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Today's RFID Passport Deja Vu · 31.10.05

Bruce Boyes's Blog gives me today's deja vu. His post is on RFID in passports and covers perfectly identical issues as german 'non government' authorities have put against it. It seems to be the same all over the world. Great Bruce, thank you!

By the way, officially today has been the last day for german citizens to apply for a 'non'-RFID passport. Though, due to hardware proliferation problems in some counties one can apply for the conservative passport a little longer. Thanks to sabbeljan for the additional information.

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Jack-O-L.E.D. · 30.10.05

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Cursor Following Flying Bat · 30.10.05

I'm sure you all want this cursor following flying bat on your pages for helloween, so here is the picture and the javascript to add it to your page: flying_bat.zip. Don't forget to link me.

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Rule Britannia · 29.10.05

Englische wochen beim fussball sind in ordnung, aber in der kantine? Gut, dass das vorbei ist.

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Are They Going After You? · 27.10.05

Being paranoid does not mean they are not out to get you. Do you always wonder if your co workers try to destroy your plans to establish world peace? That old lady in the underground, was she taking notes about you? Or is it just you being paranoid. ElReg covers a finding of the University College London (UCL), stating that schizophrenics perform better in certain graphical tests. One application of this finding is the little simplified test below. If you fail, you are not paranoid, hence people are after you. This test runs only on your machine. I'm not gathering any information about your or any other person's results. I'm not after you.

Ok, let's start: One of the small tiles around the center image matches the inner square of the center image in contrast and color. If you find the correct tile, you might be paranoid. Try it, Click the tile you consider correct.

!Are they out to get you? The answer appears here!

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Physicists Sign Petition · 27.10.05

The sneakin' return of nuclear warfare did not remain undetected. Physicists of UCSD have published a petition against adopting a new U.S. policy that would permit the use of nuclear weapons against an adversary for the following reasons:

• For rapid and favorable war termination on U.S. terms.
• To ensure success of U.S. and multinational operations.
• To demonstrate U.S. intent and capability to use nuclear weapons to deter adversary use of weapons of mass destruction.
• Against an adversary intending to use weapons of mass destruction against US, multinational, or alliance forces.

For rapid and favorable termination of weirdo doctrines 470 physicists signed the petition already.

(via ScienceDaily, ucsd.edu)

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The Hacker's Diet · 27.10.05

Here's a truly geek e-book on how to become and stay slim (hence attractive?): "The Hacker's Diet". This, of course, is a topic widely discussed and tackled among computerists. The book is written by John Walker with LaTeX. It comes in three parts: Engineering, Management and Details. I love the section on computing tools to track weight loss efforts in the details part. When you became skinny following John's plan you'll at least have a great set of data that you could explore afterwards.

... but geeks outthere be careful. A temporary diet doesn't do any good in coping with moderate 'office rolls'. Consider sustainable changes. For those who feel obese: Under no cicumstances trust your own perception in this field. Dangerous!

(via BoingBoing, Kevin Kelly)

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Economics of Lap Dancing · 26.10.05

There was this article by a former lap dancer Elisabeth Eaves, which had astonishingly sound economic reasoning on the topic of high price 'lap dancing establishments'. I found that one at Improbable Research, where it was featured for the mentioned economic reasoning.

Today the register does feature the story behind. A IT Firm's CEO, Robert McCormick, spent the amount of 241.000$ in one night out at the Scores in New York City. Watch the urban neon interiour here. Now he refuses to pay, claiming that he was a victim of fraud. Since the story made it to the register without mentioning it's 'economics of luxury' implications, I'd like to cite from Elisabeth's article, which one should read completely. Actually I perfectly agree with Elisabeth. A lap dance club is some kind of a Dior handbag for men, or is it not?

Nevertheless, the Manhattan district attorney's office is investigating allegations of overcharging at Scores. To which I say, as someone who has worked in strip clubs, you've got to be kidding - there's no such thing as "overcharging" in this industry.

Does Christian Dior "overcharge" when it sells a handbag for $13,000? That depends on how you look at it. If you see the handbag as a few pieces of stitched leather, the price is grossly inflated. If you see it as a source of heady self-worth - a passport to an exclusive club - then it's hard to say what price would be too high.

This is the economic logic relied on by purveyors of luxury goods. It's not about the utility of the product. It's about making the customer feel as if he has arrived.
-- Elisabeth Eaves at the NYTimes

Right, very often it is not about the actual utility but about the social implications of a certain good. For this reason, Mr. McCormick is probably very happy about the publicity he and his firm gets, which is better then the publicity it gets for it's business recently.

(via ElReg, Improbable Research, NYTimes)

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Haendler im Tempel · 26.10.05

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Funny Nerd II · 25.10.05

(via Sixtus )

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Wat Bin Ich Positiv · 25.10.05

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Rosa Parks died · 25.10.05

Rosa Parks died at the age 92. We should consider not to take the bus today.

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Textpattern Shoutbox Plugin · 23.10.05

Textpattern user, this weekend the jfx plugin is a very simple shoutbox. You know, one of those fancy commenting tools that would not go with a post but just appears somewhere on your pages. This one is so simple, it doesn't even know a senders name or address. Maybe this is something to include in the future. The plugin is tested with texpattern 1.0 and 0.9. Since it doesn't access the database, it should run with more recent versions as well. Make sure you have read, write and touch rights in txp home.

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Ion Luca Caragiale · 22.10.05

Yesterday, I learned that there's a contest going on. Topic is: Portrait or caricature a great writer and journalist from Eastern Europe: Ion Luca Caragiale. There has been a whole lot of activity already. Have a look at the galleries. The page layouts seem a little cheesy but the content is great. Above, you see my contribution. I just sent it to Romania. It took me half an hour to accomplish the ballpen sketch, I do not really know Ion Luca Caragiale, so my contribution definitely won't be top of the heap over there. Actually I just loved the idea and wanted to be part of it.

(via Cartoonist)

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Open Office 2.0 Released · 21.10.05

Openoffice 2.0 released.

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Sprache schafft Denken · 20.10.05

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Enemy Recognition · 19.10.05

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Geek Reading: Web 2.0 · 19.10.05

There is this other buzz word that crosses my paths annoyingly frequent. What is this Web 2.0 thing anyway? I had a quick glance at this O'Reilly article, which is long and tends to take buzz names and buzz words from the late nineties and link them to current buzz words. Is there more then recycling aged buzz to Web 2.0? The following author went to a conference on Web 2.0, which is already rebaptised Bubble 2.0. Here's just a snippet of the newsforge article which is worth reading completely:

I thought giddily for a minute that I should run to the Office Depot across the street from the Argent Hotel (where the conference is being held) and grab some blank CDs. I could then come back to my room and make a slide presentation for a business that would develop a VoIP-based multimedia wiki that would track disintermediated community-generated podcast blog reviews. It would be based on open source software, of course. And cross-platform. And extensible and highly scalable.

Conclusion: Web 2.0 is a great venture capital magnet, just as well as Web 1.0 used to be. Can we even recycle an aged hype? This surely is something that hasn't been done often. In the eyes of the Rough Type Web 2.0 stands for participation, collectivism, virtual communities, amateurism. This is basically what I think Web 2.0 represents. His article is very long as well, but gives you a whole lot of insight as well as some laughs. Unfortunately he ends up in 'criticising gravitation' somehow:

... Web 2.0, like Web 1.0, is amoral. It's a set of technologies ... that alters the forms and economics of production and consumption. It doesn't care whether its consequences are good or bad. It doesn't care whether it brings us to a higher consciousness or a lower one. It doesn't care whether it burnishes our culture or dulls it. It doesn't care whether it leads us into a golden age or a dark one. ...

Sorry, Rough Type, the same holds for the invention of 'printing', it layed off loads and loads of monks, who weren't needed to copy the bible anymore. The same holds for the invention of radio and television, for people didn't need to read anymore. The same holds for the invention of writing, for it distracted people from the spoken word as ancient greek philosophers put it once. In fact, it holds for any technology that exists. Technologies are amoral. So what. All I see is a bunch of nerds who made up some buzz words to collect capital. Probably, they'll spend it on lofts and vintage pacman machines. That's all.

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Geek Reading: SOA · 19.10.05

Today we should go for a little geek round up. This is mainly because I have to cancel the Weizenbaum speech in Potsdam. So, what issues are covered currently in geek journals? I read this little piece on SOA. Some guys outthere would call the topic outdated already, but I think those who are affected by it's impact didn't even start to notice properly.

Register: JBoss and SOA: JBoss is reaching out to a more business focused, less code-centric, audience with JEMS. The notion of separating the business process from the application will mean more business-level managers will be able to wade into development, using a simplified set of development tools - possibly based on drag and drop.

'Simplified set of development tools' for 'business-level managers' are the important terms in the quote above. Yes, true, the division of application and business process could make 'business-level managers' developers ... with simplified tools, but still. Some of those 'business-level' employees, who actually worked with business process managing tools already, know what that means: exception handling, secure transactions, rollback scenarios, modularisation, interface definition, et cetera, et cetera. Even with simplified development tools the task of developing is not simplified. Here we have the big pit fall for SOA, the manager has the power to administrate business processes which would sound good to him in the first place but, business-level manager, your process is more complex then you might think now. Anyway, SOA will remain a buzz issue just because there is a lot of modularisation potential involved:

Register: IBM and SOA: According to Robert LeBlanc, IBM's general manager for WebSphere, DataPower's products have helped customers manage an increase in web services traffic as they move to more modular businesses processes and architectures under SOAs.

Still, I do not think 'business level' people should start dreaming too 'wet' about it. In my eyes SOA will clearly remain a geek thing.

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Syndication Changes · 18.10.05

The W.H.O. disease outbreak news were luckily way too boring, so I from now on syndicate my recent del.icio.us bookmarks. They tend to be more interesting ... well ... in my eyes, in my eyes.

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Worte mit Obst · 18.10.05

Obstipation. Ob's Obst hier auch der etymologische kern ist? Wohl eher nicht. Vielleicht findet man aber was erhellendes in der Obst-Datenbank ...

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The Trouble With Mergers · 18.10.05

ASME's Top 40 english magazine covers of the past 40 years. I like this one. It made it up to position 16. Of course it is old european, therefore it is 'kinky':

Update: Obviously magazine.org has off lined the winning covers. Do they fear the traffic or copyright trials? However, I changed the link above. Now it points to a boring press release, which is not interesting at all. Thank you, ASME.

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Reminder · 16.10.05

'There goes David Brent. I must remember to thank him.'
--David Brent

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Textpattern MagpieRSS Plugin · 16.10.05

Textpattern-user, below you find a text pattern plugin that provides a tag to include rss syndication to your page. I'm pretty sure that's been done before, but in this case it was faster to write a tailored method, rather then downloading and customizing other people's work. This version is already quite generalised. You can pass a variety of parameters to set CSS attributes and to limit and customize the output. The plugin needs magpierss to work properly.You will have to set 'server_path_to_magpie' manually:
http://magpierss.sourceforge.net/

Update: I pasted a second version with even more parameters and a refined help section.

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W.H.O. Content Syndication · 15.10.05

To add a good deal of morbidity to my colourful pages I, from now on, syndicate the WHO Disease Outbreak News in the lower left margin of my pages. The textpattern plugin is alpha right now, so, I do not publish it now. For the technically interested: I use Magpie to fetch the WHO feed. Works fine as long as you check for default char encoding within the magpie methods.

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Nobel Prize Economics · 11.10.05

http://www.clocky.net/ Clocky, the alarm clock that runs away and hides when it's snooze button is pushed. This is a thing, the world has waited for and therefore the worthy winner of this years Ig Nobel Prize, section Economics. The Ig Nobel Prize is awarded to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative -- and spur people's interest in science, medicine, and technology. With this post I fulfilled my duty to annually cover the Economics Nobel Prize Awards.

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Morbid High Tech · 11.10.05

This is very cool. My recent comment on the flu lead to this lovely application of information technology. The WHO has got a Disease Outbreak RSS Feed: http://www.who.int/feeds/entity/csr/don/en/rss.xml. Beats me, this is so up to date. Subscribe immediately, see the epidemics spreading on your feed reader.

(thanks Eva)

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Ars Vivendi · 10.10.05

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Weizenbaum in Potsdam · 9.10.05

Joseph Weizenbaum, professor emeritus of computer science at MIT, will give a speech on "The Responsibility of the Individual - Reflections on Coping with Science and Technology". Since this guy has written ELIZA, the first chatbot ever, this is a serious nerd appointment.

Here are the dates:
Where:	FH Potsdam, Fr.-Ebert-Str. 4, 14467 Potsdam, Hörsaal I
Date:	19.10.2005
Time:	5:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Source:	FH Potsdam - Event Calendar (page language German)
Contact:	>>daessler@fh-potsdam.de

Again the always up to date Mr. Luebeck found and published first. Respect!

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Puppies, Sex and Avian Flu · 8.10.05

We have three dead geese, who died from bird flu, in the Danube delta in Romania, which is considered Europe main land. This news serves as a great hook to paint dooms day fantasies. Especially mass media is among the most active dooms day painters.

Though I recommended panicing when I covered the issue in november 2004, I think it is high time to review. What do we know about bird flu? It comes from south east asia, where human beings and birds live closely together in a tropic environment and here are the figures:

Within the last two(!) years we had according to wikipedia...
Reported cases:	116
Fatal cases:	60
Mortality rate:	51.7%

Hey wait, the conventional flu has fatal cases by the thousand every year and here we have by now sixty fatal cases. Ok, no need to worry about that, is it? Now for the high mortality rate. We have to take the possibility into account, that the H5N1 virus might become infective among humans leading to a mortality rate which is higher than everything we have seen comming with the flu. Not even the 1918 flu pandemic reached this rate. But, and this is an important point, does the figure 51.7% really decribe the actual mortality rate of H5N1?

The weak point is, that the given mortality rate implicitly assumes that the number of reported cases equals the number of actual cases. This might not be true. Of course not every chicken trader and cock fight manager in Jakarta catching a sneezer goes to the hospital and not every case of a feverish infect in the Mekong delta is reported to the WHO. On the other hand, every fatal case of flu is most certainly reported. So, there is a bias in what we observe, isn't it? Furthermore, we have very few observations, which is good, but statistically bad at the same time. Statistically, few observations mean big errors in forecasting.

I'm not saying that H5N1 is a little 'nose run'. I just want to remind you that we do not know a lot about H5N1 and that 'not knowing' has always been a great canvas to paint dooms day onto and dooms day paintings sell like puppies and sex.

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Useless Nerd Fun · 7.10.05

<script type="text/javascript">
col = 0;
blck = 0;

function cc(){
 document.getElementById("butt").value = "Wait ...";
 document.getElementById("hid").style.color
          ="rgb("+col+","+col+","+col+")";
   if(blck==1){
    col-=5;
    if (col>0){
      setTimeout('cc()', 30);}
    else{
      blck=0;
      document.getElementById("butt").value
                = "FadeOut()";};
   }
   else{
    col+=5;
    if (col<256){
      setTimeout('cc()', 30);}
    else{
      blck=1;
      document.getElementById("butt").value
                = "FadeIn()";};
   };
}
</script>
<noscript>
You do not allow the execution of  Javascript.  What You 
miss is a fadingscript, that fades a paragraph to black
and backwards to the background-color. So, you do 
not miss a lot. What you could do to see the hidden 
paragraph, if you do not see it already, is marking it 
with your mouse or disabling css interpretation.
</noscript>

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Surveillance Industrial Complex? No ... · 5.10.05

Here is a nice one, answering one of those Cui bono? questions. Bitkom, the german organisation, that represents the information technology sector, hint: lobby lobby lobby. However, Bitkom published a press release yesterday. The title translates to: "The electronic passport is a chance for the german security industry." Below the headline, Bitkom gives some kind of a management summary in list form. It could be translated to:

• The whole IT sector will benefit from biometry projects
• The government is market enabler for biometry
• Major market obstacles will be removed by the ePassport

In the post Bitkom is enthusiastically stating that the biometric passport, which will be handed to germans from the 1st November on, is an innovation motor and a great source of standardisation in the european 'spotting and tracking business'. Where does this enthusiasm come from? The article gives the answer. A Bitkom spokes woman stated that 95% of the project volume of such projects will go right into 'conventional' IT -hardware, -software and -services. Furthermore, note that the new passport will cost the citizen 60 euro while the old 'only machine readable' one costed 20 euro. Time to get some german IT shares, isn't it?

Oh, before I forget: I'm not suggesting that terrorism 'leads to' governmental demand 'leads to' prosperity in certain businesses. Of course not. I mean Rainer Werner Fassbinder would have done that. He actually did in his movie "Die dritte Generation" about the german left wing terrorism of the '70ies.

Though I'm usually pro IT research, for the sake of privacy I hope, the biometric passport will share the fait of other large german publicly founded technology projects. The autobahn toll collecting system would be a great reference.

(via juergen-luebeck.de)

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5766 Learn and Unite · 5.10.05

To remain religiously neutral and since I covered the beginning of Ramadan yesterday, of course, I mention the beginning of the year 5766 according to the hebrew calendar as well. By doing this, I'd like to shout out 'peace'.

L'Shanah Tovah Tikatevu!

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D.V.D. · 5.10.05

DVD Digital Versatile Disk. Im deutschen, und vor allem fuer maulfaule wie mich, ist DeVauDe irgendwie schwer auszusprechen. DiWiDi waere besser, ist aber ein unnoetiger anglizismus. Was bleibt? In unserem haushalt hat sich die verschleifung 'DiVDe' (sprich:diffde) durchgesetzt.

Folgerichtig gehen wir auch nicht mehr in die videothek, sondern in die DiVDe-rie.

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Ramadan · 4.10.05

The holy month of Ramadan has begun in most of the arab world, after a new crescent moon is sighted. Science Daily notes that there seem to be syncing problems in spotting the first crescent moon after the eighth month of the Muslim calendar.

(via BBC)

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Red Rooster · 3.10.05

This year's autumn cocktail is the Red Rooster. You need Jaegermeister, cherry juice, cream, chocolate rasps, ice cubes and a caipirinha glass. How to do it: Fill a caipirina glass with ice cubes. Put in half a tea spoon of choc rasps and 4 centi litres of Jaegermeister. Fill up the composition with cherry juice up to two fingers below the 'spill'. Pour in a shaker and shake well. Pour the conglomerate back in the glass. Fill with two tea spoons of cream and decorate with the remaining chocolate rasps.

(Seen at the Red Rooster)

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I was still Laughing · 1.10.05

While I was still rolling on the floor laughing at those weirdo americans, because of their tendency to put faith where knowledge is needed, while I was still laughing about Intelligent Design, about the need to defend Darwin over there in the USA, while I was still laughing about the raise of the brilliant flying spaghetti monster ...

... while I would still mock the american way of education, Mister Althaus, Member of the CDU, prime minister of the federal state of Thuringia and the biggest and most reliable source of platitudes in german political talkshows invited Siegfried Scherer, author of "Evolution: a critical textbook" and prominent academic defender of intelligent falling, no sorry, intelligent design, to discuss at the 'Erfurt Dialogues', a state run 'scientific' forum.

As reasoning Mr. Althaus stated, that evolution was not a consistent theory. Yes, true Mr. Althaus. Of course the spirit of the almighty as well as the noodly appendages of the flying spaghetti monster are much more consistent. No, in favour of Mister Althaus we have to acknowledge that the Erfurt Dialogues are meant to be the arena for academic arguments. Still, I'm not sure if Intelligent Design might be too weird to be called academic.

Did you realise that I'm not laughing anymore? Alternatively, I'll go to my kitchen to worship the monster with cold noodles and a selfmade sauce out of onion, bacon, carrots and tomatoes. Ramen.

(via Sixtus -> F.R.-blog)

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European Biometrics Portal · 1.10.05

Rabenhorst notes that last week the European Biometrics Portal has been launched. Obviously it is designed to encourage networking of involved corporations, educational institutions et cetera. Aim seems to be the building of a european "biometry community". On the first opened forum the ask questions concerning 'Biometry, security and privacy'.

... can biometry be seen as a neutral technology, where only the usage has to be monitored to prevent accidents?

Well, yes, good question. First biometry as well as video surveillance, mass storage of telecommunication data, skrewdrivers, doors and stone age arrow heads is a neutral technology. What is the aim of this technology? Biometry as part of a set of surveillance technologies aims for spotting unwanted behaviour, tracking persons who actually did unwanted deeds and therefore lower the incentive to do unwanted deeds.

Now, what is 'unwanted'? Obviously the meaning of 'unwanted' lies in the eye of the beholder. A cab driver will probably consider 'being robbed by a passenger' 'unwanted', financial authorities may consider tax dodge 'unwanted', a shop owner may consider shop lifting unwanted, a corporation may consider internet use at work 'unwanted'. The last example is one that might interfere with the employees freedom of information already. All of the mentioned could use surveillance technologies to avoid what they consider 'unwanted'.

Up to here, we have examples where the rights of the observed and the reasoning of the observer can be regulated in court. After all, there is a case that bothers me. What may governments consider 'unwanted'. Have a quick look at Belorussia, at Uzbekistan, at Saudi Arabia, at Zimbawe and many more countries around the world. Yes, governments may consider opposition 'unwanted'. And who is the foremost customer in the field of biometric technologies? In fact, governments who are tightly connected to law enforcement authorities are the foremost customers. Nobody could convince me yet, that governments could bind themselfes to not using the mentioned means to spot, track and therefore avoid opposition. Remember, they or their successors may consider opposition unwanted. Governments change. Even if Ghandi was president and Clown Popov was minister for the interiour, I would not like them to have access to too much of those technologies, for one day they won't be head of state anymore, but their means of spotting and tracking remain. What they call an 'accident' at the European Biometrics Portal may result in the disappearence of all political debate in a society. Bad medicine ...

There is much more to say about this. Follow Rabenhorst to keep up to date.

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