 Friday, 29. November 2002
Thierse wins against Bild
A state court in Hamburg has ordered the popular daily Bild to print in a prominent spot a statement by the president of the German parliament, Wolfgang Thierse, refuting the newspaper's claim that he had &147;invited&147; all the members of the Bundestag on a junket to Paris that would cost taxpayers EUR500,000 ($498,000). [FAZ: Politics]
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Monday, 25. November 2002
Only Thieves Block Pop-Ups
It's official: using browsing the web while blocking pop-up ads and other such exciting website enhancements is theft. Anti-leech.com are offering to protect your site from browsers blocking pop-ups (or 'theft tools' as they call them). [Slashdot: Your Rights Online]
02:16 |
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Friday, 01. November 2002
Radio 9
I'm a user. I love features. Then again, I remember the 1980s. Stop me before I kill again, but Word is only slightly more advanced than Wordstar was in terms of truly usable features. It sure boasts tens of thousands of unusable features, though.
On the safe assumption that Userland's gurus are cooking up the next version of Radio, I want to put in a plea for modest feature enhancement complemented by radical attention to fit-and-finish of the product we love-to-love (and occasionally love-to-hate).
In very specific order of personal conviction:
1. Categories
HELP! Redo the GUI to make categories first-class citizens with per category posting, editing, archiving, retrieval, theme management, etc.
2. Aggregation
Clean GUI and infrastructure support for large-scale news management (hundreds or thousands of feeds). Augmented with filtering criteria, notifications, trackbacks et al plus reasonable post-to-category options.
3. Site portability
Clean, brainless support for retrieving site content from cloud servers as well as moving content from server to server.
4. Editing
Either a platform-independent widget that takes the IE mechanism to its next level (Mozilla? Flash? ???) and/or desktop-centered editing that is more elegant than raw text editors but orders of magnitude simpler and blog-attuned than programming editors or word processors.
5. Instant Outlining
The next area for geeky goodness? Turn the betas into a ready-for-end-user-prime-time deliverable.
6. Performance
Use every trick in the book to gain back some cycles on our desktops so we are enticed to live inside Radio, not just use it to retrieve-and-publish. [Russ Lipton Documents Radio]
22:49 |
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Chaostreff Aachen wird gegründet
Chaos everywhere! In diesem Sinne treffen wir uns am 14. November um 20 Uhr im "kaktus" (Pontstr, NŠhe RWTH). [c4 Headlines]
17:02 |
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Tuesday, 15. October 2002
Internet Again
10 Minutes ago the "SYNC" LED on our ADSL modem switchd from red to green. So we are on the net again. Theoretically we where before connected via an Apple Airport with Modem but some confusing Interactions between the ISDN-to-analog converter in our PBX and the Airport resulted in a transferrate of ca. 800 b/s and RTT latency of up to 22000 ms (22 seconds!). So basically Internet was unusable.
11:10 |
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Monday, 30. September 2002
Back blogging!
As you might have noticed this Weblog was broken in various ways in the last few days. Seems all showstopper bugs are ironed out and I can go on blogging. Nice.
You can find some explanation of my problems at http://md.hudora.de/blog/categories/niftyHacks/2002/30/
01:25 |
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Wednesday, 25. September 2002
"Transparenz im Netz": Die Suche im Internet erleichtern: Bertelsmann Stiftung erforscht Qualität von Suchmaschinen
Im Rahmen des Projekts "Transparenz im Netz: Suchmaschinen" untersucht die Bertelsmann Stiftung jetzt das Suchverhalten von Internet-Nutzern und die LeistungsqualitŠt von Suchmaschinen. Auf Basis der Ergebnisse soll letztendlich ein Verhaltenskodex fŸr Suchmaschinen-Betreiber und Portalanbieter etabliert werden.
22:56 |
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"Transparenz im Netz": Die Suche im Internet erleichtern: Bertelsmann Stiftung erforscht Qualität von Suchmaschinen
Im Rahmen des Projekts "Transparenz im Netz: Suchmaschinen" untersucht die Bertelsmann Stiftung jetzt das Suchverhalten von Internet-Nutzern und die LeistungsqualitŠt von Suchmaschinen. Auf Basis der Ergebnisse soll letztendlich ein Verhaltenskodex fŸr Suchmaschinen-Betreiber und Portalanbieter etabliert werden.
22:56 |
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DARPA seeks "total information awareness"
Biometric, language processing, predictive modeling and database technologies are all key areas of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's revamped strategy to assist homeland security. [Government Computer News - DOD Computing]
07:25 |
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EU finances `OpenEvidence', an Open Source project
The EU is very active in supporting Open Source development by providing financial aids to European projects of interest, like OpenEvidence that was approved to be realized by a consortium of technology providers and users from 4 countries: Belgium, France, Italy and Estonia. In this contest C&A is very proud to announce its OpenEvidence participation, integrating its Time Stamping technology, to this 'evidence creation and validation system' of electronic documents and activities. The technology developed by the project can be used as basic building blocks to support such services as non-repudiation of electronic business transactions, property right protection and notarisation. Implementations and demonstration services using the protocols defined in RFC 3029 (DVCS) and RFC 3161 (TSP) will be provided as initial activity. A version of time stamping service can be also be tested on the C&A web site. To learn more about OpenEvidence: http://www.com-and.com/openevidence.html [infoAnarchy]
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Sunday, 22. September 2002
Visa setzt auf Drahtlos-Kreditkarten
Visa International plant ein neues Kreditkarten-Zahlungssystem, beim dem Smart-Cards mit so genannten Radio Frequency Identification Tags (RFIDs) zum Einsatz kommen. [ComputerWoche: Nachrichten]
Kenner der TrickbetrÄgerszene freuen sich schon auf die kreativen Ideen bûser Menschen, uns drahtlos Geld aus der Tasche zu ziehen.
23:19 |
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Breaking the internet
US .gov WHOIS Info Restricted Over Attacker Fears. VeriSign Inc has stopped providing access to information about the .gov internet domain, which is restricted to US government bodies, over concerns the data could be used in planning internet attacks,... [Security News Portal]
20:03 |
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Friday, 13. September 2002
Phones join file-sharing revolution
Soon you could be using your phone to share musicŸ games and images with almost anyoneŸ just like you used to do with Napster over the net. [BBC News | TECHNOLOGY]
09:10 |
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Sunday, 08. September 2002
First mobile top ups from cash points
The first UK service which lets customers top up their mobile phone at a cash machineŸ launches on Monday. [BBC News | TECHNOLOGY]
22:16 |
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Email Disclaimers From Hell
[LawMeme: Legal Bricolage for a Technological Age]
For instance, Credit Suisse First Boston attaches an eye-popping 1,500-word disclaimer to all its research in both print and e-mail; Goldman, Sachs & Co. weighs in at 987 words; Merrill offers 749 words and Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., 617.
Is there already a disclaimer archive?
21:25 |
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Thursday, 05. September 2002
Denver opens 3,200 'spy files'
The Denver police spy files have been opened to the public - after some old-fashioned black marker censorship, of course. AP doesn't say what happened to the 22 files that the federal government contested . About 200 people crowded the lobby of Police Department headquarters Tuesday after officials opened 3,200 "spy files" on local activists and organizations. [...] Many who waited for up to an hour to see their file received papers that still smelled of... [bplog]
12:52 |
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Mitnick says " Companies still exposed to 'social engineers'"
Companies are leaving themselves exposed to hackers because of a lack of awareness of the 'social engineering' techniques deployed by the most dangerous attackers, according to former hacker Kevin Mitnick [Security News Portal]
12:46 |
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Wednesday, 04. September 2002
Ghana's burgeoning hacker culture
[Moreover - moreover...]
09:05 |
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Monday, 02. September 2002
German Blog Fake-Addrees Craze seem to come to an end
Recently german bloggers went crazy about getting rid of spammers by putting a lot of fake Email addresses onto blogs. I was guilty of this, too - ca. 1997. Now Funkenfeuer, eBiz, edings and others speak up against this. Fake Addresses have been tried for years and and they just don't work. See Wpoison Sets Trap for Spam Weasel [Wired News] for historical interest.
20:21 |
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Tuesday, 27. August 2002
Domaingrabbing and sex
Sex.com case turning dirty [LawMeme: Legal Bricolage for a Technological Age]
11:30 |
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Sunday, 25. August 2002
How can we make law better? - Talking to Dave yesterday got me thinking; something he said made me aware of a fundamental problem with laws. Lawyers tend to solve all social problems through the use of laws. It's the old "when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail" scenario. Sadly, ordinary people are also starting rely heavily on laws, when ordinary common sense would do just fine. And Congress? Well let's just say that the place is littered with hammers.
So I'm working on a model of changing things in Congress that will help. I'm pretty close to having something I can share with everyone. It will have to be short because I'm not in the whole Kantian tome-writing, super-duper exegisis thing. I've got attention deficit disorder, and I suspect that some of you do too. So it will be short, pithy, and true. The "truth" is the hard part. I'm finding that "truth" requires a mix of strange ingredients. And you've got to get the right proportions with those ingredients. I'm sure I won't get it right, but at least I can say I tried. Hope to have something for you soon. [Ernie the Attorney]
19:56 |
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Legal und gut: Tonspion. "TONSPION ist der Geheimagent im Auftrag des Musikhûrers... (24.08.02) [Industrial Technolgy & Witchcraft]
09:14 |
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You're Only as Secure as Your Passwords [Kill-HUP.com]
00:47 |
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Hacking contest at Malaysian IT conference. Sydney Morning Herald Aug 23 2002 4:19PM ET [Moreover - moreover...]
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Thursday, 18. July 2002
Firms tackle cyber-sabotage
Cyber-sabotage is regarded as one of the business world's dirty little secrets.
And it's one that is increasingly coming to light in the wake of scandals like Enron, Global Crossing and WorldCom.
The US recession and the thousands of lay-offs that have resulted have also forced the issue centre stage.
There is a worrying tendency for disgruntled employees to take their venom out on former employers by going back into the company system with their valid ID access codes to create chaos.
[BBC News]
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Wednesday, 21. August 1996
Rich folks embrace digital privacy and anonymous markets
Two items from the recent news:
1) The August 7th edition of the WSJ has a front page story on the divorce
of cellular phone king, Craig McCaw. Here's the salient phrase, "... Mr.
McCaw says in an interview via a wire-line phone to which he entrusts all
sensitive conversations because he is leery of eavesdropping on his cellular
calls." Given that the call was at least partly on the record, I wonder how
he handles his truly sensitive calls.
2) The August 20th edition of the NYT describes the effects of the recent
settlement between NASDAQ and the SEC. The NASDAQ marketplace is essentially
a computer network that links a group of dealers who use the system to make
announcements like "I want to buy Microsoft for 92 dollars/share." A
brokerage firm will often make a profit on the difference and not pass it on
to their customers. If someone breaks the spread, all of the brokers suffer
but the customers generally gain a small advantage. The SEC now has audio
tapes of some dealers using collusion and social pressure to keep the
spreads up between the price the shares are offered to buy and sell.
There is also another market ran by Reuters known as "Instinet" and it is
anonymous. No one knows who is offering to buy and sell shares. If someone
breaks from the pack and starts offering slightly more money for a
particular issue, there is no easy way for the dealers to retaliate. It's
all anonymous. The article suggests that prices are often fairer for the
people who use Instinet. Of course it is only open to big folks like
institutional investors. Presumably it is not truly anonymous and the SEC
could unwind the trades if it wanted to investigate, say, insider trading. [pcw@access.digex.net (Peter Wayner) via risks-digest Volume 18, Issue 37]
01:18 |
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disLEXia, a research project by Maximillian Dornseif
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