Trip organized ✔
Accommodation booked ✔
Talk created ✔
Talk practiced ✔
Communicated with translation and subtitle teams ✔

… i'm really looking forward to the 31C3. A short reminder:: Here is my talk abstract within the 31C3 "Fahrplan" (=Roadmap). Unfortunately the abstract is in German, so here is the article that describes what it is all about. My talk will be on December 28th 23:00 in Room G.

I just got the notice that I will be talking on this year's 31C3. I really look forward to meeting the community and will be publishing details as I get them. My talk will be on the Xerox Saga.

There is another question I keep getting asked a lot in the aftermath of the Xerox saga: Whether or not I accepted cash (or non-cash benefits) from Xerox. The answer is simple: I did not. I did not even ask for a refund of the DHL Express stamp I used to send my originals over to Francis Tse.

As a result of this answer, I keep being asked unbelieving and doubtful questions. “Really?” – “Really. Not a single cent.” I was okay with this, though. However, in the light of some recent specialized press articles, I got word of a business manager's opinion that surprised me quite a bit. The trenchant outline is as follows: I would have been stupid not to demand at least several tens of thousands euros from Xerox for my work – in consideration of the enormity of the issue probably more. Well, this is the opinion we all expected. Here comes what actually surprised me: Every single reader of the specialized press articles would be supposing I accepted money for this anyway.

I do not want to demonize this view after all. There obviously are valid reasons supporting it. What's more, the one to state this view reportedly has a precise intuition on the state of affairs due to his wealth of experience and business success. Additionally one might consider a nice cash injection to be always welcome to a 29 year old computer scientist right at the start of his active life. Therefore, in this blog post, I lift the lid on the reasons of my way of proceeding in the Xerox saga. May the reader decide for himself, whether or not I was stupid (I appreciate any feedback on my stupidity ).

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