lix blog

After the excitement about the new GNU/Linux Sailfish OS phone Jolla and having tinkered around for a couple of days I come to the, – unfortunate, – conclusion, that the phone is not end-user ready (yet).

Although the OS offers an intuitive, fast and clever handling of the functions, many core functions are yet missing.

• No CalDAV/CardDAV syncronisation for Calendar & Addressbook
• No Task manager
• No GnuPG native e-mail program
• Buggy browser
• No OTR support for XMPP/Jabber
• Poor battery life
• No VPN client

Watching the community reports and how desperate many are looking for a well working, nicely developed and secure smartphone, I hope that the Jolla team will come up with an update of the missing features soon.

“Hello World!“

While Apple Computers decided to violate users rights once more, ceasing the capability to synchronise PIM (personal information management) data locally with OS X Mavericks 10.9 (argueing they should store their data in their iCloud. – Bwahahahaha!1!!) there are too many PIM solutions for GNU/Linux users, whereas none of them are really feasible for users who want to switch to Free Software.

While many complain that there are too few GNU/Linux Desktop users and Linus Torvalds claims this to be his “personal failure” the GNU/Linux community fails to offer a seamless integration of GUI (graphical user interface) PIM into their OS. (Which is really sad, as fiddling around with SoGo-connector, lightning etc. does not offer a sustainable solution…)

So here is my solution:
Get DAViCal, install it on your server and get mutt, pycarddav and khal for your desktop(s), get a Jolla and you will have a beautiful and seamless PIM solution using the “good olde command line”.

7. – 9. March 2014 eth-0
17. – 21. March 2014 Troopers
18. – 21. April 2014 Easterhegg
29. – 30 May 2014 HITBSecConf
13. – 15. June 2014 Chaos Singularity in Bienne
19. – 22. June 2014 Gulasch Programmier Nacht
July 2014 SIGINT
August 2014 ICMP7
September 2014 Datenspuren
24. – 26. October 2014 Hackover
27. – 30. December 2014 31C3

Phantastic!
When searching for any search word or phrase in Duckduckgo, using the additional term “mirror”, the search phrase will be displayed upside down.

Example: “mirror hello world” will display the output “plɹoʍ ollǝɥ”.

I further think that this is a pretty neat way to send sensitive information (e.g. passwords) to people who are not using encryption technologies… 😎

˙˙˙sıɥʇ pɐǝɹ oʇ ǝlqɐ ǝq ʇ,uoʍ ɐsu ǝɥʇ ɟo sǝuıƃuǝ ǝɥʇ ʎlqɐqoɹd ʇsoɯ

Tonight in a discussion with a friend about the absurdity of patents, I came across the story that Gareth Bale, – a (seemingly) famous football player who recently was acquired by Real Madrid, – did trademark the “heart sign”, whereas I was wondering if this is in any contradiction to the recent patent, which Google got for the “heart shape”!??

The question remains: How many ways of perversion can trademarking and patenting still offer?

Photo Nathalie Bissig

Ma in questa sera mentre il choro cantava “Oh, mia patria si bella e perduta” ho pensato que se noi uccidiamo la cultura sul qui e fondata la storia dell’Italia, veramente sara la nostra patria bella e perduta!

Riccardo Muti

Translation:
But this evening during the choir was singing “Oh fatherland, so beautiful and lost” I was thinking that if we murder the culture which forms the basis of the italian history, it truly would be our beautiful and lost fatherland!

Source ex opera Nabucco by Giuseppe Verdi.