The download day for the world record attempt in the number of downloads by the Firefox community seems to be(come) a flop. It’s now 45min after the whole thing started and apparently the servers can’t handle the number of requests.
Or is something going on in parallel? Such as a DDoS of their webservers?
Update: Their site is back, although slow.
Update #2: So they’re prepared? Fun fact, I get offered the version 2 in the language which is set as primary in my primary browser (which isn’t Firefox). Wondering whether the world record attempt will even be valid in such a case …
Update #3: Okay, screw their world-record attempt. I have some sympathies for them, although it is not my favorite browser, but it’s simply getting ridiculous. I am getting offered version 2 as version 3 (screenshot below) and their download page for other languages and operating systems lists only version 2.0.0.14 (other screenshot) for any language. It’s definitely the worst-prepared world-record attempt. Maybe it will make it into the Guiness Book after all, although under a different category than anticipated?!
If you’re juggling files beyond the desktop and still use Windows Explorer, check out SpeedCommander. The new version has gotten even better and unlike another popular “commander-like” file manager it has full Unicode support and even has a native x64 version.
Today two more polar bears were sighted in the North of Iceland. Let’s hope this time there is a veterinarian with tranquilizers, not like last time. My father told me even the German yellow press reported about the polar bear being shot recently.
BTW: No polar bears have been sighted here on Iceland in years before this summer. So it’s a somewhat similar situation as in Bavaria, where a bear was shot after visiting briefly. He was the first in more than 150 years.
// Oliver
A clip about the killing of the first polar bear. The subtitles are not an exact translation of the parts spoken in Icelandic, in case someone wonders.
Following a court ruling, the EFF and several news sources world-wide have reported about the practice to search through the data on electronic devices at the US border. Bruce Schneier has picked up the topic in his latest cryptogram (a newletter). So far everyone seems to have ignored or neglected another possibility: targeted spyware.
In fact I am not just talking about the usual spyware, but software that was written with the sole purpose of going undetected as long as possible and possibly being able to transmit as much data as possible. Spyware in a literal sense. Continue reading ‘Searching electronic devices at the border’
Now that the Irish have rejected the Treaty of Lisbon in a plebiscite, European politicians suggest to leave the Irish behind and ratify the treaty regardless with only the consenting member states. This is a notable development because it shows all too well how the European Union (EU) works. The parliament as the body that represents the people has been overruled more than once by other non-representative bodies of the EU … and alone the fact that only around 4.2 million people out of more than 420 million are allowed to decide about their fate shows how “democratic” the EU and the states of which it is comprised really are.
Hier mal ein Experiment in dem die Bedingungen im Lager in Guantanamo nachgebildet werden. Wohlgemerkt, die brutalsten der von der US-Regierung erlaubten Methoden wurden hier nicht benutzt, da sie als zu gefährlich angesehen werden.
Laut einer ARD-Umfrage sind 52% der Deutschen nicht mehr mit ihrer “demokratischen” Gesellschaft zufrieden. Rein rechnerisch kann man es nicht mehr allein den Ostdeutschen zuschieben, wie es noch vor einigen Monaten möglich war, als bereits eine Mehrheit der Ostdeutschen sich ein anderes Gesellschaftssystem als unsere “repräsentative Demokratie” wünschte. Zu dumm.
Aber vielleicht hat der Rest ja inzwischen begriffen, daß Demokratie etwas anderes ist. Bei den alten Griechen gab es zwar Sklaven und die hatten natürlich nix zu sagen - genau wie Frauen - aber da Sklaverei heutzutage abgeschafft und Frauenwahlrecht (etc.) eingeführt sind, lohnt sich der Vergleich durchaus. Auch die Zahl von Bürgern ist kein Argument, da zumindest inzwischen technisch eine weit repräsentativere Demokratie möglich wäre. Aber unsere Volksparteien haben ja sogar ein Problem damit Volksabstimmungen auf Bundesebene einzuführen …
The European Commission issued an EU-wide radiation alert late on Wednesday after Slovenia began shutting down a nuclear power plant following a problem with the cooling system. (Source: interactive investor, deutsche Leser gehen hierher)
Don’t panic just yet. The amount of information is scarce and from the first comments it sounds like it’s all under control.
Update: BBC also reports now. So there it looks more like it’s a preliminary warning that something worse might follow.
Update #2: It seems everything is under control and it was just to warn in the case something happens. But an EU-wide alert is obviously unusual, given how big the EU is and that “only” cooling water was supposed to have leaked. More info (deutsch).
The patches pertaining to the Debian key rollover are only available in the security repository. I just found out the hard way, that one of my machines denied access to another one, although I had “freshly generated” private keys. Ooops … until I figured that the repository for security fixes should have been in there. Now it is and the keys have been replaced.
Checked the logs and no one got in. Luckily this server is still in the preparational stage and I am always stopping sshd when disconnecting … that should be a pretty high hurdle for any attackers
As I am currently setting up a new server, I thought it would be a good idea to keep most of the configuration files (e.g. /etc) under version control. RCS comes in handy to achieve just that, but laziness requires some kind of script to make its use convenient
So I sat down and wrote this little Bash script for my Debian system (Ubuntu and Knoppix should work as well then). Please note that you may have to change the shebang line, you also may have to adjust the command to call the file editor. I am using the nice “alternatives”-mechanism of Debian by calling editor instead of any specific editor. For example I’ve found myself disliking vi, while others swear an oath that vi is the best editor around. In any case, this problem should not exist if you have set your favorite editor.
If you have no clue what I am talking about, use:
man update-alternatives
Alright, now that you have set your favorite editor for sure, go and make sure to install the rcs and diff packages by issuing (as super-user):
apt-get update && apt-get install rcs diff
… either you’ll have it installed or you will install them with these commands. There shouldn’t be any unsatisfied dependencies on any “normal” system apart from those packages themselves (and even diff would be on most systems already). Continue reading ‘Version-controlled edit via Bash script (Debian)’
