ePrivacy loopholes.

Earlier today, ten days since my return from Brussels, I received an email from Mr. Lambrinidis regarding a number of amendments on the upcoming e-Privacy directive that he contributed to. An interesting topic that I think merits a short post was that of breach notification. Breach notification refers to the situation when citizens whose personal […]

SquirrelFish Extreme (SFX)

The people behind the best HTML engine around (yep, that's WebKit for those that don't know it yet) just announced the next generation of their new Javascript engine, SquirrelFish Extreme, just a few months after SquirrelFish itself was announced and before it was even adopted in any product. In the performance chart they posted in the linked page the engine is around 3 times faster than JavascriptCore and two times faster than SquirrelFish. Impressive.

Central planning and Research

Diomidis Spinellis wrote earlier today about the EUs planning priorities for research and how he thinks that’s bad for innovation. I agree with his thesis, but I find his complaint somewhat naïve. Let me explain myself: If I could only give one reason to the question “What’s wrong with EU Funded Research?”, I don’t believe […]

Δημόσια Δεδομένα, Δικά μας Δεδομένα

Στον κόσμο του διαδικτύου δυο ημέρες φαίνεται να είναι αρκετές! Με κάποια καθυστέρηση λοιπόν υποστηρίζω κι εγώ τις θέσεις της πρωτοβουλίας Δημόσια Δεδομένα, Δικά μας Δεδομένα, της οποίας τον δικτυακό τόπο θα βρείτε στο www.publicdata.gr. Είναι ακόμη νωρίς και --- χωρίς αμφιβολία --- οι θέσεις όσο και οι απαιτήσεις των συμμετέχωντων είναι ακόμη ρευστές (όμως και εύπλαστες). Οι βασική ανάγκη παραμένει: τα δημόσια δεδομένα πρέπει να είναι διαθέσιμα σε όλους, δωρεάν είτε αυτά είναι προϊόν του κράτους ή κυβερνητικών υπηρεσιών. Τα πλεονεκτήματα είναι πολλά, η ανάγκη για τα δεδομένα μεγάλη και η ευρωπαϊκή (αλλά και παγκόσμια) τάση δεδομένη. Το διαδίκτυο καθιστά την παροχή αυτών των δεδομένων εύκολη και φθηνή απομακρύνωντας βασικές ενστάσεις που ίσως μπορούσε κανείς να παραθέσει ως εμπόδιο προ εικοσαετίας. Μπορείτε να συμμετάσχετε διαδίδωντας τη προσπάθεια, συμμετέχωντας στην συγγραφή των θέσεων αλλά και στηρίζωντας τη προσπάθεια υπογράφωντας.

Chrome. Another piece in the puzzle

Google just announced Chrome, its own browser based on Webkit, Gears, the V8 VM and a host of features inspired by Opera, Safari and Firefox. The move will no doubt be considered ‘controversial’ by some, given Google’s dominance of the market, but the company seems to have taken many steps to avoid this: everything in […]

Printing Buildings

This is not the first time I'm reading about this; some five years ago I remember reading a related article online or in IEEE Spectrum. I'm somewhat hopeful that the technology will mature soon enough for mainstream use and will be affordable in the parts of the world that proper housing is desperately needed (e.g. Africa, India). It goes without saying that the newly found ease of building should be accompanied by renewed building regulations in order to avoid cases where buildings appear 'overnight' without any building permits authorising their construction. Another concern might be whether architecture could be compromised by the technology in the long-term leading to the replication of a single or few designs destroying the feel and character of cities or regions.