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2009-04-26

Open Access und Kinderpornos

In der letzten Ausgabe der Zeit wettert Susanne Gaschke (ich habe nur die Papierversion gelesen, online gibt es das inzwischen auch) etwas technikfern über das Internet (und rechtfertigt gleich noch die Zensursula). Eine schöne Antwort darauf gibt es hier bei den Orkpiraten.

Dass die etablierten Zeitschriften beim peer review gelegentlich pfuschen und die Fachautoren alle Arbeiten außer Ausdrucken und Binden selbst erledigen müssen (und noch dafür bezahlen), steht ja schon woanders.

2009-04-24

Coole Tarnung

Was macht man, wenn man im Outback (auf rostrotem Schmutz) rumkriecht, keine Deckung hat und nur dürres Gebüsch rumsteht: Man ist selbst orange und hat schmale schwarze Streifen auf dem Rücken, die den Schatten des Gestrüpps entsprechen.
Art: Vermutlich Pseudonaja modesta.
Bilder in der Schlangengrube gefunden, hier, hier und hier.

Alle sind ja so gemein zu mir (1)

Neue Serie, heute: Octomom
Nein, nicht was ihr denkt (und ich auch dachte, deswegen ist es ja so gemein). Da locken die mich auf eine obig betitelte Seite, und ich erwarte eine Krakendame mit 30000 frischgeschlüpften Jungen. Und was kriege ich stattdessen: eine Schweinerei!

2009-04-23

Internationaler Tag des Regenwurms

Gefunden bei "The other 95%", Seite ist hier.
Da die Würmer seit ein paar Jahren Lophotrochozoa sind, sind sie mit den Kraken verwandt und damit automatisch liebenswert.

2009-04-21

go Forth and multiply

Gerade gefunden: Ein Schmierzettel aus den Achtzigern. Drauf steht:

...
: rk8 DUP 5 + GPAHOR @ 5 * dim @ 3 * + rese ! ;
: rk9 dim 0 do i 5 * GPAHOR @ + dup f@ 5 * d + * dup f@ fdu f+ f+ 5 * d + dup f@ fdu f+ f+ 5 * d + f@ f+ h6 @ f* ytop @ i 5* + f! loop ;
...

Das war ein Runge-Kutta ziemlich hohen Grades. Inzwischen verstehe ich nicht mal mehr, was ich da gemacht habe, obwohl ich einigermaßen fließend Postscript spreche.
Ich werde wohl langsam alt - beim Test auf Gesundheit vs. Neurotypisches Syndrom habe ich gerade mal 36 von 50 Punkten geschafft (dort haben sich einige Fragen sinngemäß wiederholt - wahrscheinlich war der Fragesteller selbst betroffen). Allerdings leiden >90% der Menschen an dieser Krankheit (die können nicht programmieren, kriegen kein einziges Integral im Kopf raus; aber stehen abendelang auf Partys rum und heucheln sich die Hucke voll).

Fazit: go Haskell and have fun

2009-04-19

The thirteen lies of Zensursula

The following text (by the famous german Internet expert Lutz Donnerhacke) was grabbed from
http://netzpolitik.org/2009/die-dreizehn-luegen-der-zensursula/ and translated (quickly and probably badly) by me. Comments and insertions in square brackets are mine. Text by the government is blue, text by Lutz is violet. Please inform me about translational errors.

Introduction [by somebody called "wetter" on netzpolitik.org]:

In the following contribution network activist Lutz Donnerhacke analyses, comments and responds to the claims of the german Ministry for families [Official name: Federal Ministry of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth] about the necessity of censorship
measures against the documentation of child abuses. Therein Donnerhacke claims to have found 13 lies, which the ministry had published as text modules and other statements. But read for yourselves ...

(The) consequential course of action against the distribution of child pornography (is) a unconditional necessity, since the Internet must not be a Unregulated Area in this regard.

Lie #1: The Internet is not an Unregulated area.

The bulk of the child pornography in the area of the World Wide Web is meanwhile distributed over commecial web pages

Lie #2 and central problem among the leading politicians: There is no
mass market, there is no commercial distribution, there are no
turnovers in the million range. The perpetrators are single
perpetrators, and they exchange [the material] in Closed user groups,
mainly outside the Internet.

And the responsible persons as well as the perpetrators earn millions per month.

Repetition of lie #2.

Only a small portion of child pornography is distributed over german servers

Lie #3: The bulk of the Closed user groups is hosted in germany.

As soon as there is knowledge about representations of sexual child abuse, the police acts against the contentn provider, induces the deletion by the hosting provider and evaluates the connection data record.

Lie #4: If one uses the blacklists of other countries, wherein germany is on the 4th place concerning the hosting of blocked pages, and looks for really illegal material (which there is rare enough), then the hosting provider blocks immediately after notice. Those blacklists are known to the german investigation authorities, but the servers remained online for over a year.

When offers of child pornography are run by foreigners or in foreign countries, the responsible authorities and abuse adresses [original: Beschwerdestellen] are informed and asked for comparable measures of investigation and elimination of the violation.

Repetition of lie#4: the is obviously no mutual information.

The federal and state criminal police offices do outstanding domestic work.

On this place, i want really to praise the responsible investigators: please continue your good work and don't get entrapped by election-campaign related tactical confusion games to install a
paravent [original: spanische wand - does this idiom exist for this purpose in english?] in front of the crime; instead of catching the perpetrators and stopping the criminal action. Good luck.

The frequent press messages about uncovered [original: ausgehoben] child pornography rings confirm this.

All these successes confirm that the activities were not performed over the public web. they were always closed circles.

Despite all national and international efforts, many child pornography sites remain available in the net. in many countries it is not successful to make accountable the operators of child pornography offers (so-called content providers) or take away their platform (so-called hosting provider).

Repetition of lie#4: this claim would be read as "we are incompetent".

The current discussion about the complication [Original: Erschwerung] of the access to child pornographic material concerns offered web pages on which such contents are offered commercially.

Lie #5: no such sites are known. the do not occur in any of the blacklists of any countries. The investigators and lawyers working in this field do not know about such sites.

Is the whole discussion only about inexistent sites? Just hot air in the election campaign?

This is a matter of a form of grave and organized international criminality about which the Federal criminal police office [BKA] collects informations within the scope of it's duties as a central office. The informations available there concern ca. 1000 such web pages. Those web pages are not listed in special lists.

Repetition of lie#5: Does this mean that since years the BKA is informed about grave and organized international criminality and did not inform the other countries?

Since in about hald of all countries posession and distribution of child pornography is either not punishable or is insufficiently sanctioned, police actions are insufficient in many cases.

Fie #5: The part of countries, where the legal situation is insufficient and which come into question for hosting, is clearly below 1%.

Then the blocking of the only remaining course of action. An approach against the content providers, thus the main responsible person to be accessed, fails in this cases due to the fact that the responsible person is situated abroad.

Repetition of lie#4: Such mutual information which might lead toapprehension of the perpetrators os obvously omitted.

Indeed the freedom of information is a value held in high esteem with constutional status. But here the matter is the complication of access of web pages with child pornographic content. Following the criminal code, distribution, obtaining and posession of child pornography is punishable.

Lie #7: The equalization of child abuse with sexual background and distribution delicts (up to seeming youth pornography [Original: Jugendanscheinspornographie] is an inacceptable mixing of elements of crime of different gravity, which in no case justifies such an incursion into basic law. The allegedly justifying criminal act is not only not avoided or impaired by the incursion, but even protected against criminal prosecution. On the other hand, the incursion serves to protect against investigations the non-publicly performed, less grave acts of distribution delicts.

Since many years, blockings are successfully performed in Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Italy, Great Britain, Switzerland, New Zealand, South Korea, Canada and Taiwan, mostly on the base of voluntary negotiated agreements.

Lie #8: The fact that a country blocks would be a valid argument only in the case that the blocking in this country were a success in the case at hand. But it is not. None of the countries mentioned the blockings as success, on the contrary, it harms the investigations and does not at all impede the criminal acts.

The long time [Original: jahrelangen] experiences of the countries which already installed access blocks demonstrate that the system works ...

Repetition of lie#8

... and every day tens of thousands of accesses to child pornographic offers could be blocked

Lie #9: As is known the blacklists in other countries contain less than 1% of the pages mentioned here, the remainder are legal pages, which have nothing to do with pornography in any form, but distribute critical political contents. Thus the total number of blocked accesses is not the number of accesses to criminal material.

Here, fantastic numbers [Original: Fantasiezahlen] are generated, which shall impress. They have nothing to do with reality. One could rather calculate this way: The government wants to block 400000 accesses to politically critical contents, thus perform censorship on a grand scale.

It is not relevant that technically versed internet users will always find ways to obviate the blocks.

Lie #10: Obviation of the dilettantish blocks is easily found by searching for "block abviate instruction" [Original:"Sperre umgehen Anleitung" ] and realized in seconds.

Rather, it is decisive that by access blocks the access for the majority of averagely versed internet users is blocked and the hard cases are forced to use side ways. Instead of resignating in front of the possibilities in the World Wide Web, all means against the distribution of child pornography are used.

Repetition of lie#5: Those pages don't exist. It is therefore impossible to stumble upon them by accident. The exchange channels are outside the web.

The position of the Federal Government, that the blocks are an appropriate action to restrict the outreach of known child pornographic pages if other methods fail, is therefore confirmed by the experiences of those countries.

Repetition of lie#8: The other countries made the experience that it is just a completely inappropriate action.

Thereby blocks should be part of a overall strategy against the sexual abuse of children and it's depiction on the internet. The investigation of the perpetrators and the protection of the victims
should hereby not be replaced, but effectively amended.

Lie#11: Since years, the Federal Government cuts the funds for prevention, criminal investigation and victim support. Instead it performs ineffectual symbolic politics. Thus teachers who assault children are simply moved to other schools instead of being
investigated and punished if applicaple.

The Federal Government strives for cooperation with these countries in order to come to maximally efficient actions against the sexual exploitation of children in the internet and to come to an exchange the blocked pages by international cooperation. [The probably mean "list of blocked pages"]

Lie #12: The exploitation and abuse of children takes place in the own family, not in the Internet. The Ministry Of Families should know this.

In the context of a summit talk on Jan. 13, 2009 of Minister Schäuble, Minister von der Leyen and Minister Glos with the representants of the major internet providers agreed upon a two-level action.

Lie #13: The providers were strongly against this action. These objections have been ignored on the part of the ministers.

Concluding remark: The struggle against grave child abuse is not an international contest where one is praised for biggest case counts or highest click rates or whatever other perverse indicator comes to their mind. The decisive indicator is the number of acts which still happens. Even if nobody looks.

Die dreizehn Lügen der Zensursula

Interessanter Text von Lutz Donnerhacke über die Internetsperren.
Bitte sofort lesen, ausdrucken und an jede verfügbare Wand hängen.

2009-04-18

Quantenbus

There is no god, and Dirac is his prophet.



Created using the bus slogan generator. Thanks to Uzza for pointing to this.
Tip for usage: The generator breaks unless you fill something visible into each of the three input fields (space characters do not work).
Click in the picture to embiggenate.

Es gibt keinen Gott, und Dirac ist sein Prophet.




Erzeugt mit dem bus slogan generator, Danke für den Tip von Uzza.
Anwendungshinweis: Der Generator funktioniert nur, wenn alle 3 Felder ausgefüllt werden (Leerzeichen funktionieren nicht).
Klick auf ein Bild öffnet die größere Version.

2009-04-17

Invertebrate war, Teil 5

Neues Paper von BGF et al. über Kopffüßer. Fazit: alle giftig.

Digitaler Bilderrahmen für Bücher

Dieses Script wandelt ein PS- oder PDF-File (Seitengröße A4) in ein Verzeichnis voller JPGs um, die sich im Bilderrahmen betrachten lassen.

#!/bin/bash
# convert a PS file into a sequence of picture frame compatible jpgs

PSFILE="$1"
B=${PSFILE%.*}
tmpdir=$(mktemp -d ./${B}.XXXXXX)

gs -sPAPERSIZE=a4 -sOutputFile=${tmpdir}/${B}%04d.png -sDEVICE=pnggray -r96.8 -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE ${PSFILE}
cd ${tmpdir}
for f in *.png; do
b=$(basename $f .png)
p=${b}.pgm
pngtopnm < $f > $p
pnmcut -left 0 -top 0 -right 799 -bottom 599 < $p | ppmtojpeg > ${b}_1.jpg
pnmcut -left 0 -top 532 -right 799 -bottom 1131 < $p | ppmtojpeg > ${b}_2.jpg
rm $p $f
done

Impfgegner-Bodycount

Deutsche Anleitung für Bodycount-Widget in Blogger

Einstellungen→Layout auswählen, es erscheint eine Grobansicht des Blogs.

An geeigneter Stelle "Gadget hinzufügen" wählen, es erscheint ein neues Fenster, darin wählt man den Typ "HTML/Javascript". Klick auf das Bild bringt das Fenster in den Editiermodus, dort gibt man einen Titel ein und kopiert den Inhalt für ein gewähltes Widget aus der Seite http://www.layscience.net/node/510 hinein.

English instructions for embedding the Jenny McCarthy Body count widget into blogger

[I had to guess the english names that blogger displays for the menu fields, since I get shown only the german ones]

Go to settings→layout, you get a chart displaying the look of your blog. Click on "add gadget" somewhere, you get a new windows with lots of gadgets to choose from. Select the type "HTML/Javascript" (which is currently in the 2nd position), enter some title and copy+paste the code given on the page http://www.layscience.net/node/510 into the main area.

2009-04-06

Warum URL-shortening saugt

Dass das so ist, sage ich seit Jahren (die DOS-Mailer, die URLs irreversibel zerbrechen, sind ausgestorben, und wenn doch einer einen hat, können alle Mozillen seit Netscape 3 umbrochene URLs zusammensetzen (einfach das ganze Gebilde markieren und im Netscape mit der mittleren Maustaste in einer leeren Seite herauslassen)).

Neben den bekannten Nachteilen wird noch ein weiterer genannt: Der Betreiber kann Werbeseiten auf dem Landepunkt des verkürzten Links anbieten, und diese ist eventuell NSFW und somit peinlich für den Linksetzer.

Links: http://taint.org/2009/04/05/215357a.html (Justin Mason),
http://joshua.schachter.org/2009/04/on-url-shorteners.html (Joshua Schachter)

2009-04-04

Interview mit 419er

Mike Nash (Firewall-Programmierer in .au) hat einen Scammer interviewt.

Beste Stellen:
[3:57:13 PM] Mike Nash says: May I ask, how much you make doing this ?
[3:57:47 PM] Mr. Robert Dutu says: be my victim and you will get to know how much i can make from you

[4:38:06 PM] Mr. Robert Dutu says: and i know my God will forgive because i pray to him to replenish the pockets of my clients with double of whatever they loss

Wer immer sein Gott sein mag, Cthulhu ist es jedenfalls nicht.