I would like to take the opportunity of this special day to express how much the influence of Free Software to my life is. Back in 2005 I started to use Linux and because I had no clue I looked for support in the German-language Kubuntu community. This is how I jumped into and got an idea about Free Software. Kubuntu and the people were fun, after some time I was able to give support and not only take it. I helped out with other things, started to attend conferences (usually also in combination with a Kubuntu community booth). I met amazing people who became really really good friends.

Finally, finally, I found the time (spread over several months) to refurbish my blog. Not that it took so long, but spare time is rare these days. I decided to stick with Drupal and created a fresh and clean installation of 7 to replace the old Drupal 6. Now Drupal is somewhat overkill for a simple blog, but I the alternatives did not convince me for various reasons.

Mister Wong, ein deutschstämmiger Social Bookmarking Dienst (altdeutsch: eine Online Lesezeichenverwaltung mit sozialen Funktionen), hat bereits vor einigen vielen Wochen (das war so Mitte/Ende Juni) eine neue Version seiner Firefox Toolbar veröffentlicht. Auf Netzwertig werden die neuen Funktionen genauer beschrieben, im Prinzip ist sie um Bewertungs-, Stöber- und Verteilfunktionen ergänzt worden. In einem Absatz eines aktuellen Blogposts wird zudem fast beiläufig ein größerer Relaunch angekündigt.

Zurück zur Toolbar. Unter anderem kann man per Klick einen neuen Tweet erstellen, bei dem Titel und ggf. gekürzte URL voreingetragen werden. Genau, Tweet, Twitter... da fehlt doch was. Zum Glück sind Firefox Extensions letztlich nur Archive und der Code wurde hier nicht unleserlich gemacht. So ward es leicht möglich, dieses Funktion für die OpenSource Alternative identi.ca zu ergänzen: tatsächlich habe ich das bereits kurz nach der Veröffentlichung gemacht, nur das drüber reden hat auf sich warten lassen ;) Die modifizierte Variante stelle ich aber erst jetzt hier bereit: Wong Toolbar Identi.ca Edition herunterladen.

Vor kurzem bin ich durch Markey zufällig auf einen Artikel gestoßen, der sich mit der Arbeit des Biologen Anthony Cashmore auseinandersetzt. Er vertritt die Ansicht, dass es den freien Willen nicht gibt. Jede Entscheidung und Handlung basiert auf der Genetik, das Umfeld sowie einer Portion Stochastik. Das Bewusstsein ist die Wahrnehmung bzw. Reflektion des unbewusst gesteuerten Handelns. Dabei werden noch weitere Aspekte verknüpft: Das Bewusstsein sei eine evolutionäre Entwicklung, die uns den freien Willen vorgaukelt, um Verantwortung zu fühlen und somit das Leben in einer Gemeinschaft als auch als Individuum führen zu können.

When I started in SEO business almost have a year ago, I have been shunt into Matt Cutts, head of Google's webspam team. Reading his blog articles, i did not only get insights into Google, but also in his person. I got to know, that he starts challenges which would endure 30 days, usually. For one of those, he decided to switch from Windows to Ubuntu, and he eventually he kept using it. The latest challenge was to replace his iPhone with Android based Nexus One, and he does not seem to roll back, too.

In our time, when everything is, goes and is going to be more and more web based, my impression is that many users do not think about where they put their data, how secure the provider is and which control they have. Especially with the rise of software-as-a-service models you need to be sure to know what happens with your data, somewhere in the cloudy somewhat. Who is you email provider and who can read your mails? Are there Backdoors? Should i upload my pictures to flickr? Where can i safely send private and possibly sensitive messages?

Read the english version over at SF0

Beim 26C3 habe ich diesen Flyer in die Hand gedrückt bekommen und entschloss mich dieses Real-Life Spiel auszuprobieren. Ich habe alleine angefangen und habe den ersten Checkpoint zu Fuß über die Französische Straße erreicht, nachdem ich wenige Minuten nach dem Start einen Jäger hinter mich gelassen habe. Er hat mich anscheinend gar nicht gesehen :)

Die nächste knifflige Situation musste ich an der U-Bahn Station Oranienburger Tor überleben. Zwei Jäger stiegen nicht weit hinter mir aus dem Zug, so dass ich flott zum Ausgang bin, wo an der Straßenecke ein weiterer Jäger war, dem ich einfach durch Rennen davonkam.

Can this be? The fourth day now? Time is going much too fast. Anyway, this day was a great final for this excellent event.

Relevance discussion in German Wikipedia

Two core Wikipedia contributors have been invited to take part in a debate in the long running and currently peaking relevance discussion in Wikipedia. They were Kurt Jansson, associated with exclusionists, and Mathias Schindler, associated with inclusionists. And additionally there was Tim Weber, founder of the Levitation-project, which aims to provide personal and VCS-based Wikipedias. Beside them, Martin Haase and Fefe were in the podium as well as Andreas Bogk who did the moderation.

Today was a seat fighting day, because the year reviews (especially the Fnord) as well as the lectures about DECT and PKI are hot spots, which also lead to the strategic decision to go to the Manufacturing-talk and save a seat for Fnord (absolutely wise decision).

Review of 2009, Part I

Todays upbeat was the review of the passing year 2009 in Chaos Computer Club's point of view. Andy Müller-Maguhn, Constanze Kurz, Frank Rieger and Martin Haase gave a chronological overview of the remarkable events of this year. Besides events as Hacking at Random and the first performance of SIGINT in Cologne, many law topics has been pointed at, e.g. the adjudgement regarding voting machines or the enactment regarding the voting pen of Hamburg. Another sad point, which did not affect CCC directly, was the dramatic suicide of the 20year old, who crawled publicy available data from schuelerVZ. In this case some background details have been mentioned.

Somehow i caught a slight cold yesterday, but that does not lower my anticipation for this second day. Just like yesterday i'd like to share my experience of this day with you. Here it goes:

Voting Machines

Kathleen Wynn showed the audience a video of reports and interviews regarding the irregularities in US vote in 2004 and the general problems with voting machines. She concluded, that in US has been a wall between citizens and the elections and compared it to the Berlin wall. She points, that USA failed to realizise reasonable changes with the use of voting machines in contrast to Germany and calls for help.

First day of 26th Chaos Communicaton Congress. Thomas and I got our tickets yesterday evening, fortunately, as the event is apparently sold out. I have forgotten a network cable (need to rely on WLan) and my headphones (need to rely on seat in the rooms). Well, from time to time internet access breaks down, however.

Dawn

I was too late for the keynote, so if i do not want to stand the whole time (which i did not), i needed to get a seat on a table in the upper story. Headphones would not seem to help as the video stream does not seem to work reliably (afterwards it was quite stable as i heard), so i checked mails, the 26c3 wiki and stuff.