Moblogging Test

I'm playing around with photo-moblogging. The image quality from the Clie is pretty poor - but Bluetooth+GPRS is quite practical ... ![130-400-300.jpeg][P1]

9-11

I remember it very well too. I was sitting at the computer and had the TV on in the background. I was hacking away at something - I think I was on vacation or working from home. Suddenly Jutta came in and said that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. We briefly discussed what might have happened - possibly an error in the flight control system? Meanwhile, I switched over and watched the images. Shortly after, the second plane crashed into the other tower. It took me a long time to believe what I was seeing. I still had some hope that it was an error in the flight control system, but then the plane hit the Pentagon and after that it became clear that it must have been a terrorist attack. After that, I spent hours trying to find more information, flipping through news channels all day, trying to access websites and looking for where to find news. In between, I called the office and spoke with colleagues - they had only heard about it on the radio up to that point. Dirk Steins has the original article.

The Web is Small

That's how you wander through the RSS reader and stumble over one thing after another, eventually landing on someone you've already discussed the correct functioning of mail/newsreaders (or MausNet frontends) with in the MausNet. Weird. The web is definitely too small.

Here's the original article.

Cologne Stollwerck factory to close

Shame. Okay, Stollwerck was never really my favorite chocolate - I'm quite spoiled by Cluizel, Valrhona, Dolfin and Domori, everything else is just chocolate garbage to me - but still, somehow it belonged to Cologne. Hopefully the chocolate museum will remain there.

At tagesschau.de - Die Nachrichten der ARD there's the original article.

More on Nokia's 9300 Communicator

Looks nice. Maybe I should swap out my private phone for something more current at some point. After all, I still have such an outdated S3 Com for my private plan, so the Nokia is even smaller.

You can find the original article at Engadget.

Sony Has Stupid Ears

I have a Sony Clie PEG TH55 - a nice device that has everything a business PDA needs. So camera, MP3 player and other gadgets. Oh, and of course it can do calendar and stuff too.

What it can't always do though: play my MP3s. I have various MP3s created with different programs. At first I thought only the 192 kbit MP3s from iTunes were causing trouble, so I quickly converted a bunch of songs from my iTunes to 128 kbit MP3s (using Amadeus II - a really cool audio editing program!). Well, the result: Pink Floyd songs work, those were converted from AAC tracks (I ripped them more recently). Emerson, Lake & Palmer doesn't work - those were 192 kbit MP3s before, but were saved as 128 kbit MP3s the same way. With the same software.

Anyway, my iPod is much nicer and more pleasant for music anyway. I had just hoped to get by with just one device in an emergency, but that's only very limited with the Clie. Annoying.

Back ...

... at least physically. The rest arrives tomorrow.

NASA space probe Genesis crashes

Nice Crater.

At NETZEITUNG.DE Wissenschaft I found the original article.

Blog vacation until Thursday night

That's why there won't be anything new here until then. No, I'm not moblogging. Check out the old stuff, or read some more interesting blogs, I'd rather explore Hamburg instead

HyperPAD - Application Development Software published by Brightbill-Roberts and IQ Technologies.

While browsing through old software and investigating what became of it, I came across the now free — as in free beer — availability of HyperPad. HyperPad was a programming environment for DOS computers that was heavily inspired by HyperCard. No graphics, but a pretty good recreation of what made HyperCard special — and an almost identical copy of the programming language. Quite amusing for the time, when integrated development environments with GUI builders were still utopias from the workstation market.

Here's the original article.

Perversion, this time public-service broadcasting

Just as the special report on the storming of the school in the North Caucasus is ending, they run an ad break. One advertiser offers CD collections of church hymns with a note about these terrible times to calm Christian souls, another advertiser offers the folk plays of the Theaterstadl on video cassettes.

Does nobody at ARD have even a shred of sense left in their head? Right after images of dead children, the injured, and terror footage, while the question still hangs in the air about how many children may have been killed there, and while the numbers of injured are climbing, an ad block airs? Could it be in worse taste?

Sorry, but I'm normally only used to this kind of tasteless stuff from the private broadcasters—and I find it extremely tasteless there too. But for the publicly-funded ARD, which is also financed by my GEZ contributions, I consider this outrageous.

Of course, you can't put the entire television program at half-mast all the time. But the greed for advertising revenue should surely take a back seat to common sense at ARD...

Dispute over Microsoft's patent claims shakes anti-spam standard

I hope this Microsoft proposal will be firmly rejected. This is absolute nonsense, what Microsoft is imagining here - an anti-spam technology that is patented by Microsoft (or any other company - only Microsoft is particularly suspicious due to its embrace-and-extend practices) simply must not be accepted as an IETF standard.

At heise online news there's the original article.

What kind of crap you can find on eBay

Taken from an auction description via copy-and-paste. I suspect that despite his disclaimers, he's operating well outside legal boundaries here, especially since it's going to be hard to sell a 5-pin network cable and similar nonsense.

3Com Network and "Hacker Card" for Sale

The unique opportunity here on eBay!

A 3Com 905B – TX Rev. 03-0172 410

The revision with the "error" known in the hacker scene

Which consists of the card having an incorrectly built encoder (H1012).

With this encoder you can make all data stored on the Internet visible

Break SSL encryptions up to 2000 times over

Open and close http protocols undetected

Program and delete htts, httm

Inject Java programs into network ports undetected

Online access to servers and computers

Access to private computers

Ghost logs on networks

And much more!

For legal reasons, I'm selling the card as a network card

Which is basically what it's intended for anyway.

Without illegal hacker software!

But you can find it on the Internet!

The Netscape cable is inserted into the card on an EEPROM basis.

The cable is 90cm long and has a Netscape 5-pin connector.

Sale as network card with 10/100m/bits

And RJ45 connection.

PCI card!

So dear eBay security team, this is an auction that doesn't violate the guidelines!

I got this card from San Jose (California, USA) and I paid $429 (USD) for it in early March 2004!

I assume no liability for damages caused by the card or its misuse with various programs from the Internet!

!!! Sale as a completely normal network card !!!

Shipping costs are €5.90 with DPD as an insured package!

Since I don't want trouble with the police or the public prosecutor's office, I'm selling the card here as a network card!

If you have any questions, just send an email!

Best regards

The depressing part is the two bids. Okay, it might still be a cheap network card, but honestly, throwing money at such a brazen lunatic is really stupid. But the bidders probably actually believe this garbage...

Leica - OBE - Prototype 2

Wow. Leica is ripping off collectors again. That's fine, they should bleed for their foolishness.

Sorry, but this is really absurd. I can still accept a replica of the prototype. But all the fuss around it sounds more like esotericism than photography. At least this 0-series edition finally has a rudimentary viewfinder - unlike the last version which was just a wire mess with a crosshair.

Somehow I find it fascinating how Leica products range from a digital module for the R9 to the M-system with high-performance optics, to compact cameras and digital compacts (usually a bit overpriced) to such crazy things as gold-lacquered and snakeskin-leather special editions and things like 0-series replicas.

I still prefer to stick with the M-system. Sure, I pay a lot of money for it, but at least I get decent MTF diagrams for my lenses and a really easy-to-use rangefinder camera. If I feel esoteric (and have too much money) I can always buy an MP.

Here's the original article.

Milosevic is no longer allowed to defend himself

Were they perhaps tired of his hours-long absurd rambling?

At tagesschau.de - Die Nachrichten der ARD you can find the original article.

Call for Trackbacking

Yeah, Serendingsbums is soooo great and can do soooo much with trackback. Unfortunately it only implements trackback autodiscovery (which is a dumb idea to begin with, which is why the Python Desktop Server naturally doesn't do it) and doesn't even have support for the trackback module in the RSS feed (which would make trackbacking posts from the aggregator easier, if the aggregator evaluates the trackback module - which the Python Desktop Server does, because it makes sense) ...

Devil's grin

At Die wunderbare Welt von Isotopp you can find the original article.

Dialer page enters "OK" in the dialer [Update]

There are no legitimate applications for dialers - it's all nonsense. The few situations where it might possibly make sense can be solved in other ways. This entire dialer garbage should be completely banned, end of story.

At heise online news you can find the original article.

Dreamcard offers Hypercard-like environment

Is there finally an adequate successor to HyperCard? For an old nostalgic like me, that would certainly be something. It would also fit well with my rant about end-user-friendly programming solutions - because HyperCard was something that end users could tinker with endlessly and create their own small solutions without having to complete a computer science degree first.

At The Macintosh News Network there's the original article.

Morons in the News: Diebold Machines Appear to Have Built-in Code for Fraud

A new voting machine scandal in the USA?

At morons.org headlines you can find the original article.

Rebellin becomes Argentine: With new passport to the World Cup

That's quite a cool reaction. No ranting, no verbal outbursts - just switched citizenship and Italy's left empty-handed.

I found the original article at Radsport-News.com.

Smalltalk/X - the forgotten Smalltalk

Forgotten because I never think about it being there. Yet it is one of the more interesting implementations: free as in free beer, even for commercial purposes. Support costs money (which is fine). Good portability - unfortunately not available on OS/X - when you consider Windows and various Unix systems. And a compiler that generates natively executable programs directly - especially practical for classical application development. Due to the nature of compilation (via a C compiler), integration of external C libraries is also good. So if you can live with the platform limitation, it is certainly a very interesting implementation.

Here you can find the original article.

Doubts About the Reliability of eBay's Security Concept

They have no security concept. After notifying me about the possible creation of new accounts using my credit card data - and thus potential credit card fraud - I have received no confirmation from eBay to this day as to whether the notification is genuine and whether my credit card data was actually used in full.

Credit card numbers can be automatically generated and then used - only through combination with address and name does a potential misuse result. Preventive blocking based on a non-detailed report would make credit cards pretty unusable.

Although I have meanwhile fulfilled all the strange requirements from these support trolls, there is no confirmation and no information about what eBay is now doing in this case. It would also be far too easy if they actually provided support.

The simplest thing would have been to just answer my question with "no, our data shows no multiple use of your data" or "yes, we have account registrations that use your complete data" or something similar. But no, instead you have to jump through a pile of pointless hoops and in the end you simply don't get an answer anymore. Really great.

Update: today I finally got a terse response (filled with technical incompetence about supposedly non-falsifiable header lines that point to some identities in emails - nonsense, the only non-falsifiable headers are server forwards, that says nothing about identity), stating that there are no irregularities and no double use of my credit card. Where exactly the emails came from that informed me about this double use (and where the non-falsifiable headers clearly mentioned eBay servers), they didn't tell me. Although they previously wanted to know exactly in several emails from me which headers these emails had so they could verify their authenticity.

In summary: a lot of blabber, a lot of delay, but in the end the whole thing leaves at best a feeling of confusion and technical incompetence at eBay. Given that they also operate one of the larger internet payment services with PayPal...

At heise online news there's the original article.

eBay.de: Domain Hijacking Made Easy

Wow. So much incompetence from two involved providers is pretty heavy.

astonished face

At heise online news there's the original article.

Google Mail Invites Invasion

I had laboriously worked my way down to 4 invites (despite a temporary top-up from Google), and now I have 6 again. Who wants one, who hasn't had one yet? If so, please use the email form.

Hamburg Senate in Law-and-Order Frenzy

Hamburg soon the largest facility for open incarceration, with automatic suspicion of every citizen? And all of this completely without Schill? Fantastic. Of course, all of this has a lot to do with the much-invoked Hanseatic openness to the world. The Hamburg policy failures are still managing to spoil my favorite city for me ...

At Telepolis News (31.08.2004) you can find the original article.

Smartphones soon with atomic clock precision

Typical case of over-engineering: instead of simply transmitting the time when regularly logging into the radio cell (whereby the cells are of course centrally fed via time servers from an atomic clock), people are thinking about a mini atomic clock. Completely crazy.

I found the original article at NETZEITUNG.DE Wissenschaft.

lemonodor: PlaneT

Cool. PLT-Scheme (that's MzScheme as the language, MrEd as the GUI library, and DrScheme as the IDE) has gotten an automated package system that allows extensions to be installed from the network. Something like CPAN for Perl, just in Scheme. MzScheme is becoming increasingly interesting as a scripting alternative.

At Planet Lisp there's the original article.

Shitcanned

It's quite absurd when an employee of a company whose only product is so-called social network software gets fired - because she runs a blog.

Here's the original article.

Skype - Download Skype for Mac OS X

That's nice that it's here now. But I think it's a bit much that it only runs from 10.3 onwards. So count me out.

Here's the original article.

Zach Beane

Elephant sounds interesting - a database for Lisp objects based on Sleepycat-DB. Would be another possible building block for a Lisp rewrite of PyDS or similar projects where you need a directly embedded database.

At Planet Lisp there's the original article.

Berliner woman sues in Karlsruhe against Hartz

But according to Wolfgang and Federal Gerd, everything is just fine. How far removed they are from reality is no longer even measurable...

The frightening thing about it is that this bunch in the opposition doesn't think it's nearly enough yet, what's being destroyed. So we can look forward to another round of china-smashing after the next election. Until the unemployed and welfare recipients, the asylum seekers and others that our elitist politicians deem not full members of society are where this elite wants them: right down in the dirt at the bottom.

At Pepilog - Berlinerin klagt in Karlsruhe gegen Hartz there's the original article.

Powerbook: 1, God: 0

What can we learn from this? In a kickboxing match between Jesus and Jobs, Steve would win. -

Teufelsgrinsen

At Gizmodo you can find the original article.

Speeders Among Themselves

Funny. With all the complaining about unjustified measurements and speed cameras, I'm missing a crucial tip on how to avoid tickets while driving: simply follow the traffic signs. Sure, signs get changed, traffic management gets changed, and some signs aren't necessary. So what? Just stick to the posted speed limit and you're done. Honestly, I can't see any problem there. The only people who have problems are those who violate the speed limit. Why one then has to discuss the rationale behind the limit (possibly even with the police officer who's already annoyed and is writing you a ticket) is beyond me.

But freedom for Germans is apparently defined by speeding on the motorway. Social laws can be dismantled, taxes raised (except petrol tax, of course), civil rights curtailed — all irrelevant, as long as there's no speed limit of 130 on the motorway.

At Telepolis News (30.08.2004) there's the original article.

Sony Announces 7 Megapixel Cyber-shot DSC-V3

Sounds quite nice and finally looks like a camera again and not like a spaceship - but I'm afraid the camera will have the same problems as other Sony cameras with high resolutions.

At PhotographyBLOG you can find the original article.

Visual Studio Magazine - Guest Opinion - Save the Hobbyist Programmer

An older, but interesting article that points to an important problem: hobby programmers are increasingly being excluded from creating small hacks and simple solutions by ever more complex system interfaces and constant changes to APIs and programming tools in the Windows world. And it's not just the Windows world that suffers from this. Linux and OS X suffer from it in part as well.

Of course, there are still small utilities with simple programming capabilities. Or scripting languages that are easy to learn and use - for example, Python. But that's not really a solution for these tinkerers. What was once the omnipresent Basic for hobby tinkerers, or for example the - admittedly problematic - language in dBase, is missing today. Hardly any programming environment that doesn't come with an object-oriented approach. Hardly any solution approaches that don't try to be a general development environment for complete programs right away.

There are still some nice exceptions - FileMaker on the Mac still tries to appeal to the hobby hacker. But it's still true: the simple entry points are becoming fewer.

Even AppleScript on the Mac has become so complex and bloated in the meantime that it's hardly possible for a newcomer to just get started with it. Some corners of AppleScript are obscure and complicated even for old programming veterans like me. And of course, while there are many great integration possibilities for all these scripting languages, the documentation for precisely these parts is downright terrible.

To stick with the AppleScript example: while there are application dictionaries that document an application's AppleScript capabilities, nearly all the descriptions I've read in them have assumed that the user already has complete and extensive knowledge of AppleScript and AppleScript structures (what are objects in AppleScript, how do you work with containers, etc.). Although these dictionaries could serve as a starting point for the hobby programmer, their creators (professional programmers in software companies) design them in such a way that often even they themselves can make sense of them.

It's similar in the Linux world. TCL was once the standard scripting language for simple entry with simple structure, an almost primitive extension interface, and the ability for even non-programmers to quickly arrive at solutions. Today, TCL in the standard distribution (which is then nicely called "Batteries Included" - only unfortunately the understandable instructions are missing) already consists of mountains of packages, many of which deal with metaязыage aspects (e.g., incrTCL and the widget libraries built on it and on TK - good grief, in just this brief mention of the content there are more incomprehensible words for a beginner than filler words), which a beginner will never understand.

And I don't need to go into the dismal situation under Windows with the scripting host and the OLE Automation interfaces (or whatever they're called these days) - anyone who has experienced a version change of an application and had to completely rewrite their entire solution due to a total change in the scripting model of, say, Access, knows what I'm talking about.

Ultimately, we (we == professional programmers) are taking a piece of freedom away from end users - the freedom to tinker around and yes, also the freedom to shoot themselves in the foot. And I think that precisely in the world of free software, programmers should start spending some thoughts on this again. It's nice that almost every larger program embeds some scripting language. But what's not so nice is that hardly any of these embeddings have decent documentation of their capabilities, and only the most primitive examples and complete solutions for very complex applications are available as starting points for learning. Hobby programmers in particular learn most easily by reading existing tools. And yes, I'm not exactly a good example myself, because the Python Desktop Server has a number of extensibilities that are also intended for end users - but I also wrote far too little documentation for it. Somehow a shame, because that's how many projects become incestuous affairs, because the actual end users are left out. No, I don't have a real solution - because especially with free projects, documentation creation is often an annoying and unpopular part of the project and is therefore treated like a stepchild. Besides, most programmers aren't able to create generally understandable documentation anyway. But maybe that's also an opportunity for projects that try to increase activity in large open source community projects that have had lower participation so far. debian-women comes to mind spontaneously (since Jutta is currently working on it). Because greater participation by women would certainly also be helpful for documentation and information that doesn't necessarily require a fully trained master hacker. After all, not everyone has the desire to spend their entire life learning new APIs and tools ... Here's the original article.

Why Most Landscapes Suck

Wow, someone was really enthusiastic about landscape photography there: >Since most people have pretty bad taste, they easily mistake the cutesy postcards for good photography, especially if they are displayed as large, impeccably sharp prints. Hence the success of photographers like Alain Briot, Michael Reichmann, and Ken Rockwell. Their photography is pure Socialist Realism, only not as honest about its program -- relentlessly upbeat, eager to please, depicting the world not as it is, but as it surely should be ... and utterly devoid of power to evoke anything but the most trite and saccharine-sweet of emotions.

I must admit, though, that I do have a fondness for the postcard motifs he criticizes so harshly. I produce some of them myself for my own pleasure. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that — though one should keep it within limits (Velvia can sometimes really be too much of a good thing). However, for several years now I've mostly been shooting black and white film, because for me the interplay of light in landscapes is often the most interesting part — and that tends to get lost in color images. For me, color images have always had more of a documentary character.

By the way, the article is still worth reading (or perhaps especially because of this): it examines the context of a photograph and the possibilities of photography in a very interesting way. Photography rarely stands alone — there's always something accompanying it, even if it's just the title.

Here's the original article.

Quote of the Day

Yeah, those crazy advertisers who want to sell every bit of crap are really annoying. Sometimes so stupid that it's actually funny. But this lottery stuff really gets to me - especially when there's a threat at the end: you'll have this invitation in your mailbox tomorrow. NO THANKS! I don't play the lottery, I don't want any advertising for citizen rip-offs. das Netzbuch has the original article.

eBay is run by a bunch of idiots

eBay apparently (I don't know if it's really true) conducts checks on credit card number usage when registering new accounts. In any case, I received two emails from eBay stating that my credit card number registered with eBay was used to open new accounts.

I simply wanted confirmation from eBay that this situation is actually true. The emails apparently come from eBay (both Received lines and other elements are quite clear), so it should really be an email from them.

You would think there would be a simple and direct way to contact eBay about this abuse situation. Forget it.

The email itself only says something vague about contacting them. But not how. On their websites there is a contact option, but you have to search for the right category for this case - otherwise your email ends up in the wrong pile. Of course, credit card abuse isn't something you need to make directly accessible to customers upfront, no.

Then you send an email there and get a banal standard response that emails can be forged. Yes, and? I didn't want to know that, I wanted confirmation of whether my credit card was really used for other accounts and wanted to know how eBay will proceed with it. Whether the email that alerted me is genuine or not should be irrelevant, right? Forget it.

So I send my email to their wonderful spoof address. Then comes a terse response that they don't know what it's about and what my concern is, and they need my member ID. Okay, so I explain everything again and provide my member ID. Fine. Now they want the headers, even though I've already pointed out that the headers point to eBay. Even the Received lines - why does this miserable bot at eBay think it needs to babble about cryptic and incomprehensible header lines to me? I'm not a layperson, thanks, I can read my headers myself.

And now comes the kicker: for this banal information about how eBay proceeds with actual multiple use of credit card data, I cannot send from a different email address, but must send from the one registered with eBay. Because that's so much more secure. And because it's damn impossible with a mere forwarder address like the one I use for eBay. Idiots. They babble about headers and potentially forged emails (and about not being able to receive attachments because of virus risk - which of course unnecessarily complicates sending unmodified emails), but for security they want the sender registered with eBay. As if that weren't easy to forge.

Of course, the whole thing with back-and-forth takes about a week, because eBay only responds once a day. A week after being informed of possible credit card abuse and still no useful answer about what eBay intends to do - whether they will file a report, or if I have to, whether information is shared (whether it's even secured at all), etc.

What a mess. If there were a direct contact point for this admittedly fairly common situation of credit card abuse (preferably via the web interface, since they could then use the login credentials, which would be much safer for identification), and if competent employees were sitting at the other end instead of just bots, the whole thing could have been handled within a maximum of 2 days. But no, you have to make it extra complicated and extra stupid.

angry face

Needless to say, eBay points out that the email address used must be able to receive mail to register, but nowhere does it mention that you also need to be able to send emails from that email address.

GmailFS - Gmail Filesystem

Now that's quite a crazy idea: a Linux-mountable filesystem that accesses Google Mail via HTTP and stores the filesystem contents there. And it's all written in Python too. I mean, if that's not insane ...

With Google's latest changes, there seem to be problems though, because Google is trying to exclude scripts. So it's possible it no longer works.

Here's the original article.

The new Duden is here

Absolute competence in all matters. Where do I get cat pictures now? Our cat has been dead for years anyway...

Teufelsgrinsen

At Wortfeld you can find the original article.

You already know it anyway

It would be nice if you could travel by zeppelin. I would much prefer it to traveling by plane ...

At Der Schockwellenreiter you can find the original article.

Leica Announces CM ZOOM Film Camera

Not uninteresting. Ok, I would definitely prefer the CM ( Jutta has one, really a fine device), simply because I'm a fixed focal length fetishist, but if you want to have a zoom compact, the CM Zoom is certainly interesting. Ok, only if you're willing to pay the absurd price. But that's normal for Leica.

At PhotographyBLOG there's the original article.

Driving toll into the wall

There's something to that. I mean, they're blowing millions on nonsense and then they steal map materials because they're too cheap to pay for them? I always knew it - no satire and no grotesque can be as absurd as real life ...

At Die wunderbare Welt von Isotopp you can find the original article.

USB-Cams: The Battle with the GPL

Too bad. Heise News didn't understand it either. Webcam users wouldn't be left in the lurch if the module maintainer weren't acting like an offended crybaby and nurturing his poor ego. Because as a module outside the kernel, it would still be possible to offer support without problems (and if the hardware really is so widespread, distributions like Suse would certainly include it in the distribution kernel).

Nobody has a fixed right to be in the actual kernel source with their module. Often it doesn't even make sense - because some modules directly in kernel source aren't properly maintained and thus a constant source of trouble when kernel interfaces change.

And purely binary components of a kernel module are a security risk, since their function cannot be verified. And they directly contradict the GPL - that has nothing to do with overly pedantic interpretation. Binary kernel modules, or even just parts of them, are always a problem. And hooks that only serve to give such a component access to the kernel are not necessarily what I understand as secure kernel design...

At heise online news there's the original article.

Jaw bone transplanted from back muscle

Wow.

surprised face

At NETZEITUNG.DE Science you can find the original article.

Developers and Their Misunderstanding of Open Source

Quite remarkable. Here we have a developer of a kernel driver for Philips webcams. This kernel module works, but to fully support the cameras, it needs a binary-only module. However, the kernel developers have decided to clean up binary-only modules. The Philips webcam module is also affected. As a result, the USB subsystem maintainer removed a hook from the kernel module through which the binary-only module could attach itself to the kernel.

The module developer is now complaining that his module would be demoted to a second-class module because it could only be distributed as an externally maintained module, but not directly in the kernel tree—because without the hook, his binary-only module cannot be loaded. Out of spite, he throws in the towel and no longer wants to support the module at all.

Where is the logical error? With the kernel developers who reject binary-only modules and don't want backdoors for binary-only modules in the kernel? Hardly.

The module developer could simply continue operating and distributing his module outside the kernel. He just can't be distributed with the hook directly in the kernel. He could distribute kernel patches that patch the hook into the kernel source. He rejects both options.

Such or similar discussions come up repeatedly when individual developers fail with their great idea—and yes, sometimes the failure only comes after a few years because previous maintainers took a more relaxed view of the whole thing. But binary-only modules in the Linux kernel are a constant nuisance: not only can't you fix them because you don't have the source. You also can't do security reviews. And sorry, but any decent admin doesn't want hooks on their system through which unverifiable binary modules can plug into the kernel.

Ultimately, the whole thing comes down to whether Linux must support every piece of hardware, even if there are no open source drivers for it. That Linux can also serve proprietary interfaces is clear—simply develop subsystems outside the kernel and integrate them into the kernel. The support for this is built into the kernel. But must the kernel itself support such modules?

In my opinion, no. It's certainly a downgrade for modules with purely binary components when they can't be distributed along with the kernel. But modules with purely binary components are already second-class citizens in an open source system anyway.

Of course, it may be more complicated for the user (although with Debian GNU/Linux, for example, it's quite trivial to install module subsystems to the kernel), but it can hardly be the goal of an open source system to compromise its own principles to make something easier that isn't even a focus of that system.

The real cause of the problem doesn't lie in the behavior of the Linux subsystem maintainers. The real cause lies in Philips' stubbornness in not wanting to release parts of the driver.

The fact that the module author is now scorching the earth (deleting downloads, deleting the mailbox, deleting sources, FAQs, etc.) just proves that he doesn't get it. Well, someone else will probably take the source and all the stuff and continue operating it—probably outside the kernel. The author didn't get that either. Instead, he's acting like a stubborn child.

Here's the original article.

Google Mail Invites available

So I currently have 6 invitations for Google Mail accounts available. If you want an account, just send me an email via the contact form (the small envelope icon at the bottom right of the sidebar). Please fill in your name, though — I don't feel like sending invites to Donald Duck or whatever.

Artikel - 23.8.2004 - 12.9.2004