Show your support for free software!

Do you like free software? If yes, I’d like to ask you to show your support – anonymously – on the website of the Free Software Foundation Europe: http://fsfe.org/support/?yalla

What is this request about? The FSFE likes to know how many people care about free software and the issues we’re having. Also, we want to show off how many people are caring about free software issues, so that we can raise awareness in the public and in politics.

A lot of people – like you – care about free software – if it’s Linux, OpenOffice, GIMP or just Mozilla Firefox – without speaking up. This survey won’t disclose your identity to the public, but only to the FSFE. It would be really really cool if you could sign up as a supporter.

Here is the explanation. As some of you know, I’m a Fellow of the Free Software Foundation Europe (“FSFE”). As a fellow, I take care of all aspects about free software. I’d be happy to let you know, in case you didn’t know yet, that I will answer you any question about free software if you have any.

So, if you’re interested, sign up! And drop me a line or start a discussion below in this posting, if you have questions, remarks or suggestions.

Still alive, projects

If you wondered where I’ve been the last year, I’ve been on Google+ and somehow didn’t feel like posting anything useful in the last couple of months.

However, I’ve got quite a few cool projects running:

1. Got me a pair of Infiniband Adapters. Plan: Brew up a software which will receive data via IP on multiple IB-nodes and write the data to distributed shared memory via RDMA/IB. Then let one or more IB-nodes read from that (ring)-buffer and aggregate data so that it can be shoved into an RDBMS.
2. Brew up an AWS image for easy BOINC-crunching while preserving the workunits on a headnode. Why? Because images on the AWS spot-market are cheap. But spot-machine do not retain any data. So I might be putting it into S3 along with some headnode directing which machine (machines id keeps changing!) can work on which workunits.
3. Become more confident in the language Erlang. Got quite a few projects which could benefit from easy protocol prototyping with ASN.1 in Erlang. Stay tuned.
4. Got me a Spartan-3E FPGA board. Not sure what to do with it, but it’s awesome :)
5. Was playing around with GNU Radio and my RTL DVB-receiver recently.
6. Doing some serious Openstreetmap work recently.
7. Mrs. Janssen and be got fond of geocaching. Lot’s of outdoor stuff. Sweet!
8. Been to this year’s Linuxbierwanderung. Was awesome!

I ain’t dead yet.

A proposal to Google how to improve privacy in Google+

This is a verbatim copy of one of my postings at Google+.

A proposal to Google how to improve privacy in Google+

Hi there Google! It’s very nice how one can restrict postings to a certain audience.
But what would also be very nice is when you could restrict other people from seeing to what audience you posted something.

For example:
Alice posts something to her circle “Friends”. She’s got 34 people in this circle.
Bob, being a member of her circle “Friends”, has 14 friends in common in all his circles.
However, Bob also sees Charly, who’s only a friend of Alice, but not of Bob.

So:
I propose that Google adds a feature that Bob will only see the 14 friends he has in common with Alice, and a note “and 20 other people”. But Bob should never see the identitiy of those other people, means, he’d never see Charly.

Also, I’d like to see a feature saying “Prohibit this posting from being shared”. Sure, it won’t prevent people from sharing it by other means, let’s say copy&paste the text or downloading the pictures and resharing. But just the notice “This post was originally shared with a limited audience” doesn’t prevent anyone from unintended consequences.

Edit: While we’re at it, it’d be really neat if you could change the intended receiving circles afterwards.

Thanks!

P.S.: I’d like to see those features optional, but enabled by default, until the user decides to change it. Kthxbai!

 

Piss Hero

2005… Harmonix releases the first version of Guitar Hero…
2007… Activision publishes the most popular version ever since, Guitar Hero III…
2009… Activision presents DJ Hero…
2011… Activision announces the Hero product line to be dead.

Now SEGA took the lead, continuing the tradition of music games with special controllers.

Live, from Digital Signage Show, we present you:

Piss Hero!

Only this time, the controller is your wiener.

And the v6 keeps on rolling!

Yesterday was World IPv6 Day. From the German perspective, there was a huge spike in traffic-increase on that day. Not so much as one might have expected, but still a significant increase:

IPv6 Traffic at the German Internet Exchange

Interestingly, although IPv6 day is over, the traffic didn’t decrease. For the fun, I checked with youtube.com – and it’s still serving traffic in IPv6!

Now compare to the the montly stats:

DE-CIX monthly IPv6 traffic

Nethertheless, IPv6 traffic is still very little compared to regular IPv4 traffic:

IPv4 Traffic at DE-CIX

So while IPv6 peaked with 1.8 Gbit/s, IPv4 at DE-CIX is still a 3.2 TBit/s. Which is about 2000 times more traffic.

But what does that tell us?

Thinking of the IPv6 traffic stats I derive the following things. First, I assume that IPv6 day didn’t make user migrate to IPv6. I think – although I can’t prove it – that existing IPv6 users kept using the Internet like they used to.

But the statistics tells us one thing: That a lot of people were prepared and ready – the early adopters. Since youtube.com is still online with v6 – and the traffic didn’t change to much – I think that either youtube.com made up most of the v6 traffic, or, that most of the websites are still live with v6.

Whoever you are, running IPv6 since yesterday: Keep going! And let’s hope those traffic stats keep increasing over time.

If you’re interested in IPv6, and didn’t bother to try it, go and get yerself some v6 at the following spots:

• GOGO6 - http://gogonet.gogo6.com/page/freenet6-services
• Sixxs.net - http://www.sixxs.net/
• Hurricane Electric - http://tunnelbroker.net/

Fly safe!

UPDATE: Sony TV calls home, tells your MAC-address

Just because I can and I was curious, I sniffed on my Sony TV set’s traffic:

GET /WsIndexes/AZ1_EU.xml HTTP/1.1
Host: applicast.ga.sony.net
Accept: */*
X-WS-MODEL-NAME: KDL-46EX705
X-WS-CLIENT-ID: 54:42:49:B5:E1:28
X-WS-COUNTRY-CODE: DEU
X-WS-LANGUAGE-CODE: ger
User-Agent: WidgetSystem/2.0


HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: Apache
ETag: "dd74d85181fb035ebc97fe67fc242681:1303966227"
Last-Modified: Thu, 28 Apr 2011 04:50:27 GMT
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 3107
Content-Type: application/xml
Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 14:50:46 GMT
Connection: keep-alive

Why does my TV send it’s MAC-address to Sony?

Next on: Will try to change the X-WS-CLIENT-ID to some arbitrary value and see what happens.

Because I can. For science.

UPDATE: I just wrote Sony Europe a letter with a request for comment. Text (in German) below:

Bei einem Sicherheitsaudit meines Netzwerkes ist mir aufgefallen,
dass mein Fernseher jedes Mal beim Einschalten bestimmte Server von
Sony im Internet kontaktiert, um die Liste verfügbarer Widgets
herunter zu laden.

Das ist auch soweit OK.

Aber warum schickt mein Fernseher seine MAC-Adresse mit - das Merkmal,
was meinen bestimmten Fernseher identifiziert, obwohl ich in diesem Fall
noch keinen Kaufvorgang eingeleitet habe?
Das Deutsche Datenschutzgesetz sagt eindeutig, dass Daten nur dann
erhoben werden dürfen, wenn diese für einen Geschäftsvorgang unbedingt
nötig sind. Beim Einschalten meines Fernsehgerätes habe ich aber noch
nicht die Intention, mit Ihnen ein neues Geschäft zu tätigen.

Bitte teilen Sie mir bis zu Montag, dem 13. Juni, folgende
Informationen mit:

* Warum Sie das tun
* In welcher Form sie die MAC-Adresse in Kombination mit meiner
IP-Adresse speichern
* Wem Sie diese Daten weitergeben
* Was sie mit diesen Daten tun
* Wie lange sie diese Daten speichern

Ich bedanke mich recht herzlich im Voraus!

Alexander Janßen.

UPDATE: A few weeks later, no response from Sony. I wrote them another message over their webinterface.

Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,

ich habe Ihnen am 30. Mai die Frage gestellt, warum mein Fernseher -
ein KDL-46EX705 - seine Ethernet MAC-Adresse zu ihnen mitschickt, wenn
er sich seine Diensteliste bei Ihnen abholt.

Leider haben Sie mir weder eine Antwort noch eine Bearbeitungsnummer
bisher zukommen lassen.
Um mein Anliegen noch einmal zu verdeutlichen, füge ich meine Nachricht
an Sie noch einmal unten an.
Bitte geben Sie mir bis nächste Woche Montag, den 27. Juni 2011
Bescheid, unter welcher Bearbeitungsnummer SIe mein Anliegen bearbeiten
und wen ich in Ihrem Unternehmen dazu telefonisch befragen kann - und
das bitte nicht unter einer kostenpflichtigen Nummer. Wir hatten schon
Kontakt miteinander und ich sehe nicht ein, mit meinem Lieferanten
gegen Geld bei einer Reklamation zu sprechen - einer Reklamation, die
auch noch meine Privatsphäre betrifft.

Meine alte Nachricht an Sie.
--- schnipp ---

Bei einem Sicherheitsaudit meines Netzwerkes ist mir aufgefallen,
dass mein Fernseher jedes Mal beim Einschalten bestimmte Server von
Sony im Internet kontaktiert, um die Liste verfügbarer Widgets
herunter zu laden.
Das ist auch soweit OK.
Aber warum schickt mein Fernseher seine MAC-Adresse mit - das Merkmal,
was meinen bestimmten Fernseher identifiziert, obwohl ich in diesem Fall
noch keinen Kaufvorgang eingeleitet habe?
Das Deutsche Datenschutzgesetz sagt eindeutig, dass Daten nur dann
erhoben werden dürfen, wenn diese für einen Geschäftsvorgang unbedingt
nötig sind. Beim Einschalten meines Fernsehgerätes habe ich aber noch
nicht die Intention, mit Ihnen ein neues Geschäft zu tätigen.

Bitte teilen Sie mir bis zu Montag, dem 13. Juni, folgende
Informationen mit:

* Warum Sie das tun
* In welcher Form sie die MAC-Adresse in Kombination mit meiner
IP-Adresse speichern
* Wem Sie diese Daten weitergeben
* Was sie mit diesen Daten tun
* Wie lange sie diese Daten speichern

Ich bedanke mich recht herzlich im Voraus!

Alexander Janßen.
--- schnapp ---

Ich hoffe, bis nächste Woche Montag von Ihnen zu hören -
Alexander Janßen.

Maximum insanity – scientists charged for not predicting earthquake

To blame or not to blame, that is the question. Politics and science sometimes just don’t mix, and now we have another example right out of the real life. You think politicians are sane or educated enough to cope with science? You think they actually understand what science is about? You better think twice. This is insane:

News out of Italy suggests that seven researchers who did not predict the L’Aquila earthquake in April 2009 are under formal investigation and may be charged with gross negligent manslaughter.

I wonder if they will charge Berlusconi for aiding and abetting because he cut funds for basic research.

Next on: Politicians sueing meterologists for Kathrina. Politicians sueing vulcanologists for Mt. St. Helens. Politicians sueing petrologists for the BP oil spill. Errrr… Right.

Film at 10.