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Saturday July 1, 2006

Raiders of the Lost Arch

Software

Good news: I have finally committed the already supplied monopd DOS patch to my Arch archives which I have restored on my private network and will see if there's a way to make it public again. There may be hope for me and this project (along with Atlantik) yet.

The modern Fruit Republic

European Union

Forget about banana republics in Africa, instable governments exist far closer to home. Just consider the orange constitutional monarchy show-casing three failed parliaments in a row, this time over the Verdonk-Ayaan debate. It took them a while, but D66 apparently concluded that they in the end didn't like Verdonk's circus. Verdonk refused to step down, and Lousewies van der Laan blew up our government (politicians 3 - Hofstadgroep 0).

Back to the election booth during fall, then.

MySpace retention requirements

Anglosphere

Congress may be working to extend the record retention requirements to include social networking sites such as . And all that just when my users page starts to look so much like a social network.

Data retention legislation could follow one of two approaches, and it's not entirely clear which one U.S. politicians will choose.

One form could require Internet providers and social-networking sites to record for a fixed time, perhaps one or two years, which IP address is assigned to which user. The other would be far broader, requiring companies to record data such as the identities of e-mail correspondents, logs of who sent and received instant messages (but not the content of those communications), and the addresses of Web pages visited.

I suspect almost any web site with forum, comment or chat functionalities can be seen as a social network, so it is very well possible even a site like mine could somehow fall under this law (it is actually hosted in the US).

That said, the first option would be easy to comply with. I already store web server logs with IP addresses and rarily ever clean up and I know this is true for most people who maintain a web server

As for the second option, providing all pages accessed is also feasible: that's exactly what the logs show. Instant message transactions would however not be as easy to provide, even without data. I would either have to ensure most of the site's forms use GET instead of POST requests to get them into standard logs, or log all transactions manually.

Although both options are feasible, neither would be the most exciting use of resources, so I'm glad I'm not a company.

Bye England

Sports

I ignored my vows and am watching World Cup again. And what do I see during England-Portugal? The ref sending off Rooney without any good reason. All I hear about this World Cup is how Germany has changed so much, but to be honest all I see is a bunch of totalitarian refs and their personal fetishes. In fact I'd like to state that this World Cup is in fact the worst thing to come out me Germany since the Nazis.

Update: I have withdrawn my criticism of the red card. I do maintain however that the qualify of referees at this World Cup has been disgraceful.

Bye England for real now

Sports

Portugal beat England after a penalty shootout, but not until after the ref denied England a penalty and then let them retake an already converted penalty during the shootout. Well done FIFA. You've ruined football once and for ever.

Next day: Monday July 3, 2006 Previous day: Thursday June 29, 2006

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