mfeilner – Page 52 – markusfeilner.de

The Twitter-Controversy: Titanic and Beatrix von Storch

It’s abut freedom of speech, so the stakes are rather high.

It may sound a little overwhelming, but the tide is high in the controversy about the newest data (security) and privacy laws in Germany and Twitter. Because of the new legislation, mainly done by Heiko Maas (social democrats), that was supposed to stop digital harrasment and racism, kicked fully in: but not in the way it seemed designed for. The satirical magazine “Titanic” got shut down on Twitter (by Twitter) for its parody on altright politician Beatrix von Storch.

ENIAC: Betty Jean Jennings Bartik

The ENIAC's main control panel with Bartnik on the left.

Bartik was one of the leading developers of the ENIAC trajectory computer, and she was quite proud of its first public presentation in 1946:

“The day ENIAC was introduced to the world was one of the most exciting days of my life. The demonstration was fabulous. ENIAC calculated the trajectory faster than it took the bullet to travel. We handed out copies of the calculations as they were run. ENIAC was 1,000 times faster than any machine that existed prior to that time. With its flashing lights, it also was an impressive machine illustrating graphically how fast it was actually computing.”

(more at Wikipedia)

The first woman to win the Turing Award: Frances E. Allen

Frances Allen

Frances Allen became the first woman to win the Turing Award (2006). She worked 45 years at IBM, helped develop Watson and trained FORTRAN in the 60ies already.

More at Wikipedia

Ada Lovelace – inventor of programming algorithms

Watercolor portrait of Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (Ada Lovelace)

Wikipedia on Ada Lovelace

Augusta Ada King-Noel, Countess of Lovelace (born Byron; short: Ada Lovelace) is said to be the world’s first programmer. She was the first human to recognize that Charles Babbages’ Calculation engine could serve for more… and published the world’s first algorithm.

Margaret Hamilton – programming the moonshot

Margaret Hamilton standing next to the navigation software that she and her MIT team produced for the Apollo Project.

Hamilton made up the term “software engineering” during the Apollo space mission days

Wikipedia zu Margaret Hamilton

Rear Admiral Grace M. Hopper

Commodore Grace M. Hopper, USN

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper

She had a large part in creating COBOL, the first compilers and Harvard’s Mark I: Rear Admiral Grace M. Hopper is a legend.

Getting started with Linux – Linux Magazine US

For a special edition of Linux Magazine US named Getting Started with Linux I helped creating several articles. I wrote the security article, and my wonderful colleagues at SUSE wrote many of the other texts. This is probably the best way to start a Linux career or experience. Let yourself be guided through the onboarding.

Hosting Open! 2016 Blockchain panel

Just found these pictures from hosting a panel on Blockchain at the Open Source Business Alliance’s 2016 Open IT! Konferenz, moderating the OSBAR Award ceremony and the corresponding article on blockchain in enterprise (written for the OSBA/MFG) called “transparently blocked”, unfortunately only available in German: Transparent geblockt :

“Am 7. Dezember [2016] treffen sich Experten aus Industrie, Wissenschaft und IT, um bei der OPEN! 2016 zu (er)klären, ob die Blockchain Hype oder ein echter Game-Changer ist, welche Rolle Verschlüsselung und Peer-to-Peer-Netzwerke dabei spielen und warum immer mehr Branchen der Meinung sind, die Kette aus verschlüsselten Informations-Blöcken lasse sich für neue und alte Geschäftsmodelle gewinnbringend einsetzen.”

More Pictures from the conference can be found here.

OPEN! 2015 – Hosting the Panel “Open Source”

In 2015 Markus was permitted to moderate the panel “Open Source” at the OSBA and MFG’s Open! 2015. I was happy to welcome Malte Spitz and other prominent experts. Well, here’s my report (sorry, German only!). Interesting fact: We were among the first to demand “Public money, public code!”, and I love Malte Spitz’s quotes: “There’s no provable security without open source.” “Data protection is like the environmental protection of the future.”

OPEN! 2015 – Bericht aus den Panels – YouTube

Representing OSBA and SUSE at LPI, Kassel

Today I had to get up early (in fact I slept four hours, one at home, one in the train to Nürnberg, one to Würzburg, one to Kassel), because I was invited to represent open source lobby group OSBA and my employer SUSE at certification Institute LPI. In their board meeting with LPI members interesting news was disclosed. Read it soon in Linux-Magazin.

Visiting the LPI board of directors

Getting up Saturday morning at 5 o’clock isn’t funny, but sometimes it’s worth it.

Today I traveled 400 miles across the country to meet with the board of the Linux Professional Institute, Central Europe Master Affiliate. Those four guys have been running the board throughout the last years… (from left to right) Dimitrios Bogiatzoules, Chairman Klaus Behrla, Oliver Michel and second chairman Reiner Brandt.