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What I want to know is: [...] What is the state of Linux use in Germany?

Germany is home to an awful lot of linux development. SuSE is from Germany, as an example. The government is also active, sponsoring the GnuPG pgp-like developement. Top government officials (like "secretary of state") opening the LinuxTag for 2 or 3 years in a row now.

There's a lot of debate currently on whether the Reichstag (the German parliament) should switch to linux. It's kinda funny, even people from the same party are disagreeing, one proclaiming the gospel of linux, the other (being half sponsored by Redmond) denouncing it as a threath to Germany's software industry as a whole :-)

The best tip is to look at heise. They also've got english news now. Look at what's going on there. That 'heise' publishes two of Europe's best-regarded computer magazines, one for home-use (c't), one for professional use (iX).

Microsoft Germany spokesman Boris Schneider-Johne has denied (apologies for the german link) to Heise that Microsoft is working on such a thing.

A am clueless why moderators keep spending points in this. but the facts:
-She (a "cow is a she?") posted as Anonymos Coward. So it was no karma whore. However it would have been better to mirror it and post a link.
-kernelTrap is /.'ed now(badly!)
-Why waste moderation points points on this? Moderate the trolls down. Moderate gems up, leave the rest, don't push an agenda.
-Read the article first before moderation,(if the moderator did this you would have found out is was /.'ed.)

Some interviews i filtered: (if i say post links i should support this)

1999 linux weekly
1999 from c't (german)
june 2000, linux journal
Nov 2000 linux.ei
and a /.
aug 99 /.

Notes
From: William Anderson
Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2002 17:35:00 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: Info file for fixes7

* Patches pppsetup CGI to further increase security of ppp secrets file

* Upgrades passwd file to shadow passwords

* This patch removes the capability to connect to the web admin interface
over the RED (external) interface by DNS name - you must use the IP
address instead, e.g. https://213.123.312.231:445/ instead of
https://mymachine.someisp.net:445/

After SmoothWall's rather insulting reply to the article in c't (essentially accusing the reporter of being an idiot), this is on the heise news page (heise is the publisher of c't):
Sicherheitsloch in SmoothWall (Update)(Security hole in Smoothwall)
I says that they have now found an actuall exploit for the security issues they had identified in the original article. Their advice is to close the browser after accessing smoothwall through the web interface (so I'm guessing a session id grabbing exploit of some kind).
They have sent this information to smoothwall, and smoothwall claims to have issued a patch already (that's not bad response time at least, I guess they take c't reporters more seriously now ;)

Windows 2000

BTW, the new "Prestonia" Xeons implement "Hyper-Threading" (a form of SMT), and report to have two logical processors.

BTW, the new "Prestonia" Xeons implement "Hyper-Threading" (a form of SMT), and report to have two logical processors.

And here is the article in English.

There is an interesting court case against BMG that is linked to the violations of the CD-DA standard all current cd copyproctions use. In germany it is a punishable act to use false or incomplete data to affect the result of data processing in a way that someone loses property. This offence is called "computer fraud" and is punishable with up to 5 years jail.
It is easy to see that these copyprotections use false data. They all contain the CD-DA logo but contain data that isn't valid in the current standard. That there is a lose of property is also easy to show. You could easily waste a cd-r ,disk space or your time while you try to make a legal copy as it is allowed by fair use rules. It doesn't matter how much money or property you lose.
Read all about it in a real nice article by telepolis. The article is in german, but google produces a readable version.

The company (or rather their lawyer Gravenreuth) send an "Abmahnung" against SuSE to not publish CDs with Krayon on it. SuSE didn't sign it (probably because the CDs didn't even contain Krayon), and then the company got an injunction against SuSE.

- Stephan.

Come tot think of it, how is it possible that Gravenreuth still lives: hitmen are not that expensive, even in Germany, and if enough computer dealers pooled their money...

Heise just reported that SuSE and Crayon now reached an agreement and settled the case, so SuSE may continue to sell their distro CDs.

Heise just reported that SuSE and Crayon now reached an agreement and settled the case, so SuSE may continue to sell their distro CDs.

Although the english pages don't carry that many news-items, you should definitely check it out. Heise is a great source for IT-related news.

Although the english pages don't carry that many news-items, you should definitely check it out. Heise is a great source for IT-related news.

Although the english pages don't carry that many news-items, you should definitely check it out. Heise is a great source for IT-related news.

The Heise Online article is available in english too: http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/data/ray-08 .01.02-003/

A bit tricky is: krayon is *not* included in SuSE 7.3 although in the KDE-startmenu there is an entry for krayon and that seems already enough for a preliminary injunction. Software-"Company" Crayon Vertrieb GmbH i.G. fears that their name might be confused with krayon and therefore sent FvG as their lawyer.

The heise.de article is also starting to think about consequences out of such cases regarding other Distribution-makers such as Debian. These might face a significant amount of work in the future to make sure none of the thousands of packets included might be consfused with some registered brand.

-al

Incidently, as the article says, Krayon is not even included in SuSE 7.3, apart from a KDE-Menu entry. Krayon is unmaintained upstream and so not longer part of Koffice.

The article finishes with the question whether Distributors will have to scan their packages for possible namespace clashes and in doing so, might abandon a loarge portion of free software that's not cleared.

In a land where you can get sued for using the colour Magenta anything can happen, I guess.

Michael

Incidently, as the article says, Krayon is not even included in SuSE 7.3, apart from a KDE-Menu entry. Krayon is unmaintained upstream and so not longer part of Koffice.

The article finishes with the question whether Distributors will have to scan their packages for possible namespace clashes and in doing so, might abandon a loarge portion of free software that's not cleared.

In a land where you can get sued for using the colour Magenta anything can happen, I guess.

Michael

Even funnier/sadder was the thing with Tricon. He represented a Dutch company named "Tricon Engineering BV" that held a trademark on the name "Tricon". And because "Triton" could be confused with Tricon, he got an injunction on people advertising computers and motherboards with an Intel chipset commonly known as "Triton". He even tried to get Microsoft in the sack, because Windows 95 flashed "Triton" on the screen when booting on a machine with said chipset. Heise article (in german), post from the freebsd-chat, and the Gravenreuth Abmahnungs FAQ (in German), Part 1 of 6.

If you use Intel's C compiler (esp. when using -ipo (inter procedural optimization)), you may want to check the results. It sometimes trades speed for correct results. See this article (in German).

I agree with you on your opionion that the euro coins and bills look nice, but I do not like the fact that there aren't any real builds/persons/whatever are on the bills. Why are there just drawings of imaginary buildings on the euro bills ? Shouldn't real bills have drawings of real things ?
The coins are really cool. There are different version of the coins, one version for every state that uses the euro.
BTW:heise.de has an interressting article a about faults that happend in ecommerce shops because of the change.(in german/ use the fish)

Well, when you "click to download" tou have 2 options: ie6 or ie5.5sp2. What did you expect?

Anyway, you have to know where it is (the patch/hotfix) as it's not yet listed under "windowsupdate".

I ran it and it looks to do the right thing - at least if you try with ct's "browser check" at http://www.heise.de/ct/browsercheck/readme.txt. The link actually feeds you with "hello.exe", beware.

From memory: it was a moderately fast PC base (not P4 or Gigahertz), with emphasis being put on good A/V components (surround sound, TV tuner, DVD drive, AV-capable and sizeable hard disk, remote control, ...) and proper software. All this was put into a case that looked almost, but not quite like a generic living room AV component until they put a layer of black paint on it. Oh, and to round it off, they inserted an 8" or so colour LCD into the front of the case.

Looked mighty good. I think the price tag for the fully-fledged model was around DM 5500, or USD 2600. This was for parts only; you still have to put it together yourself.

The only thing I am missing when people talk about this is an apartment- or house-area personal broadcasting system: putting all those nice channels coming in over satellite and cable TV, high-speed Internet and other communication links on a nice, uniform 802.11 (or so), and getting small, cheap "receivers" so I can listen to, e.g., cable radio in the bathroom without having to drag a wire in there.

From memory: it was a moderately fast PC base (not P4 or Gigahertz), with emphasis being put on good A/V components (surround sound, TV tuner, DVD drive, AV-capable and sizeable hard disk, remote control, ...) and proper software. All this was put into a case that looked almost, but not quite like a generic living room AV component until they put a layer of black paint on it. Oh, and to round it off, they inserted an 8" or so colour LCD into the front of the case.

Looked mighty good. I think the price tag for the fully-fledged model was around DM 5500, or USD 2600. This was for parts only; you still have to put it together yourself.

The only thing I am missing when people talk about this is an apartment- or house-area personal broadcasting system: putting all those nice channels coming in over satellite and cable TV, high-speed Internet and other communication links on a nice, uniform 802.11 (or so), and getting small, cheap "receivers" so I can listen to, e.g., cable radio in the bathroom without having to drag a wire in there.

european govs _talk_ about using linux - but they talk for a couple of years now.
The german "bundestag" diskusses about switching from NT to linux - but the same time windows-based e-gov solutions are presented.
( Windows 2000 for virtual city-halls (e))
Meanwhile MS announces to show theire sources to european govs (XP-source for gov of austria (e))....
i hope, linux will make it into our govs - but i do not really believe into it.

re china: they are not realy "anti-MS" anymore - their mayor ISPs switched to MS - most of them predicted to sitch to linux half a year ago ( breakthroug for MS in china (e))

sorry for all the links to german heise news - i read things like this on other (austrian/german) news-services, but heise has the better search-engine ;-)

european govs _talk_ about using linux - but they talk for a couple of years now.
The german "bundestag" diskusses about switching from NT to linux - but the same time windows-based e-gov solutions are presented.
( Windows 2000 for virtual city-halls (e))
Meanwhile MS announces to show theire sources to european govs (XP-source for gov of austria (e))....
i hope, linux will make it into our govs - but i do not really believe into it.

re china: they are not realy "anti-MS" anymore - their mayor ISPs switched to MS - most of them predicted to sitch to linux half a year ago ( breakthroug for MS in china (e))

sorry for all the links to german heise news - i read things like this on other (austrian/german) news-services, but heise has the better search-engine ;-)

european govs _talk_ about using linux - but they talk for a couple of years now.
The german "bundestag" diskusses about switching from NT to linux - but the same time windows-based e-gov solutions are presented.
( Windows 2000 for virtual city-halls (e))
Meanwhile MS announces to show theire sources to european govs (XP-source for gov of austria (e))....
i hope, linux will make it into our govs - but i do not really believe into it.

re china: they are not realy "anti-MS" anymore - their mayor ISPs switched to MS - most of them predicted to sitch to linux half a year ago ( breakthroug for MS in china (e))

sorry for all the links to german heise news - i read things like this on other (austrian/german) news-services, but heise has the better search-engine ;-)

It's not the first time. Last year irc.gmd.de of IRCNet passed away for the same reason along together with a fusion of the scientific instute who ran it. See also this bit about that topic. (sorry, german)

The local government is willing to take the necessary steps, no matter how stupid and counterproductive they may seem. Providers are forced to block sites

According to a heise article, 60% of German customers have access to alternative local loop providers. However, 98% are still served by GT.

Sadly, nothing much will change anytime soon. The government still holds a huge percentage of GT's stock. If their monopoly were broken, the stock would deflate like Enron's and that windfall of cash could not be spent on securing the next election by way of pork.

If you're in a german-speaking country you might want to fetch the most recent issue of c't. They got an article about Virus-Cleaning on NTFS-Platforms (from DOS and Win9x). Take a look at The download Links for the article. I don't think the article itself is available on the net. It's german but I'm sure even those of you, who don't speak this language will find a way through ("NTFS", "DOS" and "Download" are the same ;-)

You are right, this is less a problem of cloned DNA, but the way we currently can clone it. This is a link to an article in German about this very problem. It's about an article in the August issue of Science. There are several more articles on cloning on Telepolis, but all in German.

You will be still able to reach some of the online banking offers over a special gateway called "classic gate". So BTX is not dead yet, but it's dying slowly.

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/psz-24.11.01-0 00/

of course that is in german, so use this babelfish link

US Army wants allegedly no Windows XP

US armed forces are to have decided against the use of the new Microsoft operating system Windows XP. By its on-line registration the Redmonder software company would get too much information about the computers and software of the American Department of Defense into the hands. That again would be a violation of the government regulations to data security. The pentagon is to have cancelled therefore the purchase of PCS, on which Windows XP is installed. How it is called further, the Ministry of Defense wants also in the future to acquire no licenses for Windows XP.

All this maintains anyhow Charles R. Smith, Cyberwar Cyberwar-Kolumnist of the NewsMax appearing in the Web . He sees himself as one of the prominent American experts for Cyber technology and their meaning for the war, the terrorism, the data security and the daily life. Charles Smith says about itself, he has good contacts since the cold war to the US Army, which was he with " Games Programs " supplied. Today he is a president and CEO von Softwar, its own consulting firm, writes additionally for the " USAF information of throwing AR journal " and maintains as a journalist regular contacts to American secret service sets.

The press department of the American Department of Defense did not want to acknowledge Charles Smith in the fact that Windows XP was generally gebannt in the area of the US Army. Windows XP is new on the market. One must regard that only once. The pentagon became general on the fact however always notes that the software used there does not contain back doors, traps, viruses and Trojaner.

Manufacturer Microsoft does not take the security doubts of authorities and enterprises on the light shoulder. The software giant has therefore a " Corporate edition " of its new operating system in the delivery program, which does without the on-line registration

I find the $500 lawyers bill to be insane though - I mean, seriously, the guy was just trying to help, no?

According to the heise article (in Krautish, sorry), the $500 bill has been declared void by Infogrames. They still threaten with a $10,000 fine if he won't cease working on the translations and remove all the work done so far from the 'net.

seems to be that the game is not yet available in Germany and that the effort going on will cost Infogrames a lot of money (the heise article, which, btw, is here says so, too). Also there will be issues with support. And it is there intellectual property. So, by altering a closed source program without permission they stepped over some border line. Wouldn't it be prosecuted here in the US under DMCA?

- Just my 0000010 cents

First of all note that according to this article now the sites are blocked again. So it looks like that there seems to be a need for blocking nazi sites?

Did you ever stumble over such a site by accident? I'm online now for many many years, but even hitting some hard core porn sites by misleading search engines I never hit one of the Nazi sites because I was misled (and since I'm not interested in the rubbish they have there I never visited them on purpose). So if somebody want's to get that "illegal" material he's going for it on purpose and he will surely find another way to get it. So blocking nazi sites is a sort of ostrich policy, don't look at the real problem and pretend that the problem will go away by itself.

From my very own point of view Germany has to deal with the real problem and that is the answer to the question why people should want to access such site. Why are the new nazis attracting some people.

One thing can be that even 56 years after World War II Germany is not able to deal with that dark chapter in its history at school. I remember my own school lessons about history, we were forced to learn everything about Julius Caeser for example, but the whole period between 1900 and now was more or less done in 2 hours. Just like "that was bad" and stop. The kids just don't know what really happened in that time and since nobody is telling them the truth instead of "that's some sort of taboo" they might think that it wasn't that bad. I would really strongly recommend that every kid at school has to see a KZ memorial once in his school life. There are plenty of them existing in Germany and they really give you in impression how bad it was. I recently visited Dachau and I was really feeling sorry that I had to get adult and go there by myself instead of my school taking me there.

On the other hand Germany has to deal with 4 million unemployed people (total population 82 millions) so there is a great chance that you finish school and you get no job. Education at school is focussed on a program that creates workers in a minumim time and there is not much about social competence and human rights and so on. So you have frustrated people that get the message "no future" from the actual job market, they get little supply from the social system and they are poorly educated. Do you really think that those people can resist a "strong leader" that is promising them a sort of future and that is at least dealing with them?

I think that every society or every state can be seen like a sort of organism. At the moment the human organism is attacked by flu viruses and a healthy organism can stand that attack without medication. A weak organism needs medication to survive. And blocking out things instead of "healing" the system looks like a big dosis of medication to me.

Hehehe... it's back in effect now... see also here, hope the fish helps.

Hehehe... it's back in effect now... see also here, hope the fish helps.

If it's a .de domain, it could be somebody hijacked it from DeNIC. Article (in English for a change ;-). This just in: ISIS now does block again

If it's a .de domain, it could be somebody hijacked it from DeNIC. Article (in English for a change ;-). This just in: ISIS now does block again

The provider "ISIS" has enabled the block of this websites again !
heise.de(in german)

A member of their local goverment said that they support the racists with their unblocking of the webpages, because of that they are blocking the domains again. I think in a few days the block will be gone again, stupid. Can't they decide ?

According to http://www.heise.de/pda/newsticker/m22902.html the provider blocks again as told by the government.

It means "the technician tried to demonstrate that there is a simple technical solution to block web sites, which can be circumvented easily."

From what I understand the technician blocked the web sites on its own without consent by management. Another article states that several other german ISPs have also implemented blocks for web sites as requested by the local government.

Personally (being a german citizen) I perceive these actions as bad move towards censorship.

Results of Babelfish on the Heise article:

Isis takes blocking back from Internet pages

The Duesseldorfer Internet provider Isis took the blocking back of four on-line supplies again. " the barrier decreased/went back to the initiative of an individual technician. It corresponded not to the policy of the enterprise ", said Isis speaker Thomas Werz. It concerned itself thereby around four pages with right-wing extremists as well as force-wonderful-ends to contents from the USA, which were attainable for the Isis customers for Monday no longer.

The technician had wanted to demonstrate on own fist that a technical solution for the blocking from Internet pages was possible, in addition, easily to be gone around can, avowed Werz opposite heise on-line. This should not have occurred however in all public; Werz apologized in the name of the company at the customers. Isis aims at a political solution with the Duesseldorfer district government.

From Monday to today one had gone out in the enterprise erroneously with it, the technician in arrangement with the management concerned, stressed Werz. Accordingly a Isis spokeswoman had justified the side blocking yesterday in relation to the public.

During his public demonstration the technician had followed arbitrarily a request of the district government Duesseldorf. This had before reminded the ACCESS Provider as North-Rhine/Westphalian supervision of Internet to lock four pages from the USA. Approximately ten Provider reacted according to specification of the authority country-wide so far to it. The measures are strongly disputed in the Internet municipality. Thus the chaos computer club called the attempts of the district government to let Internet pages lock censorship in the Internet. "this is a crucial step into the false direction."

The district government Duesseldorf tries as country-wide Internet control instance for some time to let pages with illegal contents lock by the ACCESS Provider. On 13 November a hearing with 90 Internet Providern took place for this reason. At that time the providers referred particularly to technical problems, in order to lock pages from the foreign country. According to estimations of the Federal Criminal Investigation Office (BKA) approximately 90 per cent of the more than 1000 right-wing extremists German-language Internet supplies from the foreign country are fed into the network.

See to the topic also the contribution network barrier for Fritzchen stupid in Telepolis. (anw / c't)

Ah, good old machine translation. Yet, it's still Better than Nothing. "force-wonderful-ends" :)

This has already been reversed. See the newer article on heise