Tales of Drudgery and Boredom

We (Sandra, Philippe en mezelve) gaan op 16 september naar The Cramps!!

Microsoft Corp. is taking steps to embrace and extend another standard development technology, this time in the modeling arena.

The Redmond, Wash., company is developing its own model-driven architecture for a future release of its Visual Studio .Net development environment. The new architecture will be based on the UML (Unified Modeling Language) standard, sources said.

Chief Software Architect and Chairman Bill Gates has publicly described the company's goals to add support for model-driven development to Microsoft products leading up to the release of the company's "Longhorn" operating system, expected in 2005.

UML is a standard modeling language for documenting data and processes in software systems. Rational Software Corp., now a part of IBM, led the development of the standard.

[eWeek]

Mijn leraars moeten zich soms toch vragen gesteld hebben denk ik... Dit was een opdracht uit het vierde leerjaar:

Ik kan me inbeelden dat ze iets verwachtten als "morgen bewolkt tot zwaarbewolkt met temperaturen tussen 15 en 18 graden", maar neen:

Het handschrift is eigenlijk pas verbeterd na mijn humaniora (dit is schoonschrift in vergelijking met sommige andere dingen), maar dit is wat het zegt:

Er is in Bonn een tropische cycloon (Zorro is de naam) gesignaleerd. De kruissnelheid van "Zorro" is 378 km/u. Binnen ongeveer 1u30 zal hij hier zijn. "Zorro" ontstond in de Zwarte zee, als de kat van huis was. Men had al lang gemerkt dat er vuil weer zou geven.
Wij vragen u niet te panikeren, maar tustig de huizen te verlaten.
Ik herhaal, niet panikeren. De maxima zijn van 30 tot 30 graden. Pas op het zal oude wijven regenen.

The mind boggles.

We zijn vandaag naar Plopsaland geweest. Als ik niet zo moe was, zou ik een heel verslag schrijven.

1. Google's immortal cookie:
   Google was the first search engine to use a cookie that expires in 2038. This was at a time when federal websites were prohibited from using persistent cookies altogether. Now it's years later, and immortal cookies are commonplace among search engines; Google set the standard because no one bothered to challenge them. This cookie places a unique ID number on your hard disk. Anytime you land on a Google page, you get a Google cookie if you don't already have one. If you have one, they read and record your unique ID number.
    
2. Google records everything they can:
   For all searches they record the cookie ID, your Internet IP address, the time and date, your search terms, and your browser configuration. Increasingly, Google is customizing results based on your IP number. This is referred to in the industry as "IP delivery based on geolocation."
    
3. Google retains all data indefinitely:
   Google has no data retention policies. There is evidence that they are able to easily access all the user information they collect and save.
    
4. Google won't say why they need this data:
   Inquiries to Google about their privacy policies are ignored. When the New York Times (2002-11-28) asked Sergey Brin about whether Google ever gets subpoenaed for this information, he had no comment.
    
5. Google hires spooks:
   Matt Cutts, a key Google engineer, used to work for the National Security Agency. Google wants to hire more people with security clearances, so that they can peddle their corporate assets to the spooks in Washington.
    
6. Google's toolbar is spyware:
   With the advanced features enabled, Google's free toolbar for Explorer phones home with every page you surf, and yes, it reads your cookie too. Their privacy policy confesses this, but that's only because Alexa lost a class-action lawsuit when their toolbar did the same thing, and their privacy policy failed to explain this. Worse yet, Google's toolbar updates to new versions quietly, and without asking. This means that if you have the toolbar installed, Google essentially has complete access to your hard disk every time you connect to Google (which is many times a day). Most software vendors, and even Microsoft, ask if you'd like an updated version. But not Google. Any software that updates automatically presents a massive security risk.
    
7. Google's cache copy is illegal:
   Judging from Ninth Circuit precedent on the application of U.S. copyright laws to the Internet, Google's cache copy appears to be illegal. The only way a webmaster can avoid having his site cached on Google is to put a "noarchive" meta in the header of every page on his site. Surfers like the cache, but webmasters don't. Many webmasters have deleted questionable material from their sites, only to discover later that the problem pages live merrily on in Google's cache. The cache copy should be "opt-in" for webmasters, not "opt-out."
    
8. Google is not your friend:
   Young, stupid script kiddies and many bloggers still think Google is "way kool," so by now Google enjoys a 75 percent monopoly for all external referrals to most websites. No webmaster can avoid seeking Google's approval these days, assuming he wants to increase traffic to his site. If he tries to take advantage of some of the known weaknesses in Google's semi-secret algorithms, he may find himself penalized by Google, and his traffic disappears. There are no detailed, published standards issued by Google, and there is no appeal process for penalized sites. Google is completely unaccountable. Most of the time they don't even answer email from webmasters.
    
9. Google is a privacy time bomb:
   With 150 million searches per day, most from outside the U.S., Google amounts to a privacy disaster waiting to happen. Those newly-commissioned data-mining bureaucrats in Washington can only dream about the sort of slick efficiency that Google has already achieved.

[GoogleWatch]