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There is another interesting article about this on Technology Review written by Simon Garfinkel which covers possible security risks of early IPv6 software routing as opposed to hardware routing as the technology becomes widely used. In addition to that, he predicts that p2p will actually increse due to the fact that NAT troubles disappear.

German version
English version (free registration, blabla)

Telepolis article (german only, may the fish be with you)

I'm guessing that this is why they're goint to Europe... They're hoping that their name isn't completely trashed there (yet).

It is. Everybody knows all about it, it's been in the computer and business related media all over, no less than it was in the US. As a point of reference, try one of the recent articles at the Heise Newsticker, which a lot of Germans read. The link section at the end of the article refers to previous news articles on SCO by Heise, and should give a good impression on the extent of the coverage.

Alex

I'm guessing that this is why they're goint to Europe... They're hoping that their name isn't completely trashed there (yet).

It is. Everybody knows all about it, it's been in the computer and business related media all over, no less than it was in the US. As a point of reference, try one of the recent articles at the Heise Newsticker, which a lot of Germans read. The link section at the end of the article refers to previous news articles on SCO by Heise, and should give a good impression on the extent of the coverage.

Alex

Actually, when they realized they had lost the race, IBM at least tried to cash in on some patents, thus retroactively licensing their technology.

So what does KDE do for a "next-generation save/open box?" Because KDE has had support for this, in the form of KIO, for years. In any KDE file dialog, you can just save a file to "fish://foo" and it works just fine. It supports a ton of protocols, including SMB, bzip2, http, ftp, pop3, smtp, webdav, nntp, etc. Hell, there is even a cool KIO handler for APT, to turn Konqueror into a package manager :)

... could be achieved by combining this with recent failures of GPS in Europe. See this article here (in German).
Abstract: Satellite SVN23 (PRN23) has gone off-line due to an "anomalous condition", which led to people having their GPS devices telling them they flew 14 km high with 120kph.

Core team of XFree86 separates on David H. Dawes, one the founder of the XFree86-Projekts for the development of a free x-server and present president of the company, which cares for the project, communicated in a Posting on the mailing list XFree86 Developer that the core team of the project will dissolve. Also on the Website from XFree86 meanwhile a short note with the announcement appeared. It is pleased that the majority core of the team its suggestion agreed, writes Dawes. This represents an acknowledgement of the fact that the core team does not represent no more the active, experienced and adept developers. Also it was no more place, at which technical discussions would have taken place. So far there are no further data, who is to resume the tasks, which the core team had actually taken over. In addition above all the supervision belonged over the general development of the project -- which probably the board OF Directors and/or the project responsible persons could carry out with XFree86, Inc.. David Dawes had supplied itself however already lately with some fellow combatants violent arguments, which led also to the door of individual project participants. Thus separated only in October Cygwin/XFree86 von XFree86.org. And Keith luggage pool of broadcasting corporations, over several years member of the XFree86-Kerntruppe, criticized for example already for a long time the development as too slow-acting and too closed -- and in March from the core team was excluded. Luggage pool of broadcasting corporations opened a new branch of development with Freedesktop/X server and supports the project Xouvert, in order to make a faster integration possible of new techniques and advancement (jk/c't)

The fine folks over at c't magazine have a short preview of the DeltaChrome Chip here (article in German, use the fish).

Summary:

DX9 chip, 300 MHz pixel/ram clock. The S8 competes with the Radeon 9600 and the GF 5600Ultra and 5700, a higher clocked variant (the F1) is planned for Q2/04.

Mixed benchmark results (from "faster than the Radeon 9600 in UT2003" to "30 % slower than the 9600 in Serious Sam"). Problems with current drivers (black screen during "bullet time" scenes in MP2, Halo Timedemo crashes @1280 resolution). Very low power consumption (only 5 W, chip needs no active cooling even in graphics intensive games). Some interesting features (HDTV out, filtering of block artifacts in videos).

Given those first impressions, I wonder where S3 will position this chip in the market. The high end seems to be out of reach, and in the OEM and value market they're vulnerable to the phase-out offers from ATI and NVidia.

Disclaimer: my German isn't terribly good so it might be a review of the new BMW 5-series instead ;-)

According to Heise Security www.heise.de this patch actually builds up bigger security holes than it repairs

In german:

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/dab-19.12.03-0 02/

Actually the have also a test for those who already patched their systems with this:


http://www.heise.de/security/dienste/browserchec k/ demos/ie/e5_18.shtml

So do not use this patch!

According to Heise Security www.heise.de this patch actually builds up bigger security holes than it repairs

In german:

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/dab-19.12.03-0 02/

Actually the have also a test for those who already patched their systems with this:


http://www.heise.de/security/dienste/browserchec k/ demos/ie/e5_18.shtml

So do not use this patch!

I think mozilla misrepresents the url in the status line while the address line shows the url correctly.
MSIE, on the other hand, fails completly.

In fact, on some versions of mozilla you even can spot a control char in the status line, too. But real spoofing depends on the address line.

heise (German)

As a test:
http://www.mozilla.org%00@www.heisec.de

is shown as http://www.heisec.de in mozilla, while msie puts http://www.mozilla.org into the address line.

Here is the article from Heise News (in German - Google transmogrification). Highlights:

• Eric S. Raymond writes in a mail to heise on-line: "Why should we be so stupid to start a DDOS on SCO if the juridical system already prepares their fall."
• www.sco.com with the IP address 216.250.128.12 couldn't be reached
• ftp.sco.com with the address 216.250.128.13 worked great.
• traceroutes reached SCO's ISP, then stopped. The provider reported no disruptions.
• The press release says that a SYN-attack brought down SCO's intranet - the company selling the "reliable and highly available Unix" didn't prepare against the well-known SYN-attack like their support tells people?

You can use it without javascript look at heise.de, the link at 'ohne Javascript'

click on the test button on this page.... it's quite scary.

Of course, you have to use Internet Explorer to see it.

Internet Explorer is usually found under C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer ;)

I don't see a description. All I see is an assertion.

OK, did a little more google. Here are a couple of real source articles.


And you are forgetting that I already stated that fingerprints were a bad example. For fingerprints, fine, they're already being used, and they're easy to copy. So let's not use them for anything else. But that's a strawman argument against a single implementation of biometrics.

Fingerprints do make a convenient strawman, but unfortunately they are still the dominant form of biometric systems. Look around you, count the products or services that propose to rely on biometrics. The majority (60% according to the latest article linked from slashdot) is fingerprint based. The next largest group is facial recognition, which is also not very secure. The rest (hand, iris, voice, writing) may or may not be better, I do not know. Combination systems are very rare today. Don't you think the strawman arguments are valid while the strawman is real? :)


If an ATM used [fingerprints], and your fingerprints were stolen, there's no way you could be personally held responsible unless you were somehow negligent. This protection is being used by the bank, not by the person, so there isn't "anything else that might be protected by that ID," as far as the victim is concerned.

So fine, the fingerprint is for the protection of the bank, and I won't be liable if their system turns out to be less then secure. There is also no harm done if the bank is the only one entity in my lifetime (or in the lifetime of a given technology) that uses that biometric. But there are not enough unique biometric systems that each bank, each id card, each company could use an independent measurement, so there will be inevitable overlaps.

If [birth certificates, passports, etc.] were required day to day, they wouldn't be sufficient to "steal my identity." Actually, the whole concept of "stealing someone's identity" is rather ridiculous. For instance, this article talks about stealing people's identity's, but what actually happened is people stole a bunch of cash from an ATM.

This is a good argument. As long as the compromised systems are compartmentalized (ie. one bank and their atms) then such a compromise is not a big deal. The problem comes if multiple systems will depend on the same biometric id.


The way I think about them is like a public/private key system that you cannot change. Biometrics are easy to recognize, but hard to reproduce. That's the key to their security.

As long as they are difficult to reproduce, I agree. In my opinion though there is a limited window when that is true. Once someone figures out how to do it, then that given biometric will become weaker.

Keep in mind that the difficulty only exists for physical attacks, where a person is trying to impersonate you in front of a trusted system. Biometric signatures offer no protection against electronic attacks. If these rigged ATMs can copy the PIN number and magnetic card info in a re-usable form, then they can also copy your biometric signature.

No one is forcing people to use biometrics on anything.

Oh, good, I'm relieved. :) "use it at your own risk" (whether that risk is lower or higher then alternatives) is fine with me.

The private key is "me," perhaps. But the public key, which I give out is not me. It's the parts of me that are recorded in those particular conditions at that particular time. And that's not going to be the same among different systems.

Unlike in public key cryptography, it only matters if someone can produce a good imitation of your public "image

You can get more information on the (german) site heise:
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/pab-27.11.03-0 00/

The full advisory from Werner Koch can be found here:
http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/fulldisclos ure/2003-q4/2998.html

It seems that about 800 people are using the compromised keys.

To check if your key is in danger you have to check the type of the key. All type 20 keys can be compromised. Here is a small shell script to check our key:

gpg --list-keys --with-colon | awk -F: '($4 == "20") {print $0;}

If your key is in danger you should create a new one and revoke the old one immediately.

Selling PCs at supermarkets has rocked the German PC market.

ALDI (a very popular discount retailer, similar to Wal-Mart) began selling computers a few years back, both desktop PCs and laptops. They still do so on a regular basis and just this week they had a not-too-bad all-in-one all-purpose PC for home users.

These computers are special time-limited offers, marketed in large quantities over a few days, about twice a year. So limited that when the first series was sold in 1997, one customer tried to secure his PC using a gun.

Aldi has become so successful that its main supplier Medion has slowly become the #1 computer manufacturer in Germany (although it is unclear wether it can hold that spot - the company is struggling, too).

Several other competing supermarket chains have joined the market with their own line of bargain PCs and now there are a number of "Schnappchen PC" offers popping up in several supermarkets chains before Christmas every year. You pick up your fully-installed, ready-to-go PC right next to your milk, bread and toilet paper.

Although computer pros initially laughed at the thought of buying an ALDI PC, it turned out to be a pretty good offer. Thanks to huge numbers of absolutely identical PCs to be sold, the company preparing these boxes had time to slash prices and still do the configuration better than what you'd often get at the likes of Dell or your local selfmade-PC-shop.

The ALDI PC is targeted at home users and its first versions were quite well thought-out and sold like crazy. (See gun story, linked above.)

These days, customers aren't that mad about the ALDI PC anymore, it seems. The recent offerings were more and more prone to feature-overload. The current ALDI PC comes with everything and a kite: Next to the standard stuff it includes a universal card drive, a TV-in card, a remote control, wireless keyboard and mouse, wireless LAN and a DVD burner on top of the DVD read only drive...

But still, ALDI teared down the wall, put massive price pressure on everyone else and literally brought the multimedia PC to the masses with a PC that's actually really ok.

Selling PCs at supermarkets has rocked the German PC market.

ALDI (a very popular discount retailer, similar to Wal-Mart) began selling computers a few years back, both desktop PCs and laptops. They still do so on a regular basis and just this week they had a not-too-bad all-in-one all-purpose PC for home users.

These computers are special time-limited offers, marketed in large quantities over a few days, about twice a year. So limited that when the first series was sold in 1997, one customer tried to secure his PC using a gun.

Aldi has become so successful that its main supplier Medion has slowly become the #1 computer manufacturer in Germany (although it is unclear wether it can hold that spot - the company is struggling, too).

Several other competing supermarket chains have joined the market with their own line of bargain PCs and now there are a number of "Schnappchen PC" offers popping up in several supermarkets chains before Christmas every year. You pick up your fully-installed, ready-to-go PC right next to your milk, bread and toilet paper.

Although computer pros initially laughed at the thought of buying an ALDI PC, it turned out to be a pretty good offer. Thanks to huge numbers of absolutely identical PCs to be sold, the company preparing these boxes had time to slash prices and still do the configuration better than what you'd often get at the likes of Dell or your local selfmade-PC-shop.

The ALDI PC is targeted at home users and its first versions were quite well thought-out and sold like crazy. (See gun story, linked above.)

These days, customers aren't that mad about the ALDI PC anymore, it seems. The recent offerings were more and more prone to feature-overload. The current ALDI PC comes with everything and a kite: Next to the standard stuff it includes a universal card drive, a TV-in card, a remote control, wireless keyboard and mouse, wireless LAN and a DVD burner on top of the DVD read only drive...

But still, ALDI teared down the wall, put massive price pressure on everyone else and literally brought the multimedia PC to the masses with a PC that's actually really ok.

Selling PCs at supermarkets has rocked the German PC market.

ALDI (a very popular discount retailer, similar to Wal-Mart) began selling computers a few years back, both desktop PCs and laptops. They still do so on a regular basis and just this week they had a not-too-bad all-in-one all-purpose PC for home users.

These computers are special time-limited offers, marketed in large quantities over a few days, about twice a year. So limited that when the first series was sold in 1997, one customer tried to secure his PC using a gun.

Aldi has become so successful that its main supplier Medion has slowly become the #1 computer manufacturer in Germany (although it is unclear wether it can hold that spot - the company is struggling, too).

Several other competing supermarket chains have joined the market with their own line of bargain PCs and now there are a number of "Schnappchen PC" offers popping up in several supermarkets chains before Christmas every year. You pick up your fully-installed, ready-to-go PC right next to your milk, bread and toilet paper.

Although computer pros initially laughed at the thought of buying an ALDI PC, it turned out to be a pretty good offer. Thanks to huge numbers of absolutely identical PCs to be sold, the company preparing these boxes had time to slash prices and still do the configuration better than what you'd often get at the likes of Dell or your local selfmade-PC-shop.

The ALDI PC is targeted at home users and its first versions were quite well thought-out and sold like crazy. (See gun story, linked above.)

These days, customers aren't that mad about the ALDI PC anymore, it seems. The recent offerings were more and more prone to feature-overload. The current ALDI PC comes with everything and a kite: Next to the standard stuff it includes a universal card drive, a TV-in card, a remote control, wireless keyboard and mouse, wireless LAN and a DVD burner on top of the DVD read only drive...

But still, ALDI teared down the wall, put massive price pressure on everyone else and literally brought the multimedia PC to the masses with a PC that's actually really ok.

Yes, and one of the owners of that company and co-developer of that phone is Andy Mueller-Maguhn, speaker of the German chaos computer club (ccc) and until recent one of the elected ICANN directors.

There is some more info in German at heise

You build a simulation. Right now this is still in its infancy, and these systems obviously have to prove their worth by producing accurate results, but virtual organ simulation is where things are headed.

It's very likely we won't have the computing power available to simulate these accurately for another 20 years - but so far there doesn't seem to be anything that would prevent you from, in principle, modeling organs on a sub-cellular basis and obtaining a reasonable simulation of their macroscopic behaviour.

One idea is for the germans to hold 80% of AOL shares while 30% stay with Time Warner, a cooperation that would change the media-landscape.

I doubt that they really want to buy them. They even denied it @heise (german) but this is a usual procedure during a buyout/merger.

If they would buy AOL, the Germany State would own a part of AOL, which I think conflicts with American law (IANAL). T-Online is a subsidiary of German Telekom, which is owned by the the German State (more than 50%).

See here (in German).

According to Heise online this has already been denied by T-Online (sorry, German only).

Basically, what they are saying in that news article is that some spokesman from T-Online claims buying AOL would be "economical nonsense". But T-Online has about 4 billion Euro cash with which they'd like to buy some companies. And while T-Online is the biggest online provider of Europe it is largely unknown outside of Europe, thus buying AOL would make sense to some people because T-Online likes to expand and conquer markets outside of Europe.

According to Heise online this has already been denied by T-Online (sorry, German only).

Basically, what they are saying in that news article is that some spokesman from T-Online claims buying AOL would be "economical nonsense". But T-Online has about 4 billion Euro cash with which they'd like to buy some companies. And while T-Online is the biggest online provider of Europe it is largely unknown outside of Europe, thus buying AOL would make sense to some people because T-Online likes to expand and conquer markets outside of Europe.

"Itanium is a poor architecture. This isn't just my opinion, it's the opinion of the professor here at UT Austin working on the multi-core lightweight processor"

Your professor's opinion is... well... flawed.

Itanium is an excellent architecture. Its flaws come from politics:

An excellent architecture has no faults. Clearly, the Alpha architectuer would b considered The Excellent Architectuer(TM) as it out-performs the Itanium2! Go check the benchmarks for a 21264CB Alpha!

1: Itanium requires good compilers. For now, that means compilers from Intel. GCC will be fine for running Mozilla on an Itanium, but technical apps simply won't perform anywhere near the performance of the machine when compied with GCC.

It appears Itanium is in a chicken-before-the-egg issue: Hello Mr. Anderson, what good is a CPU's outstanding performance...when...there...exists...no...outstan ding...compiler? The Itanium arch has been available for 3 years and there has not yet been a Good Compiler(TM) for it. Here is Itanium2, an update of the Itanium architecture, and there is not Good Compiler(TM) in sight. I have more confidence in buying swampland and praying to God for a drought to dry it all up. Better yet, I hear there is some HOT land for sale in California that has potential; a smoking deal, just a few issues of supply and demand of fire-fighters just-in-case...

2: Intel wants to market Itanium as a server chip. That means that they are putting 3MB or 6MB on the high end Itaniums. Soon they will have a 9MB cache version. Lots of cache means lots of transistors means lots of heat.

There is no spoo^H^H^H^Hserver chip. Yesterday's dedicated servers are today's 1337 workstations.

3: Intel is not fabbing Itanium with a state of the art process. Intel leads the world in process technology, yet their Itanium is still on a 130nm process. Before Madison (about a year ago), it was on a 180nm process.

Yea, ok Mohammed...

Some misconceptions:

1: Itanium is "inefficent". This couldn't be further from the truth. At 1.5Ghz, it whoops *anything* else in SPECfp (by a margin of 1.5x or more) and matches the 3.2Ghz P4 or 2.2Ghz Opteron in SPECint.

Itanium2 is latest technology and has already been whooped by the Alpha CPU. Sure, it's arguabl on the Itanium2's actualy performance when the COMPILER can't put all that Performance on the pavement. From an architecture that didn't require a compiler written in the future to be taken forward in the past using a mod'd Delorian; AlphaLinux.org, providing a link to a Heis.de article with a benchmark between Itanium2 and Alpha. Itanium2 is inferior to 2-year-old Alpha technology, and so is PowerPC4.

2: Itanium is "slow". Wrong again, see above.

Somewhere in Jerusalem, a Yeti is jumping on his desk flinging his poop at Developers(TM) and shouting: "Compilers, compilers, compilers, compilers!"

3: Itanium doesn't scale. Wrong again. Itanium scales better than any other current architecture, getting nearly 100% of clock in both int and fp. Opteron gets around 99% int and 95% fp. Pentium 4 gets around 85% int and 80% fp. I don't have data for PPC970.

Shit! Flying Shit! In Air! "Compilers, compilers, compilers, compilers!"

4: Itanium is expensive. This is true, but it has to do with politics rather than architecture. Itanium uses *fewer* transistors and does *more* instructions per clock than a RISC architecture. Itanium takes much of the logic out of the CPU and puts it into the compiler (this is why you need good compilers). Itanium's architecture is called EPIC, or explicitly paralell instruction computing, because each instruction is "tagged" by the compiler to tell the CPU what instructions can and cannot be executed in paralell.

I hate to have fed this troll. I'm a dope ped

... but it certainly is ugly

As I see it, this is a free, virtual window into another city. Very nice for separated love couples in two different cities: "Let's meet at the cylinder" etc.. And funny for innocent passer-bys that can see wave and say "hi" to people from another city.

However, I think the most critical question is: will people be able to look into each other eyes like you would when you are looking trough a real-world window? Well the answer lies in the german article: "Im Inneren eines Zylinders sind sechs HDTV-Projektoren, 22 Mikrofone, 22 Lautsprecher und drei Kameras untergebracht" - "Inside the cylinder there are 6 hdtv projectors, 22 mics and 3 cameras". Only 3 cameras! How will it be possible for more than 3 people to look into their eyes then? Not at all, methinks...

I think not being able to look into each other's eyes through this virtual window will reduce the coolness factor of the cylinder to an overhyped TV/webcam combo...

Here's an (abbreviated) article (German!): http://www.heise.de/ct/03/22/146/

Also AAC > OGG.

Wrong.

(Link is to an english summary; original german article is here.

According to this Heise News article (in German), Microsoft will only issue security patches once a month from now on - excluding "Emergency Releases".

You're not thinking of the K6 are you? That was actually a very good processor, it was faster than the Pentium. Unfortunately though for AMD, intel adapted the PPro for consumer use and called it the Pentium II, and suddenly the K6 had to compete with that. Even so, the K6 still compared favourably on integer operations, eg K6-2 and III's @ 450MHz both beat the faster clocked Celeron 500MHz and the K6 isnt that far off the Pentium II at SPECint95.

The K6 did suck a bit at floating point though, especially compared to the PII and even the Pentium MMX. But otherwise, for general purpose work, it was a fine CPU, especially the rare K6-III with its on board L2 cache.

You're not thinking of the K6 are you? That was actually a very good processor, it was faster than the Pentium. Unfortunately though for AMD, intel adapted the PPro for consumer use and called it the Pentium II, and suddenly the K6 had to compete with that. Even so, the K6 still compared favourably on integer operations, eg K6-2 and III's @ 450MHz both beat the faster clocked Celeron 500MHz and the K6 isnt that far off the Pentium II at SPECint95.

The K6 did suck a bit at floating point though, especially compared to the PII and even the Pentium MMX. But otherwise, for general purpose work, it was a fine CPU, especially the rare K6-III with its on board L2 cache.

DeanSpace development comunity - Website : http://DeanSpace.org
Articles: http://drupal.org/node/view/2267
Wired News http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,59497,00 .html
Dan Gillmore http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/650 1101.htm
Reason Online http://www.reason.com/links/links081303.shtml
Hesie Online (german) http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/jk-26.08.03-00 1/

...another article at TP which fits as a follow-up. "The Virtual power station" (German only, Babelfish to the rescue) describes a possible solution. Since more and more power (at least in Europe) is planned to be coming from smaller plants (photovoltaic/wind energy etc.), there need to be more flexible methods of directing and diverting power, routing around failures and preventing overloads. Since the Great Vision is to connect any hoousehold appliance to the Internet, your fridge could, instead of automatically ordering food on-line, receive feedback about the state of the power network and more flexible rates per kWh -- and appliances could adjust their power consumption according to availability. All that is needed, according to that article: "intelligent, decentralized energy management."

• Welcome to Brainwashington D.C.
• Lenin lives
• The New Black Gold
• Skepticism about the Official Explanation of 9-11 Spreads

• Welcome to Brainwashington D.C.
• Lenin lives
• The New Black Gold
• Skepticism about the Official Explanation of 9-11 Spreads

• Welcome to Brainwashington D.C.
• Lenin lives
• The New Black Gold
• Skepticism about the Official Explanation of 9-11 Spreads

• Welcome to Brainwashington D.C.
• Lenin lives
• The New Black Gold
• Skepticism about the Official Explanation of 9-11 Spreads

The field of microprocessors has a similar controversy. Intel frequently portrays itself as the inventor of the microprocessor because, supposedly, Ted Hoff and Frederico Faggin invented it when they were Intel employees.

In 1978, the United States Patent Office (USPTO) granted Texas Instruments a patent for a version of a microprocessor developed by Gary Boone, an employee. He had filed the patent in 1971.

In 1990, the USPTO granted Gilbert Hyatt a patent on another version of a microprocessor; he had initially filed the patent in 1970. His work pre-dates the work by Hoff and Faggin.

In 1996, the USPTO rescinded the patent granted to Hyatt and designated Gary Boone as the official inventor of the microprocessor. In short, neither Hoff nor Faggin are the first inventors of the microprocessor, yet we in the Slashdot community have heaped undeserved praise on them.

For further information, please read "Micro, Micro: Who Made The Micro?", "1970s -- The Altair/Apple Era", and "Processor Talk".

... from the desk of the reporter

[... Arlene McCarthy] complains about the "huge amount of disinformation" in a statement to her British representative fellows. Her most suspicious sources for the misinformation seem to be open-source-driven groups and small and mid-sized companies, who temporarily closed down their web servers last week "due to software patents" and demonstrated against the directive in Brussels.

"This is a dishonest and destructive campaign designed to cause confusion about what the Parliament is trying to achieve", she outraged. The unexpected lobbyists and demonstrants would assail the representatives with factually incorrect claims and organized phone call campaigns in the representatives' offices. If they succeeded, this would "sound the death knell for our brightest and best European inventors, whilst the US and Japan will demand licence fees from European companies for the use of their patents." [...]
The strong opposition against software patents seems to be simply unforseen by the makers of the directive and therefore unplanned. [...]

[...] Demonstrations and fierce lobbying have led Arlene McCarthy, UK Labour MEP and the leader of the European Parliament's legal affairs committee, which is reporting to Parliament on the draft Directive, to state that she had never been treated so aggressively over her years as an MEP as she has in the preparation of this report. [...]

[... Arlene McCarthy] complains about the "huge amount of disinformation" in a statement to her British representative fellows. Her most suspicious sources for the misinformation seem to be open-source-driven groups and small and mid-sized companies, who temporarily closed down their web servers last week "due to software patents" and demonstrated against the directive in Brussels.

"This is a dishonest and destructive campaign designed to cause confusion about what the Parliament is trying to achieve", she outraged. The unexpected lobbyists and demonstrants would assail the representatives with factually incorrect claims and organized phone call campaigns in the representatives' offices. If they succeeded, this would "sound the death knell for our brightest and best European inventors, whilst the US and Japan will demand licence fees from European companies for the use of their patents." [...]
The strong opposition against software patents seems to be simply unforseen by the makers of the directive and therefore unplanned. [...]

[...] Demonstrations and fierce lobbying have led Arlene McCarthy, UK Labour MEP and the leader of the European Parliament's legal affairs committee, which is reporting to Parliament on the draft Directive, to state that she had never been treated so aggressively over her years as an MEP as she has in the preparation of this report. [...]

The story gives a completely wrong impression. Have a look at this story from the german magazine Heise (german, sorry) - the fact is, the majority voted for drastic changes of the directive and against the original draft - so actually this is very good for all of us opposing patentability of software.

Hey editors, please change the story so that not everybody claims we european get a US-like patent law system, this is (not yet) the case!

In an article from heise online (c't, ix etc.), they come to another conclusion. (several good, few bad amendments.) They also quote different people, who are pro or contra software patents, who all can live with this decision.
The link is here (german): heise article

/.hans

It is interesting how a headline can change things... German c't magazine - not suspicious of being pro-software patents - believes that the "good" (i.e. "anti-patent") amendments outweigh the "bad" ones. Their headline is something like "EU Parliament Stops Software Patents.

I would advise you not to get on to the rocket to mars yet, but wait for a thorough analysis of the laws actually passed.

Just my 0.02,

Alex

... Microsoft has recently added BMW boss Helmut Panke to its board of directors [1] - a move to get more insight into the German political system?

And a German Member of Parliament, Ekin Deligoz, recently said (on TV) that she thought it was frightening "if you think about how much money Microsoft invests into their parliament work". [2]

Both links in German language only, unfortunately:
[1] Heise
[2] 3sat

If you grok german, read the related item on heise news.