Artikel - 18.9.2003 - 28.9.2003

quiz-time

Hmm. According to the test, I'm both a linguistic thinker and a "naturalistic thinker". Weird. Ok, the linguistic thinker description says that these people often think in words and use language to specify and solve problems. That fits me exactly. However, the career directions are missing any mention of programmer - and in my opinion, language is an essential tool precisely in programming. And programming languages are exactly that - nothing more than languages for computers, even if they're somewhat more formal than human languages. Unfortunately, there's still too much of a separation in people's minds between the aesthetic realm and the logical realm - as if these two areas were incompatible. The result is software engineering, where programming is reduced purely to the formal, as if the programmer's intuition and creativity were something disgusting that should be hidden or even eradicated...

At sec.digigeek.net there's the original article.

Robot Controller 1.7b2

For all Geist enthusiasts.

I found the original article at VersionTracker.com - Mac OS X.

A Small Step from Whisky to Chemical Weapon

No way. Bruichladdich a potential chemical weapons factory? Well, alcohol is certainly a dangerous poison, but I can confirm from personal experience that the chemical warfare agents from Islay are absolutely tolerable for humans if the dosage is kept low

Devilish grin

At tagesschau im Internet there's the original article.

Freedom of software is recognized by the UN as worth protecting

Ok, who has a bottle of champagne ready? Please pop the cork!

At Markus Kniebes Journal you can find the original article.

Heras inches closer to Nozal with uphill ITT looming

Wow, this is getting really exciting. But somehow I'd wish Nozal would win more than Heras.

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

Heras slips into the golden jersey at Spain tour

And Menno, poor Nozal! That's really bitter.

At tagesschau im Internet there's the original article.

IBM Files New Lawsuit Against SCO

Cool, now the tables are turned

At heise online news you can find the original article.

Morons in the News: Banned Book Week: Food for Thought

Another batch of idiots coming right up. Here some people want to have Aldous Huxley's Brave New World banned from schools as pornographic. You can find the original article at Morons Dot Org.

Reader-Submitted: CWA decides that homosexuals are terrorists

If you want to take a look at a horror cabinet, just follow the link provided at http://morons.org/. Extremely fascinating what these idiots from CWA (how else are you supposed to call people who regard homosexuality as a curable disease and the entry of a married homosexual couple as a terrorist act?) have to say - I find the fact especially interesting that no woman is mentioned anywhere in the article. Yet it's supposed to be the Concerned Women for America ... At Morons Dot Org you can find the original article.

SPD dissidents must answer for themselves

This all fits perfectly with my last post on the topic. The Union wants to impose its handwriting on politics - and the SPD will let it happen to them because they no longer have their own profile. And so we keep sliding further into the mess.

I don't want the Union's handwriting in politics. I didn't vote for these idiots. I expect those I did vote for to prevent exactly that - the Union's handwriting appearing there. But I can probably forget about that...

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

Union politicians for Schäuble as Rau's successor

No thanks.

At tagesschau im Internet you can find the original article.

Word field: ICANN and the International Telecommunication Union ITU

Very interesting report about the ITU and its positioning regarding ICANN in the Internet topic at Wortfeld. Worth reading!

Here you can find the original article.

Poor by Official Decree

Well, the fat cats just have the better lobby - no wonder, since most politicians at state and federal level belong to them anyway. And impressing corrupt politicians doesn't work when you don't have the cash to grease them (or their party) ...

And so we're eagerly steering into an increasingly polarized society and letting ourselves be told lies about reforms and minor reforms. At the next election, we get to decide again in which color we'd like to be screwed.

At Der Schockwellenreiter you can find the original article.

Bossi: Christian Democrats Should Be Shot

Like master, like servant ...

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

Herzog Commission: Pension after 45 years

Herzog was already unsympathetic to me as Federal President, but this really takes the cake...

What kind of ridiculous idea does someone like that have about reality? Just because he didn't have to move his ass as a judge doesn't automatically mean everyone can have such a cushy job. How many workers destroy their health so badly that they can't make it through full-time work? How many barely earn enough to keep themselves and their families above water, but definitely not enough to finance additional private pensions from it? How great: work yourself to death your whole life, but then get paid off with scraps in retirement.

At tagesschau on the internet you can find the original article.

Imaginary Python books that I would like to read

Funny suggestions for Python books that you might read if they existed. The 12-volume Zope series in particular would definitely be something I could use sometimes

You can find the original article at Python owns us (the original post).

Motorola separates from chipsets for PowerPCs

It's a shame to see how a manufacturer with truly innovative processors in the past (I'm not just talking about the PowerPCs, but especially things like the 6809 or later the 68000) is gradually disappearing from the CPU sector. Motorola CPUs were always the most interesting processors for me - if you overlook the old Zilog processors. Well, everything comes to an end ...

At heise online news you can find the original article.

Storever Online Backup

An online backup service – that is, data backups via rsync and ssh to a central server. I was particularly struck by the following line in the waiver: Although Storever Online Backup will do the job most of the time, custommers should always consider that they have been lucky whenever they can recover lost data. That's really reassuring – that's how you sell a backup system! So you look at what the Storeever Offline Archive offers, since that's what Storever recommends when the customer wants security. And what do I find there in the waiver? Exactly: Although Storever Offline Archive is a secure and reliable service, it is not 100% reliable and involves risks which we can not control. In particular, custommers should always consider that they have been lucky whenever they can recover lost data. Wow. So with the low-cost product, I should consider myself lucky if I can restore a file. I can then pay even more per month, and I can still consider myself lucky if I can restore a file.

I don't know quite what to say, but somehow I get the impression that this is not a particularly confidence-inspiring product.

Devilish grin

Here's the original article.

Poll: SPD continues to decline

As long as it doesn't finally start doing social democratic politics, things will continue this way. Who should even be interested in a purely economically-oriented SPD? The Union can sit back grinning and simply block everything in the Bundesrat - it's cheap and costs no votes. And so the Union diligently blocks initiatives that it would never have dared to tackle itself. The SPD will never really attack this nonsensical behavior of the Union and exploit it politically - for that it would first have to be genuinely convinced of the nonsense it's spouting. So it keeps making compromises on top of compromises and in the end no compromise emerges, but only the compromise of the social democratic idea.

And society loses. What kind of future should we expect if the choice only exists between right and right?

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

apt for RPMs

I wasn't aware of this: there's a project to make apt usable for RPMs as well. Very practical - anyone using Debian knows what apt can do. However, I doubt that all the RPMs really have useful dependencies specified (which apt relies on) ...

Here's the original article.

Israel: Fighter Pilot Rebellion Triggers Political 'Earthquake'

Well, the reactions are just as one might have imagined: contemptuous of humanity and disgusting. From when is an attack immoral and criminal? A stupid question. When is an attack morally justified in the first place? At RP-Online: Politik I found the original article.

Israeli Pilots Refuse Attacks

Wow! That's quite a positive sign. Even if only a small group, but still. Maybe that will open Israelis' eyes to what their government is actually doing. Maybe that will have an impact in the next elections. Maybe pigs will fly too ...

At tagesschau im Internet you can find the original article.

Password theft through Internet Explorer vulnerability

Ouch.

At heise online news you can find the original article.

Union faction for tuition fees

Oh, are we heading back to education only for the rich? At tagesschau im Internet you can find the original article.

Berlusconi honored as fighter against antisemitism

There are things that are even more absurd than German court decisions ...

amazed face

At Telepolis News there is the original article.

FTP Server ProFTPD Vulnerable

Not a good time for administrators at the moment. First the multiple holes in OpenSSH, now ProFTPd. Fortunately, Debian works quite pragmatically and delivers the patches relatively quickly - although I'm still waiting for the ProFTPd patch there (and the latest ssh patch isn't here yet either - and that's not entirely uncritical, since Debian works with PAM support).

At heise online news there's the original article.

Parenthesis Closure Law

Cool. And when will someone find the first prehistoric lambda?

At Der Schockwellenreiter there's the original article.

Guideline on Software Patents Adopted

Could it be that the cup has passed us by after all? Let's wait for the assessment of the passed version.

At tagesschau im Internet there is the original article.

Sophos acquires ActiveState

Whether Sophos will really have the same commitment in the open source community as ActiveState? They'll have to prove that they really do it that way. I'm rather skeptical about it.

At heise online news you can find the original article.

From helper to Vuelta winner in six weeks

Nice. That's what makes cycling exciting when lesser-known riders perform so outstandingly. Not always just the usual suspects up front ...

At RADSPORT-NEWS.COM - Nachrichten-Gesamtübersicht you can find the original article.

Mac OS X 10.2.8 causes problems for some

Ugh. Apple seems to have made a bit of a mistake here. The battery life reduction (what a word) is at least one reason for me to wait for now (and the broken network can't really motivate me to do the update either)...

At The Macintosh News Network you can find the original article.

Rainer Joswig's Home

Cool, Rainer has a weblog (sort of). Ok, no RSS feed, but at least a Lisp website again. He used to have a big link dump there, but somehow it disappeared and I kind of lost track of his web pages. Rainer is the one who got me into Lisp years ago — and infected me with the desire to get a Symbolics Lisp machine (which I now have). Besides that, he got me my first Lisp machines - boxes from Xerox - and was also my first net dealer, even if I had to take the FTP downloads home on floppy disks ...

Man, now I feel guilty again because I work with Lisp way too little

Here's the original article.

Investigation proceedings against former chancellor Kohl

Auja, throw the fat one in the dungeon!

At tagesschau im Internet you can find den Originalartikel.

Health Compromise: Merz Runs Amok

Oh, I think if Merz doesn't want to anymore, then you should just let him go ...

Teufelsgrinsen

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

SPD: "Massive membership decline" in North Rhine-Westphalia

Sure, the cause is always in Berlin, but certainly not in the misanthropic policies from Düsseldorf and the backroom dealings with Koch. No, certainly Steinbrück is not to blame, it's all the federal government. The loss of touch with reality in Düsseldorf is taking on truly alarming proportions. A good part of the withdrawals can certainly be attributed to Steinbrück's crowd. They're not showing the right perspectives either. And at some point, the Black votes alone won't be enough to keep the SPD government in NRW. Unfortunately. Because under a CDU government we can bury NRW ... At WDR.de you'll find the original article.

Owner of Dewey Decimal System Sues New York's Library Hotel

According to AP, the owner of the Dewey Decimal System (a widely used classification system for literature) is suing a hotel that numbers and furnishes its hotel rooms according to the same schema. The demand is amusing: either three times the hotel's profit since opening or three times the damage to the rights holder, whichever sum is larger. Can bibliophiles also spell the word "profiteer"? Here's the original article.

AppleScript Studio Tutorial

Nice little tutorial for AppleScript Studio. At least to create a starter project and get an initial introduction.

Here's the original article.

Fascinating ...

... when Spock cites Sherlock Holmes as one of his ancestors

High-Tech Heroin

There are certainly ways out of dependency: free software, independent music, privately organized providers, etc.

The sad thing about it is that media and business often go hand in hand, and therefore the alternatives get less public attention than the mainstream (okay, in the Linux area that's just changing — but what about the other alternatives like the BSD variants?)

If there were still well-researched journalism, reports about the RIAA would have to be followed by reports and mentions of the quite active independent scene — but these are often missing. And that applies, for example, also in the area of internet providers — who has already reported on the small, privately organized ones? Even back when the IN e.V. still existed, such reports were scarce.

Ultimately, consumers do have it in their hands how strong their dependency really becomes. Sure, not every area is overflowing with alternatives — for example, mobile networks are beyond private feasibility. Still, the consumer can certainly strive for a certain degree of technical competence and doesn't have to subject themselves to dependency on rip-off artists in all matters.

Unfortunately, dependency is much more convenient though...

At anoteron weblog there's the original article.

Pursuing the 17th-Century Origins of the Hacker's Grail

Here are a few teasers about the new Neal Stephenson novel

At New York Times: Technology you can find the original article.

taz 20.9.03 Stoiber achieves clear victory

The CSU won the Bavarian state election on Sunday with an overwhelming majority. The party of Minister-President Edmund Stoiber received 59 percent of the vote according to initial projections. The SPD, with its top candidate Franz Maget, only achieved 20 percent. - that's how an article begins in the DigiTAZ that has just been released. The commentary also refers to Sunday in the past tense. Truly remarkable. But what I find really remarkable are the lottery numbers from Saturday's drawing that are already available at the TAZ today at 01:12. They revealed it: a white gloss on a white background. To scare an old man like that so late in the day is really almost criminal.

Here's the original article.

Case modding of a very special kind

Just plain awesome (found at delta-c) Here you can find the original article.

Computer makers sued over hard-drive size claims

Great class. People are upset that the disk capacity in gigabytes is in the decimal system, but computers work in the binary system. Dumbasses - the binary information on a 1024 basis would not be called gigabytes, but gibibytes. Specifying disk capacities in decimal basis is completely correct, as you can read for example at Wolfram Research. Here's the original article.

The future for Hesse's women is secure

Great prospects for women in Hesse. And of course Koch will announce his rubbish as an absolutely important program and of course he will demand that the same garbage is also done at the federal level. Koch would really be a worthy successor to Kohl - just as corrupt, just as contemptuous of humanity, just as a catastrophe for the Federal Republic.

At Der Rollberg you can find the original article.

Just a Brown Bear

Nessie doesn't exist, the Yeti is just a brown bear - where will this end?

At tagesschau im Internet you can find the original article.

Canned Meat

Just a warning: I'm still using an outdated version of POPFile. Jutta uses a newer one, but not Mailsmith, rather Mail.app - anyway, you can easily combine the two scripts. The main difference is that my script looks for a colon and space and uses what comes after as a link, while Jutta's version uses the text between a < and a > as a link. If someone could just tell me how to do string manipulation properly in AppleScript, I could clean up the somewhat cumbersome source a bit - because at the moment I'm breaking the string down completely into individual characters and working through them. Somehow inelegant.

What was nice, however, was that porting from MailSmith to Mail.app only required minimal changes. These standard dictionaries of Mac programs are really a fine thing ...

Over at Der Schockwellenreiter you can find the original article.

Effective Measures Against Comment Spam

Great explanation. Unfortunately, that occasionally also drives away commenters of the human variety. Maybe an upgrade to a somewhat more powerful platform would make sense? Nochn Blogg. has the original article.

200 Dollar Note with Bush Picture

Ouch.

Here's the original article.

eBay Happy to Give Away All Personal Info

A quite interesting article with discussion on Kuro5hin about statements from an eBay official regarding their practice of releasing data to law enforcement. If things really happen as described there - release of data that goes far beyond mere personal information, and based solely on fax or email requests - then that's a massive scandal. And as stupid as the whole thing sounds, it's very likely that things really do work that way. The original article can be found on kuro5hin.org here.

False Crime Statistics in Hamburg

Well - did anyone really believe that Schill actually took effective action against crime? But it's nice that it's now definite that he only lied. Another nail in his political coffin.

At tagesschau im Internet you can find the original article.