Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office hosts a page about the so-called "Militante Gruppe" (militant gang). Whoever visited that page left his IP address and got lined up in police's sights. Providers were asked for contact data of the surfing users.

Is it now better to avoid Germany's gouvernmental web sites to prevent being taken for a possible terrorist or violent criminal? Which search terms should one avoid for not becoming a suspected person? Is it suspicious to use an anonymous proxy now? To have a firewall at home? To have an own web site? (Source1, Source2, Source3 (German language only))

At last we're celebrating our first party of class 10b at Lanu-Gymnasium in Berlin Marzahn. Your beloved Madscientist is the big nose guy in the middle row on the right side and thinking about fooling his new classmates.

That's easy: because we were requested to bring along our own music, there's nothing I'd prefer than doing that! Okay folks, class 10b was during my golden C64 era and soon I got enthusiastic about its sound capabilities (graphics of that machine was so-so). To listen to my then favourites you just have to:

Install a SID-Player (that's an emulator of the C64's sound hardware). Here's a Mac, a Linux and Windows version.

Go to Ankman's C64 SID page and browse through the music. One of my absolute favs was the highly challenging Parallax theme, followed by The Last V8 tune. Enjoy!

The Local Court in Berlin forbids saving post-session user data for Germany's ministry of justice's web servers. Doing common things like saving user's IP address in logfiles my become illegal in Germany. This could be useful for avoiding bad jokes like this one. The meaning for private web site owners is not yet forseeable. (Source (German))

The German Work Group on Data Retention (Arbeitskreis Vorratsdatenspeicherung) starts a campaign for an "anonymous Internet" and asks webmasters to omit saving IP addresses in logfiles. This group was also accuser in the lawsuit above. I can't see any sense in this campaign. It's not the logfiles that are bad but gouvernmental stalking of user profiles. People have to learn how to protect their privacy by themselves and to become sensible about how and where leaving their traces. What sense would an Internet make that is divided into 'good' servers that don't save your IP and 'bad' ones? Also, proposed solutions to track users by their e-mail address (e.g. to avoid vandalism in wikis and forums) instead of filtering IP addresses is nothing but nonsense. (Source (German))

China arrests cyber-dissident Lu Gengsong. (Source)

Is this Big Brother EU's hour of birth? This investigation by an El País reporter during the European ministers of Interior and Justice was answered with "No" by Minister of Internal Administration Rui Pereira. "But" he added, "there have to be limits for freedom".

Uh, thanks for saying this frankly, Sir! (Source (German))

IRTF is rethinking the Internet' routing architecture to be prepared for the billions of users to come and to remain routing tables maintainable. On debate is how backbone routers operate. Recently, they're exchanging routing information via BGP, the Border Gateway Protocol. BGP routing tables are growing fast what will result in growing costs for everyone in the end. To strengthen its efforts, IRTF has revived the Routing Research Group. One of its interesting problems deals with IP addresses.

Toni Li, a well-know designer of routers at various network manufacturers, says:

The IP address has both the identification of the node and the location of the node. The question becomes: Can we separate the identification from the locator semantics, and can we still run an Internet with that kind of architecture?

• The Locator/ID Separation Protocol (LISP) describes a method for splitting Internet addresses into endpoint identifiers and routing locators through the use of tunnel routers.


• The Six/One proposal proposes provider-dependent IP addresses given by service providers, while hosts would use addressing spaces from all providers on an interchangeable basis.

Dark mood at a conference workshop at the Institute for a Competitive Workforce: participants were doubtlful about America's ability to produce skilled IT workers and to remain competitive in the future. For Microsoft's Fred Tipson the situation is 'dire' and Siemens Foundation's James Whaley said:

"We can no longer assume the talent pipeline will be here."

One could say: good, it's time that other countries (like my one) will take a leading role in the future (pertained to IT). However, I won't say so. At least not for Europe, where the Bologna process ruins academic education. (Source)

...it all started so well. Your nationalist-marxist-buddhist regime under strict isolation from the rest of the world just slipped through the world's radar, because 1962 we were troubled with Cold War and Birma was just far away from everything. Purporting to be sort of socialist republic was a brilliant idea: in the Wesern world nobody expected from socialist states but to treat its people like prisoners; it was their reason of state and folks like you at the back of beyond could well hide beyond socialist heavyweights and fool us all.

How much money from USSR did you encash for claiming to be a socialist republic? I'm pretty sure things went exactly like in some african dictatorships: suppress your people, put a cap upon ethnic unrests, deny all types of development and open a swiss bank account. Was it so? Wasn't that a great time?

Unfortunately, though your policy in the early 70s made several educated Burmese people leave their country, the rest of your population just wasn't stupid enough - you almost had to change your paradigms, but the next putsch put things back in order for you. As usual, you found the inner enemy for the 1988 crisis (Ne Win's daughter and grandchildren) and sentenced them to death, or better, Cold War is over, put them under house arrest.

Saw Maung, it must be said, for you surely was way too sentimental. Okay, he followed your traditions and crushed the opposition, but, folks!, promising and executing democratic elections in 1990 was definitely a big mistake! Just imagine: in 1990 all your former socialist friends were just vanished and lots of countries tried to become democracies. Claiming to do so got you in a tight spot, because people from everywhere were watching! How could you!

Than Shwe, your poor copy of an enlightened military dictator with appeals to sort of Burmese glasnost, surely isn't your darling any longer: I'm sure that the knuckles of some of you turned white when he was extending his tenure. What do you want to do now? Ah, wait, now I know! You're doing what you're best at: let him wear out in fighting against democrats, monks, everybody, let him appear as world's complete asshole and after some fights then implement just another general officer! A new man for difficult times, bright and shiny, with new medals at the chest, perhaps a little bit younger... Yeah, that's it! Now I understand completely.

You lunatics. Your people will sweep you away, one day.

The good news: if you're young, you'll get higher start salaries in IT jobs. Young IT workers are much sought after by the industry and there's a 5% salary increase over last year's level (average salary of $53,051 this year).

The bad news: if you're in the middle of your career, chances are high to get outsourced or laid off. The same companies who moan that there are too few experienced IT forces are demanding for young people and relatively cheap foreign workers. Since companies are not interested in constant training and retaining of incumbent workers, young people have to bring in knowledge and 'flexibility'. (What happened to life-long learning? Oh, it's privatized and you have to pay your exams by yourself, I see.)

Even worse, if you belong to these demanded young people: some day, you'll get (too) old, too! (Source. The article describes the status quo in the US, but I guess the underlying phenomenon is international.)

One way of viewing these trends is that the terrorists have won. They're making us change our society to counteract, not what terrorists are doing, but what they're threatening to do.

Richard Clayton, computer security researcher at the University of Cambridge who is part of the OpenNet Initiative, which tracks Internet surveillance and filtering practices (Source)

Eva Herman: Kultfigur für Katholiken (Cult Figure For Catholics).

No. Definitely not.

Two Nobel Prizes for German scientists in two days have made our politicians praise the merits of our scientific research. Indeed, the Nobel laureates Peter Grünberg (together with France's Albert Fert) in physics and Gerhart Ertl in chemistry did a great job and deserve all respect entitled to a Nobel Prize winner.

But: whoever has or had some working experience in scientific jobs in Germany knows that circumstances aren't nearly as rosy as described by Mr. Ertl, who told to the press that he never had any problems in performing his research and that he cannot listen to the ubiquitous moaning about missing money and chances in German research any longer.

It's not a coincidence that both scientists don't work at universities: Ertl works for Max Planck Society, Grünberg for Helmholtz Association, both organisations are dedicated to basic research (in contrast to Fraunhofer Gesellschaft that is more application-oriented). Additionally, one must consider that a Nobel Prize winner is honoured for something he has done several decades ago. There is no evidence for paradisic conditions at German universities in these days, the reverse is true.

The enduring brain drain in Germany provides for a difficult situation for the remaining scientists. Because of Germany's special support system for basic research done by the German Research Foundation (DFG) (most basic research here has to be supported by them because only few companies are willing to invest in basic science), the need for German scientists is ungrantable since many of them already have left the country. So Germany is falling behind in many important disciplines, escpecially biotechnology and information technology.

The Bologna Process and its development turns German universities inside out. Cutting back graduations to a low-level bachelor and providing a master's degree only for a small 'best of' selection of students won't provide for masses of future Nobel Prize winners. Instead, German students for the most part are qualified for 'academic' jobs in the industry but not for big science. Eventually to study in Germany recently means to have enough money: now our universities rake in usually 500,- Euros fee per semester - and we don't have grant programs yet that are comparable to these in the US. So pay more for less education: a whole generation of students is taken for a ride and most of them don't even notice because most protests against tuition fees just withered away.

In contrast to claims for "excellence" and support for scientific "elite" there's no room for elite research on German universities any longer. The amount of 1.9 billion Euros German gouvernment plans to invest in several universities have to reach till 2011. This will be less than Stanford's budget during a five year term.

I remember a quote from my study years that said: The good ones are leaving. Those who were studying biology with emphasis on genetics (and wanted to continue their research after getting their diploma) usually went to the US or Japan. The transformation of computer science to a mere service-oriented discipline has been lamented by me in several postings. Considering science as just a tool for further utilization, denying scientific curiosity, making scientific research exclusive for established networks only while blaring out hymns of praise about German science is nothing but window dressing and can't be swept away by the merits of two Nobel Prize winners.

University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee assistant professor of information studies Thomas Haigh gives lectures in computer history and shows us that yesterday's problems are not too far away from ours today.

Another interesting repository is IEEE's History Center.

as of now Mabuse Laboratories are baking back again!

Attractive insights into the Internet's structure is done by researchers of the University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute: they sent a ping to every know IP address and got a breathtaking map of all allocated Internet addresses (Source, Details).

Some court decisions that happened this week that exemplarily show how political developments in the name of legal protection for children, competition law, and, of course, war on terror will cut civil rights stealthily.

• A web site (typical porn portal with several links to adult sites) has been banned because it didn't provide an age verification system (AVS) compliant with German laws.
• The German Court of Justice decided yesterday in a legal proceedings against a German adult hoster who has been accused by a competitor because of the defendant's insufficient AVS. Both companies were struggling against each other for years. Company A uses the so-called Postident procedure, that allows personal identification of natural persons, carried out by employees of Deutsche Post AG (Germany's snailmail provider). If one wants you to use Postident to prove that you're above 18 years, you have to go (physically!) to the next post office and show your passport in order to get an affirmation of your age.
  Company B doesn't use Postident but the passport number and a small bank transaction (like the one Paypal does when one wants to verify his bank account). Company A considered this a competitive distortion, accused Company B and has now finally won. Company B's AVS is way too simple, judges say.
  If you're living in a western country and not in Germany then I'm sure you don't know what I'm talking about. In short: German lawgivers and judges treat every web site that can be seen in Germany in obedience to German law. In their eyes, every adult site must have an AVS as prescribed in Germany. Just because foreign companies are outside the access of German executive forces, no further legal action is taken. Company B's protest, claiming that foreign companies have competitive advantages in Germany because they won't use the elaborate Postident procedure, has been declined by the judges. In the end, according to German law, every adult site that can be accessed in Germany and that doesn't use an authorised AVS is considered illegal.
• The German FSM, an "organisation for the voluntary self-control of the internet" celebrated its 10th birthday. One of their self-imposed tasks is the establishment of a G-rated Internet by enforcing AVSs and acting upon politicians through heavy lobbying. Cleaning the Internet from filth for them is the problem of this century. Even harmlessnesses like Second Life for them is a big challenge that urgently needs regulation in order to protect minors from bad influence.
• In a recent court decision one of Germany's Internet provider is forced to blacklist free porn sites like porntube. This case has some history: some weeks ago, a German porn producer (Company C) considered AVS-free access to international porn sites a competitive distortion. Trying to make foreign porn inaccessible they addressed IVD (a German professional organization of video store owners) and KJM (an influential organization for legal protection for children and young persons). Since Company C didn't get any response, they then addressed Internet providers directly and demanded to ban some of the most important international competitors of Company C, threating with legal measures. All but one Internet providers plonked that letter into the bin. The remaining provider P updated its blacklist and blocked several porn sites (sex.com among others) for its customers. Of course, this caused much confusion and some days later provider P made the sites accessible again. Company C immediately sued provider P for performance and won. Now provider P has to block several porn sites again!

These events are just the beginning of further developments to cut our civil rights and I think they are not exclusive for the German political landscape. But it's not only about porn: "Online monitoring" measures were passend in Austria recently, and, most likely, will be established in Germany, soon. Where will this lead to? Gouvernmental proxy servers filtering all our Internet traffic and protecting us from bad influence - as in China? I would be interested in other people's experiences about all this and potential measurements of concerned companies to protect themselves from over-protective gouvernments.

Rain in the early evening on a cold day in autumn makes our plants wear costumes made of cristals. Time to wrap them up for winter.

Interestingly, some tender ferns do really well so far. Temperatures dropped to 4°C (39.2°F) at night.

Before the birthday of Mad Scientist is over, I just want to recommend a visit to a fine website presenting the work of Antonie van Leeuwenhoek who was also born on October, 24.

So we're comparable to Spiderman's MPAA rating. Not bad.

Remember your latest job interview?

If you're living in Eastern Europe, China, or India I guess they primarily wanted to know everything about your technical skills: did you ever code a hardware driver? Are you experienced in Windows DDK? Do you have some assembler knowledge?

If you're living in the Western world chances are high that these basic skills are getting less important. Soft skills are the not so new kid on the block and this time they get better paid than your DirectX experience. A recent report by Foote Partners shows that employers pay higher premiums for 'noncertified tech skills' that have a more conceptual nature. So the overall number of IT jobs in the U.S. is rising but the jobs are changing. Software engineers, computer scientists, system analysts, and IS managers show the largest job growth, while the number of programmers and support specialists declines. (Source)

What does that mean to the computer enthusiast next door? Try to separate your desire to do something creative (i.e. programming) from making money. You'll get frustrated seeing 'e-commerce experts' getting higher bonuses than you who had written the code of the system. Don't waste your time and money hunting for expensive certificates (unless your exmployer pays for them) - they'll get outdated, soon. Instead, become a 'software engineer' or even an 'e-commerce expert' or a 'manager' and strengthen your programming skills in something useful, perhaps an Open Source project. Just my 2 cents.

BTW: you guys from Eastern Europe, China, and India: same will happen to you, soon. See you again in five to ten years.

If you belong to the so-called Generation Y (I will call so the generation born between the early 1980s and the late 1990s), you are in the focus of elder experts. The good thing about you is, they say, you are arriving on the job market familiar with up-to-the-minute technology skills, but, this is the bad news, you're lacking in other areas, such as business communication skills. Employers hate this.

What did happen? The number of freshmen studying a computer related discipline has fallen by incredible 70% since 2000 (in the US). This has been discussed here, too. Though technology has become an important part of everybody's life, young people no longer want to switch from a tech lifestyle to a career in technology. While being a computer geek was something new in former decades, this is nothing special anymore. Jobs in IT science or industry are missing that smell of rocket science: they have become commonplace, if not banal. Kate Kaiser, associate professor of IT (and one of Lee's instructors) at Marquette University thinks that "this generation is so familiar with technology, they see it as an expected part of life" thus declining it as a basis for a whole career. Together with the Society for Information Management she's trying to change this view. I'll keep observing their studies.

A big plus for you, young people, is your knowledge of recent technologies as the common Office products and web languages like Ruby. Also your ability to connect or network quickly is greatly appreciated by many consultants and employers.

But now we're coming to your deficits. You're lacking communication, basic math and writing skills and even "critical thinking". Some managers and academics now why: there are too many technical gadgets, too much instant messaging, too much SMS that are distracting from the important things. So all that networking stuff is OK as long as you're using complete sentences the grown-ups will understand. (I can't resist but ask which manager really wants people who are good in "critical thinking". If you're one of these, you'll get my vote!)

Growing up in families where the last generation of people dividing responsibilities the classic way (father works in the company, mom cares for house and family) experienced the limits of traditional family living. Companies won't hire employees for a lifetime any longer, salaries didn't keep pace with rising living costs. Many families in the US (and in other western countries) are overindebted. Having a job in the industry no longer guarantees wealth and security. Instead, you have to live corporate identity and to be aware of getting fired because of ongoing restructuring the company. No wonder that modern people want to have a better work/life balance and that many of them are rather sceptical about their pretended bright future. Working in a company doesn't need to be the sense of life any longer but is just another aspect of life among other things. This is certainly too much for conservative minds, and the imagination of people who won't meet their bosses face-to-face seems strange to them. But some companies are already adopting to recent employees' expectations. That's what modern technology was made for: to make life easier. Why should sitting at your desk in a cubicle be better than a flexible time schedule that allows working online from home? What reason - other than overcome traditional concepts of labor - is there for seeing your boss every day face-to-face? Wouldn't leaving the workplace at the end of work be better than leaving at the end of the day? Sure: but only if you don't get some extra work when you're done!

We're living in a time of transition where working conditions are still quite traditional when it comes to your claims on security, income, your rights as an employee etc. On the other side, companies are transforming rapidly and continuously while expecting from you to follow each new direction the company takes. It's not so long ago I've read an article about employees of a medium-sized IT company sympathizing with their former employers who had fired them. Yes, that was the generation before you, young people. Don't be so foolish, please! These times are over soon and I'm completely fine with that. So are you? (Source)