Hubble discovers sensational exoplanet
Wow, an astronomical cliffhanger
At Astronomical Trivia there's the original article.
Artikel - 26.6.2003 - 9.7.2003
Yahoo! News - ONLINE DIARIES CAN CAUSE TEEN FRIENDSHIPS TO SUFFER
This is so absurd, I just have to link it. How good that we all don't write diaries, because they can disadvantage teenage friendships. What, we all don't have teenage friendships? So annoying, must be due to our blogs. Or the fact that we're no longer teenagers.
Sex, Lies and Video Surveillance
ACK. Unfortunately.
At Ligne Claire you can find the original article.
Sharp lets Zaurus die in Germany
Too bad. The Zaurus is a nice platform. I like to tinker with mine. Well, I guess I have another exotic computer lying around here then.
At heise online news you can find the original article.
target="_blank"
Okay. I'll remove the target=_blank then.
At .::: [unsinnfälliges] you can find the original article.
The Observer | Politics | Confess or die, US tells jailed Britons
So we've arrived at the methods of the Inquisition? Very nice choice: either the British suspects in Guantanamo Bay confess that they are terrorists, then they get 20 years in prison. Or they don't confess and get the death penalty if they are found guilty in the trial. What kind of legal system is that supposed to be? Is this the Bush administration's idea of freedom? I call that perverted.
Mass crash at 55 km/h
So (and with third place for Zabel in the sprint) today's stage of the Tour ended. Ouch. Jimmy Casper didn't look good at all, I hope it's not too serious. It almost looked like a game of dominoes, the way the riders all tumbled. That hurts just watching it.
You know that a tour stage is just not that exciting right now...
... when commentators report for 10 minutes about the technique of peeing in cycling races (of course including an anecdote).
Merkel wants to have the final say in tax dispute
Merkel. Power word. What irritates me about the combination of these two words in one sentence?
At tagesschau im Internet there's the original article.
User Feedback on Blogs
I'm honestly always amazed at how many blogs don't have comments (for example Schockwellenreiter) and how many only allow comments after registration with some strange service. Are spam comments really such a huge problem? I hardly ever see them in the blogs I read anyway, and I only get a comment once in a blue moon myself. The whole thing is rather strange... You can find the original article at Nochn Blogg. here.
AOL blogs!
Ouch. Well, then the weblogs.com servers will probably get Septembered 1, just like Usenet did back then. In any case, what will likely cause problems is the infrastructure of information services. If a significant number of weblogs are created via AOL (and you can bet that the AOL weblogs will really be diaries and will be hard to beat in quantity and easy to beat in quality
), how will services like Technorati, Feedster, blo.gs and similar handle it? So we can be curious to see how the blogging infrastructure will cope with something like this and what happens to it (certainly a few hardware upgrades will be necessary). I can well imagine that one or another service will give up the ghost, especially if the AOL weblogs are cranking out pings. Possibly AOL will set up its own server this time, which would at least be sensible, and distribute the pings via changes.xml to the other services.
Unlike Usenet, the blogosphere is not a push medium, so it shouldn't make any difference to the end user (unlike Usenet, where every participant had to experience the chaos). Except that there will be even more weblogs and probably the various weblog search services, information services and directories will have to think about how to structure their information - otherwise you won't find anything in all that mess. [1] the invasion of millions of AOL users into Usenet took place in September 1993.
At Der Schockwellenreiter you can find the original article.
Saturday 5 July Pg : also works with SBCL, OpenMCL and Lispworks
Cool, a complete Lisp implementation of the PostgreSQL interface. Very interesting, and runs in OpenMCL, which means I can play around with it.
I found the original article on CLiki Recent Changes.
Alleged Million-Dollar Purchase on eBay Turns Out to Be a Bad Joke
Are we now introducing a 0.8 per mille limit on the Internet?
At heise online news there is the original article.
Berlusconi refuses to apologize
Oh man, the troll from Italy doesn't even recognize a golden bridge when you put it on his foot. Ok, so now it's at least clear that Berlusconi wants to make a fool of himself. I think this EU Council Presidency will have at least high entertainment value. The political value, however, should be rated as rather questionable. At WDR.de I found the original article.
Embarrassing Iraq dossier in Word format
Yesterday and the day before already here, today also at Heise and Telepolis.
At heise online news there is the original article.
Sport in the Odd Summer
Another Tour casualty (with a few nice links)
You can find the original article at Ligne Claire.
taz 4.7.03 The Servant's Dream
Go for it, push yourself, you pig!
I'm crossing my fingers for Udo Bölts to get a daily victory. He really deserves it.
WebDesktop
Weird. A semi-transparent web browser that runs directly on the desktop. So to speak, Google as a wallpaper (or any other website). Crazy, what kind of ideas people come up with, of course I have Geektool running, with an image of the Holtenauer Lock in Kiel and my current system log on the desktop. That's of course much more sensible. Here's the original article.
German Government Continues to Hinder Fight Against AIDS
Well, everyone has to cut back, so the Eurofighter is approved, but AIDS assistance is cut. That makes sense, doesn't it?
I found the original article at Telepolis News.
Children's Rights: Not a Matter of Compassion
Of course the USA won't ratify something like that, after all they have also detained minors in the camp at Guantanamo Bay. At WDR.de there is the original article.
UK's Straw Admits Iraq Dossier Was 'Embarrassing'
The British government's reaction to the digital traces in the Iraq dossier. It's quite amusing how they squirm now that their embellishments courtesy of Microsoft have been exposed
I Love Me, vol. I
Michael O'Connor Clarke stumbled upon strange pages on the web full of gibberish. These pages contain seemingly randomly generated text content with links. He did some research into who owns the domains and discovered they're connected to Scientology. He's wondering what's going on. My theory: they're trying to improve their Google rankings for their main sites. Through many sites with content and links to each other, they get correspondingly good search positions. The random content could even be regularly refreshed, which Google would then rate as "actively maintained site with many inbound and outbound links." This way these link networks could boost other sites, but due to the random content they wouldn't show up in search results for more specific searches—for non-specific searches they'd get lost in the noise. Essentially stealth Google-bombing. Possibly to combat Operation Clambake? On the other hand, if you read through Operation Clambake and the original Scientology documents hosted there, it could also all be religious texts—they're almost as confusing.
Microsoft Word bytes Tony Blair in the butt
Hmm. A government-presented (and allegedly stolen) intelligence report on Iraq had been edited in Word. Unfortunately, the editors left traces behind. The creative minds who adapted the original document are now known by name.
Nazi jokes in the EU Parliament
Well, the troll from Italy is going to give us a lot of fun. It didn't take long before he showed what he's made of for the first time. He'll certainly fit very well with Dubya. At WDR.de you can find the original article.
Ringel new CEO of WestLB
Fits anyway. Ringelpietz was what they were doing before anyway.
At tagesschau im Internet I found the the original article.
Secret Santa terrorism
Ah yes. Apparently the CIA held a report secret for 30 years, according to which the Ebenezer Scrooge terrorist group was planning an attack on Santa Claus. Of course it was just a joke by a couple of silly spies, but it was kept secret nonetheless. Well, I think it probably had more truth to it than the reports about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, especially the British version of it.
I found the original article at Warblogs:CC.
SpamBayes Outlook Addin
Anyone who has to work with one of the devil's tools (I have to at work, for example) will be happy that the Outlook spam filter plugin written in Python now works really well with Outlook 2000 (and probably XP too). Not that I'd like to use Outlook, but I have no choice, I'm forced to ...
c't opens portal for IT security
No RSS feed?
At heise online news you can find the original article.
Fwd: [infowar.de] Media in War: Dismissed for Criticism
What? Can someone confirm this: employees of Springer press in Germany are contractually obligated to show solidarity with the USA? That can't possibly be true
Lispworks 4.3 for OS X
Wow! Unfortunately more expensive than Macintosh Common Lisp (which I already find too expensive), but still impressive. Unfortunately, it's not revealed whether CLIM is part of OS X Common Lisp. OS X is getting more and more interesting programming environments. But for now I'm still waiting for the OS X Native GUI Smalltalk, that would be the hammer for me.
I find Allegro Common Lisp for OS X uninteresting, by the way - no GUI and a price that represents a real outrage.
At lemonodor there's the original article.
Microsoft can't even get an HR tag right ...
... anyway, that's what the linked article says. A buffer overflow through an overly long ALIGN attribute on the HR tag. That's really embarrassing – Microsoft can't even get a horizontal line right in Internet Explorer without producing a security hole.
MulleNewz - RSS Reader Dockling
Nice little RSS reader for the Dock under OS X. Unfortunately, it doesn't show how many unread messages there are (more precisely, it doesn't remember which ones you've already seen), but otherwise it's very nice. Maybe I can get the programmer to add that feature.
T-Online launches flatrate for DSL-1500
Hmm. With the larger upstream (which unfortunately isn't offered), it would certainly be interesting. Especially if a static IP were included in the package. But only for 1.5 MBit? I think I'll stick with my regular T-DSL flatrate for now.
At heise online news there's the original article.
"Frankenstein Food" - the New Edition
And once again the British government runs like a trained dachshund after the Americans into ridicule. At some point it must even occur to Blair that with his tactics he can at best go down in history as Comical Tony ":Â-]"
I found the original article at Telepolis News.
google with thumbs
Hey, cool! Google search results with website thumbnail. Funny idea
At netbib weblog there's the original article.
Tom Waits Text Collection
Nice link. Very nice link! Anyone interested in Tom Waits should definitely browse through it. I really need speakers in the office...
Tom Waits is definitely one of the most gifted musicians of our time for me. His songs aren't just nice to listen to. They are little works of art. Acoustic sculptures. And the perfect accompaniment to a glass of whisky
I found the original article at Der Schockwellenreiter.
Zabel German Road Champion
So this Zabel - as a sprinter, simply pulling off a 40 km long solo and becoming German champion is quite an achievement against the competition. Maybe he can come to terms with no longer being world number one. And it's not that many points, so he can certainly still make up some ground. But I'm rooting for him for the Tour, he's simply one of the most likeable cyclists. Besides, he's from right around here Here's the original article.
Friends defend photographer as he is arraigned on sex charges
Bob Shell - Editor at Shutterbug Magazine - is currently in custody in connection with the death of his model Marion Franklin (aka Chloe Jennings). She died on July 3rd apparently from an overdose and there is apparently evidence of a sexual relationship between him and the model as well as evidence that he may have made her compliant with drugs. I only found out about it indirectly (Jutta pointed out to me that something was added to the Contax list about it), so far it apparently hasn't been reported in other media. Bob Shell is not entirely unknown in the industry as a technical author and photographer. Besides, he works as an expert at http://beststuff.com/ in the digital technology discussion forum, as well as in some other forums there. Here's the original article.
Comeback of the old BahnCard?
Hmm. That would be a start. Ok, more expensive than the old BahnCard isn't that great, but I'd probably buy it anyway - simply because I'd have my usual spontaneity back. Get on the train and just travel for 50% - and not have to check days in advance whether there's still space in the contingent. We'll see. Especially how people with an existing BahnCard are treated.
At tagesschau im Internet there's the original article.
Freeware violates Apple's intellectual property
Yeah, Apple as we know and despise it: a bully in the jungle of taste patterns, trademarks, and intellectual property. But maybe someone at Apple will eventually realize that their wonderful intellectual property in the Dock wasn't actually theirs to begin with, since they just bought it.
When will Apple finally regard the replication of its own interfaces on other systems for what it is: a compliment? Without the necessary underlying infrastructure, these replications are nothing more than exactly that: imitations. Better mimicry. Nothing more.
But what do you expect from a company that once believed they invented the trash can?
At heise online news you can find the original article.
Bad MSNBOT. Bad.
I love Microsoft's excuse: occasionally it ignores robots.txt because of programming bugs. Oh really. What kind of programming bugs might those be? Could that perhaps be the so-called Intentional Programming that Microsoft once thought so highly of?
At algorhythm you can find the original article.
if SCO isn't right, someone else will be
Once again, one of those tedious discussions about how open-source projects would supposedly be notoriously bad at controlling license compliance for code. Come on? This is getting annoying. Why do people keep opening their mouths about this without engaging their brains?
So first of all, there's hardly any software sector that pays closer attention to licenses than the open-source sector. If only because of the various incompatible open-source licenses (every developer will eventually run into license compatibility issues with the GPL - those discussions keep coming up). Also, in the open-source sector, many projects are explicitly careful to ensure that no proprietary content ends up in the source code - see for example the Samba project or Wine. Both manage to exist alongside Microsoft (and Microsoft's legal department is no slouch). And what really gets me about this whole thing: why do these people always believe that proprietary, closed software development doesn't steal foreign source code? That assumption is absurd. In the area of open-source projects, anyone can read the source code - including companies. Everyone can check whether foreign source is being used. In the proprietary sector, however, that's not possible. Here, costly court proceedings are needed to achieve source code reviews, and proof is not exactly easy. So please don't just parrot the FUD from companies like SCO, please use your head first and think about it. And check the facts.
At Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants there's the original article.
SteinbrĂĽck goes on the offensive
Well, at least scrapping the silly Metrorapid project shows some rudimentary intelligence. In times when social services are being cut, it's quite difficult to justify millions for such a prestige project ...
At WDR.de you can find the original article.
Bill Gates: IT Creates Security
Bill Gates? Wasn't he the chief architect and founder of that store that distributes this web browser with 20 unpatched security holes now?
At heise online news there's the original article.