... if I get the following message when accessing your weblog:
Sorry, your IP address is listed in the local realtime blackhole list. You may not enter this site.
then you have done something wrong by definition. Blogs are meant as a means of communication - and installing silly communication preventers just because you don't want links in your referrer log that come from spammers is simply ridiculous. In that case, you might as well take your blog completely off the network.
Stumbled upon this at Spreeblick: what a game company considers suitable for ages 6 and up:
Your task: rule over your island, where pirates and prisoners reside. These two population groups must be treated completely differently. The pirates want to enjoy an undisturbed life of luxury to recover from their strenuous raids. You can best increase the productivity of the prisoners by spreading fear and terror.
Building brothels (and filling them with female prisoners), random executions, keelhauling - all to amuse the pirates and frighten the prisoners. Great training for the little ones for our wonderful world.
Hey, with politicians, bankers, and business bosses instead of pirates and the unemployed and foreigners instead of the prisoners, it could almost be realistic ...
Just found: PostgreSQL 8.0.2 released with patent fix. PostgreSQL has therefore received a new minor version in which a patented caching algorithm (arc) was replaced with a non-patented one (2Q). The interesting part: this is one of the patents that IBM has released for open source. And why did they switch anyway? Because IBM has released these patents for open source use, but not for commercial use - PostgreSQL, however, is under the BSD license, which explicitly allows completely free commercial use.
For PostgreSQL itself, this would not have been a problem: as long as it remains BSD, the use of the IBM patent would not have caused any problems. Only a later license change - such as when someone chooses BSD software as the basis for a commercial product - would have been excluded.
A nice example of how even liberally handled software patents cause problems. Because medium-sized companies that build commercial products on open source would have lost a previously available basis - solely due to the patented caching algorithm (efficient storage of and efficient access to data - so patentable according to Clements' idea).
In the case of PostgreSQL, it went smoothly: the patented algorithm is not faster or better than its non-patented counterpart. And for the software itself, nothing really world-shattering has changed. But this does not have to (and will not) always go so smoothly. In the field of audio processing and video processing, the patented minefields are much more extensive and therefore much more critical for free projects.
Okay, one might still argue that this would not have happened with a GPL license. But with a GPL license, certain forms of use as they already exist in PostgreSQL today (e.g., companies building special databases on PostgreSQL without making these special databases open source) are not possible. You can take a stand on this as you like - ideology aside - the PostgreSQL project has chosen the BSD license as its basis.
Even well-intentioned patent handling in the context of open source software would therefore be problematic. Exactly this is the reason why I am generally against software patents.
I already wrote about SORBS before. Not much has improved there. Today, I had a server listed in their directory again. And I wanted to know why - but you can only query the database if you are a registered and logged-in user. To become a user, you first have to answer a bunch of questions, such as phone number and address.
Ok, sorry, but you can't put it any nicer: the operators of SORBS are filter fascists. George Orwell would have had a field day with these nutcases - administrators are hindered in their work by the incompetent operation of their block lists and are then supposed to disclose their data. And of course, a user is also required for delisting.
That their web interface is a disgrace in terms of usability, I probably don't need to emphasize. Which fields are mandatory fields are only revealed in bits and pieces, which functions require registration are only known after selecting the function (and after submitting the associated form!) and various other obstacles.
And when you've jumped through their hoops, you get nonsense like this as a reason for the listing: "Likely Trojaned Machine, host running unknown trojan" - no, my machine does not have an unknown trojan installed. Presumably, the idiots have just stumbled over a port unknown to them (ports 8080, 8081 and 9999 are in use on the machine - by the way, with quite normal servers behind them) and once again brazenly claim that the machine is corrupted - but they are simply too stupid to build a usable list.
And yes, the ridiculous demand that you can only do the delisting from the listed machine itself and for that you have to run through their silly web interface again (which is quite ugly to use with Lynx - of course, on servers you probably operate graphical interfaces and VNC according to these great security experts ...).
I'll say it again: I won't go to great lengths if anyone uses this outdated and useless list on their server and emails are bounced as a result. Anyone who uses SORBS and therefore can't receive emails from me is simply too stupid for this world and can find a playground elsewhere. I've had it up to here with incompetent block list operators and incompetent mail admins who use these lame lists ...
The IE6 just can't handle :before when you want to insert content into the page via content: in the CSS. Quite annoying if you use it. The IE7 project that I wrote about in the previous article doesn't work reliably for me either - for example, under a Citrix server it won't execute it, probably because some security settings are missing there. Strange. Anyway, I looked at the problem myself and found a fairly compact solution, at least for my specific version of the problem: I just want to place icons before a link.
For this, links have one of three classes or no class: class="zu" defines a collapsed navigation element, class="auf" an expanded one, class="ohne" a link that should not be specially beautified, and all other links get a standard icon.
For this, I simply attach the following code at the bottom of the file just before the /body:
var links = document.getElementsByTagName("a");
for (var i=0; i
I then wrap the whole thing in a conditional comment for IE so that it is only executed by this. That's it. Simple and effective. Disabled JavaScript is not critical in my case, as without JavaScript on the system (it's a business solution with high interactivity) nothing will run anyway in the future - Ajax needs JavaScript as a component ...
For those of us who don't like Flash in the browser but still occasionally click on Flickr links out of curiosity, you know the feeling: you feel cheated because no image appears. And you wonder what the Flash is actually for, after all, you just want to display a lousy image ...
The solution for us anti-Flashers: Lickr: Flickr, without the Flash - a Greasemonkey script that rewrites the Flash stuff before display into a normal HTML+JavaScript story that works perfectly in Firefox without Flash. And finally, you can admire all those stupid pictures.
New meme at Pepilog: Post Firefox extensions. Well, ListZilla makes it quite easy, here are mine:
Found at Call it YASBLOG: Multimap allows zooming into a map down to a scale of 1:5000 - you can see where I live at the link, in case someone wants to nuke me from orbit
Ok, not as technically cool as Google Maps, but it works with German addresses. Very practical when you want to give someone an exact location - just set a link to the map.
However, I'm not sure if linking is allowed. Their terms of use state the following:
The reproduction, copying, downloading, storage, recording, broadcasting, retransmission and distribution of any of the maps and digital data shown on this site is not permitted without prior written consent of Multimap.com.
Hmm. Links are also digital data and therefore I should not use the link that was generated for me below the map without written permission ...
I like that the Charivari Puppet Theater is included in the map - few Münster residents know about it ...
SISC Scheme is a very complete Scheme interpreter and compiler written in Java. Particularly interesting: there is a continuation-based web framework for it.
Other interesting features include good integration into the Java world through the Java-Scheme interface. In principle, all libraries from the Java world are also available in Scheme.
SISC Scheme also supports SLIB (an extension library for Scheme with many useful modules) and various SRFIs (Scheme Requests for Implementation - the formal way to extend the Scheme language with standard modules).
Jonathan Luster has released his Y! Terms Extraction Plugin for WordPress. It uses the Yahoo services to extract relevant keywords from a posting text and presents them as Technorati tags in the post. If anyone tries this out: I would be interested to know how well it works with German texts.
By the way, I would also be interested to know when blogg.de offers an API. I mean, it's about time to catch up with the features of Technorati and Yahoo, right?
Found at fx3.org: resizeable Textarea, a plugin that allows you to resize a text field in Firefox forms if it's too small. This is very practical for someone who frequently works with web interfaces of CMS or databases.
News from the God of Camera Lens Cross-Adapters: an adapter from SLR bayonet to Leica M with rangefinder coupling. Crazy: you focus with the adapter and read the distance from the adapter and transfer this distance setting identically to the SLR lens. So only a half coupling, but better than nothing.
Okay, I wouldn't want to focus a 100/2.0 from Zeiss on my M at full aperture, but for the usual suspects this whole thing could be quite practical. You save the purchase of a rather expensive Leica lens in some cases.
On the other hand, the adapter costs $325, which is a bit much just to use such exotic combinations. And in some cases it's simply better to get the cheaper Voigtländer lenses.
The idea is just so crazy that it's good again.
A reaction from Kiel to the accusations from Hesse that the anonymization service JAP would promote crime:
"We will continue to defend ourselves unequivocally when would-be internet police without any sign of technical understanding discredit data protection as protection for criminals in a populist manner."
Will this still sound the same after the formation of the grand coalition?
Don Alphonso explains why Jamba might not exist soon. Because if the lawsuit in the USA is successful, it could not only wipe out Jamster, but also have an impact on Jamba. In a way, it would be something if Jamba was torn apart by lawyers ...
The police fear anonymity and cryptography on the internet - and therefore, for example, rail against state-funded anonymization services. However, this is simply the usual conflict of technology: the application can happen in two ways. No one talks about the reasons why anonymization services and encryption systems are quite legitimately used; only criminal use is the topic. Should we ban hammers and sickles, after all, you can kill people with both.
What is worrying about this development is that the use of cryptography will probably be restricted - or as it is called in modern German: regulated - in the short or long term. And at some point, the situation will arise where encrypted emails are already considered suspicious. Suspicion is no longer needed to spy on someone. And what is more obvious than to assume illegality of someone who encrypts their emails?
Every society must deal with abuse of the system and abuse of society - and with those who completely fall out of societal norms. This is annoying and in many cases even tragic - but cannot be changed. However, the problem is not solved by putting the entire society under general suspicion. Ultimately, what remains is a society that is no longer worth living in and preserving because everything is based on surveillance and denunciation. Restricting the rights of ordinary citizens does not result in a single fewer criminal - rather more, because more and more citizens will resist the regulations (and according to the definition of people like Otto Orwell, are then simply criminals).
What is completely ignored here, in my opinion, is the point that crime does not only consist of the perhaps technically difficult-to-access encrypted channel - there must always also be effects outside. Child pornography is not only traded on the internet - it is also produced at some point. Organized crime does not only organize the exchange of PGP keys on the internet - it organizes human smuggling, illegal gambling, drug trafficking, and who knows what else. Every crime therefore always has facets that take place quite openly and recognizably in society. Investigations are primarily carried out in this area to this day - the eavesdropping has not yet brought reproducibly better results than those already achieved through normal investigations. On the contrary: the eavesdropping, dragnet searches, and similar approaches have all failed, especially when considering the immense personnel deployments (and thus costs) of these actions. And no, the genetic sample was not decisive even in the Moshammermord case.
Regulating network technologies will not prevent their use for criminal purposes - it will only make legal use more difficult or stigmatize it. Someone who smuggles people certainly has far fewer scruples about violating cryptography laws than someone who only uses cryptography because they don't like the idea of the state reading everything.
Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's President and Chief Operating Officer (COO), once again criticizes the GPL and praises his own company as the biggest promoter of Open Source. Indirectly, Schwartz accuses other Open Source companies of lying.
At some point, this court jester must become embarrassing for the company.
When you find an actor who shares your name, you naturally hope that they are someone who stars in action movies, plays cool roles, maybe even does something serious and important - basically someone who wouldn't be embarrassing to mention. Well, shit happens.
The fact that WDR offers its radio programs as streams only in RealAudio or Windows Media format - nothing with reasonably open formats like MP3 - is weak. Very weak. I don't like it when my GEZ fees are used to install even more spyware on my computer and to promote the use of these formats through public broadcasting ...
News - Bombenstimmung im WWW - someone is upset here that George Orwell didn't censor the entire internet right away because there are so many bomb-making instructions on the net. If you read the article more closely, you will find a gem like this:
His company, a Hamburg-based internet filter provider, discovered a shocking record during the regular update of their blocking systems.
Well, so an online magazine has done nothing more than give a filter company free advertising and disguise it as a journalistic contribution. And then simply use the link to the filter manufacturer as a source - of course, filter manufacturers are always so neutral in their assessment of the net ...
Since the online magazine has an editorial staff according to the imprint, they probably think they fall under the category "professional journalists". Well, in that case, I would rather take a stack of bad blogs as reading material than such a stealth advertising heap ...
The judgment in the case of the music industry against heise online is available in writing - and the judges once again prove their incompetence on the internet:
In the opinion of the Munich judges, heise online has deliberately provided assistance in an unauthorized act by setting the link to the company's homepage and is therefore liable as an accomplice according to § 830 BGB like the manufacturer itself. The fact that a download of the software is only possible with two further clicks does not contradict this. The decisive factor is solely that the readers of the report are directed directly to the website via the link set. It is also irrelevant that readers can find the product via a search engine as well. By setting the link, finding the product is made "inconveniently easier" and the risk of infringing on legal rights is significantly increased.
I consider myself - and a large part of the German internet user base - quite capable of finding a product at least as quickly with a search engine and a manufacturer name as well as a product name as with a manufacturer link (depending on the manufacturer's presence, the way via search engine can even be more efficient).
Ok, if the judges explicitly want to exclude themselves from this circle of minimally competent users, fine. But I consider a judgment that presupposes such incompetence in users as a personal insult.
That they did not throw press freedom overboard as well can almost be seen as a stroke of luck in this case ...
Government study warns of blockade by software patents:
The study urgently demands, in particular, a strengthening of the interoperability clause in the planned EU legal framework. Otherwise, given the still "generous" practice of the European Patent Office (EPA) in granting protection rights for computer programs, there is a risk of destabilization and partial death of the IT market in Germany and Europe.
But Clement - our super pipe of all - still claims that everything is completely made up and that we should keep the church in the village. What a charade at the expense of our own economic location.
And the German companies against software patents won't bother him much either - probably he hears nothing because his head is still up the ass of the big entrepreneurs. That puts pressure on the ear ...
... is the Merkel pear becoming more and more similar optically? I was already unsettled by the metamorphosis of sneaker-Joschka into the Genscher sticker, but I'm starting to worry if we don't have a few stereotypes in Germany that compulsively want to be filled - no matter with whom.
Or are they Bauhaus politicians - form follows function?
Mysterious ...
Found via rabenhorst and IsoTopp: How a conference organized by the BSI deals with critical voices - they simply remove them from the planning.
The BSI is an institution under the BMI - and thus our beloved Otto Orwell. Has someone at the BSI gotten cold feet that they could upset the actual master of the house?
A Response to the Noise is photomatt's response to the search engine spamming story. As I read through it, I once again notice how incredibly stupid decent programmers behave outside their neatly ordered computer world...
Well, he dismantled everything that was involved and eventually Google might give him back his PageRank (update: has given back) and life goes on. His explanation sounds stupid enough to be believable.
"Outrage and lack of explanation" at Team Gerolsteiner, because Danilo Hondo tested positive for stimulants at the Murcia Round. Oh shit.
I hope that was a mistake or there is an explanation (medication or something similar). Otherwise, that would be pretty bad, especially for Team Gerolsteiner, which has gained quite a bit of sympathy - precisely because of its rather human appearances, it comes across much better than the T-Mobile team.
Call for strict regulation on organ donations:
Those who do not want to donate organs should not receive any in an emergency, says the President of the German Society for Internal Medicine, Manfred Weber.
He probably took the Hippopotamus Oath rather than the Hippocratic one ...
Seen at Netzbuch: Wordpress Website's Search Engine Spam - photomatt funds WordPress servers and the first WordPress employee through search engine spam. This is done through articles and hidden links to various high-cost search terms that then point to search engine spam pages provided by a service provider. photomatt is just the middleman - the spam bot, only he doesn't spam comments but search engine results.
In German: that's absolute crap. Such behavior is - especially for someone who suffers massively from spammers with his software - absolutely unacceptable behavior. The talk of "if the community doesn't like it, I'll stop" is bullshit - why did he even start such crap? Especially since blog software is repeatedly accused of being a search engine polluter, one should be very careful in this area with stupid ideas and not pour more oil on the fire ...
At the same time, this is another good reason for me to use GPL software: if it were a company whose actions I cannot accept, I would have to refrain from using the software. So I can continue to use the software - because the actual programmer is relatively indifferent, I can fork it anytime and go my own way with the software. The separation between the software provider and the software itself is much more open.
Let's see what comes out of the community discussion on the topic, if necessary, it's time for a fork ...
First fallout: wordpress.org has been removed from the Google index.
And since the discussion about the financing of projects keeps coming up and is used as an excuse for the behavior: sorry, but that's bullshit. You can't sanctify the means with the purpose - someone who suffers massively from spammers and indeed fights against them cannot resort to similar means. And yes, it is and remains spam: anyone who abuses search engines - and thus the searchers! - to push their ranking is a search engine spammer. Period. The comment spammers also like to excuse themselves by saying they only use open resources and don't really spam - bullshit, both.
Schröder: Arms deliveries to China even against the will of the Bundestag - where would we end up if the opinion of the Bundestag mattered at all, when you can properly export weapons to a country where political opponents - if they are lucky - disappear in prison for life, people are regularly executed and human rights are generally considered a problem for other people.
The economy must hum, and if it's only the arms industry. This does not create jobs - after all, the arms industry is rationalized like no other economic sector - but it brings money to the moneybags and that's the only thing that counts. And ultimately, it is only consistent: in one's own country, employees are sacrificed for the stock price and in China then the political opponents and other inconvenient people.
What a real industrial chancellor is, he does not care about human lives or democracy.
On the topic of software patents, I also contacted the BMWA by fax. While the BMJ sent a polite and factual - albeit, in my opinion, somewhat dreamy and detached from reality given Minister Clement's course - response, the BMWA adopts a tone that I find somewhat snippy (annoyed?):
Dear Mr. ..., thank you for your fax dated March 06, 2005, in which you address the adoption of the directive on computer-implemented inventions in the first reading.
I do not share your criticism of the procedure at all.
The purely formal adoption of a text already decided is absolutely usual, indeed mandatory, due to the linguistic diversity in the EU. This is also the view of the Member States, which had or have substantive concerns. This has nothing to do with disregarding democratic rules of the game. The directive is, by the way, by no means adopted yet.
We are certainly in agreement on the objective. I can assure you that the positive economic development of the software industry is close to my heart. However, the often-expressed claims that patent protection for software would be newly introduced or expanded are factually incorrect. Despite all criticism in detail, one should "keep the church in the village".
The German software industry has developed economically well under the existing legal framework with computer program patents. This will not change fundamentally through international harmonization. We are explicitly not taking the path in Europe that is rather progressive and, above all, hostile to small and medium-sized enterprises, as in the USA. The two legal systems differ significantly here.
Yours sincerely on behalf of
Thomas Zuleger
Well. Suspension of democratic decisions and ignoring one's own federal parliament is for Minister Clement just mandatory. Great. Really gives me confidence that we will be well represented by this minister on this issue ...
Reading through the report at Heise, it all sounds rather like collusion in favor of VeriSign - the biggest rip-off merchant in the domain business. Pretty absurd, the whole allocation, if indeed the company that has been accused of unfair practices in recent times (pre-registration of IDN domains without basis, wildcard A-record on .com) gets the contract. I suspect the problem with deNic was simply that it is not a US company, because Internet administration is still far too US-centric.
Study certifies Windows as more secure than Linux - of course, if I compare the security of RedHat and Windows and find out that the company RedHat is even slower than Microsoft, then I conclude that Linux is less secure than Windows. Because it is completely unthinkable that people who operate servers either run essential packages from upstream or get their patches from elsewhere. And there are naturally no other distributions than those of a company that charges exorbitant prices for open source and otherwise behaves in business more like Microsoft. And all of this financed by Microsoft. This is certainly a very relevant study.
The fact that it is nowhere considered whether the respective errors could actually be used for attacks and whether they are relevant for the scenario at all - who cares. Let's just throw everything into one pile. The fact that Microsoft does not publish all bugs and therefore an objective assessment of open bugs in Windows is completely impossible - who cares. The fact that it is nowhere independently documented when Microsoft was first aware of a bug and therefore an assessment of the actual duration during which one was unprotected from the respective bug is not possible - who cares. The fact that Microsoft has recently introduced bugs again (I recall the LAND attack), which had been around for a long time and that this casts a pretty bad light on their development methodology - who cares.
But how they now believe that anyone could see this as an objective measurement of vulnerability and why such things are labeled under the keyword "Research", I find really ridiculous ...
Missed the all-around view. Anyone who also wants to check out the toy: theoretically, I should be able to send invites. If you think I actually should have passed you an invite and really want one to check it out: speak up. Oh yeah, you need a Yahoo ID for that. Oh, and if you want an invite even though I've never linked to your blog here or know you from anywhere: at least come up with an interesting reason why I should invite you.
The Cat2Tag Plugin is something that was still missing for my photo blog: a way to work with WordPress categories like Flickr tags.
The most common tags (20 pieces, can be changed to all) are offered in a small JavaScript bar and additionally there is an input field for tags in which you can simply manually enter further ones (or click on the most common ones from the list). The default category is simply listed as a word in the tag list. New tags can be created simply by using the same. Very practical.
The hierarchy of the categories is of course not displayed - but this is not really interesting with tags anyway, the hierarchy does not play a real role with tags. Similarly, the tag description (category description) is not maintained, which must then be manually edited afterwards if you want to have something meaningful there (e.g. for the feeds).
The plugin still has one problem: it does not correctly convert the sharp s "ß" when shortening umlauts from tag names. But this seems to be a problem that WordPress also has - even when manually creating categories, the "ß" is not correctly resolved. One should therefore be careful with them. And of course, umlauts are not converted to their long form but to their base form - "ä" becomes "a". This makes the tag URLs somewhat problematic, as users need to know how the tag name is converted to the URL if they want to hack the URL themselves. But this is also a general problem of internationalization.
An idea for improvement would be an additional query string rule with which URLs with tag combinations (nature+animals) could be realized.
Otherwise, however, a really nice plugin with a very practical functionality for me.
... won David Kopp. Not Zabel. Not Hondo. On the contrary, Hondo completely miscalculated by focusing on Zabel and could only manage a training sprint in the main field. One might say that they forgot about cycling altogether due to all the tactics. Above all, Holzer's decision to bring Rene Haselbacher back to be prepared for a potential merger was probably just a shot in the dark - if you don't bring about the merger, you only lose a good sprinter in a chasing group.
Great for Wiesenhof to be able to field the winner in such a well-known race. And superb performance by David Kopp, who apparently had endless strength today.
APLX is an APL2 implementation for various systems: Linux, Windows, Mac OS X. Unfortunately, it's a bit expensive - there's only a cheaper Personal version for Linux, otherwise there's only an Evaluation version for Mac. And how they solved the problem with the APL special characters is not mentioned there - presumably via combined keys or something similar. I wouldn't know if there is an APL-USB keyboard.
Somehow, I would like to play around with APL again - the language is wonderfully crazy and has a few corners that even today (except in languages like J and K of course, conditionally also in Sisal) can find their match. Specifically, the ability to process entire arrays of values at once and combine them with powerful Higher-Order functions is really exciting.
J is now also available in an OS X version, unfortunately only from 10.3 onwards. Would be another alternative, J can be considered as APL-in-ASCII (although it offers a whole range of improvements in language theory compared to APL).
Funny thing, this: suddenly my PowerBook refuses to play sound. Nothing comes out. I can adjust the settings as much as I want - no external sound, no internal sound. Not even the system start gets its sound - everything is mute. Resetting Open Firmware and resetting Parameter Ram didn't help either.
I had already had strange phenomena with the sound: every time the internal sound wanted to make the system block briefly at the first attempt. As if the sound chip had some kind of problem. But that should be noticed during the hardware test of the motherboard - nothing, the test runs smoothly through. Damn. Ok, I have Apple Care for such purposes and will simply call them and then probably at some point take my PowerBook to the dealer for repair - but in the meantime I won't have a computer at home and that's annoying. Ok, I have the company Mac and I'll probably make it ready in such a way that I can simply carry it back and forth between home and work (a Mac Mini is luckily not much to carry), but it's somehow annoying when something like this happens just because of stupid sound stories. But I also don't want to give up feeding the system from iTunes on the computer ...
freshmeat.net: Project details for DrScheme: Yeeeehaaaa!!!! DrScheme is becoming Unicode-capable. Very nice. Ok, the other features sound very good too, especially the portable continuations for threads - opens up quite new possibilities for mischief in the code.
In any case, the best Scheme environment continues to evolve and is getting even better.
Well, there are days in an admin's life that hurt but are necessary: I'm currently playing around with a spam filter (DSPAM) that stores its statistics in an SQL database. The spam filter supports a variety of database drivers, including PostgreSQL and MySQL, and a few other non-client-server databases (SQLite, etc.). So, out of habit, I first reached for PostgreSQL - it was already running on the machine.
Well, it was a bit slow at the beginning and the machine was a bit overloaded, but I found a few tips on the net with which one could make PostgreSQL run faster for DSPAM. After that, the computer didn't run particularly fast, but significantly faster than before. So, let it run through the night.
Well, the next day the rude awakening: tons of blocked processes, pig-slow updates against the database, deadly performance when learning a mail: 12 minutes runtime is no exception. Ouch. The database dump is already 100 MB in size at this point. The whole thing is not particularly exciting when the system load is always between 3 and 6 ... Ok, so bite the bullet and install and configure the index card box MySQL. Then bring Exim back up and sort the waiting mails. Effect: total load explosion. Loads above 30 and then at some point the watchdog struck and booted. Oh shit. All clear, let's see what's actually in the box: yeah, only 256 MB of memory and the MySQL server got massively into paging. He can't help it if I just don't have enough memory. PostgreSQL had fewer problems with that because PostgreSQL's memory management is much more static and the server doesn't grab so much memory in the basic configuration.
Ok, Jutta swapped the memory with her Linux box and now the server has 512 MB of memory, which is enough for the purpose. And the system load with MySQL is significantly better than anything before. Ok, I could certainly also bring PostgreSQL to better performance with a larger configuration, but the problem was, according to the symptoms, the massive number of parallel updates and the multi-version transaction technique of the server - that was definitely in the way in this concrete case.
Note: MySQL is still only a glorified index card box and MyISAM is definitely the dumbest table format you can choose, but no technology is so stupid that you can't need it from time to time. If the data is completely transaction-free - because the SQL server is simply being misused as a data storage without a real business data model with great referential integrity - then you should simply not use a database whose focus is exactly the opposite. In this case, MySQL and MyISAM are simply the better choice.
It's definitely better than Berkley-DB or other in-process databases, because they can only work reliably via file locking and with the massive parallel updates that DSPAM makes (it learns - depending on the setting - with every mail and updates its statistical basis) a database on a file system basis is extremely unfavorable.
Now I'll wait for the next night and see how DSPAM struggles with the nightly mail pile and how the system looks tomorrow, when several thousand mails have been processed (yes, with only two users we consume gigantic amounts of mail traffic - primarily due to mountains of spam, mountains of administrative mails from various systems and mountains of mailing lists). Let's see if the system is still as fast tomorrow as it is today. I'm afraid that with the amount of mail I will also push the MySQL base for DSPAM to the limit of the possible ...
Update: so far, things look very good with the load, so the index card box actually has the nose ahead
Nette Butterbrotdose
Now comes the annoying setup and loading of all the data again. But I've already done the most important part. A few perversions are still outstanding (connecting my old Ergo-PS2-keyboard to the Mac via adapter and plugging in the ancient Logitech Trackman) and of course installing all those many little helpers that I have gotten used to in the last time (but I will probably use the opportunity again to take an axe to the selection).
Unfortunately, I couldn't afford an Apple display and now have a very bright BenQ that also shamelessly ignores the brightness control.
The BMJ has responded today - quite modern via e-mail sent PDF
Similarly, there is a conflict with the actual practice of the EU Patent Office: this does indeed grant non-technical patents, as can be seen from the absurd patent on the g eographic separation of data records by vehicle registration numbers, which has just failed in court (but only under current law!). Under a patent grant change as Clement envisages (and which, according to the BMJ, should not actually exist and would not happen) such a patent might be viable.
Of course, there is still no answer to my fax to Clement, which was only at the beginning of this month, it will certainly be April before an answer arrives ...
The Schiavo Case - A Tragedy Between Life and Death:
When he [President Bush] was still governor of Texas, Bush frequently made decisions about life and death. Ruthlessly. In no case was there a stay of execution for the condemned, in no single case did the right to life guaranteed by the constitution play a role.
Well, political calculation fought out on the backs of people - nobody really cares about the actual people. Only the religious right wants to show off again and then the law is trampled on and the decision-making authority of courts and states is simply ignored.
... are dialer scammers who set up alleged drug info sites that only contain dialer links, of course do not contain any information about the prices (and are therefore not allowed in Germany) and then also advertise for this dialer crap with blog spam. On top of that, they hide behind an Austrian address - probably just a mailbox company.
Dialer scams make me sick. When they come together with blog spammers, I can't eat as much as I want to vomit.
This has also been noticed elsewhere a few days ago here.
Yahoo buys Flickr - which is one of the reasons why I no longer entrust my data to central services but do everything myself (and am currently working on a site based on WordPress with a few self-knitted plugins - stay tuned). I experienced this with OneList, I went through it with eGroups. Yahoo buys it and then there are tons of transition pains when merging the accounts. And afterwards there are tons of ads on the pages, forced ads on interstitial pages and all sorts of nonsense.
Unfortunately, social software is often operated by antisocial guys ...
Stolpe recommends: Highways for the upswing, yes, very big ideas:
"There must be no more delay tactics by environmental associations. The sudden discovery of hamsters to block ongoing construction projects will no longer be possible," Stolpe told the magazine "Focus".
Of course, the evil environmental associations prevent the highway enthusiasts from being able to pave the entire republic - with even more shitty roads that no one needs, while the existing roads are rotting away because no repairs are carried out (or if they are, such botch jobs occur that they have to be repeated after a short time).
young world from 03/18/2005 - ARD institutions against jW - what the ARD broadcasting institutions spend our GEZ fees on. Hmm. If public broadcasters take action against free press, does that then threaten cultural diversity and is that then a quite sufficient reason for a boycott call against the GEZ?
Search engine operator must stand for defamatory entries - please what?
Since no nude pictures of the moderator could actually be found on the Internet, the mere allegation of the existence of such nude photos already violates the general right of personality protected under Section 823 of the Civil Code (BGB) and obliges to refrain from such allegations.
May I translate that: because the judge has interpreted something into the given search query that isn't even there (that old pig), the dirty imagination of the judge is a violation of the search engine's personality rights against the moderator, which doesn't even appear on the page.
Search engines do not make any statements about their search results - they only provide hits for a keyword query. Has someone once again confused cause with symptom? Apart from that: where the hell is the alleged allegation to be seen - only in the fact that search results were found for given keywords? What a ridiculous nonsense.
Or is it just the attempt of a lawyer to provide his unemployed colleagues in the warning faction with lucrative sources of income with little effort delivered to the doorstep? I'm just asking. Quite innocently.
For the Münster locals: Köster near the train station is selling Contax N1 equipment (bodies, lenses) at quite good prices. These are likely remainder stock from the dissolution of Contax Germany. Since Kyocera is exiting the photography business and thus Contax is at an end for now, this could be the last opportunity to acquire one or the other lens. The lenses are manufactured by Zeiss and also serviced by Zeiss...
Well, the Federal Schröder really wants to blow money up the ass of big corporations through corporate tax cuts. Yes, exactly, the companies that either made huge profits and laid off large numbers of employees, or alternatively made huge losses and laid off large numbers of employees while increasing executive salaries. This will definitely boost the job market.
And the opposition? They call what the Chancellor proposes conceptless, which is correct - we already knew that. Because these are partly exactly the demands that Merkelnix and the Oberstauber themselves have made - and what the opposition is doing has been completely conceptless for quite some time ...
What I don't quite understand is how this nonsense is supposed to combat unemployment? Oh, the highways that the Federal Schröder wants to build (or whatever great traffic projects he has in mind). Well, then our tanks will soon be rolling quickly to Hindukush, where they are supposed to defend the Basic Law according to Strucki. Although this is actually much more urgently needed here in this country given Otto Orwell and the sheer incompetence of the Ministry of Justice (but perhaps it's better not to, given the rather strange attitudes in the Bundeswehr ...).
Somehow, the German politicians and their market rhetoric would be much funnier if they were governing a country other than precisely the country in which one lives ...
Linux Unsuitable for Large Enterprises? At least that's what the Agility Alliance claims. And who are they? Let's take a look at Pro-Linux:
The Agility Alliance, a coalition of various industry heavyweights such as EDS, Fuji Xerox, Cisco, Microsoft, Sun, Dell, and EMC, warns large enterprises against using Linux due to security concerns, scalability issues, and a lack of compelling cost advantages.
Ok. Microsoft. SUN. Cisco. These are, of course, three companies that are particularly predestined to recommend the use of Linux to enterprises.
Rasmussen's particular concern is the potential use of Linux on mainframes, so-called supercomputers. Here, the Agility Alliance believes that Linux does not have a compelling cost advantage over the operating systems promoted by the initiative and also has scalability issues.
Well. Where is IBM in this group - I mean, when it comes to mainframes, wouldn't it be practical if there was someone involved who actually offers real mainframes? Oh, I see, IBM does indeed promote the use of Linux on the mainframe. Well, well, the scoundrels ...
After the Job Summit: Agreement on Tax Cuts - great concept. We don't have any money, but we give it away to companies. Who then screw us over again and cut more jobs, which means fewer people consume even less, and in the end, the economy complains again. And everyone pats themselves on the back for the great achievement they have accomplished.
In Kiel, the prime minister has to fail at a traitor from her own ranks and is probably forced into a grand coalition. In Berlin, pure lack of planning and stupidity is enough, without any elections. But the Berlin proletarians are really good at making decisions against the citizens ...