Once again, as described at Blogbar, there are content thieves around. Here's a preventive explanation of what a CC license with Share-Alike condition and Non-Commercial means: no ads on the pages. No commercial site - for example, paid accounts or similar. And yes, I mean Non-Commercial seriously. Share-Alike also has a simple explanation: a site that reproduces my content must be under the same license as my site.
Those who cannot meet the two conditions (we won't talk about the explanation of Attribution) will have to ask. And this does not mean that a lack of response is a silent consent - those who do not have explicit permission from me and cannot comply with the CC license must keep their hands off my content.
And those who think I can't do anything to them: those who are stupid enough to automatically pull content from RSS feeds should consider that the pulling machine is recognizable (especially for "stationary" services) - and that appropriate feeds can be provided for individual servers if you program your software like I do. And believe me, dear content thieves: the content you would then pull would definitely not please you.
The Nebra Sky Disk is an astronomical clock:
A Babylonian cuneiform script from the seventh century BC and the detective work of a Hamburg astronomer have solved the mystery of the Nebra Sky Disk: Rahlf Hansen deciphered a leap month rule that can be read from the 3600-year-old bronze disk.
With the rule, the lunar year and the solar year are resynchronized - the lunar year is slightly shorter than the solar year and therefore runs out of sync over time, with the rule on the disk the owners knew when they had to reset the lunar calendar by inserting a leap month.
It's quite amazing to consider that the disk is from the Bronze Age. And Babylonia and Saxony are not really close to each other (although the records are almost a thousand years younger, making the achievements of the disk's manufacturers even more interesting).
Does anyone remember this ongoing court case between SCO and IBM? GROKLAW brings a series of documents with IBM's demands to various companies. Microsoft, Sun, HP, Baystar - with a lot of very interesting questions. Hey, the procedure could slowly become interesting again.
They now want to ban "Intelligent Recording Software" - without revealing what that is supposed to be. But they naturally want to restrict private copying, limit recording from the radio, restrict broadcasting rights for radio, and do everything to degrade themselves to insignificance - because if no one has free access to music anymore, people will eventually find free access elsewhere. Ultimately, the absurd demands of the music industry only promote the illegal distribution of music in the long run rather than curbing it.
The problem, however, is that the Prolethikers in Berlin have been letting the music industry pull the wool over their eyes for a long time and are implementing more and more of the demanded nonsense. And so we can probably look forward to even more absurd and mindless laws until perhaps the Constitutional Court finally has enough and puts a stop to the nonsense. But then the Prolethikers will probably ignore this decision just like other decisions from Karlsruhe ...
Deutsche Telekom demands money from content providers - and in doing so, they are echoing the same tune as US telecoms:
Telekom CEO Kai-Uwe Ricke announced that the Telekom plans to charge providers like Google, Yahoo, Amazon, and eBay in the future. It cannot be, he told the "Wirtschaftswoche," that the customer alone pays for the broadband network.
And who guarantees that this will only affect large content providers? And who guarantees that small customers, private sites, etc., will still receive the same service as the big players? Because that's exactly what network neutrality means: that the service is the same for everyone involved. Even if Ricke acts as if he were the customers' advocate, it's really just about the backbone operators wanting to make more money, especially those in the telecommunications sector.
Heise makes it clearer what this demand from the telecoms means: ultimately, the providers will pay multiple times for the same service. First, they pay their host or provider for connectivity. Then they pay again for the same bytes to the backbones. And then the visitor also pays for the same bytes to their provider. This is classic telecoms rip-off (and by that, I mean more than just Deutsche Telekom).
Backbones actually finance themselves through peering agreements with other backbones (where there is asymmetric load distribution) and through their own direct connections to providers and users. Now they want money from parties with whom they do not even have contracts - but only through third-party contracts do they use the services of the telecoms. And that is simply extortion.
Who wants to know more about the embarrassing mishap at Geotrust: Phollow the Phlopping Phish describes the phishing attack from a user's perspective. With screenshots and documentation of how well the site was faked and how little a normal user could see through it.
I now have an i-Tech Bluetooth Virtual Keyboard (stupidly pulled the link from the sources - the site is otherwise not sensibly usable and without JavaScript there are no direct product links - clear case of "stupid designer syndrome"). Very nice - the keyboard is projected onto the table and then scanned using an infrared barrier above it. The virtual keys work excellently.
I bought it from Expansys, but they sent me a UK version - the power supply doesn't fit German sockets. The layout is of course always English, but I would like to have the power adapter in the appropriate version (that's why the strange links to adapters from English to Schuko).
Integration with the Nokia 770 is very simple - you just get the Bluetooth Keyboard Plugin and install it. Warning: if the bar with the icons at the top of the display is already full, the Bluetooth icon may no longer be displayed. Then you have to part with one of your status bar plugins.
After that, you just have to go to the plugin settings and, with the keyboard turned on (and reset for safety), select it from the list of available devices and pair it. After that, the plugin automatically recognizes the keyboard when it is turned on - you don't have to connect manually, just restart the tablet, turn on the keyboard and off you go. Turning off the keyboard is also properly recognized by the tablet as a disconnect.
Oh, and this laser-projected keyboard is not only extremely practical, but also absolutely cool.
BASF posts record year:
The world's largest chemical company, BASF, ended 2005 with a record result. As the company announced, sales rose by 14 percent to 42.7 billion euros. The annual surplus increased by 50 percent to 3 billion euros. And BASF also sees itself well equipped for the current year.
Oh, yes, the profit in the field of nutrition and plant protection has a declining profit - well, the politicians will certainly provide BASF with record profits with an increasing trend with the seed regulation, if the industry has finally succeeded in tying farmers to their seeds, fertilizers, and poisons.
Also cute are the high profits in the oil and gas sector. Of course, the price increases in these areas are solely due to the high costs and have nothing to do with the fact that oil and gas companies want to increase their profits. (Yes, BASF is also busy in the natural gas sector - for example, through Wintershall, a company of the BASF Group).
What do the 3,600 BASF employees in Ludwigshafen, whose positions were cut in 2004, think of this corporate development? Especially those who were not pushed out through severance packages or partial retirement, but through transfer to a temporary employment agency?
