EU written declaration 12/2010 on ACTA

1½ month ago (8/3-2010), 3 members of the European Parliament proposed this one page written declaration as a stance on the secretive ACTA negotiations.

The statement contains these 6 short guidelines for the impact of ACTA on European legislation:

1. Takes the view that the proposed agreement should not indirectly impose harmonisation of EU copyright, patent or trademark law, and that the principle of subsidiarity should be respected;
2. Declares that the Commission should immediately make all documents related to the ongoing negotiations publicly available;
3. Takes the view that the proposed agreement should not force limitations upon judicial due process or weaken fundamental rights such as freedom of expression and the right to privacy;
4. Stresses that economic and innovation risks must be evaluated prior to introducing criminal sanctions where civil measures are already in place;
5. Takes the view that internet service providers should not bear liability for the data they transmit or host through their services to an extent that would necessitate prior surveillance or filtering of such data;
6. Points out that any measure aimed at strengthening powers of cross-border inspection and seizure of goods should not harm global access to legal, affordable and safe medicines;

To me they seem so simple and so obvious, which makes me even more surprised that only around 25% of parliament members have signed the declaration (50% needed before 17/6-2010).

So who are the politicians who have signed this declaration and who have not (updated regularly)? Denmark in the high end with 6 out of 13 politicians having signed the declaration, but looking at who each of the signatories are (and which party they’re from) I’m surprised this number isn’t a lot higher.

Have signed (as of 24/4):

Gmail default for mailto links in Google Chrome (Windows)

Update:
Approach might break, as Microsoft Outlook seems to be overwriting this registry key on a regular basis. I’ll update this post with a more solid approach sooner or later.

It’s a small annoyance, but I’d prefer to have my mailto: links open a compose window in Gmail, rather than waiting for Outlook to start. Furthermore then personally I’d rather not have to install apps such as “Google Toolbar”, “ChromeMailer” or “Google Notifier” simply to have my mailto links do what I want, which I know is the solution many people resort to.

On Windows however a mailto: link is just like any other file type, so you can set the default application for that file type. In theory you could go through the a bunch of menus in the file explorer change the settings there, but who wants to do that when you can just apply the change directly in the registry with a single click (more like 6 actually)?

Anyway here’s the content of the registry file (right click and save as gmailto.reg):
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\mailto\shell\open\command]
@=hex(2):22,00,25,00,55,00,53,00,45,00,52,00,50,00,52,00,4f,00,46,00,49,00,4c,\
00,45,00,25,00,5c,00,4c,00,6f,00,63,00,61,00,6c,00,20,00,53,00,65,00,74,00,\
74,00,69,00,6e,00,67,00,73,00,5c,00,41,00,70,00,70,00,6c,00,69,00,63,00,61,\
00,74,00,69,00,6f,00,6e,00,20,00,44,00,61,00,74,00,61,00,5c,00,47,00,6f,00,\
6f,00,67,00,6c,00,65,00,5c,00,43,00,68,00,72,00,6f,00,6d,00,65,00,5c,00,41,\
00,70,00,70,00,6c,00,69,00,63,00,61,00,74,00,69,00,6f,00,6e,00,5c,00,63,00,\
68,00,72,00,6f,00,6d,00,65,00,2e,00,65,00,78,00,65,00,22,00,20,00,20,00,2d,\
00,2d,00,61,00,70,00,70,00,3d,00,68,00,74,00,74,00,70,00,73,00,3a,00,2f,00,\
2f,00,6d,00,61,00,69,00,6c,00,2e,00,67,00,6f,00,6f,00,67,00,6c,00,65,00,2e,\
00,63,00,6f,00,6d,00,2f,00,6d,00,61,00,69,00,6c,00,3f,00,65,00,78,00,74,00,\
73,00,72,00,63,00,3d,00,6d,00,61,00,69,00,6c,00,74,00,6f,00,26,00,75,00,72,\
00,6c,00,3d,00,22,00,25,00,31,00,22,00,00,00

What this does is change the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\mailto\shell\open\command to be of type REG_EXPAND_SZ and with the value “%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe” –app=https://mail.google.com/mail?extsrc=mailto&url=”%1″.
Changing the key type to  REG_EXPAND_SZ expand the environment variable %USERPROFILE%, so you don’t have to manually type in the path to your user profile directory.

Normal disclaimers apply to changing stuff in the registry and also you should probably consider checking for yourself if the hex values actually correspond to what I claim, for example by using this hex to string tool.

Different platform? Same idea. E.g. on Ubuntu Linux change settings in System > Preferences > Preferred Applications.
Different default browser? Same idea, just change path and however it likes its command line arguments.

References:
Google Chrome suggestion thread

Rankmaniac 2010 progress

Update: We did fairly well and ended up around #10-12. Check out the “winner”: Rankmaniac 2010: The Game.

Our team is now ranked #11 with our rankmaniac 2010 site, if you do a Google search for the terms “rankmaniac 2010″.

With only 6 days left it’s getting quite interesting.

For a short description of the rankmaniac 2010 contest see my (very pink) rankmaniac 2010 contest description page.

Vista DHCP Broadcast flag and D-Link routers

Last year at Rigshospitalets Kollegium, we’ve were having problems with Vista machines on the network. Vista users (myself included) were experiencing IP-conflict errors all the time. Our DHCP server was well configured and there was no rogue DHCP servers and the fact that only Vista machines were effected let me to believe that there was in fact no IP-conflicts but it was just Vista messing up. Vista had a part in it of course, but it turned out that a couple of D-Link routers actually were to blame.

One change from XP SP2 to Vista was that a DHCP broadcast flag was now by default enabled. Here’s a Microsoft KB article describing the change and how to disable it through the registry. Disabling the broadcast flag on a computer seemed to do the trick, but with 420 users and not all of them beeing computer litterate enough to fix their registry this wasn’t an option.

There also was the matter of why this even occured in the first place. Our DHCP servers did support the broadcast flag and Vista users reported getting an IP from our DHCP servers for a moment before loosing it and beeing alerted of the ip-conflict.

Using WireShark I started packet sniffing, which brought up a really interesting picture.

Wireshark: DHCP and ARP packets

What’s going on here is this:

• Packet 1: DHCP Request from Vista machine with no IP (0.0.0.0)

• Packet 2: DHCP Offer (172.20.129.35) from our DHCP server (172.20.0.44)

• Packet 3: DHCP Request from Vista machine, requesting the offered IP

• Packet 4: DHCP Acknowledgement from our DHCP server.

• Packet 5: -UNRELATED ARP TRAFFIC-

• Packet 6: Vista machine asks via ARP who (if any) has the IP it just got assigned (in order to prevent IP-conflicts)

• Packet 7: A D-Link router asks the exact same question (it’s relaying the request, but to the same network…)

• Packet 8: Vista machine interprets this as a hint that the IP is taken and therefore releases it’s lease on the IP address (sends a DHCP decline packet). The user of the Vista machine now gets a pop-up alerting him that an IP-conflict occured.

Now why the D-LINK would respond with an identical ARP broadcast package on it’s WAN-interface is beyond me. It turned out we had two D-LINK 524 routers on our network, which were the cause. We had our two users promise not to use the WAN-port on the router and instead use the router as a wireless switch (by disabling the the DHCP server and utilizing the LAN-ports on the router instead). Problem fixed!

I’ve read many reports of problems with Vista machines and IP-conflicts, many of those related to the DHCP broadcast flag. But I can’t help wonder in how many cases the underlying cause might have been the combination of Vista and a D-Link router…
As an example Skive Kollegierne were also affected. And apparently it’s not only model 524 routers that behave like this… the problems described here might indicate that there’s also the same problems with other models.

If you’re only worried about yourself and you suspect the DHCP broadcast flag might be the culprit, you should take a look at these ressources:
DHCP Fix Tool 1.2 : Easy tool that’ll allow you to fix the problem without hacking the registry.
One of the dozens of explanations out there on the registry entries and how to change them.

Destination: Caltech 2009/2010

As you may or may not be aware of I’ve been planning to study a semester or two outside DIKU for quite some time now.

Last night I received the word:
I’ve been offered a full year exchange at Caltech in 2009/2010.

It was Morten who alerted me that the results were out, when he called to tell me that he’d been accepted to University of British Columbia (UBC) Vancouver and to ask if I’d received word yet.

Beyond the obvious excitement I was also quite surprised and a bit puzzled, because I had been told by our International Office that they were dead set on sending three students to Caltech for the autumn trimester rather than just one for a full year. I had to call them earlier today to verify that it wasn’t a mistake, mainly because there has been some hickups with my application and the prior recognition of courses.

So all day today I’ve been jumping around happily like a silly little boy.

It’s always nice to receive good news, but the feeling that the pieces of the puzzle are falling in to place is especially welcome at the moment, where I’m feeling a bit stressed out. I’m following two courses (Linear Algebra and Advanced Algoritms) this quarter, but on top of that I’m a teaching assistant on the Object Oriented Programming and Design (OOPD) first year course. I knew it would be tough and I’m still hanging in there… While I can’t say whether I’ll continue to hang in there or be forced to go to plan B (postponing Linear Algebra), there’s one thing I can say for sure: I won’t recommend it to anyone!

Yet another blog!

“Starting a blog” has been project of mine for quite some time now, but all of the two million other things I’ve been up do has kept the project postponed… until now.

Why and why now?

Well a lot of people I know all seem to have blogs, so I thought…
… well thankfully that’s not my reason for setting up a blog (is it even a reason?).

For quite some time now, I’ve had quite a few ideas and thoughts that I’ve felt I ought to share, but they always ended up in the dark alley called “I should really write a post on my blog about this“.

Now add a “now is as good a time as any” feeling and sprinkle it with a bit of procrastination on more important things and you’ll end up with: Your very first blog post!

I expect to cover quite a few topics and since I’m me and you’re you then I expect you to find some topics interesting while other topics probably won’t appeal to you.

Topics might include (but certainly not limited to):

• Computers – my courses at DIKU, my projects and other stuff I find interesting.

• Thoughts on personal productivity, procrastination, GTD and the like.

• Scuba Diving

• The Big Picture of my life.

• Reviews (in particular one book, that I think everyone ought to read).

Welcome aboard!