My favourite blog reports the slow death of just another corporate blog. Also like this one. What does this blog and website pandemia mean to us? Perhaps to stay humble: After you, please.

Imagine an interview with the managing director of a company that recently acquired a celebrated german Web2.0 community web site. The managing director tells us that this web site might have had some problems in the past but they've learnt from their mistakes and everything's fine now. Even the site's notorious security bugs were fixed that good, that even hackers from Germany's Chaos Computer Club (CCC) were not able to hack the site. If you know Germany's web-two-oh market, you already know that I'm talking about the student portal site StudiVZ that has been acquired by a Holtzbrinck subsidiary company.
Within a few hours the web site's blog has been defaced, showing a counterstatement to that interview. It's not sure whether CCC members or sympathizer had done it, but if a simple-minded manager boasts with abstract terms like "security" and "hack-proof" then this would be nothing else but an invitation. They'll never learn.

Sometimes they become warlords.

What makes a web master and owner of a web site a web activist? Hosting a site? Providing some content? Fighting Spam? Nothing at all?

There's still no kind of advertisement on this site! Okay, there are links to companies, but I think it's okay (and fair) to link to the people who coded this blog software. But there's no link to Amazon, Google ads or similar. No AdSense, no SEO, no copy & paste orgies, no stolen WikiPedia stuff. Maybe you find the content on this web site kind of boring, but it's true mabuse and we don't try to make money with your clicks. Old-fashioned?

So I got this brand-new IBM/Lenovo T60 Laptop (a "gift" from my employee) and installed Visual Studio 2005 plus some additional SDKs and tools. This took almost an hour to install and I remember the old times when I had my Turbo Pascal 3.0 on a 5 1/4" disk and had virtually nothing to install, I just could use it. Couldn't say my programs were worse in these days than they are today. But I have to stop this now or I won't end praising the wonderful world of old-fashioned straight software and complaining about overblown harddrive-eating monsters.

This is my favourite start of a book that has never been written. I don't know where I read it first, it's not from me, but I have to write it down here.

"To accelerate things a little bit he obtained a gun and shot himself in the head."

Moving to a new domicile is a teacher in humility. Consider cardboard boxes, those boxes you put all your things in. There are good and bad boxes, most of them being very bad. We took relatively cheap ones and most of them failed under weigth of our books (the Mabuse library consists of several hundreds of books). Since almost 50% of all our boxes went havoc we now know that there is no better cardboard box than that offered by transportation companies. They're thick, higher than broad, they won't bend and they're virtually indestructible. Don't buy those cheap ones! You've been warned!

It's always been a special thing to be a German. Our ancestors ruined the Roman empire, we demolished the holy land in the time of the crusades and depredated Constantinople, we fought against and than later we destroyed Europe and million lives during two world wars.
Now it's about so-called killer games. In order to protect our youth, german politicians try to ban censored software completely. A lot of articles have been written about the pros and cons of this measure and I don't want to sum it up here.
Dear politicians: aggression needs more than a "killer game". There's a big transition from playing a game to killing people. Blaming games for the recent school attacks is just another example for the superficial treatment of a complex topic and nothing but a populist measure.
An interesting amendment of the proposed law to ban aggressive games would be a complete prohibition of rental of indexed / censored movies, including porn and action flicks. Goodbye, video stores (at least those for adults only)!
O-kay: what's next? When will they control people's mail for unwanted material?

Edit: Here's a very good (german) blog discussing this topic.

Perhaps it was the SL model that gave a brilliant consultant the idea that it would be a cool idea for Mercedes Benz to have a branch office in Second Life. Like every other company has its subsidiary there. Considering racing games way cooler than a 3D model of some buildings and cars, I've never felt encouraged to buy the car that I've driven in virtual reality. But maybe I just don't get it.
"Oh Lord, don't you buy me a Mercedes Benz..."

Sometimes I'm just astounded. The search term "virtual printer" gets listed on the first Google result page. Pretty steep! This software had its last update three years ago!

Alcatel-Lucent sues Microsoft for breaching their MP3 patents and wins. This decision will come expensive to Microsoft because they have to pay an absurd amount of 1.5 billion $ - though they licensed MP3 from German research institute Fraunhofer.
Lessons learned: forget all these emails with their "get rich quickly" receipes. All you have to do is to invest in software patents. You may use six main strategies:

• Be quaggy: invent a "useful machine" that may save the world, heal the sick ones, brings peace on earth.


• The submarine trick: claim as many patents as possible and use dummies to conceal your patent strategy.


• The World Formula Patent: Make your patent specification as complex as possible and create freedom for large-scale interpretation.


• Avoid any definite solution. Be as indefinite as possible.


• Don't use terms that everybody else uses. Be creative and call a keyboard a "haptic device". This will keep your patent undercover and you can strike back when somebody really invents the keyboard.


• Let your machine do everything to virtually solve any problem in the world.

...is Firefox, of course! But did you know that it's also the best porn browser (link is work-safe)? To be honest, I didn't know until now. You live and learn.

This is Don Alphonso's recommendation for Shanghai's stock exchange today. The NEMAX, to be recalled, was Germany's celebrated stock index for New Economy companies that deceased in 2004. Financial scandals aren't a privilege for the Western world only, so if they want the full Monty, they should have a dance like we had a few years ago.

It's been a matter of time. A platform that has been recently recovered by big companies and their public relations agencies now attracts jurists' attention. Minors visiting virtual brothels might become a serious problem for SL maintainers if the site owners don't offer protective measurements. Accoring German law, this would mean distribution of pornography to minors and this is actionable. Additionally, having sex with avatars that appear like animals, or children, would be a crime as well. Even if an avatar looks like an animal (though being a complete fantasy character) would be harmful if it would have, say, testicles and it is using them. This is a rich field of activity for prosecutors and you better watch your avatars - if you're playing SL in Germany! (Source: Interview (German) with jurist St. Mathé from Hamburg)

It's been a matter of time. A platform that has been recently recovered by big companies and their public relations agencies now attracts jurists' attention. Minors visiting virtual brothels might become a serious problem for SL maintainers if the site owners don't offer protective measurements. Accoring German law, this would mean distribution of pornography to minors and this is actionable. Additionally, having sex with avatars that appear like animals, or children, would be a crime as well. Even if an avatar looks like an animal (though being a complete fantasy character) would be harmful if it would have, say, testicles and it is using them. This is a rich field of activity for prosecutors and you better watch your avatars - if you're playing SL in Germany! (Source: Interview (German) with jurist St. Mathé from Hamburg)

Lots of excitement these days in German blogtown: whether it's okay to join PR campaigns, to have commercials on one's web site (or blog), or to keep it straight and avoid any commercial purposes.
Just a few thoughts: in the US, where all blogs are originally from, by all means it's been usual to blog for or against something. Websites and blogs dedicated to presidential candidates ("Democratic Girl") are common. It's not easy to say when a blogger keeps authentic and when she's just doing her job, advertizing for this and that. Perhaps this is founded in the opinion making nature of blogs: it's all opinion and that's why we love - or hate - other's blogs and web sites. But when is one opinion more justified than another? What if somebody is paid for having an opinion?
When you start reading a blog and you stick with it for a while you'll get to know the author, his commentators, his friends and foes. The blog becomes part of your daily life and you're becoming part of the blog if you start writing comments. When does this get disturbed? It's not the link to amazon, nor ebay. It's not even the banner, nor the popup (though this can be annoying, but you can do something against this). You'll feel betrayed if you think the author's trying to fool you - then she's losing her credibility.
To fool her readers could hardly be a blogger's target. She'll get response from her commenters and correct the course or she'll ignore the critics and go down. After all, if some of the more-or-less famous bloggers decide to go commercial then this is not an evil thing per se. People's reactions will show if it was a good decision and if the author has lost credibility or has not. If a blogger tries to fool me she has lost me forever. (Yes, it's an emotional thing.)

BTW: mabuse.de always has refused to do advertizing for anything other than for mabuse.de. No, it didn't make us rich (in money). But if we would bother you with pop-ups, banners and all that nasty stuff, we wouldn't get richer, would we?

Japanese people are different. Those living in Düsseldorf, too. It's early spring today, the Doc walks around the corner and is listening to the birds' twitter. I'm living in one of Düsseldorf's quieter districts, so everyone is full of peace and happiness. But not this mother with her two children who are wearing masks to protect them from - well, what? Maybe she has read about the flu raging through the city but today it's all sunshine and warmth. At least mommy's son moved his mask over his chin and was breathing fresh air.

I'll see them further first! Germany's private TV broadcaster RTL disposed one of its better TV shows ("Bones") without noticing the public. Any trace of it is lost on RTL's web site as if it had never existed. Instead, they show old "CSI" episodes. I'm not opposed to CSI, but to interrupt a new TV show the cold way and to rehash the old stuff without further notice isn't okay. I'm pissed.

Germany's employers, confronted with wage claims of 6.5%, returned, these demands were "not contemporary". D'oh. I guess they are right.

The other day, at the administration console:
Sometimes I wished, I could do it this way.

Remember the old days - if you're more than, say 10 years in IT business? Perhaps you've been starting in the 60s and been wearing a white frock. Or, some years later, you've been inventing the first mini computer or writing one-of-a-kind software. Or you experienced the home computer era in the 80s and had one of these fabulous 8 bit machines that taught you Basic, Forth, or Assembler. Maybe you bought a 16 bit computer and felt mighty when rendering your first computer graphics or playing with your synthesizer. Or you started in the 90s and realized that computers have to be connected to unleash their power and that the Internet was going to change the way you are experiencing the world and all the information distributed there.
It was exciting. It was new. It was fun. You've been a pioneer and, mostly, you've been one of a few. You could make things possible because you knew more about these geeky things than anyone else in your company, your circle of friends, or your family.
What did change since then? Where has the fun gone?
I've written in this post about the dwindling attractiveness of IT (or, more precisely, computer and information science and the jobs related to these the industry has to offer). Obviously, the problems already start in school. Sometimes I'm listening to young people lamenting their IT courses and complaining about their teachers. But I don't think it's the teachers but the curriculum. IT is a school subject like any other and there's nothing special about it because today computers are everywhere and writing short programs or learning how to write letters with Word is quite boring. This kind of teaching won't make the next Turing.
Later in the job, many IT people experience the firefighter syndrome: instead of developing new systems and being creative, all work is about fixing bugs, resetting passwords, installing service packs and make the machines work. Since there is no next big thing waiting behind the corner, nowaday's IT jobs mean caring about the standards. The software market is widely saturated and you may get tools for virtually every kind of problem. Great if you're needing and using tools. Lame if you want to develop someting new. Sometimes revenants of past eras are tumbling through the market (the newest one is Web2.0), but neither the jobs nor the people keep their promises because the is nothing substantially new you might find. But chasing trends is no fun and soon you'll just get older and younger people will take over.
So, how does the fun come back? I don't have the nostrum. Sometimes it's a nifty little tool you might have developed and you're publishing on your web site. People's reaction on tools the have searched for is often satisfying for a developer. Maybe you want to share your knowledge with other people: so get vocal and write about it. If your gainful occupation is just for earning money, make the most of your talents during your spare time. You are defining the deadlines, your plans and goals and reaching them is always rewarding. (Source)

When you were a boy in your teenage days (and maybe later on), you might have had a kind of "quality measurement" for girls. A "10" would have been the absolute eye-catcher with all attributes that made your imagination work, whereas lesser gradings were reserved for the "normal" girls.
Now this system becomes scientific! Scientists from Oz developed a system that does the measurement for you. No need anymore to leave the computer and meet the girls: just scan through your image sources and watch the attractive ladies you're never going to meet! Gee.

This week's troll cup goes to... A.T. Kearney! Their study tells us that IT is the brake for trust's growth. Woah! And their nostrum is... outsourcing and offshoring, right!!! Go figure, I never thought that it was that easy to get back into the headlines. And every press fool quotes this crap without further comments. Unbelievable.

Remember when off-shoring was the big thing in IT? Now global players are shooting their own feet, because talented and well-educated tekkies are running out in the countries big IT companies invested in. Now they go into the hinterlands to find cheaper workers than in the capitals. Good luck, folks! Even chinese hinterlands will be filled with workers who want real wages.
I don't know if the target countries in central and eastern Europe will profit from these developments in the long run. Companies that invest very fast will leave the scene when worker's earnings get too big for them. Then again it's rather hard for domestic companies to attract workers because most of them will follow the money (who wouldn't?) and most talent will be bound to the big players.
The whole madness is best expressed by a word of HP's Sasha Bezuhanova: "If you build your economic model only around low-cost labor, you have a three- or four-year window where you have an advantage." Companies of former times had several years to decades to develop themselves - how could an employee plan his life when everything changes every few years? How long will the boom in these countries last until the common chain reactions will make corporations move to the next country? (Source)

The 'Future Lab' Fraunhofer is praised in this Spiegel Online article. Top statement: German Fraunhofer Society is the top German scientific corporation where creative geniuses are questing for innovative products between the poles of science and economics. Fraunhofer is described in contrast to the Max Planck Society where fundamental research is usually done. According to this, Max Planck scientists (among others who do basic research in general) are called 'sophisticated' and 'high-browed' and only the Fraunhofer way is contemporary and promising.

Just a few comments from a has-been-scientist who worked in a scientific institution that was part of the Helmholtz Association and that has been taken over by Fraunhofer.

First: nothing against "Research of Practical Utility". MP3 is a tremendous success and the only reason why they didn't get rich was that they were just too early when releasing MP3. Establishing contacts to the industry and working together with professionals can be extremely inspiring, and to be a part of a great project that finds its way to happy customers is amazing.

But: there is a reason why Germany has produced only a handful of Nobel Prize candidates in the last years. Fraunhofer isn't interested in scientific glory: money is the big thing and only third-party funds do matter. If a student wants to do her thesis she has to prove the economical value of that work. But maybe there isn't any. Under this circumstances, my own thesis wouldn't have been possible. Additionally, a lot of important research disappears behind the iron curtain of patents and theis holders.

In the meantime, students and scientists became sort of scientific merchants who have to streamline and polish their work to make it interesting for possible investors. Why should somebody want to do this? Scientific careers are paid as bad as they always were. If a scientist in Germany wants to stay in the German scientific community (without becoming a businessman à la Fraunhofer), she may do so for 10-12 years, because there is an upper limit in years she might work in public scientific institutions (including public universities). Maybe not everybody is supposed to be a great scientist who wants to work in the university, but to urge people to go the Fraunhofer way is - IMHO - the best method to make them leave their country because they are not compatible to common sense. This is plain disgusting and proves once more the influence of our neoliberal terriers.

Now we know it: British people don't know how to use the Internet correctly! Especially Scots are completely unaware about the possibilities the web has to offer and spend long hours with useless 'wilfing' instead of going to work or doing useful things. Shame on you, boys: In many cases, wilfing means 'porning'. Of course, in the end we can the evergreen white-bread advice to get off the computer and to do something useful. Roger that, I'll think about a wilfing business model.

Google Maps is a really fine application. It even tells you how to get from Düsseldorf to New York, NY. Hmmm... there's the Atlantic Ocean between these cities... No problem! Just follow step 35!

Just watched Fritz Lang's last silent movie "Frau im Mond" ("By Rocket to the Moon", "Girl / Woman in the Moon"): a wild story about true heroes, true love, greed, a nutty professor, and the German moon rocket! Lovingly done special effects, my favourites are the straps on the ceiling to be grapped at zero gravity.

Another must-have for security administrators. Will order one for each application I have to manage.

What makes people want telling everybody what they are doing now? Sites like twitter.com where users tell others what nobody wants to know, Justin Kan's website of his daily life where he virtually shares everything that happens to him make even bloggers writing about themselves just a back number.

Consistent to this, a report compiled by the Accelerating Studies Foundation describes the Metaverse as a digital wonderland, where all kind of electrical 3D-gadgets do the total immersion and users are writing their lifelogs. Their roadmap consists of all the geeky buzzwords you've ever heard of.

This doen't push my button. I don't want to tell everybody what I'm thinking now. I want to reflect on my thoughts and to present them in an ordered manner. I don't want to look at a video instead of remembering things that were important to me. I sometimes want to forget things that were not that convenient and especially I don't want to see other's unreflected thoughts.

Does the Metaverse make the world a better place? Do we learn more about ourselves or is it just another escapism toy that constrains our view of us? (Source)

I don't want to raise this guy's popularity even further by calling his name. Obviously, he was mentally ill, long before he run riot. Just two short comments: when looking at technorati we see more than 5000 blog entries commenting on that guy thus tranforming his amok run into an act of attention terrorism. It will be interesting to observe the conclusions drawn from this misdeed and its medial analysis. Then, friends of arms: a madman without guns is better than a madman with guns. Please reconsider this simple truth. My deepest sympathies to the victims and their families and friends.

Another article about the IT job situation in the U.S. Similar to the German situation, where economy revives and the gouvernment claims ideal conditions for IT employees. Especially students are in the focus, because their job decision will constitute the job market's condition the of the next years.
One may observe the familiar rituals of employers (and politicians), complaining about free jobs in the industry employees are unwilling to fill. This usually leads to requests for visas or green cards for foreign workers who should fill the gaps. And if the gouvernment doesn't want to support this, industry even persuades women to enter the IT job market.
Foreigners, young people, women... the low wages troopers are on the run. Instead of making IT jobs more attractive to everybody and to give work to unemployed IT workers, industry tries to go low-cost thus saving a costly off-shore operation. Why going to China or India if young people of the same culture area will do it for the same money.
Just my opinion: this will fall to the ground. Without a good reason (good wages, good career chances, job/life balance etc.), young people and especially women will continue to resist starting an IT career.

This interesting article descripes changing job descriptions of developers and software engineers. According to that, the one-person-does-all developer is as dead as the 'real' developer, as coding will be done in far-off countries. Instead, architects and people intimate with business logic will replace coders as we know them.

At least for big international companies, I think, this will come true. Possible cultural bareers aren't that diffcult to overcome in technical professions. After all, it's mathematics and money, languages everybody knows. This change doesn't even mean that there will be less work for Westerners to do. The neccessary investments to make an international team work will include several project managers as well as eductated people who will do the brain job.

But in this world, teamwork is the key. And no person involved will be able to say: "I have done that from the beginning to the end. People are using my ideas and my code. I alone am responsible for this." Now everybody has to be a member of a group and to share his work and knowledge. A lot of tension in IT jobs is based upon this constellation, I think.

Tonight, strange glowing clouds in the sky. Quite large, couldn't note any sky beamers or similar devices. Half an hour later, the structure got broader and pale and eventually vanished completely.

"It seems plausible that with technology we can, in the fairly near future, create (or become) creatures who surpass humans in every intellectual and creative dimension." _{Vernor Vinge, retired San Diego State University professor}

And they're invisible as well! Old men from past decades of boundless technical plans resign. "Mind children" hushing through the networks as sort of atheistic hereafter. (Source)

Microsoft Research's project MyLifeBits promises to record every sensation of your complete life. A small webcam shooting images the whole day long is your constant attender, an audio recorder saves all spoken words and sounds, other devices detect your body's life signals. In the end, almost every part of your life becomes digitized and after commenting all the data your saved life is a very big data base you may browse through. Nothing is forgotten, everything is browsable and if you want to recall the events of a certain date there is nothing that deters you.

In this Scientific American article (unfortunately only for paying customers, here's the open German version) some sample scenarios were described to prove that system's fitness. The stories deal with situations where people use their digital brain extender to overcome typical everyday problems: a market maker is warned by his system that he's wasting time with ineffective businesses, a student proves that his learning method is better than that demanded by his parents, an old lady's medical data is permanently recorded even when she's at home in oder to give her a warning when she's drinking too few and so on.

Many questions remain unanswered. The market maker is warned by the system, so his employer controls the data. What happens when the market maker wants to leave his company? Will he be pressed to erase his company-related binary memories or to leave them at his former company? Who determines when a certain procedure is getting ineffective? Where is the student's benefit if the system proves that his parents are right? Sure, the systems tells the truth, but what if the student misses his football match? Who controls whom - does the memory system help you or is it just another tool to put the curb on you?

Another thought: the old lady from the example above uses her spare time to refresh her memories of former times. At a certain age, dementia becomes a serious issue, so brain work is a useful thing. But is the permanent preoccupation with one's own memories healthy? Could this be another form of narcism when nothing but one's own history remains important? Will there be enough time and room to learn new things and people?

Kathryn Bigelow's underrated movie Strange Days (1995) tells a crime story in the near future. The story's hero is addicted to his own memories, this is made possible through devices that store one's feelings and visual impressions on disks. It is very difficult for him to let go his memories of his former girlfriend and solve his problems. The plot shows various crimes effected by misuse of this device (excessive memory feedback, trauma induction, 'snuff' memories), thus pointing at the ambiguity of that technique.

With the total recall device, scenarios like these might come true. This system doesn't allow you to forget, even if your memories aren't that enjoyable. Why should you want that (besides all interesting technical questions)? Will a system like that make you free, happy and self-determined?

Isch bin dä Schmitze Jupp! Un isch wütt misch jern vorställe. Paß op: Isch kumm uß Kölle. Un drink jähr ä Kölsch un bin enne löstije Jung, wah. Ming Marie is äh läcker Mähtsche, ävver se säht, isch wöhr enne Suffkopp. Un dat is nit nett vun ihr. Nät? (Voice. Thanks.)

Number of web sites Google researchers identified as being able to launch "drive-by downloads", malicious software pushed to the client immediately on the first request. Another 700,000 sites are potentially compromised. (Source)

What is a machine made for? To help us in our cumbersome labour. When I'm reading that Japanese and Korean robotic manufacturers are looking for ways to meet manpower shortage, meaning that robots "will be able to look after children and the elderly, do routine housework, guard criminals and hunt down terrorists" (Source), I'm asking myself, whether these tasks better should be done by humans and if not the dull and boring work should be given to robots instead. I remember very old phantasies where people weren't forced to work because machines would save them from that. Men would have leisure and enough time to care for children and the elderly and much more.

A recent study at Indiana University states that (simulated) phishing attempts were much more efficient when phishers purported to be "friends" of the same community. Overwhelming 72% of all addressees were willing to return personal data (their university ID and password) when they thought the phishers to be friends (a control group that received "normal" spam asking for the same data was less talkative (16%)).
Countermeasures are recommended as usual, but I think for most people this kind of problem is too abstract and they don't get the point that a user's mistrust is her best protection.

These days I am often reminded of Chernobyl when I'm listening to news about the G8 summit in Heiligendamm, Germany. This will take place in a few days and our gouvernment's bids for security are without precedent in Germany's post-war history. What's the deal with Chernobyl? All references to the G8 convention center are expressed by distances. If the convention center is placed into the middle of everyting, the surrounding zones can be seen as security buffers, supported by fences, police (and the army, if our minister of the interior would have prevailed). Every other location around Heiligendamm is related to this center. The security fence: 200 meters away from the center. A street where demonstrations are mercifully allowed: 5 km away from the center. The initially suggested security zone where demonstrations should be forbidden: 6 km around the center. Location of the pressroom (only for tolerated journalists): 8 km away from the center.
Located inmidst the Chernobyl zone is this contaminated reactor, a dangerous threat for any creature coming too close. Security measurements around the conference center in Heiligendamm in their effect are likely for our democratic basic rights and our dignity as citizens of a democratic political system, that is afraid of its own people.

Who of our German readers doesn't recall the affairs of Facebook-Clone StudiVZ and the general discussions about the pros and cons of social networks and community web sites? The times are a-changing and American universities are exploring the possibilities of such networks. Also an increasing demand coming from the industry is noted. This approves the fears of growing possibilities for x-raying candidates by HR and other interested parties. So wtach your step and think twice before you type: you're entering a public place at your community site. (Source)

This blog has just been scanned by Operation and has been indexed as active weblog.

Please read on, everything's fine.

Maintaining a search engine, like Google, is sheer rocket science. Besides the mathematics, engineers have to deal with changing demands from users as well as from the continuously changing Internet. Permanent challenges from spammers and 'optimizers' constantly try to circumvent the algorithms to top it all. This article sneaks a peak into the Googleplex and gives insight into common challenges, their mode of operation, and other interesting findings.

Researchers of the University of Nottingham observed Second Life as testbed for kind of virtual bullying. According to the study, Second Life newcomers are often targets of bullies. The people around Dr. Thomas Chesney were interested in the question whether bullying is similar to real world conflicts and discovered that in real and in virtual life reasons for bullying can be found in the victim's "naivety and inability to stop the griefing". Also the power imbalance between victim and bully, "focused on knowledge and experience", is an important reason for bullying. Results like these show once more that platforms like SL don't set any boundaries to one's phantasies, but obviously there's a lot of people just copying their usual behaviour from their real life. Or do victims themselves become bullies because there's nothing to fear about? Anyway, doesn't sound like fun. (Source)

Securitycartoon.com is the right place for explaining threats and tricks of the Internet to the normal user. Indiana University School of Informatics researchers professor Markus Jakobsson and research associate Sukamol Srikwan launched this site "to be accessible to anyone who uses the Internet ... That's why the cartoon format is perfect--everybody can relate to it."
Without a warning finger held up, the site broaches the issues of phishing, pharming, malware, spoofing, and password protection. The cartoons are well drawn and the stories come to the point.
According to Jacobson, an increasing number (5 percent and more) of American adults are victims of identity theft every year. It surely would make sense to offer this service in different languages. (Source)

Reproduced with permission; for more material, please see www.SecurityCartoon.com

Having read this article about the Department of Home Security's (DHS) efforts "to find, fund and push potentially ground-breaking [security] software into the commercial market", I just thought about Goethe's line Amerika, Du hast es besser.
DHS states that increasing cybersecurity threats are as bad as bombing terrorists. Instead of waiting for the industry they just start a million dollars program and do their own. Additionally, "plans to transition the technologies to the open-source community are acceptable".

And what's up in our exemplary German democracy? Our ministry of the interior draws a dark picture of increasing terrorist threats and takes it to give reason to cut our civil rights. Far in excess of a real threat situation it's planning "online investigations", meaning eavesdropping people's IP traffic, with the so-called "Bundestrojan".

The DHS surely isn't America's most popular ministry. But can you see the difference?

So that's a big amount of money for Africa, as G8 leaders scheduled and approved at the summit. Hopefully, this money will not be bound to expensive contracts with multinational companies that bring the money back even before it's been being sent to Africa. And I hope that use of generics will save lots of money instead of buying overpriced pharmaceuticals against whatever.

Finding out software errors and security problems on a web site may become a problem: if not only for the site maintainer but also for the person who exposes the flaw. The CSI (not Crime Scene Investigation, but the Computer Security Institute investigates how actual laws increase the danger of getting sued by site owners when somebody detects a vulnerability and talks about that. In fact, there are security researchers who don't inform the site maintainer for fear of prosecution. In a very true statement CSI declares that laws prohibiting security tests will only hamper serious security researchers and not the black hats. CSI's next objectives include exploration of disclosure policy guidelines and mirrored-site guidelines for Web site owners as well as creating a list of research methods for lawmakers' understanding. (Source)

Compared to Germany's planned tightening of security laws, where sheer usage of hacker tools will be punished, this seems to be still a comfortable situation to me.

"It is important for a digital marketing agency to be aware of the psychology of the search landscape."

Uh, thanks. Deleted.

If it was a company I'd say: Wow, another Web2.0 try. But no, GeoGreeting is free and absolutely geeky: Tell your message with rooftops from buildings all over the world that are formed like letters. Funny! (Source)

Another chapter in the long American H1-B dispute. A so-called shortage of software developers that has to be countered with foreign workers who would also work more for less money. All accompanied by less and less computer science students. Nothing new on the Western front. (Source)

Last month, German parliament tightened computer crime laws, including §202c StGB, which says (translation by Phenoelit, thanks):

Whoever prepares a crime according to §202a or §202b and who creates, obtains or provides access to, sells, yields, distributes or otherwise allows access to

• passwords or other access codes, that allow access to data or


• computer programs whose aim is to commit a crime

will be punished with up to one year jail or a fine.
Additionally, this new section is interwoven with other laws, including the ones covering terrorism. The current interpretation includes the acceptance of others committing a crime using your (or our) material as violation of §202c.

This law passed our Bundesrat (or representative organ of the 16 German federal states) and will come into force in a few weeks despite several warnings from IT experts.

Oh thank you, politicians! I'm curious when prosecutors start sueing scientists and administrators for using and exploring bad, bad hacker tools. All this for fighting terror, of course! (To probe further, see Dunning-Kruger effect.)

Addressed by a young guy in his holiday job, trying to pursuade me to sign in for a newspaper subscription.
"Print is dead." I hurled at him, in a good temper.
He didn't understand. Gee, sometimes it's difficult to be the angry old man.

1. American lawmakers advise DHS to spend more money on cybersecurity. “I will get you the national strategy by the end of the fiscal year,” told Jay Cohen, undersecretary of the DHS’ Science and Technology Directorate to Rep. Jim Langevin (D-R.I.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee’s Emerging Threats, Cybersecurity, and Science and Technology Subcommittee. (Source)

2. Germany's Interior Minister wants to tighten law for the fight against terrorism by "clandestine seizure of private computer data" (amongst others, "like preventative detainments" and "targeted killings". (Source)

We no longer live in the world of 1949.

Germany's Interior Minister in an interview with Der Spiegel, July 2007

Indeed. Situation was much more troubled then nowadays.

IEEE members are discussing a common problem (scroll a bit down). I second most of these opinions.

Dear Aussies,

no need to be shocked about Australia's cockamamie performance in the IT competitiveness report published by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). Your overall rank is 5 and when I'm comparing this to our - Germany's - embarrassing 16th rank, I just can say: "Go Aussies Go!"

This year, for the first time, Region 8 has become the largest IEEE Region, not only because of its huge geographical area – from Capetown to Vladivostok -, but, more relevant to IEEE, because of its number of members having voting rights.

Get ready, IEEE-USA! Region 8 is coming ;-)

(Dear IEEE members, Region 8 or not: VOTE!)

A browser technology that binds single IP addresses to DNS names causes a vulnerability that will especially affect Web2.0 applications. Ironically, this techniqie (DNS pinning) has been developed to protect users from DNS spoofing, but the various embedded technologies within a browser might do their own DNS handling and circumvent the browser's security mechanisms. This way malicious web sites might establish a VPN connection to the victim's network. There's no patch yet to solve this issue that could be called a design flaw. Especially web sites and services that need a lot of JavaScript or various browser plugins to run will be affected by this challenge. Looks like big fun for Web2.0 sites. (Source)

"The IEEE Standards Association now requires that members of IEEE standards development projects reveal any knowledge they have of patents they or their employer hold on intellectual property being considered for inclusion in the standards." (Source)

Accentuation by me. Listen to that people.

The reality is that it is very rare to have young women portrayed in the media as having a role in ICTs or engineering. They are usually doctors, nurses, lawyers or reporters. When was the last SITCOM where the female leading role was a computer scientist, an engineer, or a webmaster?

So, where are the positive role models? I'm pretty sure that nobody would be interested in a TV show about computer scientists. But nowadays, computers are everywhere, so there are indeed some female characters in TV series who convey a positive message about working in science and engineering.

There's Crossing Jordan, a crime series about members of the Boston Medical Examiner's Office and police detectives. Especially Nigel Townsend (played by Steve Valentine) is a weird, but friendly character, and obviously a resourceful computer wizard. The main character of this series, Jordan Cavanaugh (Jill Hennessy)
is as attractive as clever in finding the villains.

CSI, the famous series about forensic scientists, is full of characters who are well educated and competent in engineering and IT topics. There are also strong female characters, even with non-academic background (Catherine Willows (played by Marg Helgenberger)). This is true for the original series and for its spin-offs, too.

Last but not least we have Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. Though it's not the world of science the characters live in, the "Willow" character (Alyson Hannigan) first starts as a typical computer nerd and supports Buffy fighting the powers of evil.

None of these characters is without quirks. Below their glossy or spectacular surface, these series deal with the tragedy of life and each female cast is not just positively charged, but a lively character with her ups and downs thus resulting in an overall credibility. So if one looks for positive role models, she might dig deeper, but might find some treasures here and there.

A study by Forrester Research predicts an upswing for dynamic languages like PHP, Ruby, and Python. Why should one use this crap? PHP is the Visual Basic of the Web, but it's also a security nightmare. Ruby receives rave reviews because of its high-level OOP approach. I think it's just another Web2.0 hype. And Python is praised for its 'fun' factor, but I can't see any arguments beyond that but baiting against Perl.
So tell me what you can do with these languages you can't do so by using Perl or a C derivate. (Source)

Having read just another pamphlet about a successful software project with special emphasis on testing, testing, testing.

If they had chosen the right algorithms and made assumptions about their performance (Big Oh and stuff), that testing, testing, testing could have been reduced significantly.

Old school, I know. They don't trust their own software anymore.

Anti-virus products whitelisting fedware that tries to get all the little secrets you store on your computer: is this a real threat? A recent surevy by CNET News.com of antispyware vendors coudn't find any company cooperating unofficially with US government agencies. But some agreed in not to alert customers if gouvernmental spyware would have been found if they were ordered by a court to remain quiet.
This interesting survey shows that it might be rewarding to try one's hand on open source anti-spyware. At least it's unlikely that software created by a greater community will be compelled to betray the user. Perhaps the easiest antidote against the Bundestrojaner, too.
(Source)

...the problems of widespread saturation in communications flow may arise within the next half century

The information overload has become a dictum, if not a cliché, and some people are going to call this phenomenon information pollution. According to one's temper, people react in different ways: some are trying to reduce this pollution, which is a more active coping strategy, but most people just get tired and suffer from the information fatigue syndrome (IFS). This may come in many forms, from e-mail fatigue, password fatigue, feature fatigue, and much more. Quite new is the social network fatigue, caused by a burnout from self-imposed commitment to get to know as much people as possible via the usual community web sites.
Others are craving for data and become informavores, looking for more and more information. Again, this syndrome comes in many forms, including sort of digital acquisitiveness.
Paul McFedries digs deeper into the various phenomena of fatigues and addictions. Being online since 1994, I recall various phases when I started as curious lurker, becoming an infohoarder and now being busy with filtering information as efficient as possible. Often I remember the days when advertizing in the Internet was rare (if present, at all) and there was no Spam. Being confronted with info crap all the day, fatigue isn't far away for many people. Unfortunately, strategies of advertizers change all along and keep you busy in avoiding this. Switching off TV and computer is not a solution. I'd recommend learning how to cope with this and how to protect from too much news, too much spam, and too much unnecessary knowledge.

To keep up to date with actual nerdism have a look at McFedries' wonderful Word Spy web site.

Q: Why are fewer and fewer people, especially women, going into CS? A: Part of the issue is jobs not paying enough. There is also the thing I spoke about earlier, of CS not being expansive enough — this notion that the computer scientist will be sitting in a box writing Java code or something. That’s just not where the interesting stuff is.

Hollywood again. UCF professor Costas J. Efthimiou and former UCF physics chair R. A. Llewellyn argue in their paper "Hollywood Blockbusters: Unlimited Fun But Limited Science Literacy" that contemporary movies don't respect scientific knowledge, thus stupefying the audience. Original reproach! But, dear colleagues: a movie theater is not a lecture hall, despite the similarity. I think most people know that action scenes in a movie are perfectly choreographed sequences that nobody should try at home. Who doesn't know this, well, won't understand the film either. So science doesn't lose anything / anybody. (Source)

"9% more degrees in natural sciences", including a raise of 13% in CS titles the Federal Statistical Office of Germany these days. Kids of New Economy (remember?) are leaving the universities. The situation for them must be similar to the mid-90s, when I finished my studies and found myself in the post-reunification recession, when jobs were rare and I was told to be exotic (Original words of an exhibitor at a job fair: No, we're developing in India, this comes way cheaper. We don't need computer scientists at this moment). I suffered for three years in small economy jobs until the Internet saved me. Kids of today are grown up with the Internet and I wonder if there will be another job miracle for them. I can't see any.

In the meantime, German public is faked with phantasy numbers by the German economics ministry, claiming that the somewhat felt shortage of skilled workers would cost the nation more than 20 billion euros ($26.8 billion). But before starting just another job market pig cycle, consider that our political top executives are calling for immigrants filling this job gap thus lowering incomes of skilled workers. Any skilled foreign national who will work for less money is welcomed by our industry. So these 9% people from above are somewhat left out in the rain and other countries realize once more a brain drain of skilled people. For further developments in this topic, see the american H1-B discussion.

Solutions, anyone?

I just felt so certain about this church and its 'britishness' I just had to revisit it. Several years ago, we discovered it in southern Cologne and it kept a memory in me of a neo-Gothic masterpiece of british appearance. When we rediscovered St. Paul, I figured out that I was wrong. It's a nice little church but that british accent I was memorizing just came from the missing spire. We couldn't get in and left the situation somewhat disappointed.

If marketing and SEOs get aware of this study of Pennsylvania State University, they'll be beside themselves with joy. Though the study says that testers click on sponsored links in the results list of a search engine less than two times out of every ten searches (a rate of 16%), it notes that "there is plenty of upside growth potential." Fortunately, click rate of sponsored links didn't increase when these links weren't separated from regular "organic" links any more. Penn State assistant professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology and lead author Jim Jansen grants users more wide-awakenness, but considering the "growth potential" of sponsored links further development in this area is to be feared. (Source)

Students - children of sorrow these days. An original approach for explaining the decrease in the number of engineering and IT students is given by Quocirca analyst Rob Bamforth who says that today's people aren't too tech savvy at all because technical products are now so easy to use that there's a major lack of knowledge and curiosity about technology as a whole. Also, the lack of positive role models is bemoaned, but nothing beats Hal Abelson's argument. (Source)

There's just a small number of job disciplines that claim to have a built-in future. Since its beginning in the Fourties of the last century, information technology has attracted numerous tech- and math-savvy people and has changed our life style significantly. IT development was always driven by highly charged situations like WW II, the cold war, aerospace, and the general need for progressive technology. Also, working in the IT industry has always been a warranty for a secure and wealthy life, a good basis for working in a hard but nonetheless satisfying environment.
This situation changes. After the New Economy bust a few years ago, the advent of offshoring, nd the commodification of IT services, a recent survey done by eWeek reveals that many IT workers like their work but feel somewhat unsettled and wouldn't encourage their children to work in the industry as they once did or still do. This is IT's midlife crisis and the declining number of IT students raises the question where to go from here.
At this moment, IT is dithering between eclecticism and Bohemia. Eclecticism in a way, that development of technical solutions (be it hard- or software) is penetrating nearly every aspect of everyday life, bowing to the dictate of creating something 'innovative' every few months. Innovations come and go like fashion trends, just consider discussions about programming paradigms, hardware cycles, trends in corporate work etc. Bohemia can be found in numerous people working as artists or self-employed persons, often with low salaries. One may even count scientists to this group, not to forget many low-cost workers like programmers in small companies with small income. An industry with product cycles geting shorter all the time, products that aren't innovative any longer (Do you really need all of Word's features?), innovators (researchers, developers) who are wasted in crunch time and are considered being 'old' when they hit their thirties: such an industry loses its attractiveness.
Unfortunately, there's no lunar landing programme that would boost technology; the 'war against terror' is a playground for military and security companies but not for the mainstream IT. Also, plans like saving mankind through technology have failed so far. So what's the Next Big Thing? Another reorganization? Calling the controllers? Some Next Generation technology? Which one?
The hype is over. Let's do it some more years, let's maintain the standards and let universities begin from scratch. IT must change to keep alive and vivid. When the Internet was invented, nobody thought about its return on investment. Fortran was invented to simplify the process of programming and not to lower scientists' salaries. When the first computers started computing, money was the last thing their inventors worried about. They just had to save their country. Think it over. It's time get fresh ideas and to inspire people again.

To be continued. (Source)

Unexpected offer in one of our expensive stores at the 'Kö' (Düsseldorf's luxury retail strip): a shelf with various DVDs below a "recommended videos" sign.

All movies were horror and slasher flicks! *g*

For connecting yourself to the internet, you're paying your monthly fee (apart from any technical tasks). So do content providers, like Amazon, eBay, and all the web site owners and maintainers whose sites you may visit. Generally, every web site is equally accessible to any user - this is called net neutrality.
Carriers and telephone companies see are fighting this base principle of the Internet and are going to succeed, because

the Justice Department on Thursday said Internet service providers should be allowed to charge a fee for priority Web traffic (AP)

At last, the "world" takes notice. A well written overview about our gouvernment's strange interpretation of online security.

Corresponding to this, one of our local Internet providers starts to block adult internet sites in preemptive obedience due to legal protection of children and young persons. A german provider of adult content argues that foreign web sites don't have age verification systems as demanded in Germany, so they have to be banned. To avoid legal difficulties, the Internet provider follows this argumentation and cuts the wire.

This is just pleaded. Following their argumentation, in the end each site would be blocked that would offend laws in any country in the world. If providers practice censorship by allowing and denying content to their customers, one should probe further. The censoring provider is hosting an adult video portal itself, and is limiting foreign competition by blocking these other prominent sites. The adult market is highly competitive and rivalries are fought out on the backs of the customers.

Update (9/20): The aforementioned provider released the IP number block. Access to the blocked sites is possible again.

"We don't need hackers to break the systems because they're falling apart by themselves."

Interesting NYT article about the limitedness of our engineered world.

Just spotted a new product in the supermarket shelf: a bunch of care products (each item not containing more than 100 ml) packed together with a transparent plastic bag. "Complying with recent airport security standards."

What did I learn from this?

War on Terror just starts at the Point of Sale.

Alex is working in security business and he maintained a TOR server. Because somebody posted an offensive comment in an online forum for policemen and obfuscated his origin with Alex's server, Alex had a visit from the prosecution. They arrested him for some hours, confiscated his hardware (clients only, that TOR server hosted somewhere wasn't interesting for them) and locked his office.

I think it was Bruce Schneier who has written in his book "Secrets and Lies" that every security technology is vulnerable to a very old practice: it's called social engineering or, as happened in this story: Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. It seems that the mission is accomplished: Alex has closed his TOR server. As he says: his moral courage is over.

At last! I'm getting the chance of going to school again (Proof)! I'm kind of new kid on the block and few people out of my hood do know me, so I'm better going to be careful, busy, honest, and beating just the bad ones. You may recognize me easily: I'm the big-nosed guy with the jug ear and full hair besides sunny who's trying to get me wet ;-) Mr. Bulo: well done!

Most of my new classmates already entered the stage. Funnily enough, I thought they were much taller :-)

Just by spidering the web and maintaining its database, software from the Dark Web project is searching for online activity of suspected people. No trojans, no spyware, just a spider doing its work. Though one could ask if researching the web for online terrorism does make sense at all (they're talking about 5000 web sites that matter), this shows a method of researching the web without compromising everybody's privacy. (Source)

Interesting things can sometimes be found even in your bathroom.

Is it art? Science? Or will it just be an inspiration for politicians to have a pefect surveillance tool? Wiki City Rome is a MIT project that gathers cellphone data (and of other wireless devices) to illustrate the movements of crowds and public transport vehicles in real time. Wiki City Rome is derived from MIT's SENSEable City Laboratory that studies the impact of new technologies on cities and may be considered science as well as art.

Though

Ratti's [senseable city lab's director] team obtains its data anonymously from cell phones, GPS devices on buses and taxis, and other wireless mobile devices. Data are made anonymous and aggregated from the beginning, so there are no implications for individual privacy.

Is the price for protecting public and private networks too high? In a project internally called "Cyber Initiative", NSA together with the Department of Homeland Security and other federal US agencies are planned to monitor networks in order to defend them against unauthorized intruders. For the NSA this would mean a rearrangement of its charter, because up to now it's responsible for protecting gouvernmental infrastructure.

Whoever is engaged in computer and network security knows: protecting means monitoring. To efficiently protect a network all incoming and outcoming traffic has to be monitored. One would need few imagination to fancy the uproar of citizens realizing that their internet traffic and harddisk content is scanned by intelligence agencies. Since gouvernments are always hungry for data the next step would be a total control for other purposes than terror prevention (tax offices are very interested in your ebay sales!).

If this will happen, terrorist don't have to go further. They will have won their struggle, because we'll live in a world whose main communication paths are widely controlled by gouvernments. This would be a step towards a strong, if not total state where putting the wrong words in your mouth is dangerous for you, your family and your friends. A world you have to watch every step you do, because the web and its controllers won't forget anything. This might not happen immediately. People will unlearn the value of privacy over a longer period. On some day, they won't know it at all and the last remembrance of privacy will be closing the toilet door behind you. No need for terrorists to throw bombs further. It can't get worse than that.

In the end, this is a dilemma. It's good, if gouvernments care about computer security to defend even normal citizens against crackers, phishers, spammers and other crap. To give up privacy is indeed a bitter pill and this price is much too high.

But surely this is just my gloominess. (Source)

When life is imitating art, it's time to mention bloggers who aren't in a comfortable situation like mine but who are struggling for the future of their country. Ko Htike's blog is one of few windows into Burma's dramatic situation. (Source)

If one accepts that video games and virtal worlds represent a cultural value of their own, the question for preserving these values. Since I'm busy running through the streets of Half Life 2 once more (and I might do this in some years again), it's good to know that the Rochester Institute of Technology joins the Library of Congress partnership for just this purpose. Main targets of this work

will explore the methods, infrastructure, standards and technology for preserving the complex software, content and interactivity in computer games and electronic literature

How about emulating old hardware? Works well for 8 and 16 bit platforms. Ah, I see: it's the dreaded copyright problem! This is a bigger threat to yesterday's treasures than the more technical questions, isn't it? (Source)

Having read the abstract of Laura Beckwith's PhD dissertation, I'm getting a bad mood. Beckwith and her adviser, Margaret Burnett (Oregon State University) were interested in the question for a possible key to make computer science (and the CS industry) more attractive for women. One of their tasks was to analyze how people use computers to solve problems. One of their results is that men are more likely to use advanced software features than women, indepent from their confidence in computer skills. Their experimentees had to find out bugs in various formulas within a spreadsheet and were allowed to use a debugging feature that would help them in detecting the errors. Even unexperienced male users who were less confident in computer tasks used that advanced software feature more often than the female users. Even experienced femals users were unlikely to use that debugger. The only way to raise the number of women in this setting was to add some more options to the debugger. In its first version, the debugging tool let users mark values "right" or "wrong." For the next version Beckwith added options for "seems right maybe" and "seems wrong maybe," and suddenly some tests had more female debugging users than male ones.

This is plain depressing. Does software really need "pink buttons"? What's wrong in saying "1" or "0"? Will "Excel for Women" become a reality and a joke for "real" users?

Beckwith's dissertation is available online.

I would be interested in a comparable study in different cultural circles, where women aren't that shy with math: Israel, India, Iran to name a few. Anyone? (Source)

America's IT industry will shortly suffer from labour shortage. (Source)

We created the whole artificial intelligence community and funded it. And we created the computer science world. When we started [IPTO, the Information Processing Techniques Office], there were no computer science departments or computer science professionals in the world. None.

I'm not sure one could start the old ARPA nowadays. It would be illegal, perhaps. We now live under tight controls by many people who don't understand much about substance.

People that you have to persuade [to build up big things] are too busy, don't know enough about the subject and are highly risk-averse. When President Eisenhower said, "You, Department X, will do Y," they'd salute and say, "Yes, sir." Now they say, "We'll get back to you." I blame Congress for a good part of it. And agency heads are all wishy-washy. What's missing is leadership that understands what it is doing.
We are becoming incapable of handling a technology challenge of any major magnitude. We are losing the ability to do big, complicated things.

What's missing is leadership that understands what it is doing. The whole thing is just off the rails.

Charles M. Herzfeld, a senior fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies in Arlington, Va., fifth director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency in 1961, which was later renamed Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and director of Defense Research & Engineering from 1990 to 1991, in a ComputerWorld interview. (Source)

Myanmar, land with many names. When I heard about blogger's international protest my first thought was: fine, I'll join and contribute to this! Having read some texts about the subject, I'm backing away. Let me explain.

Myanmar's history is violent. Long before british colonialism the various 135 ethnics were painfully, that means: martially, unified. That didn't last for long. When british tourists didn't put off their shoes they got into trouble with buddhist monks. This was just one episode in the vanguard position of monks in struggling against ruling authority.

Years later (as of 1940) the Burma Independence Army, commanded by Aung San (Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi's father) fought against British colonial forces. Interestingly, they received their trainig in Japan, that means Hirohito's army, 'our' (Germany's) confederates. They turned the corner in 1945, teamed up the allied forces (USA, UK, F) and found themselves rulers of Burma some years after the war.

The short democratic era lasted a mere 14 years, then the military junta took over. A lot of riots against the militairies happened ever after (especially the "8888 Upraising" must be mentioned).

As I've understood things so far, buddhist monks of Burma form some kind of alternate social support system because of their freedom of taxes. Due to their relative poverty many Burmese enter a buddhist convent and live from charity and (mostly gouvernmental) benefits. Actual trigger of nowadays protests is the raise of fuel prices that directly affects the moneyless monks, so they take to the streets to protest against this. These protests get politicised quickly and the rest of the angry population joins the demonstrations.

If eastern monks feel similarly like western monks (and nuns), then they shouldn't care about the political system they're living in. Since they decided themselves against a life in profanity, I don't think that they have kind of a political programme in stock, nor would they clearly claim "for" democracy or raging "against" military. Nevertheless, their informal power and the peaceful momentum of their appearance is an important flywheel for the democratic movement. If this makes them automatically democratic allies - I cannot say. They are clerics and their kingdom isn't made of this world.

The democratic movement is united through its common enemy: the junta. However, democrats aren't experienced in gouvernance since Myanmar's democratic period lasted for only 14 years. Even famous Aung San Suu Kyi doesn't have a political agenda for the times after the junta; she derives her political authority from her father's importance. The precepts of the democratic movement seem to be descendent from the days of struggling against the British. But the reflection on yesterday's heroes won't make a political programme for tomorrow and doesn't give any warranty for a peaceful society. Tensions among the various ethnic groups keeps under cover while the junta suppresses them all, but who will preserve peace in the country as soon as militaries go back into their barracks?

Additionally, Myanmar is in the focus of its neighbours. China wants access to the Indian Ocean, so its container ships could spare drifting through the southern chinese sea. They would favour a military base in Myanmar, too. Also do the Russians.

One reason for us being relatively well informed about Burma's situation isn't just because the handful of bloggers, but because of the radio station "Democratic Voice of Burma" that is among others, supported by a US foundation. Even if one would avoid the bad word "propaganda", it's completely clear why the chinese support for the junta is particularly stressed. With due indignation against the junta we're calling about geopolitical interests and a country rich in natural resources situated in an interesting strategic place in the world. We as consuments of the Birmese situation, keeping alert by our mass media, thus understand China's and Russia's role as potential aggressors.

To put it in a nutshell: the whole situation is awfully complex and even if every Burmese soldier deactivates his weapon, it's completely unclear which direction Myanmar will take. There are other countries that took the way into disaster, torn between the interests of opposing forces, and without taxing my brain too much, I must think about civil war. Burma is a perfect scenario for a proxy war as Africa had some decades ago.

To come to a conclusion: just to say "Free Burma" is too simplistic to me. Military junta, corruption, destroyed villages, terror against the people: this is awful and just curse the junta! But just "free" the people - this is superficial, naive, and helpless. Therefore you won't see a "Free Burma" banner at this web site. But to get some information about the subject, learn about the context and write about it: that makes sense in my opinion. If one understands some of the details, he will learn where he can help and how. (Source)

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))

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!

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.

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)

I'm always glad when the foreign press discusses Germany's change from a rather open democracy into a surveillance state where everybody comes under suspicion.

Like in this article.

Former New Holland experiences similar problems as many other western countries: an all-time low in skilled IT workers, less students demanding for computer science, the competition amongst economies that are touting for talents, a weak image of IT careers and many other things that have been discussed here in the last few months. (Source)

Hm - Australia!

Skilled IT worker (20 yrs. experience), Diplom (equiv. to M.Sc.) in computer science, Un*x/Win/Web, C/Perl/other languages, exp. in various MS/Un*x server products, S/W developer, server administrator, various publications. Leave a message if we're in business.

US president Bush announced plans to launch a program against cyber terrorism against the U.S. and requested 154 US$ for preliminary funding. The whole programme is expected to become a seven-year, multibillion-dollar project for tracking threats in gouvernment and private networks.

When I'm reading these numbers my first reaction is: awesome! Hopefully this will also reduce SPAM and threats through viruses issued by normal criminals. So much money and and few good men: this could become a success story.

But we aren't in the 1960s. Modern project management is working different. As Charles M. Herzfeld said a few weeks ago, "agency heads are all wishy-washy". What sense does all that money make if it's burnt in imprecise standards, written by people who are highly risk-averse and don't get the big picture? Is there true leadership in helping citizens to have a peaceful and undisturbed life or is it just the usual pruning of civil rights where everybody might be suspicious because decision makers don't understand what they're doing? There's a chance to lose "the ability to do big, complicated things" and we all - not only US citizens - might pay a high price for this. (Source)

Today our representatives of the people decide on the future of secrecy of telecommunication. It is expected that the draft bill about prolonging the retention of communication data will be waved through. As of now all connection data (who phones whom, who travels where with which IP address) will be saved for six months. As usual, this is animated by the best intentions.
The location of mobile phone users when doing their call will be saved, too. With a thus far not known attitude of impudence our politicans ignored experts' advices, defamed opponents of data retention, and claimed its necessity without possibility of any alternative. Because they don't have any idea what they're doing, they are willing to scan just every bit of connection data trusting that evil terrorists will be caught somehow somewhere with these data.

This is plain rubbish. But nobody expects that victims to the Dunning-Kruger effect will develop wisdom. So what will happen next?

It's no surprise that many other parties besides intelligence and public authorities are interested in communication data. Persecution of 'normal' criminals by scanning through the data will be made possible, soon, retention of loaction data means tracing of persons, creating user profiles would be really easy. Law firms spezialised on chasing copyright infringement with easy access to these logfiles will prove that it really is possible to make money with the Internet. Economic miracle made easy! If you put this censorship through application of competition law - the next big thing in Germany - together then you'll see Internet's future in Germany: a playground of censorship where every step of your feet is scanned and every move will be used against you.

Today Norman Kingsley Mailer, novelist, journalist, playwright, screenwriter and film director, died. He was my very first literary discovery when at the age of 3 or 4 years, I found this big book in the drawer of my father's desk: The Naked and the Dead.

Since I wasn't able to read at that time, I urged my mother to read at least one page to me each evening instead of singing a lullaby or telling a fairy tale. I don't know how long she or I kept up with this, but I still remember this very first voyage into literature and tales from the war very well. I kept this love for American writers and I guess I've read more of their books than from German ones. Thank you, Norman.

A lie from start to finish are studies about America's youth (described here) stating that there's an enomous loss in IT students and that US students are falling behind in disciplines with mathematical background. At least so tells another study, done by B. Lindsay Lowell (Georgetown Univ., WA; funnily enough a Catholic/Jesuit university like Marquette, that came to different results) and Hal Salzman, Urban Institute). Accoording to them, the situation isn't that dark as described elsewhere: the authors doubt the validity of international test rankings that are used as evidence for the weakness of today's students. Over the past ten years they have taken more math, science and foreign language courses than in previous decades.

Additionally, other countries' good international rankings might not necessarily lead to innovation, better jobs and a better economy for them: Singapore is promoting a national "creativity initiative" to widen its narrow teaching plans; India owes it success to a small percentage of its citizens who are building up a new middleclass but are nonetheless a minority. Throwing all these countries together the authors find doubtful. Even testing methods are critizised by Lowell and Salzman, because in the U.S. a broader selection of students than would be eligible in other countries has been tested.

Not all things are going smoothly, though: the "zip code determines education quality" phenomenon becomes a real problem. But compared to Germany's harsh social selection mechanisms where lower middle class children (and below) have significantly bigger problems in visiting good schools, making good graduations and getting good jobs than upper middle class children (and above). I'm not knowing much about trends and development in American society, but I hope that social egality is more distinct there than it is here.

Stay tuned: the next ten years will tell. (Source)

Recent developments in Germany make plain that protecting privacy is important and necessary. If you want to drop us a line, please use PGP: here's the public key. Get a key for yourself, learn how to protect your privacy! (Image reproduced with permission; for more, please see www.clap-club.de)

Avatars' reactions on the behaviour of an anti-social, ill-mannered software bot in Second Life raises the questions on the ethics of such tests. Scientists of the University College London dept. of CS developed an automated avatar searching for other isolated avatars, in order to see if SL users expect others to give them the same personal space as the do in Real Life. The results are somewhat mixed and to tell a "male" from a "female" avatar in SL isn't maybe the best idea since the avatar may be of one sex but its user might be completely different. The question for the admissibility of such studies is nonetheless interesting. I guess that a bad experience in SL could be as unpleasing as a comparable situation in RL, depending on how much the user takes SL for real. (Source)

Having a look towards the southern hemisphere is always rewarding. Even if you notice that your own history is repeating. Scientists at the Bioengineering Institute at the University of Auckland are modeling virtual bodies of real people and, as it was during my Sturm und Drang period ten, twelve years ago, they want to save the world. So their project tries to reduce obesity, help surgeons, support animal rights, advance drug testing and help customers choosing the right clothes. Okay, supporting animal rights and clothing people is somewhat new, but the rest is an old hat. This won't pay off, folks! (Source)

it's always funny watching you handle with sensitive data. Not only are you guys too dumb to decide which data you are interested in (thus saving all data for good measure) but you're also too dorky to handle these data adaequately. What's your excuse? Why do folks have to pay lots of tax money for expensive and dangerous glitches like that? Is the ubiquitous threat politicians don't become tired to caution against inmidst our own system? What are these fools paid for? This is not Osama nor Dr. Mabuse, this time it's the government.

Here's a good article about Computer Science, what it is and what it's not. Considering the bad habits of today's software projects there's definitely a need for more computer scientists, not just software engineers or programmers.

Whenever the IT industry detects the increasing gap in technology skills and its origins, its reaction usually consists of moaning about miserable conditions provided by the government or moaning about the disinterest and laziness of teenagers. Andrew Herbert, head of the Microsoft Research, detects a reason in school education, where kids are taught how to use (Microsoft?) office products but who won't get deeper knowledge of technology and who are not educated by people who are excited about computers. (Source)

This is not bad, but it's only half of the truth. When I decided to study computer science (at my University, it was even more information science), I wasn't prepared by my school at all (BTW, we're talking about mid-80s here). A physics teacher was enthusiastic enough to do some programming on an Apple ][ with a few pupils, but in retrospect, I'm thinking that we teached him more than he did teach us.

I didn't study computer science because of this teacher (in fact, he was extremely unappealing and arrogant), no, I've studied computer science because of two reasons: it was actually something new and exciting, sort of a new continent, a snowcapped plain without footprints. This innovative character withheld most of my classmates who instead studied electrical engineering, chemistry, or economics (as most of them did). The other reason results from the first one: because computer science was new and yet under our teacher's radar, I was able to dive into this stuff on my own and to get creative about it. There were just a few magazines, very few usable books, so you had to find your own solution. Systems then weren't as complex as today's computers, so you were able to actually understand what was going on in your home computer. Working and having fun with my computer was one of the few things that weren't marked by my teachers. It was kind of an early teenage geek subculture relatively free from performance pressure and mostly undetected by our teachers and parents. It was l'art pour l'art. You were able to start from scratch because there wasn't a ready-made solution for every problem you could think of. You had to think, to check out different plans, to stay tuned to the matter, and this could be fun.

What did happen afterwards? Computer science became a school subject as all the others. If you're writing school tests about data types and the traveling salesman, fun will go fast. Your teachers have to follow their schedules and not your curiosity. Computers became omnipresent and - boring. Nothing special at all. The emphasis is now on computers and their handling instead of theoretical backgrounds. (But if it would be vice versa, many pupils would be deterred and think, IT is just another kind of math. I guess they already think so.)

What could we do? First, intermingling information theory with teaching the correct usage of Word is unwise. These are completely different things, addressing different skills and don't fit together. Whoever wants to dig deeper will get bored by printing documents and eventually get frustrated. Schools have to split this. Of course it's important to become familiar with office products, but this is not the entire world of IT. For the real information science part I'd start from scratch: tell pupils them about computability, teach them Turing machines, let them write small Assembler routines, start with simple computer languages and let them get a taste of other ones (telling about the paradigms they represent). Later, let them write a game, some 3D graphics, or music effects. Let them feel that knowing some programming languages and having knowledge of the theoretical backgrounds is a powerful tool to express one's creativity. The one who has this creativity and who knows how to satisfy this will earnestly consider the study of information science.

"The Internet is a distance university of terror that is opened round the clock."
Jörg Ziercke, head of German Federal Criminal Police Office

ech kann zwor kee Holländisch, äver ech hoff, Ihr künnt mich verstonn. Menge Stadt wor hück zum Baschte voll vun Holländer un all de Lück trampele sich op de Föss. Dat jeht esu net! Ihr künnt doch net all op eemol kumme! Jiv et in Holland nix ze koofe, od'r wat wullt Ihr hier? Et is ja jot, dat Ihr mit däm Omnibus kumme dot, mer wisse ja all, dat Ihr net esu jot Auto fahre künnt, äver et jit och noch woang'sch schön Städtche, wo Ihr Jeld usjevve künnt. Fohrt doch ens wegger noh Kölle oder Bonn, die freue sech! Un in Bonn jit et och Berje! Do künnt Ihr klömme bes Üch de Fritte wie'er hu'kumme.

Disclaimer: please have mercy! We're now at the very beginning of Christmas season when myriads of people are crowding my city.

3 men in a windowless, darkened room, a canvas on the wall is lit by a huge beamer one of the men has lent from somebody else. A rattling air-conditioner jars their nerves but nobody wants to switch it off. Some books are lying on a table before them. One of the men taps on a keyboard. The desktop image on the canvas is replaced by a photo.

Miller: Well, it's food.
Smith: Of course it's food! That's for sure! He says it has meaning.
Parker: You don't say. What kind of meaning?
Smith: He won't tell. That's part of the riddle. We have to look at it, describe the items, collect the facts and come to conclusions.
Miller: Man, there's no meaning at all! It's just a bunch off food on a desk mixed together with some antique stuff.
Smith: I'm not sure. This guy is pretty smart. Maybe we should look at this picture for a while.
Miller: Hah!
(All three men are looking at the picture for a while.)
Parker: I think I see something.
Smith: Huh?
Parker: That tart in the foreground. See? It's shaped like a mushroom. And that stuff in the upper left corner is yet untreated and quite fresh. Not like the fruits in the lower right corner.
Miller & Smith: Oh!
(Again, they stare at the picture for a while.)
Miller: Rousseau... so who was this guy?
Parker: Kind of philosopher. Wait... (grabs one of the books on the table) Yeah, quite influential. (Reads) This was his last book.
Smith: I like these figures.
Parker: This guy is fooling us!
Smith: Rousseau?
Parker (ironically): Exactly.

To be continued...

This is the skyline of the lovely city of Düsseldorf. Thousands of people were coming to see a red coloured river Rhine as part of the "Bambi" celebrities event. If you compare the view above (click to enlarge) with the expected one you might notice that it was less red than announced. Cynics may consider this a typical example of blatancy and bigheadedness so often to be found in our really lovely city, but all in all this little mishap has several advantages:

• Tomorrow they will try again; even more people will crowd the city and drink some beer.
• If they will also fail tomorrow, this doesn't matter: a red coloured river Rhine would just be called "biggest red light district of the area".
• If they will also fail tomorrow, this doesn't matter: a red coloured river Rhine would one made think that contents of this infamous Iranian "blood fountain" would have been poured into the Rhine.
• If they will also fail tomorrow, this doesn't matter: a red coloured river Rhine will make people think that herds of white sharks are marauding through the floods of our lovely river.

The lovely city of Düsseldorf thanks for your interest up to now! Tom Hanks and other Hollywood celebs are invited to be part of the "Bambi" party. Perhaps they'll say: "Amazing!", perhaps they won't note at all. More about this tomorrow. Nothing to be seen here, please go on!

While yesterday's complete flop of colouring the river Rhine red by applying expensive light effects was just the dress rehearsal, the humiliation today was pure and total. With help from some water guns it was possible to put at least some red spots on the river. I think there will be a demand for legal regress...

Heading to the North at the same location, views got much more interesting: Oberkassel's discotheques had their usual sky beamer gimmicks...

...and other buildings were well lit and much brighter as the river Rhine. Lesson learned: the river Rhine was a god long ago. Don't mess with the river Rhine!

Thinking about future technology, even that of the near future, will always include a life that is augmented by robots. Robots, up to now devices somewhere between automated production and science fiction will be ubiquitous helpers men of the future won't be able to live without. So a recent prediction by futurologist Ray Hammond hits the news and he's predicting lots of useful things: the rapid change of our lives since the 1980s will continue and even accelerate; people will get implemented sort of geo-tagging in order to send help if they feel ill, personal DNA mapping, gene-therapy drugs, and stem cell research will extend people's life up to 130 years and more. The environment will go somewhat to the extreme, but mankind will handle this by using more energy-efficient measurements, the Internet will be even more connected, and robots, to come back to this article's topic, will become important helpers in everyday life by caring for the old and the young.

But it's not all about robotic nannies. Let's have a look besides our everyday lives. Noel Sharkey, CS Dept. of the University of Sheffield has written a thoughtful article in the November issue of IEEE Computer magazine, that deals with autonomous weaponry that will change the way men will conduct war and the ethical implications.

For Sharkey it's obvious that autonomous robotics research projects have been harnessed to manufacture killing machines. Almost every leading nation is increasingly using semiautonomous robotic devices for military purposes, the US Future Combat Systems projects will have spendings estimated to exceed $230 billion. More than 4000 robots are already operating in Iraq and Afghanistan (ideal recent testbeds for evaluating weapon systems and new kinds of warfare).

Ethical questions arise for engineers and computer scientists: while robotic systems so far have been mainly used for clearing explosive devices, thus saving lives, the US Army introduced the first three Forster-Miller Talon/SWORDS (Special Weapons Observations Reconnaissance Direct-Action System) armed combat robots into Iraq.

Usage of semiautonomous weaponry usually is covered under current ethical warfare discussion. In the end, a human being decides when to kill. This is comparable to usage of traditional weaponry where a pilot might press the red button and ethical responsibilities can be loaded on him and the chain of command. But these developments will change fast according to a prediction of James Canton, CEO of the Institute for Global Futures, that within a decade detachments with 150 soldiers and 2000 robots will be possible. It is just a matter of time when fully autonomous systems will be applied: cheap manufacturing, fewer support personnel and being able to send less human soldiers put them on the agenda.

However, there are no ethical guidelines in place for the inevitable collateral civilian deaths autonomous systems pay responsible for. Though a lot of developers, engineers, scientists, and technicians are involved in the development process, there is no real chain of responsibility defined if autonomous systems one day are going to decide to kill a human being. The idea of robot consciousness and thought are just subject of the academic debate and this terrifiying scenario where machines are killing people is a new territory that isn't even rudimentally discussed by society. Then, possibilities of Artificial Intelligence (AI) are often overrated; all the worse when it's about decisions about death or life.

Military's promise to save lives by reducing the body count is a mere proposition since nobody has ever fought a robotic war. A possible side effect would be a lowering of the hurdle to fight a war because less soldiers would be involved (but this doesn't tell anything about civilian deaths) and costs could be reduced. But even the possibility of an artificial conscience would emerge new problems because an autonomous system faces a lot of difficulties when trying to find it's way. Under no circumstances such a complex AI will be ready before deployment of the first systems. We have to consider if we want handle with questions about the responsibility for potential war crimes caused by machines that are just executing killer codes. (Source; IEEE ComSoc members or pay per view)

The author is member of ACM and IEEE and thus bound to their codes of ethics.

Seems that we have to redefine the definition of "hacker": when gouvernments start eavesdropping on their own people, it's just being consequent to init cyberattacks against other countries. (Source)

"It breaks my heart that I went into this f---ing computer field. I could've done anything else."
Ted Nelson, creator of hypertext and a different idea of the Internet as we know it now. (Source)

To "ensure a secure, safe and free Europe" the European Union digs deep into its pockets: 1.4 billion Euros (more than $2 billion), 15 times more money than in the budget before, will be spent for security research. This is independent from Germany’s three-year plan to spend 123 million euros - $177 million - on security R&D.

Well, at least that means "Aufschwung" (boom) for the involved companies and universities. All others will have to live with ubiquitous surveillance and expensive security measurements. Kind of collateral damage, it seems. (Source)

Still looking for inspiring examples of successful women who dared to become engineers? Eleanor Baum is but one of many; here's her story.

In order to attract skilled IT workers, European Union prepares a "Blue Card" program that will be a direct competitor to the US's H1-B visa. American officials suspect that it will be harder for the US industry to attract foreign people to fill the skills gap and encourage a refinement of H1-B.

Just two thoughts: To keep pace with America's attractivity for foreign workers, the European Union will have to offer much more that just a bunch of documents for immigrants. A complex program like the Blue Card has to pass a resolution by the EU parliament, and that takes a lot of time. Additionally, Europe has no self-image as melting pot nor country of immigration like the US has. Things are quite static and apart from the big cities it's still exceptional not to come from the same place. I think the Blue Card will just repeat problems of H1-B. It just does this the European way. (Source)

"You all know our adversaries will stop at nothing to destroy the infrastructures we all work so hard to protect. ... We're all at risk, we're all responsible. and there's much more we have to do to protect our critical systems."

Greg Garcia, US's Homeland Security assistant secretary who heads the national cyber-security division (Source)

I have absolutely no idea whether Homeland Security is doing a great job in improving the nation's cyber security situation. But I appreciate officials who are talking about enhancing safety and not just claiming for additional wiretapping measurements. I would like to listen to German politicians who were telling us that security for data, especially private data, and networks would be a major case and has to be addressed. I'd just like to hear the words, even if they would mean nothing at all. My wish for the next year. I'm getting humble.

To be honest: I don't like nowadays' Christmas fairs. Especially the markets scattered about the lovely city of Düsseldorf attract masses of shopping tourists from many different countries (especially the Netherlands) that diffuse all around the city. This is true for the weekends, but also for all other weekdays and most of the time streets are crowded with people. There's no fun with this, and I don't understand why people will travel hundreds of miles or kilometers just to drop in here.

It's time to escape. To keep it simple, we'll just use our imagination and the web. There are plenty of places, real or virtual, where you won't meet any pro-shopper. So let's get started.

We're beginning with Australia's western coastline, a very remote place that has been discovered by Dutchmen in the 17th century, but now they're gone and chances are big that you'll meet virtually no human being at all. This coastline stretches several miles north from Kalbarri to the Shark Bay and it looks like it was broken away from a past counterpart. Huge dunes. This is the place where 700 ton VOC ship Zuytdorp (or Zuyddorp), captained by Marinus Wijsvliet, was wrecked on the coast of New Holland (now better known as Australia).

You might notice that I was initially searching for Dirk Hartog island, Australia's biggest and most western island, situated at Shark Bay. It's eastern coast is one endless beach. See? No Christmas market here.

Recent headlines about loss of massive amounts of personal data (Missing pensions in Japan, scandal at HM Revenue and Customs, three million learner drivers' data lost) make obvious that officials who handle with complex systems and their data are unable to guarantee their safety.

I'm afraid this is just the beginning of further misfortune: if the friends of data retention will have fullfilled their wiretapping / surveillance / retentions plans, they not only will waste a lot of tax money but won't be capable of handling these data in a responsible manner as well. We're harvesting the fruits of incompetence: elder people, who invented things like computers, databases, operating systems, the Internet, and stuff are approaching retirement and will pass away. Most younger people who are in their fifth decade, like me, often refused to grapple with this technical thingies, for many of them computers were just a toy for nerds and only few of them took the risk of studying computer science. These folks become more and more important in the companies / bureaucracies they're working in and become project leaders. Having no clue about leading projects, having no experience with tech-savvy people and problems nor being capable of thinking in a structured way, these people are completely overchallenged with the requirements of modern systems design. No wonder why software built in these projects so often fails! They're clueless but at least responsible, or, as Mark Twain said: "With ignorance and confidence success will come true!"

There's no end of this situation in sight. Because there is hardly any self-esteem among technical people that would have risen their social position, younger people just see no reason why to invest precious life time into jobs that won't result in social prestige. I just doubt that job decisions are done solely just because of personal interest: of course people want to get reputation and status. You don't get this when you're just sitting at the console in comparison to healing people, judging criminals or even drawing paintings. So the younger will continue to refuse technical jobs - and who are we to blame? It would have been a task of the fourtysomethings to continue the work of the past decades and to become an inspiring example for younger people. But what happened? We were doing business as usual and became service providers. This is not enough, there are great things that we have already developed and even greater things to come. But we technicians have to realize our social importance! Our profession is too precious to be controlled by fools.

Ooooh-kay, this is the first article I've found mentioning a "Web 4.0" (the connection of intelligence, whereas Web 3.0 means the connection of knowledge).

I just wonder why they always omit the decimal places (behind the dot). But a Web 2.1 wouldn't be glamourous enough, I guess.

Did I ever mention that "dot oh" versions of software often are the buggy ones.

Christmas is approaching and the city gets even more and more crowded by shopping enthusiasts, thus foiling the contemplative meaning of Christmas. Not that I'm that into inwardness, but masses of shopping tourists flooding our streets make me think about inhabitants of tourist paradises who become kind of decoration for welthy guests. I'm glad when this hype is over.

Including today, there are three days left we have to survive until the Christmas fairs close their doors. We're leaving the western coast of Australia, saying goodbye to the steep point and are heading towards the Pacific Ocean. Our target is a place with two small islands: Cheeseman and Curtis island, situated between New Zealand and Tonga. Curtis consists mostly of volcanic material, while Cheeseman - the smaller one - is a rock island. Both islands are uninhabitated and unfortunately there is just a few vegetation, so no jungle to explore here. Just consider the loneliness here: there's just the sea and the winds, a perfect place to escape from the crowds. And a perfect place to dive.

Time for a new generation! So there's this study "Teens and Social Media" by the Pew Internet & American Life Project telling us that 64 percent of (American) Internet users between 12 and 17 years - the 'super-communicators' - are engaged in creating and posting online content. They are heavy users of social networking sites and Web 2.0 techniques. They prefer anything except email (which is considered lame). (Source)

Just two thoughts.

There's this term 'media competence'. We'll see if just using today's technologies will be enough to succeed in the information jungle, to tell the good from the bad, the bad from the evil. I don't know how much of these teens one day will be interested in asking how all this stuff actually works. A lot of posts in this blog draw a dark picture of this. Maybe I'm wrong. Let's hope they'll preserve their curiosity and dig deeper instead of just posting youtube videos. 'Super-communicators' - whew!

If email is going to die (and the youth is completely right in this), then spammers will react. Heaven forbid!

If you're following the development of robots, you might be aware that our mechanoid friends are going to become veritable weapons instead of just cleaning up the fields of war (or constructing cars or doing the dish at home). I've written a posting about this, lately.

A new report from the U.S. Department of Defense titled "Unmanned Systems Roadmap: 2007-2032" (download it here) examines the advances of unmanned technology over the next 25 years. Among obvious improvements (as better sensor technologies) the report also works out the need for continuing the development of artificial intelligence and autonomous 'thinking' unmanned systems. (Source)

This report is impressive. I guess there is no other list of autonomous devices as exhaustive as this one, so this is source number one. To get things straight: I don't even like the idea of robots killing people. I never would want to write software that would implement algorithms for deciding whether to fire a bullet at a man or not. (I'm no peacenik at all - I just don't want a machine to do the dirty work.) But it's neccessary to deal with this stuff. If less of 'our' soldiers will be involved then chances are high that public interest in critizising a war will diminish. Without a general public that is interested in the activities of its country war itself gets autonomous. This is definitely no option.

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.

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 :-)

Inspired by a blog entry about "non-locations", that means locations you don't feel like to visit, I want you present a series of localities that you might want to go to see.

Psychiatry, brain research in general, has always been a daunting task: not knowing how this strange grey matter - our brain - really works must have been frustrating in former days. Scientists threw in input data (treated their probands with various stimulus patterns) and reviewed the results. Everything between input and output was a black box, a no-man's-land, barely covered by psychology, biology, and medicine.

The last decade brought imaging techniques and psychiatrists and brain researchers are avid users. Finally they are able to watch what happens in the head while a proband is solving problems, and without doubt this kind of research resulted in great insights. This is big science and there is much more to come.

The venerable Stanford University School of Medicine released a study somewhere between brain research and gender studies. Researchers developed a simple game that involved occupying territories, and they found out that it appealed more to their male than female probands. Now they claim to know why men can't deny games like Halo. Obviously, according to their hypothesis, men are more attracted to space-infringement games than women, because men feel more rewarded in winning territories, thus more predestined to "territory- and aggression-type games".

You don't say. In certain situations men are more aggressive than men and we can prove that by developing a simple game and watching the brain curves. Where's the beef? Statements about men as "tyrants" and "conquerors" are following the only too well-known "men are from Mars, women from Venus" pattern and this is neither original nor is it scientific. Results are presented that everybody implicitly has known before and that just affirm that knowledge. That's no science, not even insight, that's somewhere between entertainment and prejudice.

But what really annoys me (it didn't happen yet, but this is just a matter of a few hours) is the inevitable editing by mass media. I predict that articles about that study will deal with terms like "men hooked on games more than women", "game addiction scientifically approved", "aggressive games rewarding men's basic desires" and next week we'll see politicians in talkshows debating on a ban of "killer games". Is it science? No, it's a stupid study becoming propaganda. (Source)

If you attend a conference in the near future, you'll have to watch your badge: so-called "smart badges" will track every step you make, notice who you meet and send this information to a central computer where it gets visualized. Sociometrics is the new kid on the block and everybody wants to know everything about you, even at conferences. A new spin-off that produces these thingies is already underway and remember: it's all science! Really! (Source)

Stephen Murdoch, PhD doctorate at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory on the principal weakness of 'covert channels', that means anonymizing systems like TOR. Watching the patterns of behaviour of different users reveals their intentions, if not their identity. A nice reminder that usage of anonymity tools alone is no guarantee for surfing incognito at all. (Source)

What now? Dispersion of behaviour, adding a random element in your online practice, usage of multiple anonymity tools. A high price to escape the eye of Mordor.

"What I would challenge you to do is to put a lot of effort into trying to see whether there's a legal way of throwing our so-called leaders into jail because what they're doing is a criminal act."

Excellent photographs of voyages to Yemen and Niger, executed by Evelyne Dubos. Absolutely great.

This was not the usual raid on an ordinary tax dodger: yesterday, prosecutors and police raided home and office of Klaus Zumwinkel, CEO of Deutsche Post, the still quasi-monopolist for German mail affairs. After posting bail he was allowed to return to his home.

Today, he backed out of his management positions, and it will be just a matter of a few days to watch decreasing the number of his influential friends. (Some politicians are already claiming about the loss of trust in Germany's elite, but this isn't up to much. Sorry politicians, no bonus points for you available here!) Zumwinkel is no leightweight: he's one of Germany's longest-serving top-managers and head of various supervisory boards. He planned to finish his career at the end of this year, but obviously not this way.

I've watched the photos of his detention. After bailing out and returning home to Cologne, he was alone with his family and his advocate, and I wonder what might have been happening that night. Did his family, especially his wife, address reproaches to him? Or didn't they know what was happening at all? Was he trying to save his lifework (or at least parts of his fortune) and permanently making phone calls? Is there a closed drawer at his desk with a tool to be used as last resort? Would this be enough for a Tennessee Williams like family drama? Who knows?

In the end, it's probably just another chapter in Germany's white-collar crime history. But if I was a filmmaker, I'd had an idea for my next movie. It would be an intimate play about an industry giant who had been nabbed with both hands in the cookie-jar, just a few hours after releasing him from jail and just hours before his total breakdown.

Most likely, I got infected by a colleague at work. At least that's the assumption of my doctor, who told me about children diseases and their sometimes unusual characteristics on the adult body. Perhaps a Streptococcus infection. Great. I can't remember being beaten with an infection like that for ages!

When colleagues and friends are talking about their kids, this sometimes turns out into a medical seminar: there are always nasty infection waves, making kindergartens and schools a sort of pest holes, where various germs are constantly exchanged. The last wave hit me.

Our beloved government wants and urges everybody to have a job and to have as much children as possible. If both parents are at work and no granny's available, they just have to put their sick kid into kindergarten / school, together with other sick children nobody has time to care for. Because in today's Germany everybody is in fear of losing his job, many people are going to work, though, and spread their children's diseases. This doesn't work out. If a kid is permanently ill and gets a daily refreshment with viruses and bacteria without any chance to recover, I wonder what's going wrong here. And I don't blame the parents for this!

"We're just a means to and end - and not an end in itself." - our head at yesterday's meeting. I was just browsing through some articles, all dealing with the question why young people / women / whoever isn't interested in a carrer in IT any longer. My boss told us the answer: we're just there for customer's sake, we're costing too much money, our only raison d'être is to satisfy the customer.

I was too tired to tell her that even the opposite of this would be still wrong. Why should one try to convince people to have a career in a work environment without any self-confidence? Why this bullshit about that abstract customer? Most customers I talked with were actually nice people, they were, in fact, people. No need to frighten IT workers because of this evil customers. Who takes his work seriously doesn't need a monster to be afraid of, he's proud to deliver good work.

The complete loss of self-confidence up to total self denial is the main reason for people backing away from a career in IT. If we could get back our self-confidence, coffee-cup reading like this or that would get obsolete. Give IT the glamour back and people will come.

Remember Java? 13 years ago, Java creators touted that Java was made to revolutionize the computer world (this discussion had a subthread that dealt with ultra-thin net computers, but that's a completely different story). The revolution felt through, sort of. It's way too early to pronounce the Java software market dead, there's a tremendous code-base and global players like IBM and SUN do big business with server and programming environments for the Java platform. However, a decrease in importance is noticeable due to developers who prefer systems like PHP, Ruby or the .Net Framework for rapid development. To me this reveals a growing trend towards rapid prototyping systems that promise to do all the work in less time. However, this might work out for little Web2.0 rat shops, but not for serious programming. If Ruby on Rails is the only programming environment you're used to, I'd recommend a cold shower and some lessons in C. (Source)

StudiVZ and SchülerVZ usually are described as Germany's answer to community sites like Facebook. In a recent interview (German language) StudiVZ CEO Marcus Riecke tells about his view on personalised advertisement and the recent changes in StudiVZ's terms and conditions.

Riecke sees his company sitting on the fence when conflicts arise between members' privacy and curiosity of prosecutors. Thus he widely changed the VZ's terms and conditions and asked its members to accept these changes or to leave the community in order to keep the directory and the users sober. By accepting the new terms and conditions users actively agree that their data are given to prosecutors if these deliver a warrant. According to Riecke's statement, acceptance is overwhelming and just 10 per cent of all users didn't agree to the new terms.

Based on the ten enquiries by administrative bodies that come in every week (Riecke mentions this number in the interview) where name and address of a user are given to the authorities, this results in a number of more than 500 incidents with possible juridical consequences per year. Issuers of cease and desist notes can find an extensive area of operation, certainly there will be almost always copyright infringements, cases of verbal abuse and the like.

On the other side, scholars and students have to bear personalised advertisement. Because every community member is encouraged to enter as much data as possible in her user profile, advertisers have a walk-over to find the appropriate customers for their products. I wouldn't consider this innovative like Riecke does, but maybe these people still don't know that even the most personalised ads are just annoying.
And I still don't get the idea of these VZ community sites. You're running barely naked, your data is sold to advertisers or given to prosecutors, that means: defenceless, and still there are enough people to accept all this for a little bit of digital love and security. To me, the price for this would be too high. My data's precious.

Germany's Constitutional Court has spoken: by nullifying North Rhine-Westphalia's 'law on protection of the constitution' and creating a new basic right to 'integrity and confidentiality of IT systems' as a part of personal rights, many of the dubious developments of the last few months in Germany are restrained. In its explanations, the court shows more technological appreciation than many journalists of the mass media. So various techniques like keyloggers or capturing of electromagnetic radiation are mentioned and the judges declare that not everything is allowed to the state that might be technically possible. Online eavesdropping with trojans or unheralded surveillance of user owned data are massively made difficult for prosecutors, and that's very good news.

The next weeks will show how our politicians will react on this. Our minister of the interiour, Wolfgang Schäuble, announced fast steps to declare new laws on online surveillance and I'm not sure if he understood yesterday's judgement completely. We'll stay tuned.

At least one minister of justice (North Rhine-Westphalia's Ingo Wolf (FDP)) and a complete political party - SPD - disgraced themselves: the first by implementing that law that has been declared anticonstitutional yesterday, and the Social Democrats by waving through Schäuble's draft laws on online surveillance, waiting for the courts to overturn them. I call this a poor performance.

Of course with best intentions, researchers at the Air Force Institute of Technology at Wright Patterson Air Force Base are developing a system for detecting insider threats within organizations. This is done by data mining operations on the organization's emails, thus revealing social networks within that organization. Even individuals "who feel alienated within the organization" can be spotted by analyzing certain changes in their social behaviour, tracked by that software.

I've read about many paranoia systems but this outweighs others by far. If an individual "feels alienated", she has reasons for this. So going to the workers' council becomes a subversive act again! If people learn that they are monitored, they will change their behaviour, anyway. And if somebody really wants to get information that wasn't intended for him, or if he wants to destroy something, he won't wait for that until you're ready with analyzing his profile.

Dear researchers: Is your hubris that big that you don't even consider abuse of your system and its data? There are still enough people in Germany who have a lot of experience with a totalitarian state (the former GDR), a governmental system based on nosing the own people and draconian penalties for subversive elements. Go out, ask them and take some history lessions about dictatorship and Big Brother scenarios! (Source)

Having read about minuscule RFID chips I imagine a rotating door system that you have to enter and that lets you breathe in several of these mini RFID chips. And whoops - you're tagged! With a scanning distance of 30 centimeters you can be easily tracked.

What's next?

"My best basic law is of no use to me if I have to fear concretely that a bomb goes off in the subway evenings. You have to consider security measurements. These don't have to cut basic laws massively."

Clueless German minister of justice Brigitte Zypries on this week's verdict of Germany's Constitutional Court

Who needs Bundestrojaners? To make personalized advertizing possible, three British Internet providers (BT, Carphone Warehouse and Virgin Media) teamed up with a company called Phorm in order to track Internet user's behaviour and to send ads suiting to their profiles. Phorm promises to establish a new platform called OIX (Open Internet Exchange) that will send ads to a user whose browsing records were accessed by Phorm. This way advertizers can send ads to a user that might suit his 'needs'. The providers give Phorm access to all necessary information to get this job done.

Any objections against this worst case scenario of privacy are hit back by Phorm with shallow arguments like they're clearing their caches often or their privacy policy has been checked by Ernst & Young. I'm not convinced, and so aren't lots of British, because some of them make head against this unfortunate alliance. After having read this NYT article (the providers didn't want to bring their alliance to light, so British media echo was small) they have set up a website and put up resistance. I hope this will shed some light on this obscure business practice where BT denied secret tests with Phorm last summer.

Putting the lid on this affair, Phorm is a successor of 121Media, a supplier of Spy- and Adware. Quite a great alliance! (Source)

Take that, European educational politicians: "The IEEE will recommend that the traditional four-year degree, such as a Bachelor of Science or of Engineering in the United States, remain the first professional degree in engineering." No way for turbo studies. (Source)

As we've been learning, they're just poorly engineered and tend to break a lot," Simons said. "They're also insecure, so it's possible to insert a virus.

I remember the last parlamentary elections and me standing in front of this head-high apparatus with lots of knobs. One of it had a label "Invalid Vote". (Source)

Could the Internet crash? Media rich content like videos, music, online games increase demand of higher bandwidth. According to recent measurements, YouTube is consuming up to 20 percent of HTTP traffic, that is some 10 percent of the overall Internet traffic. In November 2007, Nemertes Research gained attentiveness by its prediction of a bandwidth collapse in 2010, when Internet demand could outpace the overall network capacity. Whether advances in Internet technologies and better hardware will overcome this cloudy prognosis is yet unclear. (Source (Login req'd)).

I wonder if network neutrality opponents will take this opportunity to purport to be saviours of the Internet by narrowing bandwidth capacity for video and BitTorrent hogs. We'll see by no later than in 2011, when TV at the computer screen will be an everyday task and the ever increasing need for speed will outpace the underlying network. In former years, Pop ate itself and video killed the radio star. Will the Internet also kill itself? Or is this just a 'normal' development?

Farewell! It was one of your novels (2001) that introduced me to Science Fiction and made me want to become a scientist eventually. I always enjoyed your stories and nothing makes me more sad that most of your visions are still fiction.

Another important verdict from Germany's Constitutional Court: only weeks after nullifying North Rhine-Westphalia's 'law on protection of the constitution', today the Prime Court strongly limited the newly introduced procedures of data retention. Through provisional order they illegalize usage of collected traffic data without essential reason and without adjucation. Others may be more elaborate on the details, but I just want to say that this is another verdict to strengthen (or defend, as you prefer) civil rights against the greediness of an ever growing autocratic state. Sadly, judges didn't forbid data retention itself. It's just the data access that will be made much more difficult for prosecutors, but I don't complain. A big consequence is that it's no longer that easy for the content industry to get access to server log files without good reason: as far as I know the exchange of mp3 files isn't a terrorist threat yet. Another consequence would be that Germany's minister of justice Zypries has to resign. (Source)

He's right. I had a lot of better rogations to offer, but the old man in Vatican wants us to pray for the 'perfidious Jews'. Things didn't got better by alleviating the formula. Pathetic and embarrasing.

My rant of yesterday about that verbal injury in the Trident Mass would be incomplete if I wouldn't propose at least one rogation instead of the one concerning about the right faith for the Jews, praying for their conversion. How about that:

Let us pray for the forgiveness of our sins and those of our ancestors: for losing our humilty in serving wrong purposes, for the savage persecution of innocent people and those who were not willing to follow us, for the oppression of dissenters, for the past and present anti-semitism of our joint creditors, for the arrogance that emerged from our assumed choiceness.

Just a proposal. I don't want die-hard Catholics ruin my catholic belief. I want them to continue here and to look forward. Digging autocratic prayers from the past out of the relic box is definitely a mistake. Happy Easter, folks!

In addition to this article: an interesting Popular Mechanics report on recent unmanned fighting robots with impressive pictures. I still find the idea of unmanned armed systems frighting and disturbing.

After Germany's Chaos Computer Club's (CCC) published the fingerprints of the German minister of the Interior, Wolfgang Schäuble, Schäuble said that everybody might know his biometric data, because he has nothing to fear from anybody. (Source)

Obviously, Mr. Schäuble didn't get it. Let's assume there's a burglary in your neighbourhood and Schäuble's fingerprints are widely scattered on the walls, on the furnitures, whatever. Let's assume further that he can't prove he was in bed that night. What would usually happen? The handcuffs would click within seconds. Biometric data don't lie! Nobody will misuse your data! Trust us, trust us...

The "only legitimate successor of dotcomtod" and "leading provider and distributor of exit-oriented company reports" boocompany.com has fallen victim to its enemies. Still unknown people achieved the blocking of the boocompany.com domain and blustered to obtain its cancellation from the Google search index. All in all, the website and its forum seemed to be offline, but were still available via IP address. The well-known but anonymous face of boocompany.com, Lanu, initiated an appeal for funds to get the domain back. Obviously, this campaign shows first results: the Boocompany is available under a new gTLD: www.boocompany.my, the forum can be found at forum.boocompany.my. Hopefully, the .com domain also will be back soon. The riff-raff that gained the domain by trickery already got a painful kick in the pants; whatever they tried to accomplish: it doesn't work out. (Source)

We've had it all: Spam that promised millions of Dollars, widows of dictators trying to save their money, c1111alis and v1aaaaagra to bring the lost youth back, lonely hearts seeking for wealthy men - the world of Spam is colourful and because those bandits want your money, they usually do it polite, telling you their "friend", their last hope etc.

Seems that a new trend emerges: rant spam is -at least for me- a relatively new development. What did happen? Commenter "Pua" (with a faked? googlemail address) writes:

I'm trying to keep away from reading posts like this. It is totally meaningless. Ain't it shame to post rubbish like this?

Well, thank you, Pua, for these wise words! You probably want me to click that link you declared as your homepage and that's in turn located at a server stephanie-from-lazy-town-naked. rowgod.nx.cn. Folks: playing games is okay, every fool has one free try, but don't make me angry. I told you.

Whoever is looking for a reason for not joining a social community website now can find a convincing solution in this little 'accident': obviously unhappy with their working conditions, employees of a hotel in East Germany complained about their employer in a StudiVZ forum. Members of this group made fun of the handicapped hotel boss, cracked jokes about a still uncleared gas accident and pretended a plan to blow up the hotel. Now they got the sack.

Lessons learned: First, these guys were incredibly dumb. Even if working there was a nightmare there would be better means to overcome their trauma. Second, they felt secure within a discussion group of a big online community. They were not. (Source)

Never change a running system!

MadScientists corollary: Never unplug a system that is meant to run!

The man who has called the 'movie axiom' passed away. One of the last strong straight guys, I'll never forget his roles in Planet of the Apes, The Omega Man, and Soylent Green. (Source)

"Strong Labor Market for Scientists and Engineers" yesterday, "IT job security plummets five times faster than nationwide average" today. Hire & fire in IT is becoming mainstream - at least in the U.S. And politicians and deans still wonder why young people are still unwillingly to start a career in IT. The discrepancy between the self image of universities and scientists on the one, the always hand-wringing economy allegedly searching for IT professionals and the daily routine in the workplace gets more and more obvious.

And another article about the question "Where have the girls [in IT] gone?" Much more interesting than following the assumed reason for this well-known phenomenon of the dramatic loss of female IT workers in the last few years are the reader's comments. For example this one from an anonymous reader:

Having been in IT for 30 years, I have encountered lack of support, devaluation of my contributions, endured comments like "software is now so good even a girl can do it" (from someone ignorant of Grace Hopper, and lately, with a large influx of foreign-born male programmers, I have had to put up with cross-cultural snubbing as well and the looks of "just let her talk, we'll decide out how we'll do it later when she's not here;" and watched in disbelief as I moved from job-to-job and was always replaced by several people, all of which were male and each of which was paid more than myself. "Girls" aren't dumb - they are learning from their mothers' and aunts' mistakes and looking for more fertile ground.

That sums it up for me.

A spammer's life must be awful and boring. Awful because spammers always have one foot in prison, boring because sending all these silly stories to bazillions of artless Internet users and gaining no love for this.But today I found something really funny. The "Internet Maintenance" writes:

Dear Email Users,

This is from the internet maintance services in the united state of America.

Due to this continous arising of internet scams and fraud,Google have
decided to take appropriate maintance of our Email address.

You are hereby advise and notify to send your username and password to this
email address below:

internetmaintainancekeeping1@gmail.com

This will ensure the protection of your Email Address against scam and
fraud mails.

Please you are advise to follow this format....

Example username.........sh*ron@gm*il.com
password..........123456

Sincerely Yours
Sharon Jones

Well, Sharon: I linked your address with a mailto: tag and hope that the usual harvesters soon will fill your mailbox with a lot of useful information and mail addresses! :-)

Much rumor on the next generation Internet: the Grid, a recent development at CERN, will be "10.000 times faster than a typical broadband connection" (Source) but there are still many questions left: considering recent headlines about German providers (Source 1, Source 2, Source 3), canceling their flatrate customers I wonder how these masses of data that would be stored in the "grid" would be available if your download rate would still be limited. Additionally, storing data in a datacenter somewhere in the grid immediately raises security and privacy questions that wouldn't emerge if you would store your data locally. A discussion about the costs of this new technology (any details?) would also be nice.

Much work to do for SEOs: Google announces extended crawling by handling HTML forms on websites in order to get to those pages that would be reachable only by user interaction. This is a try to make these parts of the web visible that are still unavailable to crawlers that simply follow links and don't know how to handle things like the target attribute of forms. It will be interesting to see how Google handles the result lists, because the offered links would possibly result in HTTP POSTs and GETs and I don't know if every web application out there in the wild will tolerate this. But for SEOs this will be the next bonanza, that's for sure! (Source)