Community vs. Corporation and Corrupt Politicians

Mișcarea Verzilor

Un nou partid pentru o Românie mai curată: Mișcarea Verzilor!

Poze preluate de pe: remuscernea.ro

Mobility of Young People in Europe (Questionnaire)

Young? Fond of traveling abroad to boost your education? What exactly do you expect to gain when studying abroad? Or when doing an internship abroad? Or when just doing a trip in some other country? Which advantages and disadvantages does a young person have when being mobile?

The Young European Federalists (JEF) want to study these questions and need your support. Their online questionnaire contains questions about mobility during education & training and requires approximately 10 minutes for filling in:

English Version/ German Version / French Version

Evaluation is anonymous and the results will be published after the 1st of August 2009 on the JEF website. JEF will use the results to make suggestions to politicians in order to achieve equal opportunities, to provide support and information for young people who want to travel abroad.

Freedom from Fear

Free Burma

Please use your liberty to promote theirs.

Please use your liberty to promote theirs.

Please use your liberty to promote theirs.

Please use your liberty to promote theirs.

Please use your liberty to promote theirs.

The Pure Evilness of “Trusted” Computing

Yesterday and today I attended Chris Mitchell‘s talks at FOSAD 2007 on Trusted Computing / Treacherous Computing (TC) (Slides: part1, part2). The presentation was fairly neutral, even though Chris is one of the people working on OpenTC, so I assume he is also of the proponents of this controversial technology to which I oppose.

Here are some aspects that become even clearer to me from the two talks and the discussions that followed.

Honors Program Problems

It will take some time until we will have a new study coordinator, and there are urgent organizational problems related to the master honors program than need to be addressed.

Poor Hornets

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Hornets are often (although wrongly) thought to be very aggressive and dangerous, and are much feared by some people. Hornets can actually be seen to slowly crawl backwards and eventually flee, rather than attacking, when approaching them. This can make it hard to remove hornets from indoors, if they happen to come in through an open window or door. Some folk beliefs have it that three stings from the European hornet can kill an adult human, and that seven can kill a horse. While impressive due to their size, European hornets are in fact much less aggressive than some of their smaller relatives notably the yellowjackets Vespula germanica and Vespula vulgaris, and their sting isn’t more dangerous. Unwarranted fear has often led to the destruction of nests, and the species is locally threatened. It benefits from legal protection in some countries, notably Germany.

Hornets are not harmless, however. They have a painful sting and can cause anaphylactic shock to persons with an allergy to wasp venom, a condition which can be fatal. While not aggressive when encountered far from the nest, workers will vigorously defend the nest if provoked.

Owning ideas

The Guardian has an insightful article on software patents and so-called “intellectual property”.

Technologies for Digital Restrictions Management

In March 2005 I wrote about DRM and what it means for our freedom and now I decided to publish a more technical sequel. Back then I was outraged by the fact that Intel added a new DRM feature (DTCP-IP) to its dual-core processors. Why is that you may ask? Well … traditionally DRM means ways to restrict the use of copyrighted digital media content like music and movies. However, the DRM umbrella is broad enough so that it can cover any technology that can be used to control and restrict the use of “digital media” — computer software included. Having a DRM-enabled processor together with a DRM-enabled operating system could mean that:

• only “blessed” (i.e. certified) applications will be allowed to run (supporters will motivate this my the need to stop viruses and worms)
• encrypted documents can be opened only with the “blessed” Microsoft Office
• Sites like MSN or Yahoo.com can be accessed by the “blessed” IE7 and no other will be able to fake it (enforced through cryptographically strong digital signatures)
• an application developer could enforce that his applications work under on a certain operation system with little chance for the users to fake it
• projects like WINE and VMWARE will have to break/fake encryption keys to work and this will render them illegal in many parts of the world US included (DMCA)

Well, it is needless to say that this would mean a lot of money for the established monopolies like Microsoft and Intel and disaster for users and their freedom. Richard Stallman predicted this evolution several years ago in essays like: Can you trust your computer?:

“Treacherous computing puts the existence of free operating systems and free applications at risk, because you may not be able to run them at all. Some versions of treacherous computing would require the operating system to be specifically authorized by a particular company. Free operating systems could not be installed. Some versions of treacherous computing would require every program to be specifically authorized by the operating system developer. You could not run free applications on such a system. If you did figure out how, and told someone, that could be a crime.”

So these technologies are really going to happen, one little step at a time and DTCP-IP is one of these little steps. I will discuss next the DRM technologies that Intel has implemented so far and the technologies that are planned for the near future.