Uwe Hermann | A slightly paranoid Debian developer

Voilà! In                                                       view, a humble
 vaudevillian                                                  veteran, cast 
  vicariously as both                                         victim and
   villain by the                                            vicissitudes of Fate. This 
    visage, no mere                                         veneer of
     vanity, is a                                          vestige of the
      vox populi, now                                     vacant,
       vanished, as the once                             vital
        voice of the                                    verisimilitude now
         venerates what they once                      vilified. However, this 
          valorous                                    visitation of a bygone
           vexation stands                           vivified, and has
            vowed to                                vanquish these 
             venal and                             virulent                   Remember, remember the 5th of November
              vermin                              vanguarding
               vice and                          vouchsafing the
                violently                       vicious and
                 voracious                     violation of
                  volition. The only          verdict is 
                   vengeance; a              vendetta held as a 
                    votive, not in          vain, for the
                     value and             veracity of such shall one day
                      vindicate the       vigilant and the
                       virtuous.         Verily, this 
                        vichyssoise of  verbiage 
                         veers most    verbose
                          vis-à-vis an introduction,
                           and so it is my
                            very good honor
                             to meet you
                              and you may
                               call me
                                  V.

Yes, I've seen V for Vendetta today. Very impressing movie, highly recommended! Makes you start to think...

What kind of sick joke is this? The German government seems to want to sell the personal information of 80 million German citizens to interested companies.

They wanted to introduce a new digital identity card with biometric data and possibly also an RFID chip on it for quite a while now (you know, all those evil terrorists out there, blah blah blah). And now they dream about selling the data records stored on that card for 40-50 cents per record to interested companies? WTF?

I don't think I have to elaborate on the abuse-potential this can have, and on what this means for the privacy of all 80 million citizens affected...

The above article and also another article are a bit fuzzy on the exact details so we'll have to wait until more info is published/leaked, but this is definately an alarming trend/discussion...

(via Anarchaia, Fefe, netzpolitik.org)

Oops. Engadget reports that Play-Doh fingers can fool 90% of all fingerprint scanners. This is nothing really new. The remarkable thing is that more and more companies and government organizations rely on such biometric authentication. Now, they all have been told about the problems, but nobody seems to want to listen...

(via Techdirt)

From FSF France:

Friday November 18th, 2005, French Department of Culture. SNEP and SCPP have told Free Software authors: "You will be required to change your licenses." SACEM add: "You shall stop publishing free software," and warn they are ready "to sue free software authors who will keep on publishing source code" should the "VU/SACEM/BSA/FA Contents Department"[1] bill proposal pass in the Parliament.

WTF? This has got to be a joke... Please tell me this is a sick joke.

(via MJ Ray)