En on @ppmotskula

The Triangle of Power: A Review

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Alexander Stubb, The Triangle of Power: Rebalancing the New World Order (Columbia Global Reports / Biteback Publishing, January 2026, 216 pp.)

There is something almost paradoxical about a sitting head of state publishing a book of serious international relations theory. Political memoirs are common enough; policy manifestos, dime a dozen. But The Triangle of Power is neither. Finnish President Alexander Stubb — former foreign minister, prime minister, finance minister, MEP, and Professor and Director of the School of Transnational Governance at the European University Institute in Florence — has written what is genuinely a work of political science, grounded in first-hand experience at the highest levels of diplomacy, and aimed at a fundamental question: what kind of world order comes after the one that is currently falling apart?

Justice Is Blind — Except When It Isn't

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

On selective principles, strategic silence, and what small states stand to lose

On Sunday evening, 01 March 2026, two statements landed in quick succession. Estonia’s parliamentary foreign affairs committee, meeting in extraordinary session, voiced support for the US-Israeli strikes on Iran. EU High Representative Kaja Kallas issued a statement on behalf of the Union that condemned Iranian retaliation as “inexcusable” while remaining entirely silent on the legality of the strikes that provoked it. Two statements, one evening, telling the same story by different means.

OpenClaw and the Governance Gap: When Open Source Outpaces Policy

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In six weeks, OpenClaw became the fastest-growing open-source project in history. Developers celebrated. Enterprises quietly deployed it. Governments said nothing. Almost nobody asked what they were actually installing.

That silence is the story.

OpenClaw — a self-hosted AI agent created by Austrian developer Peter Steinberger — isn’t a chatbot. It’s an autonomous actor with real-world capabilities: reading your email, accessing your files, calling APIs, executing system commands. It operates on your behalf, continuously, with whatever permissions you give it. By early 2026, it had over 200,000 GitHub stars, was running on personal hardware inside corporate networks, and had become cybersecurity’s most urgent unmanaged problem — all before a single regulatory framework had registered its existence.

Two thoughts on Dear Leader

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

TL;DR

His tactics seem to be based on ruzzian “razvedka boem” (“разведка боем”).

His actions seem to be driven primarily by his own interests and those of his clan instead of the interests of his country and its people.

He announces new tariffs, then changes them, then withdraws them. He says he will end a war in 24 hours, then in two weeks, then says this war is none of his business. He jests about annexing a country or a part thereof, then proposes to buy it, then threatens military action, then says he’s made a great deal and decided that the won’t engage militarily. And so on and so on.

Dear Leader

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

On 18JAN26, Times of Israel published the full text of the Charter of the Board of Peace (local pdf). I fed it to ChatGPT 5.2 with a two-word prompt “analyse this”. The result (local pdf) is… interesting, to say the least.

The Chairman (named individually) is the central constitutional actor:

Sole authority to invite Member States (Art. 2.1)

Power to renew or terminate memberships (Art. 2.2(c), 2.3)

Approval right over all Board decisions (Art. 3.1(e))

Unilateral authority to create/dissolve subsidiaries (Art. 3.2(b))

Final interpreter of the Charter (Art. 7)

Authority to dissolve the organization unilaterally or by inaction (Art. 10.2)

I wouldn’t be surprised to see hordes of gute Amerikaner going “Hail Leader” very soon now. Or “친애하는 지도자동지”.

Qualified Electronic Signatures... with problems?

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

If you see the above in Acrobat, you may want to scroll down to the workaround without reading the rant and the background first (or at all).

The Rant

On 27 November 2024, Estonian trust service provider SK ID Solutions started issuing all new Smart-ID accounts using their new intermediate certificates including the “SK ID Solutions EID-Q 2024 E”. They had announced it on their website a bit more than a month in advance, calling all e-service providers to add the new certificates. The certificates are available from the provider’s website, Estonian Trusted List, and EU Trusted List.

Finland’s Future in Four Worlds – Preparing for 2045

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Mon, 03 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Finnish Government’s 2025 Foresight Report, Part 1 (Tulevaisuusselonteon 1. osa) outlines four plausible worlds in 2045. It is not a prediction, but a strategic foresight tool – designed to help Finland anticipate global transformations, strengthen resilience, and actively shape its operating environment toward democracy, security, and sustainable prosperity.

Four Possible Worlds

Cooperation World. The rules-based international order endures. The EU remains cohesive, democracy and law are respected, and the green transition advances. Innovation and governance are predictable and fair. This is the most beneficial scenario for Finland – stable, secure, and cooperative.
Tech Giants’ World. Global corporations dominate data, AI, and standards. States lose regulatory power. IP and data governance are driven by commercial interests, and national security depends on private infrastructure.
Blocks’ World. The world divides into geopolitical blocs with conflicting norms, technologies, and values. The EU and NATO operate effectively within their bloc, but global cooperation weakens. Legal fragmentation and competing standards reduce innovation and trust.
Fragmenting World. Global coordination collapses. States focus on survival amid economic instability, climate crises, and hybrid threats. The rule of law and international institutions erode, forcing Finland to rely on comprehensive national defence and societal resilience.

Key Strategic Recommendations

The report gives no probabilities for the scenarios but urges Finland to be prepared for all – while working to steer the future toward the “Cooperation World.”

Skype

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Wed, 05 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Skype.

In the summer of 2005, I had two job opportunities on the table. Swedbank had just invited me to the third and final interview, and I understood that if I wanted to work for a bank, I could do it anytime. So I joined Skype.

In the four years that followed, I had 6 de jure and 8 de facto bosses. I laughed that the biggest boss of the company should probably have worn the title of Chief Reorg Officer.

When it pays to wear belt and suspenders

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Thu, 21 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Hungary has given birth to several great inventors. Ernő Rubik invented — and patented — his Magic Cube in 1975. In 2006, Gábor Domokos and Péter Várkonyi came up with a weird object which had one stable and one unstable point of equilibrium and called it a “Gömböc”.

Photo: public domain

Hungarian IP lawyers have also been inventive. After Rubik’s patent expired, they actually managed to re-protect the cube as a three-dimensional EU trademark in 1999. The mark was contested in 2006 on the grounds that the shape was essential to the cube’s function; after 13 years of legal battles the CJEU decided in October 2019 (case T‑601/17) that if the shape of a thing is essential to its function, it cannot be protected as a 3D trademark.

Technological Revolution 2020

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Sun, 12 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

In the second half of March 2020, I was witnessing a technological phase shift never seen before.

Four years at Skype left aside, my prior understanding of conference calls and video meetings was “wailing and gnashing of teeth”. Participants dropping in and out. Microphones that only work when they shouldn’t. Screen sharing, which works so badly that it’s easier to send everyone a file and ask them to open it from page 267.

Parasummer 20

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Sat, 20 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Twenty years ago my phone rang. I picked it up and a male voice said: “Guys, you have to arrange an international skydiving event.”

“You must be mistaken, sir,” I said. “Skydive Estonia has barely finished its second month of operations. We have no experience, no money, and no connections. It can’t be done.”

“Don’t worry,” the man on the phone continued. “You have access to a wonderful big airfield and a perfectly good airplane. All you have to do is make sure that we get to use them for a week, and maybe find us a place to sleep. I know people, and they will come. In numbers.”

ACTA is a Threat to Legislative Freedom in Europe

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

They say that ACTA will cause no change in EU and European countries’ copyright regulations. What they don’t say is that ACTA is designed to make sure there will be no change in European copyright regulations.

Advertised as some kind of a “coalition of the willing” — either you’re with us or you’re with pirates, counterfeiters, and possibly even Lord Voldemort himself — ACTA pretends to only deal with the enforcement of copyrights and related rights that are already present in EU directives and national laws of the Union’s member states. While the agreement’s publicly announced purpose is to harmonize the enforcement of such rights in signatory countries, it actually harmonizes the enforcement of the rights arising out of existing copyright-and-related-rights laws that are based on economic, social and technological realities of late 17th century.

encfs for the paranoid

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

EncFS is a free (GPL) FUSE-based cryptographic filesystem that transparently encrypts files, using an arbitrary directory as storage for the encrypted files (Wikipedia article).

One of the good things about encfs is that it allows you to keep your encrypted directory backed up on a removable disk or remote server, without having to decrypt and re-encrypt the data. And if you exclude the configuration file (that contains the key, which, in turn, is encrypted with a passphrase of your choice) from the backup, then you don’t have to worry about whether someone else could get a look at your backups — all they’d ever get is random gibberish.

Richard Dawkins: The God Delusion

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Just finished reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.

Although the quality of Dawkins’s argumentation varies, he manages to present a reasonably-well justified case against allowing religion to be anything more than a person’s private belief. One thing he has completely overlooked is that several [secular] ideologies and political systems based thereof work on exactly the same principles as organized religions — the “0th commandment” being “thou shalt not question anything told by the elders”.

Online privacy? Forget it!

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Let me start from a bold prediction and a daring statement.

The prediction is that in 2020, online privacy will be more or less in the same place where digital copyright is today: there will be a growing majority of people who knowingly violate the respective laws on the grounds that the legal system has remained inert while the real life has moved on.

The statement is that privacy laws and copyright laws have nearly nothing to do with the interests of their alleged subjects — the individuals and authors, respectively. Instead, they serve the interests of the “big guys” in each scene. In case of copyright, this means the “copyright industries” — record labels, movie studios, “old school” software companies, publishing houses, etc. In case of privacy, this means the institutions who are the biggest processors of personal information today — national, state, and local governments as well as banks, insurance companies, telecoms and utilities.

Twitter Panic in Elbonia

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Sten Tamkivi tweeted:

If this tax change happens, Estonia can say goodbye to any new international tech companies: http://bit.ly/2UVEC7 Outrageous!

This sparked a serial outrage of retweets and Facebook comments. Many people became heavily opinionated about an opinion leader’s opinion about a journalist’s opinion based on a [possibly, but not necessarily] out-of-context quotation of a tax lawyer. But few, if any, took the trouble to dig out the original source — the draft law containing the proposed changes to the income tax law.

Goodbye, Skype. Hello, world!

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000

If I had to choose just one word to describe what Skype looks from inside, then it’d probably be “ever-changing”.

I’ve seen the number of concurrent users online grow from 4 to 19 million. I’ve seen people being hired at such a rate that sometimes newcomers had to actually sit on the floor while the facilities folks wrought more tables and chairs out of furniture vendors’ depleted stocks. I’ve seen the company going from private to public (eBay) and back to private again. Well, almost back — the deal is yet to be closed. I’ve directly reported to eight different managers: that’s a whopping two bosses per year.

Ubuntu magic: releases

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve always admired the way how a large-scale community-developed open-source project — Ubuntu — can deliver new releases with the predictability and regularity of high-quality clockwork. Every six months, a new version comes out with every fourth one getting polished to LTS (Long Term Support) quality.

Mark Shuttleworth, the SABFDL of Ubuntu, has shared his views and thoughts about why and how to manage the release cycle of complex software products. If you’re interested in the topic, then it’s a good read even if you don’t happen to share his preference to free and open source software.

Whadever

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

August 12, 2008. Tuuker and I take the Linda Line boat to Helsinki in order to participate in the first ever all hands meeting of the brand new four-way formation skydiving team, of which I had been persuaded to become the cameraman. The meeting results in a number of decisions: the team will (at least initially) be set up for the term of one year, everybody will commit to a certain minimum expenditure of time and money, we’re going to participate in one Bartic (Baltic/Nordic) national championship, and we’ll aim to achieve the average of 12 points in the competition. As a cameraman, I set out for not losing more than two points per competition. A few beers later, we decide that the team will be called “Whatever”.

(some) analysts are always right

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Jean Mercier writes, that different analysts value Skype differently:

Scott Adams draws, that according to economists the economy will either recover or not:

Place your bets, gentlemen.

Capital of Iceland

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Q: What is the capital of Iceland?
A: $3.52

Respect the toilet

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0000

foto: ppmotskula

Microsoft opens up Office binary file formats

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Microsoft has released the Microsoft Office binary file formats (doc, xls, ppt) under Microsoft Open Specification Promise, which effectively says: “We will never assert our patent claims against you for making, using, selling, offering for sale, importing or distributing implementations of the covered specifications.”

Indeed, these file formats are pretty complicated (it takes more than 200 pages to spec the Word .doc file format; Joel Spolsky explains why). But releasing them into the open means that the makers of OpenOffice and other alternatives will have a legal way of properly supporting these formats — and that they will probably get a lot of user pressure to implement this support.

Open letter to IFJ

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Referring to IFJ Appeals to Microsoft as Russia Uses Anti-Piracy Campaign as a Cover for Media Intimidation:

Why don’t you consider an opportunity to help Russian independent media outlets migrate to free/libre open-source software (FLOSS) instead of begging Microsoft to donate free or discounted licenses for their computers?

With more than 20 years of computing experience, having worked in and with newspapers, and having first-hand knowledge of Windows, Mac OS X and Linux operating systems, I dare to say that FLOSS is a suitable alternative for most people employed in a media organization.

Google joins the dark side

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Investors no longer seem to believe Google’s “we’re no evil” mantra 😉

Skype worm? Not!

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 00:00:00 +0000

This week kicked off with a bang. A worm had been unleashed into the ’net, targeting the users of Skype for Windows. You can check out Villu Arak’s post in Skype’s Heartbeat blog to read more about the worm and how to protect yourself from similar attacks in future.

Phil Wolff posted a nice, but oversimplified graphic explanation in Skype Journal:

Why is this oversimplified? Because this explanation fails to address probably the most important point given in Villu’s post:

Blogs, feeds, and relevance

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Martin Varsavsky asks if blogs are being rendered irrelevant by RSS feeds. Adrian Cockroft kicks in an interesting idea about lack of comments being the single biggest issue with the feeds. And as I was about to write a longer comment to Martin’s post, I decided to do it here. Enjoy it or skip it, the choice is yours 🙂

Lack of comments Adrian called the “main issue with RSS readers” is actually a two-edged sword. Quite often, comments are not that interesting, so leaving them out allows me to focus on the bits coming from the source I’ve decided to keep my eyes on. However every now and then I would much appreciate an easy way to selectively turn on comment feeds for a particular post — which is something I haven’t found yet.

Calling home

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I just finished a 27-minute Skype call from my hotel room in Boston to my loved ones at home in Estonia.

Depending on the method of calculation, the call cost me $9.99 (the price of 24 hours of internet access), $0.19 (previous amount times 27 by 1440), or nothing (as I needed internet access anyway, making this call had no effect on what I had to pay).

Alternatively, I could’ve used my cell phone. In this case, my mobile provider would’ve billed me for EEK 1066, or roughly $92.

Aviation weather for your mobile phone

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Mon, 28 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000

If your mobile phone can display regular web pages, then you can easily obtain the METAR and TAF information for most airports anywhere, anytime. Just browse to isiklik.info/met, enter your favourite airport’s ICAO or IATA code, and hit “go”.

There’s also an email interface available that you can use anywhere if you can send and receive email on your mobile phone. To get latest meteo update for an airport, send its ICAO code to met@isiklik.info in the message body (Subject: line is ignored).

Microsoft sues Estonia

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Thu, 03 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Tallinn, 04.05.07. Microsoft (MSFT) has initiated litigation against the Republic of Estonia whose prime minister’s actions have led to violent rioting during which numerous windows were broken beyond repair. “We consider this as a direct action against our good reputation on global markets,” an anonymous source within the Redmond software giant said. Microsoft would apparently accept an out-of-court arrangement whereby the government of Estonia replaces all broken windows first, and then upgrades all windows in the country to Vista.

Skype 1.4 for Linux

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Wed, 02 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000

An alpha version has been released today. There are still some known issues — and probably a bunch of unknown ones too, and the public API is yet to be implemented, but… I’ve been using the internal pre-alpha versions for a while now and can say one thing for sure: Linux Skype 1.4 is a huge leap forward from the good old 1.3.

So while this is a pre-release version that’s not intended for production use; make sure to back up all your important data first; Skype offers no warranties or customer support and all the remaining disclaimers — I heartily recommend that you give it a try and give us your feedback.

RIP my English blog

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000

In the last 12 months I’ve managed to post whopping 14 articles into my English-language blog. That’s six and a half times less than what I published on my main, Estonian-language site. Since the new Blogger has labels that you can use for filtering the content, I’ve decided to move all the articles over to wolli.blogspot.com and tag them as “english”.

ppmotskula.blogspot.com is now officially obsolete.

Skype in parallel universes

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Jaanus Kase bragged about running four [different] Skypes in one box, and Jim Courtney asked how would someone come up with (and have the time for) doing this.

Well, there are several reasons I could come up with quickly (in no particular order).

Testing. You may want to test the new versions of Skype (and/or Skype Extras) every now and then. On Windows, uninstalls are almost never complete and clean, so if you don’t like your machine’s registry and other places getting clogged with all sorts of leftovers of the stuff you’ve taken a look at. Furthermore, “scientifically” good tests must be done in controlled environment, and a system contaminated with random remnants of previously installed software would not exactly qualify.
Features. Skype does not offer identical feature sets on Windows, Mac, and Linux. While the Windows is still the most-used desktop operating system worldwide, there is a growing number of people who prefer Mac OS X or Linux. So if you’re one of the “heretics” but still want to occasionally use the newest features that have only made it into Skype for Windows thus far, firing up a virtual machine with Windows on it would make sense.
Hack value. Hey, it’s a freaking cool hack, isn’t it? 😉

As I do have to test new stuff, and as I don’t boot my computers into Windows (I’ve been on Ubuntu Linux for nearly two years, and see no reason to switch back — but that’s another story), I have a VMware Server and a bunch of (licensed) virtual OSes installed. So it takes me less than 5 minutes to unzip and boot into a “virgin” Windows XP or Vista without ever having to go through the entire re-installation of the operating system.

Local vs LoCal

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

wolli: “Could you bring me a local beer, please?”
server: “I’m sorry, sir, we don’t have any on tap, but I could get you a bottle of Bud Light.”
wolli . o O (wtf? Mis ajast Bud kohaliku eripäraga hiilgab?): “Oh, sorry. I meant local as in ’local to California’, not LoCal as in ’low calorie’.”
server: “Oh… We’ve got Gordon Biersch Märzen, a red beer from San Jose.”
wolli: “Good. I’ll have a glass of that, thanks.”
server: “Coming right up, sir!”

Installing Vista in VMware on Ubuntu

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

After several failures and a lot of web browsing, I finally succeeded in installing Windows Vista Business in VMware Server running on Ubuntu 6.10.
At first, I just created a new VMware virtual machine with default settings for guest OS Windows Vista (experimental). Booted it from Vista DVD, answered a couple of questions, entered the product key, started the installation and got as far as “Expanding files (0%)”. On the next morning, the installer was still expanding files at 0% (the process had not crashed, it just failed to do anything useful).

HOWTO leave your computer

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Joel Spolsky thinks that Choices = Headaches, discussing the OFF button in Windows Vista with its 7 choices and 2+n ways to access these choices.

The 7 choices are Sleep, Hibernate, Lock, Switch User, Logout, Restart, and Shut Down. By the way, I’ve got the same choices on my Ubuntu Linux.

If you’ve spoken to a non-geek recently, you may have noticed that they have no idea what the difference is between “sleep” and “hibernate.” They could be trivially merged. One option down.

Spam (1337)

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

As you can see, my Gmail spam folder just reached 1337 status 🙂

Thank you, terrorists!

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000

The trip to London began perfectly normally.

Shortly after the boarding was completed, the aircraft was pushed back from the gate, taxied to the runway, and took off. Soon, the seatbelt lights were switched off, and a male voice sounded: “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain. Welcome on board this Estonian Air flight from Tallinn to London. We have reached our cruising altitude of 10600 meters. Our ground speed 800 kilometers an hour and the outside temperature minus 48 degrees centigrade. We expect to arrive at London Gatwick airport in two hours and five minutes — that’s twenty minutes ahead of time.”

Culture Shock

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000

American Man: “You know, I’m totally colour-blind.”
Estonian Man: “So that’s why you called me a nigger the other day!”
British Girl: (gasps, then silently exits room)
AM and EM: (chuckle)

Love you to death,

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Israel and U.S.A!

Open Source, Open Funding

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Benjamin Horst, an open source enthusiast and a long-time OpenOffice.org user, is running a fundraiser to publish a full-page ad (or a few if he manages to raise enough for reruns) in New York’s Metro newspaper. At the time I write this post, they’re less than $100 short of the first ad, so if you’ve got a few bucks to share, please do so. And if you don’t, then you can help just by sharing the word.

Lawyer

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 00:00:00 +0000

How do you call 50 lawyers at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean? — A pretty good start!

Well, I just defended my thesis titled “Free software: opportunity or threat? Perspectives of the legal protection of computer software in networked society” and received the mark “A”. The official graduation party is scheduled to start at 12:00 on June 15th in Estonian National Library.

Apple waiting to fall… on Microsoft

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Thu, 11 May 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I’m not the only one who thinks Mac OS X is a skin on Unix — an amazingly good one indeed, but still effectively a skin. And although Apple is damn good at building software, the company’s approach has grown from the idea that the business is in selling hardware. Now if (notice that I didn’t say “when”) they decide to let their hardware business dwindle away, they might be able to pull this skin onto another BSD core, and make it a Mac OS x86.

Short-sighted stock markets

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Stock markets were once meant to allow the bright meet the rich. By bringing together people who had bright ideas and no or little money with people who had some money for which they couldn’t think of any other use, the markets allowed enterprises to be founded and expanded.

Back then, investors invested in companies. They bought shares in anticipation of receiving a piece of the company’s future profits. And they usually had at least a rough idea about the business “their” companies were in.

Dear reader,

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 00:00:00 +0000

welcome to my second blog. Since you have already landed on this page, you might just as well spend a few more minutes to find out what’s it about — and what not.

Why create another blog if I already had one? The reason is quite simple: I used to blog in my native language, which is unfortunately not understood by at least 97.2 percent of the world’s online population. But every now and then I feel the urge to discuss issues that might be of interest to non-Estonians as well. That’s why.

HOWTO: remote access to a dialup host

peeterpaul@motskula.net (Peeter P. Mõtsküla) — Mon, 23 Aug 2004 00:00:00 +0000

[ see postitus siin on kirjutatud ennekõike selleks, et endale hiljem meelde tuletada, aga võib-olla kulub ka teistele marjaks ära. seepärast inglise keeles ]

background

when my dad’s old computer died, he asked me to have a new one built for him. since i didn’t want to reinstall windows (partly because his old PC had an OEM win98 with no installation media, he didn’t really want to pay for a new windows license and i didn’t want to resort to software piracy, and partly just because windows sucks anyway), i suggested that he make the shift to linux. after a brief discussion he decided he would be OK with fedora core 2, opera, openoffice.org, evolution, and gaim. since he lives in the middle of nowhere, he’s connecting to the internet via GPRS (using a noname USB bluetooth dongle and a brandname nokia 6310). but as he’s not (yet) very experienced with linux, i felt i’d better make his computer remotely accessible. ok, so i installed VNC and ssh and enabled incoming ssh connections, but here we come to the tricky part: how to make an inbound connection to a host that gets a its IP address dynamically, and as if it were not enough, the address is a 10.x.x.x private one?