Archive for November, 2008

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VMware Workstation linux kernel upgrade

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18. November 2008 / in Technology / by

After test driving the latest version of VMware Workstation: 6.5.0.  I must say that they fixed most of the small things that made it a pain in the … hard to work with or better described apt for more advanced users.  You get a straight forward RPM installation and everything just works!, you don’t have to patch it anymore.

I did just find a small problem after installing the latest Fedora 9 kernel upgrade to 2.6.27.x, as usual it didn’t start because the new kernel modules have to be built.  The GUI detected the problem, and tried to do it itself but I couldn’t find the reason why so I found two ways to make it work:

  • Reinstall the rpm
  • Use the following oneline:

TERM=dumb /usr/bin/vmware-modconfig –console –install-all

/etc/init.d/vmware restart

The old vmware-config.pl is gone or maybe just masked but it works as it should.

Changes to the data collection law in Germany

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10. November 2008 / in Legal, Privacy / by

I’ve been living in Germany for a little more than a year now, and since then lots of things have really impressed me in the way privacy, digital rights, data collection, infomation security are managed in politics.

There have been some major attempts to create a state of surveillance protect the people and the institutions from hackers, terrorists in exchange for freedom and civil liberties.  Let’s take for example the Skype Trojan they intented to create and use out in the wild without warrants, the prohibition of “hacker tools” or the data collection law.

After giving a big fight, last week the court in Karlsruhe ruled that:

Data can only be collected when the stability or security of Germany or another country need to be defended and “life, limb, and freedom of German citizens” need to be protected (The Register)

I think this is a mayor advance, and I really hope this will be followed by action in the other controversial laws.

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