lix blog

I recently tested some of the new “features” that the lately released “iLife ’09” software of Apple is offering to their users. The new iPhoto ’09 for example offers Geo-tagging of your images, so that one can see when and where photos have been taken. This further leads to the assumption, that some tracker could abuse this data. If it’s Google or any other “big brother” who is watching you, we have to admit, that we’re living in the age of George Orwells “1984″.

Kind of funny was though messing around with the “face recognition” feature. I assorted some of my images in iPhoto and tagged the recognized faces with names, when suddenly iPhoto offered me the following proposal: (see picture).

The picture shows Mark Shuttleworth (Ubuntu) and Georg Greve
(FSF Europe) at the Linux Tag in Wiesbaden 2006. iLife ’09 suggests to tag the detected face of Georg Greve as “Richard Stallman”, which is kind of funny.

I think personally think, that a machine, based on a binary structure, will never achieve the possibility of suggesting truly diversified ambiguities because it only may answer “yes” or “no” such as “1″ and “0″. We’ll have to wait for Quantum-electronics that such things may happen…

(read more on “informative binarity and lifeworld-philosophical androgyny“)

[update: there is a youtube clip that shows the iPhoto feature.]

“The Washington Post” and “der Standard” have reported today, that chinese hackers have tried to break into tibetan activist organisations networks and computers to steal encryption keys. Encryption keys are used to sign and encrypt electronic messages like E-Mails. China operates the world’s largest and most restrictive “Firewall” to censor internet communication and obscure information. Further it is known that in China a certain hacker group called “Titan Rain”, that is most probably financed and supported by the chinese government has been attacking the Pentagon and the german “chancelor house. Many tibetan organisations and activists notice a higher amount on suspect trojans and viruses. But thanks to the operation of Free Software such as the GNU/Linux operation system and Free Sowftware applications, such as GnuPG for encryption and the Tor Project for anonymous internet, the damage has been kept low.

I urge tibetan activists, journalists and news reporters to use encryption technology to secure and assure internet communication. To bypass the chinese firewall (e.g. to access the internet from Lhasa) it is most advisable to use Tor or similar anonymiser software. (see my blog post from the 18th of march 2008).