Because they are running Siemens base stations and for that Harald started OpenBSC. Both projects are under GPL and are in close contact as far as I know.

Harald had a talk at 25C3 about their project, and were running a small setup there in the basement. AFAIK, because all frequencies are sold in Germany - there should be at least one for independent testing, but they sold all to the telcos - maybe that's why they are running the larger test in the Netherlands now.

Hey, relax! The twitter hype will pass and people will see it as what it is. It's like the 90s .com-hype - a lot of bullshit is thrown around, but it will pass, some things will stay, because they solve problems or enhance something, most will pass.

For myself, I can't see what is it about Twitter, doesn't do anything with me, maybe I'm to old or to whatever. Nearly none of my friends really uses it. But then, for a lot of people it seems to be the current thing, so what.

You and me, we poor souls are still clinging to /. - after all the years and all the bullshit here, that's pretty pathetic, too. (BTW I'm not as new as my number suggests.)

But on Biblical scale a few hundred years is quite along time. You know, it's not that Earth is older than 6000 years or so. - But then, what would Xenu do?

Yep, me too. So long, and thanks for all the fish ...

http://xkcd.com/221/

Probably obvious to everyone - just to make sure Mr. Munroe gets the credits he deserves.

Yes I think this is important, the law mimics laws in Scandinavia or Australia. Technically, it will be a blacklist for IP-addresses somehow connected with child pornography. I think it is a good sign for Germany that the debate is lively and the resistance rather fierce.

The German speaking Internet is all at rage:

There are songs on youtube, comedians are taking rhather hard on the minister, protest is organized on the net and in Berlin in September

The law is badly made, probably highly ineffective (just take a DNS-server outside of Germany, use Tor, whatever) and may have far reaching consequences. The resistance against it, however, is well organized and and I am rather optimistic that might have some effect, at least in the long run.

Yeah, they were the worst that ever happened to (obligate) anaerobe organisms and their rise was probably one of the major disasters in earth history, as far as I understand it (IANB), hitting hard on a up to then succesfull survival strategy. Turned out quite well for us, though.

This, however, emphasizes the problem of valuing survival, over human-like intelligence, as an indication for intelligence - it's more or less chance. In a highly interconnected, changing system survival depends on situational (chaotic?) factors. That is all fine, but how this is connected to any sensible meaning of "intelligence" is not clear to me. Survival indicates solely that: being good in surviving. This results in a reliable chain of transmission, but this is not intelligence.

If Mr. Barbalet thinks A.I. is about reliability of transmission or survival that is fine with me, but then please call it not "intelligence", but "(artifical) system stability" or "(artificial) transmission reliability".

p.s. to GP they can be quite harmful to animals (including humans).

They also missed to mention the full unicode support, which is quite nice.

Anyway they could have linked to NEWS.23.1, which has a concise list of new feature.

It's incredible how far off a thread can get over a few posts, I started out by defending what you call traditional genetic engineering as a technology. (The poster I responded to seemed to suggest that it's not.) - For me both technologies can produce benefits.

I only wanted to argued against the benefits brought by the big agribusiness. That is all. I have no problems with genetic engineering (breeding or controlled modification). There are dangers there, as with more or less every technology, and it's not rational to deny that - but the technologies are fascinating.

Genetically modified food brought a bunch of nasty side effects, like DRM-like crops, biopiracy and other problems associated with patents on beings. I think this are serious issues, but this are not problems of the technology, but with our usage of it.

Thanks for making me clarify my position, I got derailed, during the argument. No thanks for calling me stupid.

Ok, I'll bite.

Well considering they were the first to genetically modify plants, you can stop wondering.

This is incorrect, first you are talking about commercial uses, and not genetically modification in general. Second, Calgene were the first to commercially produce genetically modified food (Flavr Savr). Later they were bought by Monsanto, which is not that a big contribution by Monsanto.

However, even if that particular company had never done a single beneficial thing for anyone, your argument is fallacious.

Not much of a argument you bring here. I accept that one could argue that some genetically modified plants have some benefits overall, but I personally have a hard time to see them, after removing the whole PR-bullshit that surrounds them. I think there are good arguments that they are in the end mostly only beneficial to the companies that sell them. This is however open for discussion.

But organic food processing is a technology and not always and necessarily an old one.

There is an attitude among many people that if it is distributed, divers, and non-destructive it's not technology and if it involves large companies, big industries and has fatal side effects it's technology. I think that this attitude is utterly wrong.

In the end technology just means instruments and procedure that assist you getting things done, and their instrumental character defines a good technology, not whether or not a consortium can make big bucks with it.

I have a hard time seeing what improvement Monsanto (for example) brought to anyone than themselves, I'm not sure organic agriculture technology does badly in comparison with the "agribusiness" technology, at all.

Yes, yes, yes! The CEE 7/7 (Schuko) is still my favourite, Europlugs (CEE 7/16) are ok, but CEE 7/7 is rock solid, plug, socket and they coonect rock solid.- and save. For me, CEE 7/7 and if it has to be small CEE 7/16 is good.

I actually avoid Google search. Don't get me wrong, it is still the best and not always and not easy to avoid, but I love GMail and I really don't like all my searches and emails in hand of a single company.

My search engine of choice is ixquick. It has a very good privacy policy, e.g. you can use https and it's not storing IP addresses - I'm looking at you Google Inc. - that makes it the first place for me to go. Ixquick uses - among other engines - Bing , but I couldn't care less.

Most people here at slashdot are not MS-phobic, but hell, there are good reasons to distrust MSFT. This however is true for any company, so I for my part maintain a relaxed, unagitated distrust against every company (or governmental agency) and try not to depend on any single company too much.

For me, the "apology" doesn't sound heartfelt at all. It is easily written, doesn't cost much and makes good PR. It may be a smart and cheap move for the CEO, but it doesn't impress me. However, using the word solution - even in quotation marks - is impudent. One could call it "intrusion" or "encroachment" - maybe - but dispossessing people of something they paid for, because you made a mistake is not even near something you could call a "solution".

I know why I never wanted this DRM-ridden Kindle, now even more than before, but if something like this would happen to me I would be really really pissed.

When will they ever learn that DRM just means defective by design?