In the Netherlands we have a law since 1993 called "Wet Computercriminaliteit" (WCC1) that should handle all aspects of misuse of computer and network technology. Unfortunately it was not complete, so in 1999 an update proposal called "Wet Computercriminaliteit II" (WCC2) was sent to parliament. It took until 2005, almost six years later, for our parliament to actually start work on it and the minister of Justice probably wants it to become an actual law this year (read: As Soon As Possible).

Laws are written by lawmakers. Most of the time these people are not the most technically savvy people. So what will be the result? Most likely another law that will try to fix as many holes as possible, without thinking too much about the actual and technical consequences.

Even in the previous century, back in 1999, several people and organisations that know about IT and legislation have already published articles that clearly stated that there were severe problems with this new proposal. Violations of privacy and statements that would make it extremely difficult for system and network administrators to do their normal day-to-day job without breaking this law. Last week I heard a rumour that would make this law even more draconian.

While in the current law (WCC1) computer trespassing ("computer huisvredebreuk") is defined in such a way that the cracker would actually have to break through some kind of security, this would no longer be the case with the new law (WCC2). This would, for example, ultimately result in a violation when you open your laptop and it connects to an unprotected WLAN before you can connect to your own WPA protected network. Think about that! You, who has always said: "They can have every piece of information from me because I have nothing to hide.". Perhaps now, you will have something to hide in the near future.

This will, hopefully, not be the last article that will be written on this subject. Not much has been done to stop this proposal from becoming a law in the last couple of years, but perhaps it is not too late. If you do not do anything to change this proposal for something better it will become The Law. Another law that will be enforced! Even if it will violate your right to privacy.

Making waves. With that statement I finished my last blog entry. Today I wonder why there has been so little reaction to the fact that our democracy has been mutilated ever since the USA (Bush and his comrades) declared their war on terrorism, and nowadays even break their own constitution and spy on their own people. Everything because they are "in a state of war" so this mutilation is justified (in their eyes - not in mine)!

Why must we give up our right on privacy? What positive effects will that have on the hunt for these criminals who want to destroy our way of life? None whatshowever! As a matter of fact these terrorists succeed in changing our democracy into a dictatorship without too much effort.

Just using the old proverb "Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt" by our government is enough for many people to give up their basic right on privacy, all because as they say: "They have nothing to hide". But what use is it to have a government watching over every single step you take? Why should these people have access to every aspect of your complete personal life? They will not catch more criminals wasting their time on monitoring your movements, because you are no criminal. And what will the criminals do? Guess what -- they will try to hide from these new rules and regulations, and will probably succeed in it some of the time. Just as they did before.

So what is the result? More control on your personal life to the government that is frightening you day in day out. Less freedom to you, the peaceloving citizen. Have you ever read "1984" or "Animal Farm"? Have you ever watched "Brazil"? Did you like that future? If you did not care, just go to sleep and do not worry. Big Brother is watching (over) you...

If not, let's hope it is still not too late and react to all these new rules and regulations that will destroy your freedom...

Not much actually. Lots of traffic jams on the Dutch roads due to some rain. The Dutch Railroad (NS) is waiting for new trains so they can actually use the HSL (High Speed Railroad). Working in the IT field means you have to keep learning and improving the quality of your work continuously. XS4ALL's email handling was tested together with all other major ISP's and the results show it to be the most reliable.

I guess most things actually stay allmost the same... It is time to stir things up and make some waves...

Geocaching has now really hit rock bottom. Talpa, a "new" television station here in The Netherlands that is infamous because of its programming for the masses (as in "how low can you go"), featured an item on Geocaching in one of its shows. Now this game will most likely become really well known. Let us just hope that all these newbies follow at least some of the rules. You may want to read some more about this on one of the following websites geocaching.nu (Dutch site on Geocaching), geocacher.nl (People who are actually playing this game; some of them even for a very long time -- also in Dutch) or geocaching.com (The official (semi-)commercial American Geocaching site -- in English).

Oh! And one other thing. Please do not try to go hunting for a geocache with only a PDA with GPS capabilities. Really! Although some people actually only use this kind of equipment and have excellent results, it is not really suitable for this game. If you really like to play, invest in a good GPS unit from Garmin (or if you want to throw your money away Magellan :-). It will really be worthwhile...

I started this blog post 3-4 times in a row (I actually lost count) and every time I typed the first four letters ("Anot") as the title, using my default browser Safari (2.0.2), it crashed. Not only did it crash on my workstation (mac mini) but it also crashed Safari on my PowerBook G4 laptop when I tried it on that machine. Apple now has another couple of bug reports to read through. Using Camino (1.0b2) I could finally write this entry...

Another thing I needed to do today was an upgrade of some Apple software. So I started with my notebook (hopefully Quicktime will still work afterwards -- I have read some "nice" horrorstories about it). The workstation will have to wait for a couple of hours until some file transfers have completed.

Some other rumor about Apple that I have read a couple of days ago is, that during the MacWorld presentation another major cool device (laptop, notepad, ipod...) could not be launched. This aparently had quite an impact on the performance of Steve Jobs. I wonder what we will see in april when this highly inovative company will celebrate its 30th birthday. In the mean time I wonder why the new "MacBook Pro" does not contain a dual layer SuperDrive, since the "older" PowerPC versions do include it. Then again I do like these new machines, and it will be hard to wait for their arrival.

When I was writing this blog entry, a couple of downloaded .wmv files could not be played. Using Quicktime they would not play and the following error message was shown: "QuickTime cannot open the file: "Movie.wmv" the application attempted to use an unsupported feature (-2053)". Windows Media Player (which will most likely disapear in the future, due to the fact that Microsoft will no longer develop it for OSX) kept nagging me with: "Cannot open the file. Verify that the path and filename are correct and try again.". Something sure smells funny, but Friday the 13th was yesterday... So where does this jinx come from?

Today I started once more with this thing called blogging. Just to find out how long I would actually be able to write some stuff. I also (re)started in English because it is a language I do not use often enough in day-to-day business anymore. This was once very different. In a former life I used English on a daily basis and hardly spoke any Dutch (native tongue) at all.

As you have guessed by now there is not much news today, just recovering from a flu (not bird related) but still coughing - guess that is what friday the 13th will do to you if you do not watch out. Lots of idea's right now but not enough energy to start them. This will have to change!

Starting today with this entry...