Aspera Ad Astra Reborn - Personal stuff

Busy... busy... busy

nospam@example.com (Tom Geiger) — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 21:13:28 +0200

So much to do, so little time.

I'm slowly getting back on track, I'm currently cleaning up my Mailbox(es) and trying to answer all the mails I got... after that there'll be a lot of cleanup to do, and after that I'll post a lot of stuff on this blog... including quite a load of pictures.

So: Stay tuned!

Living room upgrades...

nospam@example.com (Tom Geiger) — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 17:22:05 +0200

Spent the day upgrading my living room wall.

About 1/4 done:

(Better picture once everything is done!)

4 days in Andalusia

nospam@example.com (Tom Geiger) — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 17:26:25 +0200

I spent 4 days in Andalusia last week. I picked up a few pictures and posted them below.

Continue reading "4 days in Andalusia"

Flashmob: Reading the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany. [Update]

nospam@example.com (Tom Geiger) — Sat, 23 May 2009 19:30:35 +0200

Today is the 60th. birthday of the "Deutsches Grundgesetz", which could be translated as "Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany", which is a document similar to the constitution.

To protest against growing police state laws, censorship and all the other things that have been happening lately, a flashmob gathered at 14:00 at the "Botanischer Garten" in Karlsruhe to read out loud parts of the Grundgesetz.. Similar events happened at the same time all over Germany.

In Karlsruhe, I counted roundabout 50 people participating.

I didn't take any pictures of the police that were observing the event. (I counted 5 officers that stood off side, watching).
The entire event was entirely peaceful and very inspiring.

Here are some links to other pages about the topic, as well as a few pictures I took (I'll add a few more later):

Blog of MOGIS, initiators of the flashmob
zserv.net about Hamburg
Wiki entry about the different events
windfluechter.net about the event in Rostock
Pictures from Berlin
Heise article about the events

Update:
ka-news.de article about Karlsruher event

Continue reading "Flashmob: Reading the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany. [Update]"

Don't trust a survey that...

nospam@example.com (Tom Geiger) — Sat, 23 May 2009 18:25:56 +0200

...you didn't tamper with yourself. In the ongoing debate about censorship of child pornography in Germany something interesting happened:

At first, >90% of the Germans thought that blocking child pornography was a good idea... a week later about 90% were against this. Why? Because both surveys used leading questions... (Numbers are according to those two surveys conducted by the same institute.)

A good explanation.

And it continues...

nospam@example.com (Tom Geiger) — Sat, 23 May 2009 18:06:35 +0200

According to this article (German), a satirical website criticising the German government was taken off-line by the BMI (German Ministry of Internal Affairs) and BVA (German Office of Administration). This was done due to the usage of "Hoheitszeichen" (national insignia) and because of the similarity to the original website.

This shows us a point or two:

- The BMI and BVA are actively trying to censor critics. (Using the "Hoheitszeichen" may be used in different locations by different people without problems).

- It is easy to block and remove websites from the Internet (In this case by simply asking!). So a logical conclusion would be that this would work even better for criminal and illegal websites.

- The BMI and BVA did in no way try to reason with the publisher of the page but instead simply asked the domain hoster to shut down the domain. I find this questionable, since the website itself is not illegal except for using potentially copyrighted material, so there is probably no legal basis for the shut-down, but instead the BMI/BVA may have abused their power as a government institution to achieve this.

The website is back up with some changes and can now be seen here.

Also, this website is supposedly facing legal action from a company that created the original "Du bist Deutschland!" campaign. Source: Here at netzpolitik.org. In my opinion, yet another attempt to cripple free speech.

Censorship in Germany... even stronger laws demanded

nospam@example.com (Tom Geiger) — Tue, 19 May 2009 17:30:52 +0200

A couple of groups have demanded that the planned censorship laws should be made even stronger:

German article at netzpolitik.org.

One of these groups is the "Interessenverband des Video- und Medienfachhandels in Deutschland e.V. (IVD)" roughly translated to
"Interest group of Video and Media marketing in Germany". The others are mostly child care groups, many of them closely related
in some way to the politicians that brought this law onto the table in the first place.

The PDF published requests that (among others):

- The law should not directly state the technical nature of the blocking mechanisms. (So it can be adapted to future technologies?!).
- A more powerful blocking mechanism than pure DNS- Blocking should be used. (Hey, how about just shutting down the servers, that's pretty good, and we wouldn't need a new law to do it?).
- Laws should be changed to state that everyone below 18 is considered a "child". (In Germany, this currently is at 14, where the age between 14, 16 and 18 is handled differently).
- The list of blocked sites remains to be secret. (If the content could simply be deleted or completely blocked, there would be no reason to keep this list secret, aside from hindering people to find out that also non- illegal sites are put on the list).

Especially having a group in there that is definitely interested in abusing this list to fight copyright issues shows that this blocking law will be used for other sites than it was intended for!

Du bist Deutschland. Du bist Terrorist.

nospam@example.com (Tom Geiger) — Tue, 19 May 2009 13:12:06 +0200

http://www.dubistterrorist.de

Grossartig.

Respect!

nospam@example.com (Tom Geiger) — Sat, 16 May 2009 20:34:14 +0200

Wolfram Alpha:
Knows the answer

But also knows this:
My try

It has happened before. And it will happen again.

nospam@example.com (Tom Geiger) — Fri, 15 May 2009 18:50:50 +0200

The German government and the allied forces spied on the German citizens on a massive scale from 1949 to 1968. During that time, over 40 million mail packages or letters where opened and censored. The German "Post" supported this, and over 90.000 phone calls where spied upon per month by 8000 employees in 15 locations.

Spiegel Article (German)

And that is what we are heading for *again*!

Think about it. Vote against something like this!

Weblog...

nospam@example.com (Tom Geiger) — Fri, 15 May 2009 17:33:44 +0200

Via kante: Weblog

Guilty as charged!

Switching Mailclients

nospam@example.com (Tom Geiger) — Thu, 14 May 2009 15:30:53 +0200

Time to switch from Evolution on to something else.

I'm using multiple Mail- Accounts with multiple GPG- Keys... and Evolution just doesn't cut it Usability- wise.

Any comments on what to use?

Something along the lines of CrossPoint perhaps?

Censorship in Germany

nospam@example.com (Tom Geiger) — Thu, 14 May 2009 00:00:16 +0200

I spent quite a while pondering about what to write about the current situation in Germany...

Of all I could have thought of... this is far better:

D-USA Link

I fully agree on this.

Changes in privacy

nospam@example.com (Tom Geiger) — Wed, 13 May 2009 14:02:39 +0200

Hi,

some people asked what the last couple of "German only" posts were about, and I finally found time to wrap things up:

A lot of politicians are currently on their way in Germany create laws to build a Censorship- Infrastructure and are trying to spy on their citizens.
Privacy rights are undermined or simply ignored.

Because of this I've switched a lot of my communication to crypted channels. I will not reply to Instant Messanging that is not encrypted with OTR encryption, and Emails that are not encrypted with my GPG- Key will not be answered anymore.

GPG- Key can be found here:
gpg-key.asc

I'll post a more detailed article about what is happening these days.

Satirische Sperrseite vom Netz genommen [German only]

nospam@example.com (Tom Geiger) — Wed, 13 May 2009 13:47:04 +0200

Zitat:

"Der Grund? Das Innenministerium. Schäubles Jungs haben beim Hoster des Gag-Initiators vorgesprochen und dem Unternehmen nahegelegt, die betreffende Domain dem Kunden unverzüglich “freiwillig” zu kündigen."

Quelle: Link zur Story

Geht wählen, so darf es nicht weitergehen!