With the rebels now in charge of most parts of Libya, it won’t take long for France to sell its Rafale fighter jets to their buddies. In fact, it doesn’t come as a surprise that the rebels’ “government” has already promised the countries that helped them to power a lion’s share of the contracts. It’s only a matter of time.
Cablegate resumes
After the initial release of a couple of thousands of diplomatic cables from US embassies and the US Department of State by WikiLeaks, the stream of leaks suddenly ground to a halt. This was very disappointing to all of us interested in specific topics and regions.
Kunduz, one more time
The German Parliament Committee responsible for investigating the Kunduz incident (Kunduz Untersuchungsausschuß) has completed its deliberations, and was predictably divided along party lines as to whom was responsible and whom was to blame for this disaster.
Sarrazinism on the decline
A year ago, former central banker Thilo Sarrazin‘s social-darwinistic, xenophobic and racist theses have been all the rage in the German public sphere. This wave culminated in his party, the social democrats (SPD) trying to expel him… yet miserably failing to do so (sic!).
German Politics Update
During the last federal elections in Germany, the liberal democrats (FDP) reached 14.6%, and the Pirate Party made its debut with 2%.
A lot has changed in the mean time in the overall political climate, as the last regional elections in the federal state of Berlin show:
Revisiting old blog entries
It’s time to look at some old blog entries and post some follow-ups. Instead of updating each and every entry in-place, this article briefly summarizes what changed.
A Look Inside SunBlade 1500 and SunBlade 2500
What do you do when you have a SPARC-based project, and no easy access to a SPARC machine to develop and thoroughly test your programs? Your client may offer to set up a VPN to their servers, but this is only practical if you do user-space application development. If you’re writing system software, and they don’t have a spare development machine, you’re pretty much on your own, because all those servers in the data centers are production machines, right?
Another possible option is to buy (or rent?) a development server from Oracle (the new owner of Sun Microsystems) or Fujitsu. The big advantage is that you could use the newest SPARC T3, or the not-so-new but still great and open-sourced OpenSPARC T2. Sadly, even their cheapest servers‘ prices at currently $18,642 are way above what a single developer could afford on his or her own limited budget.
For small toy projects, emulators like QEMU for SPARC (e.g. qemu-system-sparc64) could be an alternative… but they’re far from mature and can’t replace real hardware at the moment. It’s a shame that we simply don’t have the equivalent of Bochs, VMWare, or VirtualBox for SPARC.
Fortunately, all I need is a SPARC V9 compliant system. It doesn’t have to belong to the sun4v architecture, so UltraSPARC III machines would do… if I could find some…
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Al Qaeda Beheaded, Hell Shaken by Terrorist Attack
Soon after US Navy Seals managed to kill Osama Bin Laden, a huge explosion destroyed much of Hell’s infrastructure. Hell had to close shop until further notice. According to sources, all poor damned souls had to be temporarily relocated to Purgatory. Hell workers have to rely on unemployment insurance. Repairs are underway.
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The Libya War, or How to Sell Rafale and Eurofighter Jets
What do you do with your overpriced, non-combat tested and extremely unpopular Rafale and Eurofighter jets that no country in their right mind is willing to buy? You demonstrate their capabilities in an especially tailored war for everyone to see! Right now, France, followed by the UK, Canada and Norway, have started test driving those machines in an ongoing air campaign against Libya’s Russian-type tanks, aging air defenses and rapidly decaying air force.
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Resisting Data Retention Laws
The old adage says that when America sneezes, Europe catches the cold. How true! In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, America went hysterical and overreacted by enacting the USA Patriot Act of 2001. Europe, always eager to emulate America’s silliest mistakes within a delay of a few years, adopted the European Data Retention Directive (2006/24/EC). Of course, this directive is currently being turned into national laws by barely resisting parliaments… and there is nothing we can do to stop this Orwellian madness, because even the staunchest champions of civil liberties, once in a position of power, are slowly caving in to the tremendous pro-surveillance pressure.
One tragic but perfect illustration of how Nineteeneightyfour is raising its ugly head even in the most adverse conditions, is the case of Germany’s current Federal Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger (FDP), a recognized and respected civil rights advocate, and definitely not a member of the Big Brother Brigade.