Artikel - 22.9.2004 - 29.9.2004

Attack on Free Network Structures

How the far right attempts to eliminate unwelcome voices online through cease-and-desist letters.

At Der Schockwellenreiter I found the original article.

Federal Court of Justice examines right of withdrawal in eBay auctions

Hmm. On one hand, it wouldn't be uninteresting for the buyer - but for the (at least private) seller, it becomes tricky, because what about the right of withdrawal if payment and shipping have already taken place? The reversal would then be rather annoying, especially if you're left holding the shipping costs. Let's see what decision comes out of this.

It's also interesting how the eBay selling fee would be handled - in the event of a buyer's withdrawal, the payment of the eBay fee would also have to be waived, at least the portion dependent on the selling price.

At tagesschau.de - Die Nachrichten der ARD there is the original article.

Commodore 32 - Standalone Z-Machine

Funny. A machine that executes Z-Code directly - the nice text adventures from Infocom. And in design they're modeled after the old Commodore machines. And now there's a programming competition for text adventures for it.

I can't really imagine it will appeal to a large market, but it's funny anyway

Here's the original article.

CSU does not want to abolish free learning materials after all

Wow. Even the CSU in Bavaria is still capable of learning ...

At tagesschau.de - Die Nachrichten der ARD there's the original article.

Frontier Open Source is here

Complete with a weblog about news, download page with sources and binaries. I'm curious to see how the portability turns out - the whole thing was created with CodeWarrior, which already limits those who can build it. Especially on OS X, hardly anyone would have bought CodeWarrior anymore.

Here's the original article.

Well, there is still something positive sometimes ...

From the WDR Münster ticker (unfortunately neither RSS nor permalinks): The CDU in Münster has abandoned its plans for a parking garage at the Ludgeri roundabout. With this, the party drew consequences from Sunday's election. It became clear that the CDU would not find a majority with the parking garage. The incumbent CDU mayor Berthold Tillmann just missed the 50 percent hurdle in the municipal election and must now go to a runoff.

OK, what they didn't quite reveal: the Union+FDP has no majority in the council, but rather has equal votes with the others. Only if they get their candidate through in the mayoral runoff do they have - but only with the mayor's vote! - a voting majority. Could well be that something like that pressed their decision button a bit.

Devilish grin

Regardless of why and how, the main thing is that this idiotic hole - in landscape and city coffers - doesn't come ...

The usual economic hand-wringing crowd - summarized in our Münster Business Initiative - of course immediately started complaining. And immediately got pushback: The Münster Business Initiative reacted irritably to the CDU's decision to abandon plans for a parking garage at the Ludgeri roundabout. It was a fatal knee-jerk reaction that would harm the city. Sparkasse Münsterland Ost, on the other hand, reacted calmly. The shopping center that Sparkasse is currently building in the city center will flourish even without these parking spaces.

This business initiative, by the way, has an impressive homepage - if you search for them, you only find cases for the Under Construction Club. Well, they're getting nervous too, I think: the retail trade is for the most part not in agreement with their position - all the merchants around the Ludgeri roundabout have anti-parking garage signs hanging in their windows.

And if anyone wonders why they pulled it off the table so quickly: on 10/10 there's a runoff for the mayor and the opposing candidate is running his campaign mainly on the hole at the Ludgeri roundabout. So don't just believe that the Union suddenly discovered its heart for the citizens, they're just nervous that they might lose the runoff and then lack a majority in the council to do anything. Even so it will be exciting enough - just takes one Union council member or FDP council member to get sick and there's trouble ...

Hasselblad to Distribute New Zeiss Ikon Camera System

That's quite interesting then - Hasselblad getting involved. According to the rumors, there's a Voigtlaender body behind it. However, the images look quite different - the usual remnants of the mirror box from the Bessas are missing (the Bessas are based on an old SLR housing from Nikon). So if this is actually a new body and Zeiss is really involved in the design and both Hasselblad and Zeiss want to stand by their names for quality - then this could become an interesting M-body. Especially since the M7 body doesn't really offer many advantages over the M6 body, an alternative body with automatic shutter speeds could be exciting.

At PhotographyBLOG you can find the original article.

Mamiya ZD and digital back

A few more details. I think the price should be somewhat higher for 22 megapixels than for the usual KB digital SLRs.

At Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com) you can find the original article.

Mamiya ZD datasheet at digitalkamera.de

Completely flew by me: Mamiya has a digital SLR for their 645 system in their lineup. Could be interesting.

Here's the original article.

More Space for .Mac

Well, with 1 GB it costs 149 euros per year. Still not cheap, but at least you can now get iDisk sizes where Apple's backup program could actually make sense. The earlier 100 MB was rather ridiculous — and now even with the standard account for 99 euros you at least have 250 MB that can be freely distributed between Mail and iDisk.

Still, I prefer to stick with my own server. It would be nice if Apple gave .Mac an open interface so you could use the .Mac tools with your private server. Because some functions are quite limited — especially in the iLive program suite.

At MacGuardians you can find the original article.

Leaning Tower of Cologne

Doesn't always have to be Pisa, especially since it reminds us of our poor school education

Here's the original article.

Leaning Tower of Cologne: Investigation

The 44-meter-high tower of Cologne's St. Johann Baptist Church tilted about one meter to the side during the past night and threatens to collapse. Now the public prosecutor's office is investigating the responsible construction manager. - yeah, but that's definitely going to be difficult, investigating the construction manager of St. Johann Baptist Church. Or should the WDR have forgotten to copy an essential piece of information in the summary?

The original article is available at WDR.de (link).

Lawyer Denies Knowledge of FTPWelt Operator's Actions

Sure. The syndic doesn't know what his clients are doing on a server. And sure, he simply believes that taxation isn't necessary - after all, there's an aspiring tax advisor involved. Yeah. If the syndic really believed so much nonsense, then he should be thrown out of the bar association for stupidity.

Here's the original article.

Federal Office for Radiation Protection: Caution when handling mobile phones

Yes, and at the same time, the expansion of radio cells for mobile networks and UMTS is being pushed ahead. Very consistent, the whole thing. Because the power of the transmission cells is significantly higher - and for people living directly near these cells then also significantly higher than having 10 mobile phones glued to your head.

But then the interests of the economy have to be protected, which is why transmission cells are still allowed to be mounted directly on residential buildings.

Economic interests and boosting consumption is still far more important than actually protecting people from the negative effects of these interests.

At heise online news there is the original article.

CDU plans reduction of employee rights

Oh yes, what a brave new world. Work, die young and have no rights in between. That's what the CDU imagines its nirvana to be.

The fact that even today small companies can fire employees without any problem (and in practice employment protection is already suspended or very unreliably enforceable there), that even today lower-level jobs are paid less and that even today work hour extensions without wage compensation are commonplace—the Union conveniently ignores all this.

Populism rules.

At tagesschau.de - Die Nachrichten der ARD you can find the original article.

Contax i4R

Looks like a lighter

At Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com) you can find the original article.

Rollei Renewed

Though the mini projectors are quite cute - somehow the Rollei medium format camera system around the 6008 appeals to me more. Or perhaps as an anachronism the twin-lens reflex.

At heise online news there's the original article.

Adobe wants to establish a uniform format for digital camera raw data

I can't imagine that will catch on. After all, the special thing about RAW is that it usually (not always - some manufacturers are already playing games with the data here too) contains the raw data from the chips. And those are definitely not always identical. At least with high-end cameras. Just think of things like Foveon or Fuji CCDs.

But I've already experienced firsthand what joys RAW formats can bring with software: for exactly that reason, I still use an old version of iView Multimedia Pro, because the newer versions can no longer import CRW data. Ok, it's the fault of the software manufacturer, who is simply too incompetent to transfer bugfixes from one version to a new version, but it's already a hint at the fun that these wonderful digital negatives bring us. I can also only read my images from the Kodak DCS 520 with Kodak's own software; other software can indeed read Kodak RAWs from newer models, but not the old ones based on TIFF (where Kodak used proprietary TIFF extensions). As soon as the Kodak software no longer runs on my Mac, those digital negatives are worthless there.

So a common format wouldn't be bad at all. Maybe you could make it flexible enough to really represent all variants - TIFF at least offers the technical basis for this with its tag format. Whether all programs can then read all variants, or whether one or another variant will be omitted anyway (and you'll be lost again for that reason), remains to be seen.

At the moment, interestingly, a proprietary format is probably the best choice for archiving digital negatives: the Photoshop PSD format with embedded EktaSpace color space. After all, it can represent the full color space (and a bit more - it was originally intended for archiving scans of slides) and the format has so far been readable by all newer software versions. TIFF with appropriately embedded color space would probably work too - but the layers are not implemented as portably there - not every program reads them the same way. With PSD, you can nicely save some preprocessing of your digital negative that you can always discard later. And PSD can be decoded by far more programs than just Photoshop.

Ok, I'll probably get around to converting all my RAW files to PSD in the next few days.

By the way, what I would really prefer would be if the necessary extensions were made to the PNG format and it could be used. But unfortunately things still look pretty bleak there with software support for the extended features. And to my knowledge, there is still no usable standard for storing editing layers.

At heise online news there is the original article.

Four-Thirds Newcomer: Olympus E-300

Not a watt is the ugly

At heise online news there is the original article.

Massive asteroid flies close past Earth

Missed again...

At Telepolis News (27.09.2004) you can find the original article.

Security vulnerability was known to eBay for a long time

Look, the cause is obvious: the eBay managers are simply incompetent. Otherwise they would have banned and filtered foreign JavaScript long ago. Any dummy adds something like that to his software after a friendly visitor has left behind a JavaScript bomb. But for eBay, that's only a theoretical problem. Yeah, those great experts. The original article is at heise online news with the full story.

Sweet Surprise in Gas and Dust Nebula

Look, the gas clouds are actually just cotton candy at the cosmic fair

At Telepolis News (27.09.2004) you can find the original article.

Ullrich withdraws from world's TT

So then Peschel is finally allowed to take a turn.

You can find the original article at VeloNews: The Journal of Competitive Cycling.

Municipal Elections Münster

So the mayoral election unfortunately turned out much as expected. However, Tillmann apparently didn't manage 50 percent, so it looks like we'll be going to the polls again on 10.10. Unfortunately, the mayoral election results don't give me much hope that it will be better then. With the council election it's exciting. Extremely close for Union+FDP. But I fear that won't stop them from continuing their reckless nonsense, even if together they only just scrape over 50 percent. Presumably these nutcases will now bury our tax money under the Ludgeri Circle and destroy the promenade in that area through clear-cutting in the name of upgrading it - as they call it. Fantastic. Particularly annoying: in part this will probably be due to the idiots who didn't vote as a protest against government policy and would normally have voted SPD. No, the municipal election is not the right place to protest federal politics, you blunderers. In municipal elections it's about what happens on your doorstep - and that's exactly where a completely pointless and overpriced parking garage will now probably be built instead of a green space with old trees. Thanks to you too.

However, the district elections for Mitte district are at least encouraging in the results. A strong advantage for Red+Green. That's how I would have preferred it for all of Münster.

T-Mobile with new management from 2006

Can only get better.

At Radsport-News.com I found the original article.

Big tours pull from ProTour

The End of the ProTour Before Its Beginning?

At VeloNews: The Journal of Competitive Cycling you can find the original article.

Serious Security Vulnerability at Ebay

Haven't they fixed that JavaScript hole yet? Pathetic.

At NETZEITUNG.DE Internet there's the original article.

Schily: More Power for the Federal Government in the Fight Against Terror

Federal authorities would need to have the final say over state authorities, according to the minister. He said this was necessary to act appropriately in combating terrorism. - yeah right, the omnipotence fantasies of a federal interior minister. You can almost imagine Schily drooling at the corner of his mouth while formulating his demands. If you have nothing to show for success and lack competence, then you try it with pure power accumulation. Doesn't help anything, but at least you can then cover up the debacles better.

Wasn't there something about federalism in the Basic Law?

At tagesschau.de - Die Nachrichten der ARD you can find the original article.

BDR President Sylvia Schenk steps down

Unfortunately, this doesn't solve the BDR's problems - there are other functionary blockheads there, things won't change much. Probably just a sacrificial lamb, the resignation.

I found the original article at Radsport-News.com.

Chronicle Mass Pileup in Space

The Universe - a classic bottom-up development?

Here you can find the original article.

GROKLAW - SCO never compared current sources

Well, that's really embarrassing when you have to admit in court that you haven't actually compared the current sources, but instead rely on an internal study from 1999 - not a bunch of experts constantly combing through the sources. All that time wasted and in the end you had to admit you did nothing. Embarrassing, very embarrassing. But the "we need help" from SCO is really amusing. Sorry folks, but nobody can help you anymore

Teufelsgrinsen

Also amusing is the fact that Kernel 2.4, which SCO was particularly targeting, was only started in 1999 - and wasn't available until 2001. In 1999, 2.2 had just been released, so SCO could hardly have had access to the 2.4 kernel back then. Yet they claim that precisely 2.4 and 2.6 are problematic - even though according to their own statement they never compared the sources.

Here's the original article.

heise online - IETF's anti-spam working group MARID strikes its sails

Since there is no prospect of consensus and achieving the stated goal -- a standard proposal by August 2004 -- he and the MARID chiefs decided to close the group. - yes, sorry, but if it's not until the end of September that one realizes the deadline in August can no longer be met, then perhaps one should put a calendar on the desk.

Otherwise, the whole procedure is an absolute debacle. I agree with the voices that the prevention of discussion about patent problems is a reason for the debacle. Patent claims on IETF algorithms should be cleared up early - because especially with such important infrastructure decisions, one must not hand over the reins to corporations that can then exploit it. And anyone who believes that Microsoft wouldn't have used such leverage to hinder the GPL is someone who puts on their pants with pliers...

And yes, it is a serious problem that there will now be no IETF proposal for the foreseeable future. Because this opens the door wide for Microsoft's unilateral action. Let's hope that spam prevention doesn't become the crowbar with which Microsoft cracks open the server market on the Internet.

Here is the original article.

Intel against 'Inside' websites

And the brand squabble continues. However, claiming the word inside as a trademark is already pretty audacious. At NETZEITUNG.DE Internet you can find the original article.

MetaOCaml Homepage

A very cool project: OCaml - already one of the most beautiful functional programming languages - is being extended with multistage programming. In principle, this is comparable to macros from Common Lisp or Scheme - but of course defined in a functionally clean way. Through multistage programming, OCaml now allows the creation of mini-languages for specific problem domains and code generation in these mini-languages - without the whole thing becoming inefficient due to execution overhead. However, I haven't yet looked into whether it comes anywhere close to the power of Common Lisp macros.

Here's the original article.

py2app builds its first .app

Bob Ippolito has developed a tool for the simple creation of Python-based OS X applications to the point where it compiles its first Python application. The advantage of his method: no compiler is needed and you work entirely in Python - for small tools certainly useful, since the development environment is often simply overkill for that purpose.

Here is the original article.

Sam Ruby: Copy and Paste

A nice and detailed explanation of meta tags with character set specifications, the HTTP Content-Type header with character set specification, and what browsers do with it. I always say it: the web is a technical garbage heap that just happens to work amazingly well despite that.

The original article can be found here.

SZOn - "Sammlung Cremer" goes to Münster

The painting "Monochrome bleu" by Yves Klein and the "Cremer Collection" with more than 180 works of Nouveau Réalisme and the Fluxus movement will now be on view in Münster. - so if you're looking for a reason to visit Münster, this stuff is hanging in the Landesmuseum

Here's the original article.

Bavaria Abolishes Free Learning Materials

Another step towards denying or making education more difficult for those with little money. Because whoever has little money will think twice about whether to send their children to a gymnasium - paying 3 years more in book fees hurts.

Education is far too important to be prevented through cost-cutting measures. When you then look at what money is squandered on in Bavaria and how funds are lost through dubious dealings, something like this makes you even angrier.

But that was already clear from the discussion about elite universities: today elites are defined only by how much money the parents have.

At tagesschau.de - Die Nachrichten der ARD you can find the original article.

Fall Hamilton: Vuelta B Test Positive

Sounds somehow like a career end.

At Radsport-News.com I found the original article.

Jenoptik Announces 22 Megapixel Eyelike eMotion²² Digital Back

Weird. Jenoptik is actually rather known for extremely cheap digital cameras that are preferably marketed through Aldi and similar retail chains. I associate high-end digital backs for medium format cameras much less with Jenoptik. But at least they love extremes

At PhotographyBLOG there's the original article.

Lisp news from Rainer Joswig

Very interesting. Unfortunately still no RSS feed, but I found quite a bit on it that wasn't on Planet Lisp or my other Lisp sources. For example, the fact that Loom is now open source (back then I had to put in considerable effort to get a license - though it was free). When I read through all this Lisp stuff, I'm really itching to do more with it. I just have no idea where I'm going to find the time...

Update: a friendly spirit dropped a link to the RSS feed in the comments

Here's the original article.

LyX WikiWiki - LyX.Mac

Great – there's a native Mac version of LyX. One of the most interesting word processors – the structured text entered is converted to LaTeX or DocBook and then processed into print output with correspondingly powerful formatting tools. Installation is a bit fiddly though, due to the additional required software (teTeX, Ghostscript and a few other things).

Here's the original article.

OpenMCL-McCLIM-beagle-backend.jpg

Very cool! OpenMCL apparently will soon have a CLIM based on Cocoa — a prototype is already in CVS. Now if only the tools from Genera were ported to OpenMCL and I wouldn't need to turn on my Symbolics anymore

Here's the original article.

Statistical programming with R

Part 1: Dabbling with a wealth of statistical facilities

For all number crunchers.

Here is the original article.

TeX on Mac OS X

A distribution of teTeX and various useful utilities for TeX as an installer. This makes the installation of LyX easier, since all the installers are GUI-guided.

Here you can find the original article.

woodshed productions: Dialogue between web designer and search engine robot

Great! Definitely worth reading!

Here you can find the original article.

Disgusting ...

... when you listen to arrogant officials talking about how a man detained in Guantanamo lost his residence permit because he failed to report within 6 months after leaving the country - even though he was imprisoned there where he couldn't report. Because contact restrictions apply there. And nobody knows what he's accused of - sometimes it's not even told to the detainees. Even if he is released without being charged or convicted, he cannot return to Germany to his family - because the German authorities do not consider detention in Guantanamo to be sufficient reason to suspend the reporting deadline. Long live bureaucratic pedantry and red tape.