Stereo Images - Time for Space
Nice idea - stereo effects through rapidly alternating display of slightly different images. So simple to produce and completely easy to display - no additional viewing aids needed. Cool.
Artikel - 20.7.2003 - 2.8.2003
Don't trust any statistic that you haven't falsified yourself
An interesting article about statistics, their significance, their nonsense, their lies, and how to understand it all.
I found the original article at Telepolis News.
Chinese Sea Monster
That's Nessie. Obviously: she has a tunnel from Loch Ness to China. And when people at Loch Ness investigate too much, it gets too hectic for her and she takes off to China. Why didn't the scientists notice that? Simple: Nessie has a cover over the tunnel there, probably a lock system. Otherwise all the water would drain away to China - it's logical, right?
At kniebes|net you can find the original article.
Sun-Chef McNealy: Hands off Open Source
As usual, he talks out of his ass instead of his head
At heise online news there's the original article.
Windows users break the internet
And what's the difference now compared to the day before yesterday? And to last week? And to next week? Scanning for Windows machines and automatically testing exploits is standard repertoire for hackers by now. That's happening every day - and thanks to the tons of bugs in this caricature of an operating system, it probably will be in the future too ...
At Industrial Technology & Witchcraft you can find the original article.
Draft for Genetic Engineering Law Presented
What utter nonsense. Do these lunatics actually believe that plant pollen will stick to any separation areas and protective hedges? Has none of them ever gotten hay fever from rye pollen in the city? This stuff spreads with the wind, it doesn't care about silly regulations.
The whole thing can have fatal consequences for, for example, organic farming, because genetically modified plants might mix into organic stocks and thus make organic farming nearly impossible. And all this for junk that consumers reject anyway.
At tagesschau im Internet there's the original article.
Law Separates Israeli-Palestinian Couples
There is no idea stupid enough that politicians won't push through anyway - and apparently this applies all over the world. Open racism in an Israeli law.
Panorama rules ...
... even though Kohl accuses them of treason
Today there were details about the consulting contract between Kohl and Kirch in the broadcast. Nice how all sorts of shady dealings around Kohl are coming to light. A contract that consists only of Kohl not having to do anything, except not reveal anything, while Kirch pays diligently. Well, the contract is at least making its way into a book - Die Korruptionsfalle, by Hans Leyendecker. It's a shame that he's never really held accountable for it - apparently nobody has a real interest in looking into it and ending it in court. At least one has to interpret the prosecuting attorney's egg dance around Kohl's donation problems this way.
It's quite a wonderful feeling knowing that you're living in a banana republic ...
Vatican mobilizes against same-sex marriage
|KK| Well, great. Just stay intolerant, that seems to be the motto of the head of the Catholic Church and his henchmen.
Yet the Church itself is a far greater danger to society than marriages between homosexual people. Just think of the very fatal stance against contraception, which makes life difficult for those in developing countries trying to promote birth control. Or the still absolutely misogynistic attitude of the Catholic Church. Or the absurd claim to exclusive truth. Or, or, or ...
The absurd claims that adopted children growing up in a family with homosexual parents would need more police and psychologists is, however, an absolute cheek. The appeasing sentence that one doesn't fundamentally reject homosexuals doesn't help either. No, one doesn't reject them, one just wants to exclude them from society and deny them what every member of society wants for themselves - to have a family.
And then one immediately calls for incitement against homosexuals - because that's exactly what it is when politicians are called upon to actively oppose laws for equal rights for homosexuals. There we go, the next scapegoat when society is doing badly and finally the dumbest politician has realized that foreigners aren't the reason - always attack the homosexuals, they're all perverts anyway.
But what should one expect when someone like Ratzinger is in charge ...
At tagesschau im Internet there's the original article.
Hamburg: Children Face Deportation
In my eyes, an absolute scandal, but one that doesn't surprise me. Unfortunately, it's not the first time something like this has happened in Hamburg, and unfortunately not only since Schill. Even before that, Jutta's brother had problems bringing his wife's children to Germany - ultimately, only the daughter from his first marriage could be brought to Germany, while the city of Hamburg delayed the son's entry until he was no longer allowed to enter due to his age. Can anyone imagine what it means for a mother to have to sacrifice one child in order to bring another child to her? Mind you, the woman is married to Jutta's brother, and an apartment is already available.
In my eyes, the behavior of the immigration authority - especially towards children - is completely unacceptable. There is certainly no sign of the free spirit of a free port city there.
I found the original article at TAZ.
Peschel discharged from hospital
It seems like it turned out okay after all - at least they probably wouldn't send him home if his second lung were still out of order.
At RADSPORT-NEWS.COM - Nachrichten-GesamtĂĽbersicht I found the original article.
What's New in Python 2.3
Great! Lots of nice new features that are all quite useful. Generators, for example, are something that I've always missed in Icon. And the set data type is also often very practical. And of course you're happy to take the runtime optimizations as well. There are also mountains of smaller syntax niceties included, not really important stuff, but pleasant when writing programs, simply because it looks nicer in the source code.
Particularly cool, of course, is the better OS X support, with direct integration of Cocoa!
ActiveDeveloper 2.14
Sounds quite interesting - an interactive C/Objective-C IDE. Dynamic, interactive compilation, but with the classic compiler languages. At least for playing around with Objective-C and Cocoa, that would be quite interesting...
I found the original article at VersionTracker.com - Mac OS X.
IBM Counters in Legal Dispute with SCO
SCO's claims are becoming increasingly absurd. Now it's supposedly a breach of contract when IBM ports self-developed portions of AIX to Linux, because AIX is a Unix derivative and therefore, according to SCO, everything in it should fall under the Unix confidentiality agreement. Are they completely out of their minds?
Apart from that: where in the SCO garbage heap they call UnixWare have they got anything adequate that would even come close to comparing with the AIX components? For example jfs - where is the usable journaling filesystem in UnixWare that would even allow for any kind of secret violation?
It's really ridiculous what they're pulling off. I hope that - now that it's slowly becoming clear which portions of the source code SCO apparently thinks it has licenses for - the stock market will also react to this and reduce SCO's artificially inflated stock price back to what it's worth: nothing.
At heise online news you can find the original article.
TP: Email theft via domain theft is legal
It's unbelievable what kind of nonsensical and reality-detached procedures lawyers (and court decisions) are capable of ...
But in Germany, it's not the person who is right that gets the right, but the person who hammers through his plans before the court vehemently enough - no matter how far-fetched and absurd they are. Right goes to whoever shouts the loudest.
And then lawyers wonder why their profession has such a poor reputation outside of it and ranks almost below politicians ...
Cog 0.5
I should take a look at that. Could be simpler than Shelve and more flexible than Metakit. I don't really need transactions for many purposes, I can easily live with the checkpoint technique.
At PyPI recent updates there is the original article.
There is no Monster in Loch Ness
I'm curious what the Nessie hunters will come up with now for excuses as to why the scientists should have overlooked their monster.
At Spiegel Online: Wissenschaft you can find the original article.
Stoiber's Maneuvering is Not a Problem of Federalism, but of the CDU/CSU
Ralph Bollmann states: But whoever complains about too frequent elections is only insulting the voters. - well, that's the only thing our politicians still know how to do: insult voters. We're only allowed to choose what color tie we get dragged over the table with ... And for a politician, that's the dream, reducing the number of election dates: finally being able to cheat, corrupt, deceive, lie and mess things up for a few years without voters having a chance to object in between.
Hey, in 4 uncontrolled years you could easily drive a state bank, a state budget and the entire social system into ruin, and nobody can complain! Wonderful! And all the things you could siphon off on the side!
Actually, voters just get in the way of politics.
I found the original article at TAZ.
Bill Gates: Linux also contains Microsoft code
Such nonsense, I'm pretty sure Linux doesn't contain Microsoft code, it simply works too well for that
At heise online news you can find the original article.
East Frisia Growing
Well then, let's congratulate the East Frisian coast on its offspring
At tagesschau im Internet you can find the original article.
Well, that was it, the 2003 tour ...
... thrilling right to the end. A devilishly close yellow jersey. And a victory for Armstrong that he really had to work for. The 2004 Tour can be like that as well.
I'm wondering, though, what they want to name after Alexandre Vinokourov in Kazakhstan now, since he did finish in third place.
Water and Plutonium Hold Explosive Danger
Ugh. Couldn't they have tested that before storing the waste accordingly? Yet another proof that throughout the entire nuclear industry supply chain, the supposed safety measures are all just speculation—no one has ever really bothered to seriously investigate them. That's why new risks keep popping up that were previously unknown. But what do we do? Keep producing that garbage, keep hauling it across the country, keep storing it in unsuitable facilities. Until someday it goes bang. But of course the nuclear industry has nothing to do with it and everything is safe.
At Spiegel Online: Wissenschaft there's the original article.
Ten Years of Windows NT
And the misery never ends ...
At heise online news you can find the original article.
Apple, DRM and me
The Apple customer from the Heise report linked here, who had problems after moving, has since been contacted by Apple and is now allowed to play his songs in Canada after all (and also access his account, but can't make any new purchases).
His conclusion is similar to what I wrote in the comments to my post: DRM creates a very poor position for the customer. He therefore no longer wants to buy DRM-protected media.
The question is how much longer DRM-free alternatives will continue to exist...
At algorhythm there's the original article.
Email Archives as Time Destroyers
Oh yes, the wonderfully absurd arguments from the marketing folks. Nobody pays the total sum (assuming it's even actually that high - the assumptions of these pseudo-experts are completely arbitrary), since it's distributed across all companies. If you break it down to the individual employee, you save a few euros per year. The 6 minutes per day certainly doesn't justify the immense investments a company would have to make in an archive system. You need other motivations for that, not just a bit of email searching. But that's much more effective for advertising ...
At heise online news there's the original article.
Dangerously close this time trial ...
... in this weather. As Jan Ullrich had to find out - a crash, and the stage win (he probably couldn't have taken the tour win today anyway) was gone. But that's cycling for you: it's not just speed that matters, but also skill. And unfortunately Jan Ullrich didn't look as good as Lance Armstrong there, and that cost him seconds. But still, he put in a super time - because despite the crash, Lance Armstrong only managed to gain just 11 seconds, and that's saying something. This year Armstrong really wasn't given anything for free, not even the final time trial.
Of course it's a shame anyway, but I think Jan Ullrich can be more than satisfied with his performance. We haven't seen him perform this well in a long time. And in next year's Tour he might finally break Armstrong's winning streak.
Oh, and of course an incredible performance by David Millar, he really deserved that stage win, because Lance Armstrong couldn't catch him either!
And then there was Tyler Freaking Hamilton, who just managed to take second place in this stage and thereby lap the two Euskatel riders in the overall standings. Incredible performance!
Overview of Pings for the Ping Cacher
So, after Schockwellenreiter wrote about it, now the overview page is here too. And wonder of wonders, it's the same one as for the ping. So much functionality, and everything with just one address!
And his suspicion that Python is involved is correct too. The XML-RPC server is written in PHP (almost the original one from Reinvented Technologies, just ported to PostgreSQL), but the cronjob (the part that runs every 5 minutes) is written in Python.
The overview page is especially helpful when first trying it out - you can see when the ping goes through and whether it goes through. Oh yes, you should only ping either weblogs.com or simon, otherwise you get strange error messages back from weblogs.com.
Of course everything is still beta at the moment, so if you try it and find problems, please send me a message and I'll take a look at it.
Uwe Peschel crashed and seriously injured
A couple of ribs broken and one seems to have pierced into a lung. Let's hope the doctors can get it under control, because the loss or severe impairment of a lung would end his athletic career. :-(
The weather today combined with the track is really very dangerous. Let's hope no more serious crashes happen.
Walter Zapp died
The designer of the ingenious Minox 8x11mm cameras passed away on July 17, 2003, at the age of 97.
In his honor, load a film into your Minoxes again and take a few pictures.
Weblogs.com Ping Cacher in PHP (from Reinvented Inc.)
For everyone whose software doesn't support multithreading, a Ping-Cacher in PHP is linked. It probably still needs a MySQL database and presumably the ability to set up PHP cron jobs. Pings then don't go to weblogs.com, but to the Ping-Cacher. And it forwards them.
Hmm. You could actually run that centrally in one place, then others could use it too. Not everyone needs to operate something like that. Ok, I've put something together, it's running on my server. If you want to ping weblogs.com but don't feel like waiting for weblogs.com, you can instead simply send a weblogUpdates.ping call (same format) to http://simon.bofh.ms/ping/. That gets stored in a database (PostgreSQL, not MySQL, but basically the same script as in the link). Behind it runs a cron job that starts every 5 minutes and sends pending pings. I'll probably also build an overview page that's similar to the one on weblogs.com, so you can see the pings with me right away and also get their status displayed.
Another Error in Windows RPC Interface
Maybe Microsoft should just uninstall the entire TCP/IP stack with the next service pack, then they'd have a chance of finally securing it.
At heise online news you'll find the original article.
Heise News-Ticker: (Foreign) Frustration with Apple's Online Music Store
Pretty absurd the whole thing. And once again so beautifully customer-friendly.
Well, outside the USA there's no Music Store anyway, so it doesn't really matter to us for now. But it doesn't exactly bode well if the whole thing actually runs in Europe too.
Sure, Apple probably only bought usage rights for the USA — they have to pay royalties to the music industry. But you can't really call something like that customer-friendly, especially when you consider that purchased goods become invalid just because you move.
In any case, a nice example of the nonsense we're headed for if DRM continues to spread.
CD-Linux Knoppix comes to the Mac
Cool! Knoppix is my favorite emergency distribution - just insert and boot, the computer remains unchanged, but a completely functional Linux based on Debian is available. With it, you can usually get just about anything repaired, except hardware damage.
Something like that for the Mac would certainly be nice too - also to show Mac users a Linux without having to repartition their disks.
At heise online news there is the original article.
Gates Foundation Donates Palm PDAs to New York Schools
That's nice of the Gates Foundation to give away Palms, and not those dreadful Pocket PCs
At heise online news there's the original article.
Today the tour only in the ticker ...
... but it wasn't boring. A tremendous solo effort by Tyler Hamilton (yes, the one with the damaged shoulder) over two category-one mountains. Completely alone since the second one (Col Bargarguy). And then still riding the long flat descent into Bayonne solo. Wow. And he still takes almost two minutes from the rest of the field at the end. How much strength does he have left?
Oh, and Zabel wins the sprint of the main field. 17 points on the way to the green jersey. Slowly but surely the squirrel gets fed.
Italy's Parliament Strengthens Berlusconi's Media Power
Clever: first secure immunity against corruption investigations and then consolidate total media control. Really, all he needs now is to found his own religion. Church of Corruptology or something like that.
You can find the original article at tagesschau on the Internet here.
Stage 16: Tyler Freaking Hamilton takes Stage 16!
Tyler freaking Hamilton. Yeah, that fits. For Tour de France 2003 there's the original article.
Hondo about to switch to Gerolsteiner
Well, if they're setting themselves up like that for sprints, then I expect Gerolsteiner to take over the green jersey next year!
New Mail Server in X.3 Server?
Please, please, dear Apple engineers, also replace the mail server in regular OS X with Postfix. This Sendmail is simply unbearable. Yes, you can patch it. Yes, I know how to do that. But I can't be bothered to fix it again after every upgrade. Sendmail belongs in the retirement home.
At MacGuardians there's the original article.
SCO vs. Linux: Linux Tax or Security [Update]
It's really outrageous what this company is getting away with. Still this lazy drivel when asked for concrete evidence. I hope that finally some company will put a stop to all this. The whole SCO action stinks miserably to high heaven.
At least here in the country, a stop has been put to this nonsense.
At heise online news you can find the original article.
"Antidote License" by SCO
What nonsense. I hope someone sues SCO over this story. The whole thing is taking on increasingly absurd proportions. Still no evidence for SCO's claims, but they're already busily ripping people off.
At heise online news you can find the original article.
Atom mines should devastate Germany
With friends like these, you don't need enemies anymore ...
You can find the original article at Spiegel Online: Science.
The cornerstones of the health compromise
That's just pure label fraud. Allegedly, the measures are supposed to reduce contributions to 13 percent by 2006. Nonsense. Why would the insurance companies do that if they're not forced to? And even if they did it contrary to expectations: what good does that do if the savings go toward a mandatory dental replacement insurance? And what about the other co-payments? 300 euros per hospital case - great, what's Grandma Kasulke supposed to do with her tiny pension? Sell the PC with the freshly installed Linux because the gallstones have to come out?
It's all rubbish, the mess politicians cobble together. Of course, the ordinary citizen has to foot the bill again. As usual, twice over - with higher fees and lower benefits.
People called the railway company out on that as advertising fraud. Politicians celebrate stuff like this as a major success.
The tour was already tough today...
... as Vinokourov had to painfully notice, he lost over 2 minutes. That's tough. But Armstrong also had to work hard. That he ultimately won at the finish line and put 40 seconds into Jan Ullrich is certainly also because he was probably riding mainly on adrenaline. After all, this was Armstrong's first crash in the Tour and not exactly a minor one, so the body's own doping certainly works very well. Incredible what these riders can pull off, even when they crash like Majo and Armstrong.
I think it's good that Ullrich waited for Armstrong. Okay, some will certainly argue that Ullrich waited too long, but ultimately he just gave Armstrong back what he had received from him back then. Simply a very nice gesture that shows these two riders really want to know who is stronger, not just who gets more luck.
And one thing is certain: the tension remains high until the last stage, because the overall victory will probably be decided on Saturday in the time trial. And that's also nice after Tours where the outcome was sometimes almost decided in the first week.
Cycling News.com
Ugh. Mud-slinging. They should face each other on the Tour rather than in the courtroom.
Wolfowitz "Leave Iraq alone"
Wolfowitz is increasingly taking on the characteristics of Comical Ali. I mean, who else if not the Americans has interfered in Iraq in the most persistently disruptive way? It's simply absurd what kind of loss of reality politicians are capable of...
I found the original article at Warblogs:CC.
Image of Joseba Beloki after the bad crash and the surgery
Wow, bandaged and wrapped up, but at least laughing. That's something. By the way, a really nice Tour 2003 blog where I found the image.
More tour blogs (or related):
- Logos Tour Blog
- Tour Blog
- Velonews with Tour notes from Tyler Hamilton ( RSS Feed for Velonews via myRSS)
- Radsport News with Tour notes from Jörg Ludewig ( RSS Feed for Radsport News via myRSS)
- Team Telekom Pages with Tour notes from Rold Aldag
- Cycling Pictures with Tour notes from Thomas Liese
Vinokourov's day was today ...
... in any case, his attack towards the end was top-class. Well-placed and well-executed. With that, he made an impressive showing and reiterated his claim to a podium place in Paris. And Armstrong now has to fight on two fronts. That will take energy, even if he has something planned for tomorrow - he will have to work hard for it. The main rivals now just 15 and 18 seconds behind the yellow jersey - the Tour hasn't been this exciting in many years.