Do you like free software?

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.

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+

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!

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.

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/

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.

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.

Lawrence D. Thomas has been appointed manager of NASA’s Constellation Program, which manages the effort to take humans beyond low-Earth orbit and develop the next generation launch vehicle and spacecraft.

Watch the emphasis (mine). We wanted to go to the Moon, Mars and also get back. Orion? Merely an escape-vehicle for the ISS, if at all. Ares? Canceled. Altair? Who knows.

Anyway: Congratulations to Lawrence Thomas!

It’s called the Arizona Financial Text system, or AZFinText, and it works by ingesting large quantities of financial news stories (in initial tests, from Yahoo Finance) along with minute-by-minute stock price data, and then using the former to figure out how to predict the latter. Then it buys, or shorts, every stock it believes will move more than 1% of its current price in the next 20 minutes – and it never holds a stock for longer.

TR points out, that analyses similar to the described algorithm exists since the 90ies. However, the new systems doesn’t actually parse all the data, but concentrates on some keywords which seem to be of relevance.

I see two very odd flaws there.

1. A good AI predicting the stock-market based on human-written text – which could be technically used by *anyone* who could afford it – would lead to a situation where stocks keep heating up. Speculation will grow rapidly and positive feedback loops will possibly run into an overdrive situation. I wouldn’t opt in for a ban on such a software but on full disclosure if this software was used on a certain bid. This could help in debugging situations and to give legislators something to think off when the shit already hit the fan.
2. If the algorithm actually concentrates on keywords in context rather than in the whole analysis of the text, I bet a fiver that it wouldn’t even take a few weeks until some clever consulting company analyzed the algorithm and makes up a process how to tweak your fiscal reports so that AZFinText favours this text. Think of the stock-market equivalent of a Google bomb.

Nobody in Technology Review’s forum seems to be worried about the real-life implications… I think I’m just pointing out the obvious and that the stock-market professionals already made up their own ideas.

We arrived at the registration desk at 13:20 sharp – Tutorial would start at 13:30. Registration was smooth. Give yer name and company, grab badge, WiFi-details, a map how to get from the CCH to the University and a schedule for all the tutorials.

First thing we didn’t like: The schedule was divided in tracks – there was a CUDA-track, an Infiniband-track, and so on. A lot of lectures in every individual track, but no timeline, when the individual talks should start! It was hard to decide what to do first.

We grabbed our stuff and had a really short walk of probably 5 minutes to the venue. The building was a typical: A huge 1900′s building, huge, massive, a lot of stairs – but eventually we got into the lecture room B, where we wanted to hear the CUDA tutorial.

Unfortunately, the CUDA talk wasn’t anything new. I really think that the slides of this tutorial were actually used in a NVIDIA webinar about CUDA I attended last year! It was a real Deja Vu, and I think they just changed the date on that slides. Gernot Ziegler started up with the tutorial – I thought this would be “big time”, cause we’d get the opportunity to hear someone who’s really into CUDA – he’s with NVIDIA after all. Anyway, he passed over the tutorial to John Stratton, who did quite a decent job, but he was pretty unlucky for he had to reiterate that presentation I already enjoyed last year in the webinar.

Ah, what a wasted opportunity. See, I’d expect more from the ISC when it comes to CUDA than reciting what was told earlier on less specific channels!

My colleague and me stuck to the talk until the long break – some cool things were said about how to abuse the texture-buffer in a clever way to to really local multidimensional computations, but unfortunately it wasn’t elaborated enough. For my taste.

After the long break we decided to hit the Infiniband-talk. Since we deploy large installations we thought that this gives us some insight about how to deploy Infiniband and how to make up migration-concepts of how to get from Ethernet to Infiniband. Sadly, the talk was just a roundup of the available vendors, their products and performance comparison. That’s not really what we expected, we could’ve just looked that data up elsewhere. While the talk was still going on (I think we were on slide 78 of 145) I decided to check the proceedings and see what this talk would be offering in the next hours. Unfortunately it was about to continue like that.
That was the time when we left the hall and went for the “Hybrid MPI & OpenMP Parallel Programming” lecture.

And wow, that was awesome. We got there pretty late, it must’ve been 16:30, but we were basically stunned by the ideas. Basically MPI and OpenMP both have their advantages and flaws. I certainly thought about combining both technologies, but never did for lazy personal reasons. And then those guys just did it: Awesome. In general, if we got out cluster of SMP-systems with multiple sockets and multiple cores we should be running MPI on the outer computing domain, and OpenMPI on socket- or core-layer. This ain’t not new, but they gave me some insight about why you should do it and what pitfalls my arise.

In the end, I thought I should have sticked to the last tutorial in the first place. Coming back to my first complaint, there wasn’t a real schedule, which is sad. We couldn’t decide to go to which tutorial first since we had no idea when all those lectures were taking place. If the ISC continues to give those tutorials, they should improve their schedule.

Then again, since my collegue and me were both attending the CUDA-talk, we already elaborated on the spot how we could use CUDA in our usecases. We just got rough ideas, but sitting together, listening to that talk wasn’t just a waste of time.
It brought us together.

Now I’m back at home and don’t feel too bad about the ISC lectures – Now I feel sad that I’m not able to attend the rest of the ISC. But I got to work on Monday. Which is in… omg, in about 8 hours.

Good night! I’ll be putting links to this posting tomorrow evening.