Blosxom plugin multcat released //at 19:58 //by abe

I like the idea of categorising blog posts and I like blosxom, but blosxom doesn’t allow you that one post belongs to several topics on different branches of the topic tree. And since there doesn’t seem to be a plugin providing such a feature — even not after looking through the blosxom plugin repository for the third time — I wrote it by my own…

So here is the blosxom plugin multcat, version 0.01. License is GPL v2 or higher.

multcat allows you to have postings in multiple categories by setting appropriate symbolic links without having them multiple times on the main page (or any category’s page which includes at least two categories, the posting appears in). It is designed to work together with categorytree, which still counts all occurrences of a posting.

CERT vs Cert //at 17:11 //by abe

When I read the headline of the Heise Security article “Bürger-CERT freigeschaltet”, I thought, this “Bürger-CERT” would be a certificate authority for end-users (Bürger = citizen) similar to CAcert. I wondered why the German government seems to see a need for such an institution.

Then I read the article itself. Well, the “CERT” in “Bürger-CERT” neither stands for “certificate” nor for “certification” but for “Computer Emergency Response Team”. I never noticed, that with “cert” we have yet another abbreviation having two different meanings in IT (with one being an acronym) although I already used it with both meanings. I just didn’t notice it.

Seems as if I really should visit Ireland once //at 15:44 //by abe

When I loaded Planet Debian today, the first story was «Pardon my French…ness?» by Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho. There seems to be a new meme going on, trying to find out «Who’s Your Inner European?» Antti-Juhani’s Inner European is French: «Smart and sophisticated. You have the best of everything - at least, *you* think so.» Well, since I’m quite francophile in many ways (cars, food, laissez-faire, etc.), I expected to get a similar result, but it was quite different:

Well, I like what I read or saw of the Irish countryside in books or on tv, but drinking? Alcohol? Sorry, that’s just plain wrong. Doesn’t choosing the cute classic Citroën (They wrote it without diaeresis! Philistines!) suffice?

Well, maybe I shouldn’t have chosen «Those damn British - they really get under your skin», but the newest idea of the British government to sponsor voyeurs with access to public surveillance cameras to enforce their Respect Action Plan (German written Telepolis article about — BTW: Has Telepolis no more english translations?) really really goes under my skin. (Although stories about implanted RFID chips even go deeper under my skin…) One annotator of the Symlink article (German, too) about that British government programme associated their ideas with the concept of the Blockwart (“block warden” or “wonk” in English according to the dict.leo.org forum, Wikipedia also mentions “block leader” and “block attendant”) during the Nazi régime in Germany: They were the lowest officials in the NSDAP and the local contact persons to SS and Gestapo. I wouldn’t wonder if the British government gets a Big Brother Award for giving this “respect” to privacy and human rights.

But back to the quiz: Well, let’s see with which of the questions I wasn’t sure what to answer. If I change Tiramisu (yeah, I know, that there is alcohol in it, and I only like it with nearly no alcohol in) to Apple pie, nothing changed. Same after switching Pasta to Seafood and vegetables. Hmmm, well let’s try one of the obvious but not really wrong answers: Mousse au chocolat instead of Tiramisu. Et voilá! La France! :-)

Oh, and yes, the ideas of the French government to make open source software, the web and other cultural achievements illegal aren’t my French favourites either…

Update, 21:03: Christian Perrier suggested that the quiz could also be used to find out, which Inner European you’re definitely not. Well, somehow I hoped, it would tell me, I’m not German (I also marked Mercedes in that round ;-), but it told me, I’m not Russian, which is also fine since the quiz seems to focus the prejudices about Russians on alcohol consumption.

Now playing: Europe — The Final Countdown

Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar — das gilt auch für die CDU //at 15:44 //by abe

Ja, ich empfinde tiefe Genugtuung über das Urteil des Bundesverfassungsgerichts zum Luftsicherheitsgesetz: Auch bei akuter Terrorgefahr darf die Bundeswehr kein Passagierflugzeug abschießen. Die Bundeswehr darf eigentlich überhaupt nichts und niemand im Inland abschießen, selbst wenn die CDU das will. Auch das haben die Richter nochmals betont und das Luftsicherheitsgesetz für verfassungswidrig und damit nichtig erklärt.

Und ich stimme Bettina Gaus vollkommen zu, daß die CDU ihr wahres Gesicht zeigt, nachdem sie das Urteil aus Karlsruhe anscheinend als Aufforderung zur Grundgesetzänderung versteht: Daß sie nicht die Gefahrenabwehr sondern lediglich ein politisches Ziel im Sinn hat: den Einsatz der Bundeswehr im Innern. (Und IMHO auch die Herabsetzung der Menschenwürde auf ein Niveau deutlich unter dem einer angeblichen, aber nicht garantierbaren Staatssicherheit.) Und alles nur wegen dieser doofen und vollkommen unnötigen Fußball-WM. Für was alles die Leute heutzutage ihre wichtigsten Werte aufgeben… *kopfschüttel*

Da fragt man sich doch, woher das “sozial” im Namen des Koalitionspartners kommt. Aber der sitzt bei diesem Thema anscheinend nur als Stimmvieh rum wie zu Kohls Zeiten die FDP. Trotzdem scheint die SPD Telepolis zufolge im Nachhinein (das Gesetz trat im Januar in Kraft) genug Mumm zu haben, um das Thema zum Koalitionsstreit auszuweiten. Na, hoffen wir mal, daß das ein Grund sein könnte, die Koalition zerbrechen zu lassen und die SPD wieder zurück auf den richtigen Pfad™ zu führen.

Passend dazu übrigens auch die heutige Karikatur in der taz.