess it will not! It would be really nice to see some cool inventions, something new that we could play with, but I think it's not going to happen next year.
So I'm taking photos. After my short crash course in surviving German Christmas fairs I just want to wish you a merry Christmas (or whatever you celebrate). And be assured, you'll find something new at this place here and then, but more frequently this will happen at eclectic imaging. Enjoy!

Just became a member of the JPG magazine community. A nice and easy opportunity for me to link to some of my photographies. Don't forget my other blog, eclectic imaging, at aminus3.

Interesting New York Times article on ignorance of the human factor in the mathematical models of risk as an important reason of the recent financial crisis. Missing quality of data and incomplete models are certainly part of the drama (a 'bullshit in - bullshit out' scenario), but can't be the only nor the main reason. What we experience here are the fruits of a collapsing market that reinvested its profits from real economy during the last 20 years that started running hot. The profits were taken from the diminishing middle class by means of offshoring, streamlining, and permanent optimizing. Enormous amounts of money flushed back into the market and were a major reason for the bubbles that are now bursting. The good money so created highly-sensitive financial products that were only survivable in boom times. If only a few parameters, such as the base rate, changed, the overly optimistic models played havock.