According to techcrunch, Chine declared war on western search engines, like Google and Yahoo. All requests to those search engine sites from within China are redirected to Baidu. This takes cyberwar to a next level. Or should we say DNS-cyberwar? A cyberwar against companies like Google and Yahoo, but also a fight against the freedom of speech and the freedom of information. But to be honest … this cyberwar against honest citizens who want user their right for freedom of speech or freedom of information … is not only situated in China. Also in western democracies like, the US or within the EU these fundamental citizen rights are called into question also. So, let’s hope that freedom and democracy are on the winning side at the end.

Source: techcrunch.com

Great news from Apple … the next release of the UNIX based Mac OS X version 10.5 – codename Leopard – will be available on Oct. 26th. I cannot wait to get a hands on experience on that piece of software. For now, the “stacks” on the desktop is one of my favorites.

There are moments, you have to pause for a moment, look up from your daily work and let the incidents get close to you.
Bloggers from Italy started a campaign to turn the attention of us all to the freedom movement in Burma. Form their first idea, a worldwide campaign started:

• One day, jointly only one posting for the Free Burma! Movement in every blog – and then silence.
• One day, jointly taking our hat off to the victimes of the resistance against the military dictatorship.
• One day, jointly buoy up the suppressed and point out our solidarity.
• One day, jointly exert pressure on the governments of this world to take a firm stand against the murdering military regime and take action for freedom and democracy. For example by resolving a clear and strong resolution in the United Nations Security Council.
• One day, jointly recognize us as a global political power and giving the cry for freedom, for democracy and self-determination in Burma a strong voice.

All of us, as freedom- and democracy-loving citizen of the world, we should see this as a push to get engaged: Against suppression, against violence, against dictatorships. And for the people – far beyond this day. And even far beyond Burma.

A very warm thank you to all of you out there, who made this campaign happen. Especially Robert Basic.

More information on http://www.free-burma.org
… and a touching Free-Burma-Cut-Together on Youtube
… and a shocking report at Spiegel-Online "They Come at Night and Murder the Monks"

Great news from David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH), the whole Rails team and the Rails community: The brand new Rails 2.0 Preview Release can be downloaded NOW. Ruby on Rails uses the young and very smart programming language Ruby and offers a sophisticated framework for web application development. So if you are a web developer and do not know what I am talking about – it’s time to look at the open source framework Ruby on Rails
As David pointed out at his keynote at the RailsConf Europe two weeks ago, it is less of an revolution – but it is more of innovation in detail. So, go through the new features and improvements – it’s the next step to elegance and beauty in web programming.

Source: weblog.rubyonrails.org