Monthly Archives: July 2008

Observation by State

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I am living in Austria and currently there is a discussion about how to observe the internet-traffic. This is more interesting for Germans and Austrians, because we all know the problem of a “Bundes-Trojaner”.

Several engineers from different Austrian companys and the interior ministry are discussing about technical solutions for observing internet traffic. Last year they discussed a so called “Bundes-Trojaner”. This is a virus written for observing criminal citizens. They want them, because they think they aren’t able to observe Skype (For sure, could be tricky, but nothing is impossible).

Main argument was, the new security dangers force us to do something against it. This means, translated for the stupid ones.

“Osama is using VOIP for command new attacks”.

What an absolut dumb argument. I could not even say how angry i am, when i hear something like this from responsible politicans. Let’s have a look at our security issues.

There is a bit of a mixed culture in the bigger citys, but not as heavy as f.e. in Berlin, Germany. This fact bring us some conflicts from time to time, but there are no “real” or big problems. So, Austria is also a very small country, there is no strategic interest (except finanical) on us. We are in the middle of a bunch of states, called the European Union. We have neighboures with big armed forces, but they are friends, not enemys. So, why we should observe everyone’s web-traffic.

WHY?

Maybe someone think, i am a potential terrorist, that will bomb the Houses of Parliament next year, so they should observe how i prepare for this. For sure, they should also observe my web-traffic. I will use my standard-net-connection at home for getting some information on how to build a bomb.

First step is to use Google-Earth to find out how i could enter the building. Then i am going to hack the computers of the energy-companies for shut down the electricity (Maybe they have an open web-service-API for this, so i do not need to hack it.)

Oh, sorry.. forgotten somethinkg.

I will use YouTube to generate a video-stream for the observation cameras, so the watchman, watching them, does not recognize me.

Then, i will search on FlickR for getting some plans of the building, to know where is the best place for placing the bomb.

Finally, i will write a new SSL-based protocol, encrypt it with an own-styled method and tell my complices when we will start and how we do it.

So, Mr. home secretary and friends, you will never know more, than i let you know, but i am not a criminal, so maybe the “real” criminals have better ideas, than i have.

Ask yourself: Why, to reduce the freedom of Miilions, for hoping that you are able to prevent crime that will never happen?

Ps.: If you, what i think, want to know  who is downloading illegal MP3′s, movies and other so called “copyright” content from P2P-networks, than you should better have a look at the consequences than the money from your lobbyist.

Never mind what others says, copying a MP3 is still the same than crossing the street if lights are red. It could hurt, but it shouldn’t at 99%.

h.

Posted in General

Dreamweaver CS4 Beta: "It's time for teamwork baby"

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We are using Dreamweaver in different versions at our company and sometimes for us, Dreamweaver is more or less the best choice. But we are always missing some workflow-features. We have tried to implement an Eclipse-based solution (PDT, WDT, Subclipse, etc.) into our daily workflow, but this was no real alternative.

Next step was to put all of our code into a repository. But if you have to do quick changes(and this happens very often) and login with Remote-Desktop on the Production-Environment, you always will break the repository, because lack of time and the next day someone has to “Clean-Up” the mess. So we are falling back to the Check-In, Check-Out method, availabe in Dreamweaver since i know it (MX or so). But in comparison to an SVN-solution this is not very satisfying.

Next big issue we have is using CSS-based layouts and “Includes” in DW. It seems that till version CS3, DW is pratically only useable with static pages (except you use tables for some parts of the page, but i do not like this idea very much). For cases, where a CMS is not a solution, Dreamweaver is our best friend and so we have to do a lot of debugging with FF and Firebug, or IE and Developer Toolbar.

BUT

Dreamweaver CS4 will have some features that are targeting this 2 major problems we have. SVN integration into DW. Works great for me, but check your SVN-version, DW will not work with the current release of SVN(I hope a more  SVN client into DW will be replaced for the final release).

And, the new Live-View is wonderful. F.e. if you have a calendar-widget which is included like this


include("calendar.php");

you will never get the page correctly rendered. But if you have access to a testserver(Configured within Site-Manager), than you can use Live-View. Therefore Dreamweaver loads the site from the testserver and link the code from you to this live-perspective. So, you can jump between Code and Design perspective and edit your code.

We also like, that related documents are opened in “subtabs” and you can instantly work on these. We have discovered some bugs in Live-Mode and there are some feature requests we have.

  • If you have Java-Script activated and you click on Design-View, you could never go back to any line in Code-View, because of a “marker” or so, DW is tries to jump all the time.
  • If i edit a file in Live-View, the Webkit-rendered-presentation never get updated.

I have to restart DW after writing some messy HTML-code, because the Webkit-DW-Combo could not handle this. I have to do further testing to find out under which conditions this things are going to happen.

Finally, DW CS4 will be one of the most important releases in 10-years of development.

Posted in General Development, Webby Web