Dit is Nederland. Als in dit land een burger of ambtenaar met een onthutsende onthulling naar buiten komt, een zogenaamde “klokkenluider”, dan kan de overheid op twee manieren reageren:

1. Luisteren. Onderzoeken verrichten naar het waarheidsgehalte en dienovereenkomstig handelen.
2. Beschimpen, belachelijk maken, voor gek verklaren, dwarsbomen en kapot maken.

Je zou verwachten dat in dit “beschaafde” land de overheid voor optie 1 zou kiezen… maar lees dan dit relaas eens over de langstslepende klokkenluiders geschiedenis van Nederland. De heer Spijkers maakte melding van ondeugdelijke landmijnen van Nederlands fabrikaat. Er zijn dienstplichtige militairen onnodig om het leven gekomen. Vervolgens wordt de goede man weggezet als “Quasimodo”. De Pers zet de gebeurtenissen op een rij. Een schrikbarend verhaal waarbij het jarenlang treiteren van Willem Oltmans volledig in het niet valt.

Today spectacular images are released of a landslide on Mars. Scientist are baffled. Mars is monitored for several years now and pictures are being taken all the time still this is the first landslide caught on film. Scientist have no explanation for the reason of the landslide yet. I think it’s bloody obvious. A couple of weeks ago a photo from the rover on Mars showed a Martian. See the images below…

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Het is voorbij vrienden. De mooie dagen zijn over. Waren we al afgegleden naar bananenrepubliek en hard op weg om een politiestaat te worden, het kan altijd nog erger. Vandaag kwam het CDA, bij monde van fractievoorzitter Van Geel, met een oproep aan Wilders om zijn vermeend staatsgevaarlijke “moslim film” niet uit te zenden… U hoort het goed. Het CDA roept Wilders op om een film waarvan de inhoud onbekend is niet uit te zenden…

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Een tijdje geleden ontstond er commotie over het project “Goud”. De Nederlandse overheid had zojuist verklaard om meer open standaarden te gaan gebruiken toen boven water kwam dat Wouter Bos een vette deal aan Microsoft heeft gegund. Dit is mogelijk doordat de aanbesteding volledig richting Microsoft en Microsoft standaarden geschreven is. Bos haastte zich te melden dat “Goud” slechts tijdelijk is en in 2012 vervangen wordt door een andere “desktop”.  Hij heeft de toezegging gedaan om deze aanbesteding nog eens tegen het licht te houden.

Vandaag komt dan het hoge woord eruit in een publicatie van het Ministerie van Financiën. Conclusie Goud: voortvarend doorgaan.

Ik citeer: “GOUD is een ferme stap in de goede richting. Dat concluderen minister Bos en staatssecretaris Frank Heemskerk (EZ) na heroverweging van het project.”

Welterusten.

Like they have nothing better to do: U.S. spies are now developing software to detect extremists in our peaceful world of warcraft. The ultimate goal of project Reynard is “automatically detecting suspicious behavior and actions in the virtual world”. This is all about data-mining. Once this works in the virtual world you can guess where this will be used can’t you? A nice article can be found here.

So you better be careful who you duel the next time you enter Azeroth.

Sigh, yesterday was one of those days on which Microsoft tells the world it wants to open up. Steve Ballmer announced a new initiative to open up Microsoft products for better interoperability with competing products and technologies. This is hard to believe because the traditional business model of Microsoft has been “vendor lock-in”. Encrypting your data in a proprietary format without telling you how to access that is not helping clients but holding their data for ransom (licenses). Will Microsoft really change it ways now?…

Update: okay, we’re all on the same page again. Read the analysis at groklaw.

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A couple of days ago I posted a small guide to use encrypted disk images in Mac OS X instead of Apple’s FileVault feature. Disk encryption is the solution to store your data in a secure manner… I thought. You won’t believe this but a group of researchers developed an attack against disk encryption software. The problem is that the secret you have to enter to decrypt the data is stored in RAM (obviously). When you turn off your computer the data in RAM will fade. This will take seconds to minutes. The researchers have developed a small tool to capture the RAM contents to disk and hunt down the secret used to encrypt the data…

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Misdaadbestrijding staat hoog in het vaandel bij onze politici en uw privacy bungelt ergens onderaan. Derhalve kan staatssecretaris Ank Bijleveld (Binnenlandse Zaken) rustig een voorstelletje in elkaar flansen om de vingerafdrukken van alle Nederlanders in een fijne database te knallen. Hirsch Ballin rommelt dat kattebelletje wel even onopgemerkt door de kamers onder het mom van “terrorisme bestrijding”. Want voor “terrorisme bestrijding” moet en màg alles wijken, dat weet u.

Ank heeft u trouwens mooi te pakken want uw identificatie gáát een keer verlopen. Uw paspoortje mòet een keer verlengd… en misschien uw rijbewijs nog wel eerder. Wanneer u dan een nieuwe komt halen… Ha ha ha ha… Hebbes!! Dan gaat uw vingerafdruk het systeem in.

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Some stupid idiot put $100.000.000 in SCO to revive the sons of bitches. SNCP (Stephen Norris Capital Partners) injected the money and will take a controlling interest doing so. According to a statement from the company, SNCP already has a business plan for SCO that includes pursuing its legal claims. Maybe SCO can start by paying up to Novell. Novell claims that the licensing fees could amount to more than $37 million plus interest.

The Unix community should be prepared for another round of FUD and lawsuits…

Update: Groklaw.net has a very interesting thread on this. Of course there’s already a connection to Bill Gates.

Oh. Take a look at this press release. It is the official response from Microsoft to the rejection by the Yahoo! board of the Microsoft bid. From the looks of it it seems that Microsoft is going to fight a guerilla war to get Yahoo! If more than 50% of the shareholders sell out to Microsoft the deal is done.

Where Microsoft was once regarded (by some) as a marketleading force in the industry today it is just… big. It is a struggling giant trying to hold its ground. Maybe I am a bit dramatic but I think of Microsoft as King-Kong clinging on to the top of building. Everybody knows King-Kong is going to fall. You just don’t know when…

Oh no! You will not believe this. American spamfighter David Ritz is fined $60.000 for using the Unix command host -al. David was just trying to tracing some spam mail using that command. The owner of the DNS server, Sierra Corporate Design run by alleged former spammer Jerry Reynolds, sued David for hacking and trespass offences (unauthorized whois and DNS lookups). Now read this article and this one and wonder what the implications of this verdict are. Meanwhile I switch back to my old Oric Atmos home computer without network connectivity. I think I’ll be save for now.

Pre-elections in the USA, democrats and republicans are voting what candidate should run for president. Currently we are just in the stage of pre-elections and already the angry mobs are prowling the streets shouting out for a recount. Now that’s what I love about the elections in the USA. Count and recount, where is my pocket calculator?

The big difference between the paper votes and the machine votes in New Hampshire give raise to doubt against the voting machines. Are they manipulated? In Holland we already have a movement against voting machines. Or can it be that the areas that have to resort to paper voting have a typical bias towards a certain candidate? That is actually the big question. The voting machines used in New Hampshire are actually just scanners that automatically count the ballots marked by the voter. So a manual recount is possible. The recount is going to happen since most candidates, democrats and republicans, are picking up the rumors heard around the states and the internet. More info on the recount can be found here in this Wired article. Looking forward to this. I’m very curious if the recount yields the same results.

Now here is some good and bad news for all diet coke junks out there. If you’re like me you practically live on diet coke. First the good news: a major brand is starting an awareness program for women’s heart disease. In conjunction with the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute’s “The Heart Truth” campaign the logo’s will appear 2.5 billion diet coke products. Here’s a link to a nice article announcing the initiative.

The bad news? According to this article soda’s (diet soda’s included) increase the risk of… , you guessed it, heart disease. So let’s pop open another one and enjoy another sugar free, free heart disease. Cheers!

Contrary to popular belief not all scientist support the global warming theory. Al Gore (known for his claim that he took the initiative to create the internet, yeah right!) now panics the world and puts forward “global warming” as the common enemy. Much of the claims in his movie (an inconvenient truth) have already been debunked. In a previous article I tried to find the real reasons for putting forward a common enemy. Now a russian journalist warns us for a cold spell, it’s a good read. This is based on the solar activity cycles. It is predicted to start around 2012 and the minimum will be reached around 2041. So besides stocking sunscreen factor 20 I will also hold on to my winter clothing for now.

Record companies are in dire straits, record sales have dropped to an all-time low. In their struggle to survive the record companies put the blame on ‘illegal music downloads’ on the internet. In an attempt to stop online music sharing the record companies have joined forces in an organization called RIAA. The RIAA is an organization that tries to scare the shit out of people by prosecuting them for copyright violations or offer the possibility to settle out of court. Most people don’t want to go through all the legal hassle and settle. Are the record companies on the right track?

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