Spammers are improving...

I receive the bill from my favoured telecom provider (T-Com) once per month via E-Mail. Today I got one again, only slightly out of its regular rythm. The sender informed me that this month more than 730€ were due - way tooooo much to be true. But, what made me suspicious, they informed me that starting from February they would not sent pdf-invoices again - I had to login to some website to download the pdf myself.

Sounds like pretty standard spam-or-phishing - but THIS one was really close to the original. The mail contained none of the spam-typical typos or grammatical mistakes - the wording was copied exactly from the T-Com originals. I became even more curious now and compared it bytewise to one of the original monthly T-Com mails - only to discover that only three minor things were wrong:

• My T-Com account number,


• my wife's name in the mail header (we both are listed at T-Com as account holders) and


• the mail was adressed to my web.de address - not the one listed with T-Com
.

Dear me - those spammers really get better...

Maximaler Bürokratenlevel überschritten - Es reicht!

Seit einigen Jahren erlaubt das deutsche Steuerrecht die so genannten Minijobs bis zu einer monatlichen Vergütung von €400. Bis dato durfte man/frau seine auf diese Weise Beschäftigten per Formular an die Minijob-Zentrale bei der Bundesknappschaft in Essen melden. Etwas angestaubtes Verfahren, aber einfach und funktionierte.

Nun hat der typische Bürokratenwahn in seiner schlimmsten Form zugeschlagen:

• In einer Fat-Client Anwendung namens sv-net (was allein ja nicht sooo schlimm wäre) müssen Minijobber nun elektronisch gemeldet werden. Üblerweise scheint dieses Stück Software leider unzureichend getestet - diverse Plausibilisierungen funktionieren nicht...
  


• Die Gestaltung der (Un-)benutzungsoberflächen erinnert an Folterwerkzeuge - da hat jemand die unsympathischen Steuerformulare abgemalt und eine grottige Anwendung drumherum versündigt.


• Nun der Hammer: Die Tätigkeiten der Minijobber müssen nun exakt (numerisch!) bezeichnet werden. Hierzu gibt es eine lange Liste mit Schlüsselwerten - und deren Inhalt ist Realsatire: Da wird fein säuberlich zwischen Büroangestellte, Büroassistent, Bürobote, Bürohelfer, Bürokraft, Bürohilfskraft und Bürodiener unterschieden - welche Beamten-Schnarchnase hat sich denn bitte das überlegt? Und wem soll diese Info bitte helfen??

Liebe Bundesanstalt für Arbeitsverhinderung, -verzögerung und -vermeidung sowie Bundesknapp(-an-Effektivität-)schaft: Es reicht.

Comparison of VM-based languages

Steve Yegge (formerly working at amazon.com, currently with google) has been blogging about programming languages and similar stuff for quite a while - but now I discovered quite a jewel in his many writings: He implemented one game (sokoban) in several VM-based languages and compared the results. He started with some kind of design ideas on the game. Java programmers beware: Steve's not so fond of the J in JVM... (brought to my attention by Frank Jagla).
Bring some time - and be prepared for some fundamental critics either. Nice read!

How to Create Your Own Installer

Thorsten the geek Kaman has written up a no fluff just stuff introduction the Java-based open source installer generator IzPack. Just in case you need (or want!) to generate a nice'n easy installer for your software - have a look at his article (oops - no online version so far :-() or grab IzPack and try for yourself.

Well done, Thorsten!

Software Engineering Podcast

A bunch of experienced software coaches recently started to speak about software engineering in their se-radio podcast.

• You never heard a podcast before? Time to get started. Grab your favorite mp3 player and go for www.se-radio.net.
  
• You do not know about software engineering? Maybe you're wrong in this blog... but you might get something out of listening to the cast...
• You just got the impression that I'm biased? True. I'm one of them.