AK's weblog

I just sent an email to Amnesty International, where I told them that they are fucking hypocrites (and they ARE indeed hypocritical, just read here), and that I quit my membership. Anyway, here's the email:

From: Andreas Krennmair <ak@synflood.at>
To: info@amnesty.at
Subject: Kuendigung der Mitgliedschaft

Hiermit teile ich ihnen mit, dass ich unverzueglich meine Mitgliedschaft bei Amnesty International kuendige. Als Grund kann ich die Erklaerung zum Urteil des Falls Wolfgang Daschner nennen, zu finden bei ihren deutschen Kollegen unter http://www2.amnesty.de/internet/deall.nsf/windexde/PR2004099

Einerseits schreibt sich Amnesty International den Kampf gegen Folter an die Fahnen, andererseits wird begruesst, dass Folter in Deutschland lediglich mit einer laecherlichen Geldstrafe auf Bewaehrung (!! d.h. wenn Herr Daschner ein Jahr keine weiteren Folterungen anweist, muss er nicht einmal diese zahlen!) "bestraft" wird, und voraussichtlich ohne weiteren disziplinaeren Konsequenzen bleiben wird! Entweder ist Amnesty zu verpeilt, um die wahre Problematik des Falls zu erkennen, oder AI betreibt pure HEUCHELEI! Mit diesem Urteil wurde ein Praezedenzfall geschaffen, der Folter unter eine praktisch zu vernachlaessigende Strafe stellt, der fuer die Exekutive einen Anreiz darstellen koennte, auch in weiteren Faellen zu aehnlichen Foltermethoden zu greifen.

Sollten sie diese Kuendigung in schriftlicher oder telefonischer Form benoetigen, so teilen sie mir dieses bitte mit, sodass ich das so schnell als moeglich nachholen kann.

Andreas Krennmair
--
Die so genannte Ohnmacht des einzelnen ist vielleicht die gefährlichste Illusion, die ein Mensch überhaupt haben kann.
-- Joseph Weizenbaum

Update: AI officially confirmed that I'm not a member anymore. But yesterday, they called and tried to get some additional money from me, for their next year's actions. I told the guy on the phone that I'm not a member anymore, and explained to him why.

You've probably heard about the other torture scandal in Germany, ending in a very mild conviction (1 year of probation for a EUR 10800 fine). Here's my letter to the editor that I sent to Der Standard:

Es ist beschämend, dass ein so sensibles Thema wie Folter quasi ohne Konsequenzen behandelt wird, schließlich darf man nie vergessen, dass Folter nicht der Wahrheitsfindung dient (das ist auch in unserem Rechtssystem fundamental verankert), weder früher, noch jetzt, noch in der Zukunft. Wenn die Anwendung von Folter (schon die bloße Androhung ist das!) quasi straffrei endet und die Polizei das als "Schaffung von Rechtssicherheit" proklamiert, so könnte das ein gefährlicher Präzedenzfall werden, nach dem die Exekutive eher dazu bereit sehen könnte, zu foltern, weil das Handeln nach der Art von Wolfgang Daschner von der Justiz toleriert wird. Und das, obwohl Deutschland selbst dem "Internationalen Pakt über bürgerliche und politische Rechte" beigetreten ist, der Folter strengstens verbietet. Schlussendlich möchte ich noch auf die Bemerkung der deutschen Bundesregierung zum Thema Folter hinweisen: "ein Rechtsstaat, der [zulässt], dass es innerhalb seiner Grenzen plötzlich wieder Folter und Gefolterte gibt, [verliert] jegliche Legitimation und Glaubwürdigkeit."

Update: the letter was published in today's (22 Dec 2004) Der Standard.

The following thing just happened to me: I plugged by iPod into my iBook via FireWire, and suddenly, iTunes quit. I wondered, "did it crash?", clicked on the iTunes icon in the panel, and turned around to get something else prepared. When I had another look at the screen, I will suddenly logged out! I though, "damn, what is happening to my computer?", and I tried to log in again, but it failed. Suddenly, the computer started to show the shutdown symbol below the center of the screen, but it hung after a while. So I switched the iBook off, and powered it on again, and now it runs smoothly again. Has anybody of you experienced anything like that before? Weird, just weird.

Today I stumbled across The Heirloom Toolchest, a collection of standard Unix utilities, taken from all the ancient Unix source code published by Caldera a few years ago. They're packaged ready-to-compile, and quite small, yet providing all the functionality you usually need. This package is definitely a good thing, as it provides a good base for building a small system based on diet libc.

Today, I got my certificate for the final class of vocational school. Of course, I passed all subject with the grade "Sehr gut" (the best one). That means I only have to do my final exams, and then I'm finished with education (forever!). At least I don't plan to do any further things within the "official" school system (taking Spanish lessions at Wifi for example is something "outside" the normal school system, and I will do that in January). Actually, this kind of makes me feel free, and that's definitely a good feeling.

All I want is to upload a drupal directory structure onto a server where I have FTP-only access. First client I tried: NcFTP. Problem: doesn't want to upload complete directories. Fails at "mput -r *", hangs or fails at "mput -r ." (depends on NcFTP's current mood). The next client I tried: Finder.app of OSX. OK, selected "Go -> Connect to server" from the menu, entered the FTP URL, logged in without problems. But it (falsely) recognizes the mounted FTP share (that's how access to an FTP server is represented by OSX, pretty nifty actually, if it only worked correctly) as read-only. gna Why can't both clients Just Work(tm)?!

Update: ncftpput now does the trick, with some trial-and-error.

Update 2: ncftpput was only a partial solution, here comes a better one:

for d in `find . -type d` ; do
files=`find $d -type f -maxdepth 1`
if [ -n "$files" ] ; then
ncftpput -u $user -p $password -m $host /$d $files
else
echo "XXX $d is empty and was probably not created!"
fi
done


Today I bought a lava lamp as a christmas present for my brother, at Leiner. It's really interesting to see the "original lava lamp" with a price tag of EUR 69,99, and an (quote shop assistant) "affordable replica" for as much as EUR 6,99 beneath it. I took the latter one, of course.

I'm sure most of my readers already had to cut onions at least once in their life and had to cry because of that. Well, my ingenious brother found a way to reliably avoid that (and it indeed works, I tried it out today):
Get a big piece of cling film, and wrap it around your head so that it covers your eyes. Be sure that you're still able to breath through the nose! Then start cutting your onion(s), and you won't experience any more crying. The only disadvantage is that your look through the cling film is not as clear as without, but to be honest, who cares as long as there is no more crying involved?

And the currently advertised "BigChicken" is the proof. It's a combination of the good, old BigMac layers, without the little cucumber slices, and with the chicken thingies (that you probably know from the McChicken) insead of the normal meat. When I opened the box yesterday, it smelled very tasty, but when I actually ate it, it tasted like... well, almost nothing. That was so disappointing. These guys you see in the TV commercial must either have a lapse in taste or be on some drug that made them have an "eat flash". I bet they all smoked some bad weed, and the guy in the middle who destroys the table was taking some metamphetamine before. Does McDonalds really want to have junkies as target group and advertise that?

Today I bought the book "Russendisko" by [[de:Wladimir Kaminer|Wladimir Kaminer]]. I heard about it before, and saw a very long and interesting interview with the author on 3SAT, but never had the opportunity to read anything written by him. Anyway, after I bought the book, I started reading it in the tram, and I continued reading it after I came home, and now, I'm finished, and I enjoyed it so much like I haven't enjoyed a book in at least 5 years. A wonderful, simple and straight style of writing, a nice style of telling stories, and the book is, well, a collection of short stories that the author or some of his friends experienced. Imagine a Quentin Tarantino movie, but with more episodes, more fun, and less violence and all the other weird Tarantino shit (although I do enjoy his movies, no fear). So, a wonderful book, which I can only recommend. I think I will have to buy some of his other books.

If you want to get a (relatively) good and cheap mobile phone, and you live in Austria, get a Motorola A925 with 3Reload from 3. They don't advertise this kind of mobile phone, but the (out-of-stock) Nokia 7600 instead. The advantage of the A925 to the 7600: the A925 comes with UIQ 2.0 as user interface (Symbian OS as operating system), and with 3Reload, the phone costs only EUR 99,- (without any contract, you'd pay EUR 799,- for that phone). So, if you want to do some Symbian programming, and want to start without wasting too much money, this definitely the device to start with.

Today I got a nice letter from my ministry of the interior telling me that my declaration for civil service was correct, and that I'm now officially forbidden to buy, own and bear arms that are subject to authorisation, and I have to say, I'm proud of that. But have a look at it for yourself:

But after the current scandals of soldiers torturing recruits, this is the only sane decision.

Remember last time when I posted a drawing that was only made because I was bored? Today I brought this to the next level, by actually drawing something? Today, I brought this to the next level, by actually drawing something on real paper, using a pencil only:

The drawing itself shows the X key from a keyboard, a baseball bat wrapped with tripwire (something only Martin will understand), and Hirundozilla, which you should already know from this posting. Yes, I'm extremely bored.

Note to self: must-sees in the 21C3 conference schedule:

• Day 1:
  • 11:00 - 12:00: Hidden Data in Internet Published Documents
  • 12:00 - 13:00: Inside PDF (x)
  • 13:00 - 14:00: Enforcing the GNU GPL (x)
  • 14:00 - 15:00: Biometrie in Ausweisdokumenten
  • 15:00 - 16:00: Edit This Page - Scaling the Wiki Beyond 1 Million (x)
  • 16:00 - 17:00: Verified Fiasco - ein Projekt zur formalen Analyse und zum Beweisen der totalen Korrektheit des Mikrokern-Betriebssystems Fiasco
  • 22:00 - 23:00: Free Software in South America (x)
  • 23:00 - 24:00: Das Literarische Code-Quartett (x)
• Day 2:
  • 11:00 - 12:00: Lightning Talks: Day 2 (x)
  • 12:00 - 13:00: Softwarepatente - der Tag danach (x)
  • 13:00 - 14:00: Natural Language Steganography (x)
  • 15:00 - 17:00: Bluetooth Hacking
  • 23:00 - 24:00: Fnord-Jahresrückblick
• Day 3:
  • 11:00 - 12:00: Toll Collect - Verpeilen im industriellen Maßstab
  • 15:00 - 16:00: Practical Mac OS X Insecurity
  
  
  • 16:00 - 17:00: The Reality of Network Address Translators
  • 19:00 - 21:00: Security Nightmares 2005
  
  

Update: changed a few things, due to changes in the Fahrplan. Fortunately, I can now see both "Natural Language Steganography" and "Softwarepatente - der Tag danach".
Update 2: the "(x)" means "seen".

Via arc: