Frequent U.S. travelers will soon be offered RFID-embedded passports that can be read from 20 feet (ca. 6 m) away - ground travel only. This passport will cost $45. The one who develops privacy concerns may instead choose the more 'secure' model for $97 that can only be read at a distance of three inches (ca. 7,6 cm). (Source)

I can't get it: first they say there's terror everywhere and we have to tighten security measurements. That means everybody is treated like a potential terrorist. Then they're lowering border security by introducing these new passports. Not only do these passports use a technology that never was meant to identify people but to track goods (like toilet paper rolls in a supermarket). A technology that must come as an invitation for any wannabe-hacker who is hunting for any kind of personal data. And what do they do against unwanted scanning of that chip: they wrap the passport into a metal sleeve. Fabulous! Reminds me on Lübeck, Germany, where you also get a stylish aluminium sleeve for your new RFID-enabled passport. This way security is the cardholder's duty, thus making him sort of an early adopter of immature technology. If something bad happens and somebody steals your data, well, tough luck! But to make that allegedly more secure document twice as expensive than the other is just bordering on impudence.

Interesting words of Nicholas Carr, writer and former executive editor of Harvard Business Review. In short: increasing centralisation of data will eventually transform into one single computer system, thus eliminating privacy. Most people already have done the step from desktop to 'cloud' computing by using web services like Flickr and G[oogle]mail instead of desktop programs. He stresses that sensitive information of people - and companies - more and more goes into centralized systems, thus exposing more and more data to data-mining and surveillance. Eventually the collection of data is a basis for manipulating people with the help of the computer.

It's the (somewhat misinterpreted) remark about HAL, the computer of '2001 - a space odyssey' and the scary idea of people acting like computers that made me sceptic. '2001' is not a movie about the victory of technology over human beings, it's just the opposite. Man, at the peak of his technical intelligence, again becomes a murderer, thus proceeding to the next step of evolution. In fact, the machine - predominant competitor in many things - didn't win.

So I think the web won't win either. We're not just feeding our computers with our intelligence - we're feeding the web with a lot of crap, with porn, with good and bad web sites, with SPAM and everything you might think about. Does this make us dependent on all that?

Sure, we're at risk. But the risks and their reasons are manifold, it's not just because of a big system eating more and more data. And then, man is behaving bad: to all intents and purposes we're still the creatures at the beginning of '2001': ready to kill if somebody is threatening us. This is a strong power, we should not forget this.

Another book about phantasies and visions of a better future through technology. E. J. Sternberg, Williamsville North High School grad and current Brandeis University neuroscience researcher ponders over computers with conscience in his new book “Are You a Machine? The Brain, The Mind And What It Means to Be Human”. The disturbing results (I haven't read the book so I make reference to the review) are that only few has changed: apologists of artificial intelligence, neuroscience, robotics etc. continue to tell their fairy tales about conscious computers that have the intelligence of multiple brains and a virtual reality that is even more real than ever before. The escape into VR as a meaning of life? (Source)

Let's face it: does anybody still believe in this? Didn't we get any wiser? Since the origin of computers, AI and its relatives told us about super-intelligent computers and the benefits they will bring to us. There was hardly any problem that couldn't be solved by them. Sure, technology has gone a long way. But it's not the AI that changed our lives and our way to communicate but it's communication technology itself. Who will use these VR dreams but a few people when the world has to face real problems like over-population and global warming? Where are AI's answers to our recent problems? Or, less dramatic: millions of people get spammed every day. Is there any solution offered by IT visionaries to prohibit SPAM? Or what will all this artificial intelligence and consciousness be made for? If problems like this one would be way too down to earth, then you might get lost in virtual reality.

Great. It's just the beginning of the new year and I'm getting emails that are dangerous to health. The newest one lists

• e-learning
• growth prognosis
• virtual learning
• development potential
• future of learning
• protagonists
• visionaries
• Web 2.0
• Game-Based Learning
• Mash-Ups
• iGoogle
• Application Farming
• Enterprise 2.0
• Blogs
• YourMinis
• charm
• challenge
• working worlds
• learning processes
• innovative
• trend-setting
• conference
• feedback

in just a few lines. Oh thank you, SAS! This is too much for one day, I should go home.

In order to help people to make their virtual worlds or games more vivid, Stanford computer scientist Vladlen Koltun provides a neat software that creates masses of trees. Trees are well-measured objects and difficult to construct manually, so this tool is a real help for producing complex 3D data. Provided forms are ranging from naturalistic to fancyful. (Dryad homepage, Source)

Announcement: mabuse.de proudly presents: mabuse.de photographs. This is the rss-feed of a photo blog I'm providing at Aminus3, a very fine photoblog community.

By the way: folks who visit my photo blog love to comment on my photos. And I love to give responses. Feel free to do here also! Come as you are, I will understand what you're going to tell you, at least I'll try. Spammers: don't try, you'll get just filtered out. Everybody else is welcome!

Are you aged about fourty? According to hundred American employers you belong to the second most difficult groups of employees to manage. If you're younger (18-32 years), you're belonging to the group of most refractory workers ever. Of course, employers start complaining that student's expectations are way too high. But if employers don't learn how to keep their IT workers they soon will understand that refractoriness is the IT worker's new virtue. (Source)

Recipients of subsidies, receiver of fiscal relief just for being there and providing jobs, benefiting from a well-developed infrastructure, briefly speaking, being buttered up by locals, politicians, and experts, predators of our time take the money and run. Now Eastern Europe is more competitive, the grass is just greener there and a complete factory with more than 2000 employees, not forgetting more than 2000 jobs of subcontractors, is gone. Now our state government tries to get back its subsidies - but this is a lost battle, especially for those who are going to lose their jobs. Folks are still mute with rage, and management has still a good time. A very good time.

I wonder what happens, when Department of Homeland Security's Project Hostile Intent is over and ready-to-use machines and algorithms to detect microexpressions, behavioral and physiological cues and behavioral profiling as a whole will be brought into action. This is just a small step before detecting thoughtcrime, and it certainly will change people's behaviour.
While scientists and developers lend themselves to projects like this one, the belief in technological solutions for complex social / political problems will survive. But in my opinion this is just some kind of post-modern superstition. And the scare about the willingness to construct a perfectly controlled society that has lost nearly all of its civil rights is beyond my words. It will be very interesting for later generations evaluating our days - their past - if our supply of daily escapisms could prevent uprisings or if people were willing to support losing their freedom. (Source)

Another project that tries to study and then predict behaviour, this time the behaviour of hackers, done by CUBRC, a not-for-profit R&D company, along with professors from Rochester Institute of Technology, the University of Buffalo and Pennsylvania State University. We'll see. I think in the best case this will help against automated attacks with well-known patterns, prohibiting vandalism of script kiddies, if it works at all. (Source)

Sometimes you're stumbling upon things in the press and the web you can't but think you've been put into a science fiction novel, albeit a frightening one. So I'm reading about this gene2.0 company, 23andme, where you may use a so-called spit-kit to catch some of your saliva and send it to that bio-startup. For US$ 1000,- you'll get some sort of genome analysis based on half a million single nucleotide polymorphisms in order to develop a "detailed genetic profile". But it's not the biology nor the doubtful diagnostic method that annoys me.

"A lot of it is, ‘Let’s make this all more fun.’ You know, ‘Math is not fun, let’s reduce math requirements. Algorithms are not fun, let’s get rid of them. Ewww – graphic libraries, they’re fun. Let’s have people mess with libraries. And [forget] all this business about ‘command line’ – we’ll have people use nice visual interfaces where they can point and click and do fancy graphic stuff and have fun."

This is so true. Dewar's and Schonberg's article on supporting the wrong people with the wrong tools and the supremacy of library-driven software development hits the nail right on the head. (Source)

Edit: a great programmer is the exact opposite of so-called "rock star coders".

Canada's desperately looking for IT students and workers. Welcome to the club.

I just learned that the German Altweiber or Weiberfastnacht (or the term in the headline as it's used in my regional dialect) in English means "Thursday before Shrove Tuesday". Complicated! Well, basically it means getting drunk at high noon.

My "favourite" Altweiber event was 15 years ago, when I was still living in a student hostel in Bonn. Unfortunately, my rental contract was running out and I urgently tried to find someone at student services to apply for an extension of that contract. This happened at "Thursday before Shrove Tuesday" and my deadline was the next day. So I ran from office to office and I just met these ridiculously costumed women who felt unable to help me.

In the end, I moved to my girlfriend. We got married and are still living happily together :-)