German Economy Still Hopes for Iraq Contracts

After all, we all want to be war profiteers ...

At tagesschau im Internet you can find the original article.

Digital Black and White

A very interesting article about digital black and white images and their processing. With good tips and tricks and pre-made Photoshop actions.

Here you can find the original article.

Eichel makes fewer debts than feared

Surely the Union is now demanding his resignation because he failed to achieve the goal they set for him

I found the original article at RP-Online: Politics.

Hanau: Proceedings against former mayor discontinued

Corruption in Hesse is This Cheap

At RP-Online: Politik I found the original article.

PanoTools plug-ins

Panorama Tools for macOS

Anyone editing panoramas under OS X needs this software. Finally, the integration of Panotools into classic OS X graphics programs (at least those that can use Photoshop plugins). Correct lens distortions, convert panoramas between different projection types, everything you need when you want a wide field of view.

Here's the original article.

SCO vs. Linux: ... and then Santa Claus came

Well, Christmas does surprise you completely every year after all.

At heise online news there is the original article.

Grinning Cats Forever?

It's alarming how we're getting closer and closer to Aldous Huxley's vision in Brave New World and even making moves to go beyond it... At Telepolis News you can find the original article.

Immunity lifted for Berlusconi

Will his opponents now pounce on him? One would certainly hope so.

I found the original article at RP-Online: Politik.

Kanther, Sain-Wittgenstein and Weyrauch go to court

Yay! Kanther in the box!

At RP-Online: Politik I found the original article.

Class, Jörg Schönenborn

Agreed. Why public broadcasters still think they're something special when they submit everything to ratings and viewership numbers anyway remains a real mystery to me. Nobody needs a trashy channel financed by fees.

The original article can be found at kulturnation.de.

MySQL 5 knows Stored Procedures

Wow! Just a few more years and this hyped-up B-Tree management can call itself a database

At heise online news there's the original article.

News: Red Hat Transfers eCos Copyright to FSF

Wow! That's cool!

Hier gibts den Originalartikel.

TV Nostalgia: 'The Waltons' Are Back

All I can think of is: Who can fart like the horn of the Waltons?

At RP-Online: Medien I found the original article.

DVD player manufacturer KiSS defends itself against allegations from MPlayer developers

It's possible that the MPlayer developers used code from Kiss. - ah yes, that sounds to me like someone wants to ride the SCO wave

At heise online news there's the original article.

Genetically modified corn soon in supermarket shelves

Who wants this? Why does this crap have to exist?

For the first time, consumers are getting the right to choose, and farmers are getting safe framework conditions - yes, thank you. Farmers actually wanted security against this crap, because genetically modified plants cause problems for organic farmers, for example, if they mix with their seeds. And the consumers - has anyone ever asked them whether they even wanted this idiotic choice?

I can also choose whether to nail a meatball to my knee.

At RP-Online: Politik I found the original article.

Intel contributes to anti-SCO Linux fund

A clear statement from Intel. Sure, they want to sell hardware - and SCO's activities are anything but designed to sell hardware.

At XMLMania.com - Google News Search: SCO I found the original article.

Localfeeds: Münster(50)

I really like this: GeoURL+RSS results in Localfeeds. And with that, an RSS feed for Münster and the surrounding area.

However, umlauts and such are pretty chaotic and the result isn't really usable with PyDS. I should try it with NetNewswire to see if it handles it better.

Here's the original article.

Aftermath of the Verisign Certificate Expiration

That a manufacturer of IT security products recommends not checking whether a certificate is still valid would probably set off alarm bells for some customers. - if I considered Symantec to be a manufacturer of security products, then that would set off my alarm bells, that's correct.

At heise online news there's the original article.

News: New Year's Eve Again for Unix Users

Very funny at the timing: There is a place in the PowerDNS daemon that stumbles over exactly this. At one point the C expression 1< <31-1 is calculated instead of (1< <31) -1. Result: since Saturday noon all PowerDNS installations have been running at maximum load, because the wait time between database queries is no longer being maintained and the database server is being bombarded with a massive number of database queries.

The problematic expression is in pdns/communicator.hh in the earliest method, which finds the domain that most urgently needs to be forwarded to the slaves, or most urgently requires an update from the master, depending on whether the server functions as master or slave or both. Details can be found in the archive of the pdns-dev mailing list. Here is the original article.

The E3 Project

Awesome: a project that writes an emulator for the TI Explorer II. So an emulator for a Lisp machine. No idea how good it already is, but maybe I'll give it a try when I have some time. Today's computers should have enough performance to bring this emulation to the same level as the original machine.

Here's the original article.

US Bomber Accidentally Drops Bomb Over Britain

First they ruined the Queen's lawn and now they're also bombing Northern England.

I found the original article at RP-Online: Politik.

Chair of Interior Ministers' Conference Calls for More Genetic Fingerprints

And further, the threat of terrorism and the supposedly endangered public safety are used to express desires for further surveillance and control.

At heise online news there is the original article.

We are forced to support genetic engineering

That's exactly the problem: we don't have real freedom of choice. Genetically modified organisms are not easy to detect - and their spread is not easy to control. Life finds a way, and if it goes across the neighbor's field or through the stomach of the pig that ends up as a steak on the plate. And all of this just to boost the profits of individual biotech companies. There's no real economic reason for this nonsense in Europe, there are no extreme environmental conditions that make growing normal plants impossible. On the contrary, there are overproductions. Genetically engineered plants designed to be resistant don't make sense in Europe. But the biotech corporations have to rip off consumers once again.

At Spiegel Online: Wissenschaft there's the original article.

FDP politician for abolition of public holidays

Great. Abolishing public holidays. Of course, ones that are employee-friendly and either always fall on working days or - like May 1st - are a sore point for employers anyway. Somehow, all the great concepts these days only consist of taking away and scrapping. Maybe we should just scrap the politicians. Would save costs and be good for public health. That would be a real reform.

I found the original article at RP-Online: Politik.

Lego builds on bricks again

I see this with mixed feelings: on the one hand, it's great when Lego really focuses again on the classic bricks. After all, that's the part that makes Lego so brilliant. But if Mindstorms has to go away because of it, I'd find that a shame. Mindstorms is simply brilliant. Ok, the other computer kits are rather mediocre, but the original RCX kit is really great.

Fortunately, I already have two RCXs and enough small parts; I can already tinker quite a bit with them.

At heise online news there's the original article.

Practice Fee: In for a Penny, In for a Pound

Instead of blaming each other, all the politicians involved could simply resign collectively. That would be a measure. But of course, the Union is never guilty of the mess it causes, it's always the others. We all just imagined the blockades in the Bundesrat and the mediation committee. Just like the fact that Rüttgers was actively involved. When I imagine that we could get this windbag and shirker as Minister-President, if Steinbrück ruins NRW even further and people don't want to see the SPD anymore, I feel sick. The talk of the devil and Beelzebub takes on completely new dimensions ...

At tagesschau im Internet you can find the original article.

Schleswig-Holstein's Interior Minister Wants Police Access to Internet Customer Data

Another superfluous politician. Not only does he want to forcibly expand data retention at providers, but he's also demanding that cryptography must have access points for police decryption. The Clipper Chip and similar harebrained ideas come to mind.

You can find the original article at heise online news under the original article.

Traffic costs for larger hosting projects

Because I just saw Dirk's costs, here's a tip for anyone wanting to set up blog services: take a close look at the different pricing plans from various providers! There are some that are significantly cheaper. I don't advertise often, but I want to give a shout-out to Hetzner, they provide me with an entry-level server for 40 euros per month with 100 GB traffic included. And the next larger plan comes in at 70 euros with 150 GB. With something like that, you can already do a lot more cool stuff without running out of money right away. Disclaimer: I don't have much more to do with them than having simon (the server that this all runs on) hosted with them.

Here's the original article.

Fears about the European Arrest Warrant are being exceeded

Slightly intoxicated Swedes are therefore terrorists according to Spanish opinion, or did I misunderstand something there?

At Telepolis News there's the original article.

The HP iPod

Carly and Steve are quite an adorable couple

At Industrial Technology & Witchcraft you can find the original article.

The ceiling is falling on our heads ...

... and literally so.

High Pressure: When the Penguin Has to Go

The important questions of life ...

I found the original article at RP-Online: Wissenschaft.

Children's DNA database for 'theft kids'

And once again another step in the direction of total control

At Telepolis News there's the original article.

Programmed on Lies

Furthermore, Binalshibh is supposedly programmed to lie as a matter of faith. The Muslim religion supposedly commands the faithful to speak "non-truth" if their own lives or property or those of people close to them are endangered. - oh yes. Clear, terrorists belong - if they are convicted as terrorists of the acts they are accused of, they belong in prison. But could one please reserve a cell right next door for the prosecutor for this audacity?

At Telepolis News there is the original article.

ESA writes off 'Beagle 2'

Well, literally left in the sand.

At Spiegel Online: Wissenschaft you can find the original article.

Keyspan launches USB Device Server

Not quite uncool: being able to put any (ok, certainly not just any) USB devices on a server part hanging in the network and then use them throughout the entire network. Could definitely be interesting for shared scanner use or similar purposes.

At The Macintosh News Network there's the original article.

Majority of Germans consider politicians corrupt

After the perceived inflation, the perceived corruption. For the former, there is now evidence that it is not only perceived ...

I found the original article at RP-Online: Politik.

NRW threatened by flu wave

Oh man.

At WDR.de you can find the original article.

Photoshop: No License to Print Money

Adobe has a slight defect. Either the sluggish thing only recognizes part of banknotes anyway, or the filters also recognize data other than banknotes. Or both. In any case, the time and energy spent on implementing such a silly feature would have been better used elsewhere. But Adobe also felt the need to build in silly copy protection ...

At heise online news there's the original article.

Rau's Successor: "Schäuble can do it"

Not the porter.

At RP-Online: Politik I found the original article.

Preview version of Gimp 2.0 available

That all sounds quite good already. OK, it won't tear me away from Photoshop just yet, but color profile support in particular is already an important point.

At heise online news there's the original article.

Bizarre Twin Reveals His Secret

So black holes can also overeat ...

At Spiegel Online: Wissenschaft you can find the original article.

blogroll visualized

Funny idea: enter the OPML blogroll there in the field and then have your own feeds displayed as a world map. Of course, this only works with blogs that not only are listed in the OPML blogroll, but also have GeoURL coordinates stored. Here's the original article.

Hearing and Seeing Only for the Wealthy?

Bad eyes? Bad teeth? Bad ears? Out of luck - the state doesn't like you. So that only wealthy, healthy, strong, blonde and blue-eyed citizens may be gainfully employed...

At Hexentanz you can find the original article.

Movitz: A Common Lisp OS development platform

A very interesting project: a minimal system with a cross-compiler and Common Lisp as the programming language. Not quite a Lisp machine, more like a platform for embedded Common Lisp - so a minimal runtime for the target system, while development takes place on the PC. The target code runs directly on standard PCs, for example via a boot disk.

Here's the original article.

Photo.net Reviews HP Photosmart 7960

Interesting for Jutta since she is considering whether this might be a usable photo printer - so far she has a Deskjet 840c, which is not really optimal for the purpose.

At PhotographyBLOG there is the original article.

One Tenth of the Practice Fee for Bureaucracy

That the practice fee is outrageous nonsense hardly needs discussion. But why allegedly the administrative costs are so high, especially for dunning notices, someone needs to explain that to me. Every retail business deals with far more complicated payment methods and dunning procedures than doctors do. This is elementary software and the dunning system can also be well centralized. The actual effort is quite comparable to that of a typical newspaper kiosk, except that the kiosk operator doesn't have the advantage that he gets the address from his customers for later dunning and collection procedures right away...

It seems to me that the real problem here is that the rip-off artists in the doctor software industry and the chronic complainers in the medical associations are working hand in hand.

At tagesschau im Internet there's the original article.

Mambo Open Source

Mambo Open Source advertises itself with bold claims:

• Mambo Open Source is the finest open source Web Content Management System available today.
• The easiest to use CMS there is.

Does it live up to these self-imposed expectations? I installed it and tested it a bit. Here are my first impressions:

• Installation via the web installer is very easy - however, you won't find any instructions on the homepage about how to do it. You have to switch to the documentation server for that.
• Mambo supports various languages. The basic package only contains English though. If you want additional languages, you search the homepage in vain for hints or links. Only Google unearths the Mamboportal, where you can finally find what you're looking for.
• There is plenty of documentation for Mambo. It's worth taking a look at beforehand. Unfortunately, there isn't a single link to the documentation from the homepage - it's on a different server.
• The standard layout is surprisingly good for a standard template. However, it has some nasty display errors with Mozilla (text wrapping issues, graphics overlapping). Especially from an open source project, I would expect it to at least properly support the open source browser par excellence (Mozilla)!
• Mambo has WYSIWYG HTML editing fields. Unfortunately, in a variant that only works with IE. I'd like someone to explain to me why a Mozilla-compatible variant isn't used instead (especially since they exist)!
• Search engine-friendly links (i.e., those without query strings) are optionally supported, which is good. However, they're not used as standard, and modules often use normal links instead. These naturally won't be converted. Links are hardcoded, not generated programmatically, so such an implementation only works if the template creator remembers to add the function calls themselves. However, this feature is still very new, so it will probably spread.
• Mambo strictly requires MySQL. I always find it a shame when software locks itself into a single database. For PHP there is PEAR for database access, so you don't have to restrict yourself like that.
• Mambo is incompatible with PHP's Safe Mode! Completely incompatible: if Safe Mode is active, you can't install components. Error messages point to errors with mkdir.
• Mambo basically needs write permissions on its entire tree. So either you have to set everything under owner www-data, or make it world-writable. Combined with the missing Safe Mode support, this means secure operation is only possible in a chroot jail!
• Additional modules (I looked at, for example, yopsFM and Mamblog) are of very varying quality, especially regarding layout integration and consideration of search engine-friendly links.
• The administration interface sometimes uses confusing terminology - what is a module, what is a component?
• Mambo is a plug-and-play-possible package. After installation, you have a finished system with a finished layout to play with. This can be a decisive advantage!
• There are lots of ready-made modules that you can pull in when building a new site.

Generally speaking: Mambo is an absolutely impressive tool, there's no question about that. Of all the PHP-based CMS I've looked at so far, it's definitely the most convincing (Typo3, for example, was much more confusing and harder to access - and I have CMS experience with Zope and various custom developments). So this isn't about dissing Mambo - anyone looking for a powerful CMS, already using PHP+MySQL as a base and comfortable with it, and willing to read the documentation, will definitely be well served by Mambo. What is absolutely bullshit, however, is the hype that the Mambo programmers are creating around their product. It's only as simple as they claim if you just edit content and don't do anything more advanced with it. Otherwise, you'll also spend time at Mambo digging through the documentation (at least it exists!) and if necessary looking at source code. However, to be fair, the same can be said of Plone: there's also a lot of hype there that unfortunately also misses reality. Put your code where your mouth is! When you look at Mambo's source code, that's where the crux of the matter lies: anyone who is a PHP guru will certainly be able to dig through the PHP sources. But modules with thousands of lines of source code aren't everyone's cup of tea - searching for bugs and features becomes quite laborious. I don't see a major advantage of Mambo over Zope or Plone here. Mambo is not small! You always have to keep that in mind - getting into Mambo is similar to getting into Zope. Mountains of source code, but well-structured extensibility. A clear gain compared to Zope is Mambo's plug-and-play approach. The first working page comes together much faster. In principle, you shouldn't really compare Mambo with Zope, but rather with Plone, since Mambo - like Plone - already offers completely finished content tools.

Another advantage is Mambo's rather modest server requirements: Linux+Apache+MySQL+PHP = LAMP. You can get that on any street corner. Zope hosting is harder to find (or you get a root server, then you won't have any problems with Zope or Plone).

Here is the original article.

mt-daapd - Home Page

Nice: an MP3 streaming server that is Rendezvous compatible and cooperates with iTunes. You can use it to build a central jukebox that can feed multiple computers. Ideal for training rooms and computer pools at universities

Here's the original article.

NASA: The ISS may have a leak

A hole is in the bucket, Karl Otto, Karl Otto, a hole is in the bucket, in the bucket a hole! At RP-Online: Wissenschaft I found the the original article.