EU blocks 'risk ships'

EU blocks "risk ships" - that's long overdue by a few years. The catastrophe could have been avoided if politicians hadn't hesitated forever to enforce appropriate regulations.

Found at tagesschau on the Internet.

Magic with Light

Magic with Light. The trick is simple, the effect astounding: you photograph or film a scene. Then you project the image or film back onto the original scene from exactly the same location. Now comes the trick: if you hold an object in front of it, it appears transparent. Academically this is called "optical camouflage" and at the... . Hey - you always learn new tricks. Thanks to Industrial Technology & Witchcraft for this link. Found at Industrial Technology & Witchcraft.

Greens want longer shopping hours

Greens want longer shopping hours - is that a distraction tactic now? I mean, it would be just the thing for it, you can rely on the fact that such a topic produces so much fuss that it's guaranteed to bury one thing or another underneath it...

Found at tagesschau on the Internet.

Attack on McDonald's in Indonesia

Attack on McDonald's in Indonesia - I don't like their food either, but I think that's a bit excessive ...

Found at tagesschau on the Internet.

ElcomSoft Case: Ineffective Burglary Tool

ElcomSoft case: Ineffective burglary tool - really very well prepared by Adobe ...

Found at heise online news.

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Spam on the judicial test stand - I'm curious about the outcome of the proceedings. I hope a signal will be set.

Found at heise online news.

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One dead in explosion near Münster - and a colleague is on duty as a firefighter.

Found at tagesschau on the internet.

Möllemann will not leave

Möllemann will not go. In a letter to the faction members, he spoke of a "cheap removal" - sorry, but given what it has cost the FDP, calling it cheap is a bit typically Möllemann. Found at tagesschau on the internet.

Alice in Men's Land

"Alice im Männerland" - I find her a bit crazy, but still (or perhaps because of it): Congratulations.

Found at tagesschau im Internet.

Nobody Wants Mollemann Anymore

Nobody wants Möllemann anymore - I can't understand that at all. Well, he's already threatened political activities outside the FDP. Although "threatened" is probably the right word here. The question is just where he wants to go underground - with the Republicans? NPD? Or start his own group like the Schiller party?

Found at tagesschau on the Internet.

FDP board wants to throw out Möllemann

FDP board wants to kick out Möllemann10 ... 9 ... 8 ... 7 ...

Found at tagesschau on the internet.

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If all goes well, I'll soon be the owner of a Contax RTS III. By all goes well, I mean that the camera matches the description on eBay when it arrives, and I've already won the auction. Wow. A Contax RTS III - one of the cameras that can rightfully claim to occupy the top of the evolution of manually focused 35mm cameras. I still can't quite believe it...

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The government is raising taxes, contribution assessment limits are to be increased, the pension insurance contribution is being raised, and health insurance companies are announcing - despite a contribution increase freeze! - increases of over 15%. Good grief, why does the current government think anyone will still support their policies in such a context? They must be crazy. Sure, you have to pay more when costs go up - but why aren't these stupid war games ever stopped? This nonsense is far too expensive. Why do I have to pay more for it? And why do I ultimately have to reach into my pocket three times over, just because all administrations - health insurance companies just like the state - are fundamentally unwilling to clean up their mess once and for all?

Even if I can still afford the whole increase - gritting my teeth and with little enthusiasm, but ultimately I'm doing well financially, so I can also bear more - what about those whose only "consumption" - which they're also supposed to forgo according to Müntefering - consists of living? Are they supposed to end their lives in a socially acceptable manner now?

And of course the opposition immediately seizes on this and plays itself up as a great potential benefactor. Ridiculous - they themselves bled the citizen dry for years, who believes their sanctimonious act anyway? Tax cuts only exist for them for companies and the self-employed, the average employee means nothing to them either.

And then the Federal President wonders why no one believes politicians anymore and why acceptance of politics is going down the drain.

Daydreamers, rip-off artists and idiots, all of them...

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Pinkwart replaces Möllemann in North Rhine-Westphalia - but that's only one point. Will they really throw Möllemann out now? Some are already backing down. People, stay firm. End the Möllemann era.

Found at tagesschau online.

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Apparently more Möllemann millions discovered - wow, quite a bit of dirt in the basement there. This is turning into Kanther II

Found at tagesschau on the Internet.

Jürgen on the Bench

Jürgen on the bench - well, can't they get rid of him there too? I mean, I can understand the PDS women being alarmed by Möllemann in their district. The PDS women at least take the Bundestag seriously and are present more often, unlike Möllemann. Thanks to the "Jürgen Möllemann Memorial Blog" for the link.

Found at Jürgen Möllemann Memorial Blog.

Comparison of Rollei 6008 and Hasselblad System

Since I recently saw someone search for "Rollei and Hasselblad comparison" coming to this site, I got to thinking about why I actually have a Rollei 6008 and no Hasselblad. With the M6, the Hasselblad would fit much better - both mechanical. The Rollei, on the other hand, is a high-tech monster. Ok, one reason was that the Rollei was sitting in the window and the price was good, sure. But I could have left it there and waited for a Hasselblad. So why Rollei?

For me, the Rollei is the crown of the development of cameras with manual focus in many respects. I couldn't imagine what else you could put into it. The Rollei has a whole range of special features compared to many other MF cameras. Top of the list is the light metering even with the light shaft. But it's not just that alone, but also the way the exposure is measured and controlled. That's exactly how I always imagined it: a free choice of metering mode, arbitrarily combinable with aperture priority, shutter speed priority, or manual follow-up metering. Ok, it also has a program auto mode for hectic use. Just set the settings to automatic for what should be automatic - if both aperture and shutter speed are set to automatic, it's a program auto. No silly mode dial.

Then there are of course the other Rollei features that convinced me: built-in motor (it's not fast, but it's built-in and therefore compact). The roller blind on the magazines is also a great thing, which means no more lost sliders. The long film path in the magazines helps against the annoying film flatness problem of classic Hasselblad and Zeiss magazines. The electronic transmission of film speed from the magazine to the camera makes magazine changes with different speeds practical and quick.

And then the Rollei of course has the "fine points": the 1/1000th second with the PQS lenses, for example. The purely electronic signal transmission, which required no change to the bayonet even with the new AF lenses. The absolutely excellent Zeiss calculations that produce really fine lenses - even though I only have a single lens (the 2.8/80 PQS). And the whole thing also has a robust housing.

My conclusion: of course, one of the large Hasselblad models with integrated exposure metering and an additional winder would have many of the Rollei's features, but definitely not all of them. And not in this very pleasant to operate form. And certainly not at the used price I paid for it.

Hmm. I really need to go out with the Rollei again soon.

Conspirators to Make Yourself

Conspirators for DIY - cute. Poor intelligence agencies. Hmm. Is it now sabotage or even a terrorist act if you participate in it because it paralyzes or obstructs the authorities? On the other hand - it's definitely a live performance on the Internet, and if renowned artists set it up, it's a work of art. It could get quite funny if intelligence agencies actually met art. Maybe it will even help the spooks with their education.

Found at heise online news.

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Nostalgia: westfalen.de in the Wayback Machine - oh boy, the early days. OK, it goes back even further, but unfortunately there was no Wayback Machine back then. It's quite funny what our little private provider went through over the years.

By the way, my own homepage there has hardly changed since then, I think I should work on it again sometime...

Union Blocks Hartz Laws in Bundesrat

Union brakes Hartz laws in Bundesrat - clearly, blockade for blockade's sake. Yet many of these laws are points that the Union itself had once championed, but what do they care about their clamoring from yesterday. All lies, it's not about wanting what's best for citizens, it's simply only about power. And with that it goes down the drain, because democracy and the people always get left behind in such developments. And that is the real, the genuine election lie, the real election fraud: the claim that politicians represent the interests of voters.

Found at tagesschau on the Internet.

Pantani wants to return to racing

Pantani wants back in the racing saddle - well, I'd wish him that, especially on a team with Jan Ullrich under Bjarne Ries that would be quite a sensation. But whether the pirate could subordinate himself to a Jan Ullrich? Because that's what he'd have to do - he's simply past his peak performance and in direct comparison with Jan Ullrich clearly inferior - even if Jan still has to prove he's got it. And Pantani with Cippo on the same team? That would cause fights in the locker room ...

Found on tagesschau on the internet.

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FDP leadership unimpressed - well, he can squirm as much as he wants, he won't get out of this easily.

Found at tagesschau on the internet.

Jürgen Möllemann Memorial Blog

Jürgen Möllemann Gedächtnis Bloq - seems like I'm not alone (bloq, why actually bloq?) ...

And in response to Stefan: if you can do something with 10% of the programs posted on Freshmeat, then you have too much free time

One of the stupidiest talks about browsers

One of the stupidiest talks about browsers - sorry, but those guys don't grasp it. Read their little article, find at least 5 errors (there are much more in there, but we want to keep this simple, don't we?) and then you can keep them. This could really be funny if it wasn't for the fact that they are serious on it ... (found through the "Jürgen Möllemann Gedächtnis Bloq")

Concern over Microsoft's New Acquisition

Concerns about Microsoft's new hire - how extremely convenient for Microsoft to bring on board someone who happened to be previously involved in the antitrust proceedings. Hmm. No, that has nothing to do with each other, he assured us of that. And we all believe him, don't we?

Found at heise online news.

Doc Searls

Doc Searls introduces Technorati - hey, that's nice. A search engine that specifically examines weblogs for links to each other, as well as for Google rankings. I don't find the latter particularly interesting, but the former, the links between weblogs, I think that's pretty cool. Google provides some of that too, but on principle it's not as efficient.

Found at Scripting News.

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Poor grades for German schools again - I'm afraid that, just like the Pisa study, will only be blown up for political attacks, but there won't be any real consequence - an increase in the budget for the education system and a genuine improvement to it - won't happen. Why would it, stupid people believe more easily what politicians tell them...

Found at tagesschau on the Internet.

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Computer Pioneer Alan Kay Joins Hewlett-Packard - whether he can bring his strengths to bear there? HP is - especially after the latest merger - really no longer the think tank with good ideas and sometimes quite a bit of freedom for research. It would be a shame if Alan Kay got stuck there. And to stay on topic: the environment linked in the article Squeak is really worth seeing. Take a look at it sometime, one of the most modern Smalltalk systems on the market. An ideal playground, especially since many interesting base projects are already included, such as a quite usable web browser and web server.

Found at heise online news.

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Even North Rhine-Westphalia FDP wants to get rid of Möllemann - well, slowly the noose is tightening. Indictments coming in continuously, everyone wants to get rid of him, but the ultimatum to voluntarily step down probably won't work. Möllemann has already announced that he will fight. We'll see, maybe he'll take one or two others down with him, that certainly wouldn't be bad...

Found at tagesschau on the internet.

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Fred Miranda tests the EOS-1Ds - another test report from a practitioner. Again, an advocate of the digital faction. Of course, it would be interesting to see a test of the 1Ds from an analog enthusiast, but somehow I haven't found much of that yet.

Found at Imaging Resource News Page.

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Found on Scripting News: A feature for a mail server?.

What if every mail server supported a new feature. An XML-RPC interface with one entry point. It takes one parameter, a user name and returns a struct containing a boolean. The boolean is true if there is such a user on that machine. It's a struct so more info can be returned later. My email program could send a message to the server each piece of mail came from. Hey you got someone with this name, and do they send out spam? If the answer is no, filter it to the bit bucket.

Nice idea, but it's already there. Ok, not "XML-RPC", but there are other formats out there and some are much older. You can use the SMTP VRFY command on many mail servers to verify a user. Problem: since user checking on many machines is very hard work (think about stuff like http://hotmail.com/ or http://gmx.de/ - multi-million-user sites!), so not every host supports it, many hosts don't allow VRFY to not give out too much data (since spammers can use this interface to check addresses for legitimacy, too!) and some only give you an OK on every check (for the same reasons, they just hide better).

So would it solve the problem at hand? No. Spammers would just start to use the very same interface to validate their own email lists and use one picked randomly out of the pool of their addresses as the sender. What would we get? Nothing better than now, only better disguised. You have to take into account that spammers do learn, too. They might be at the bottom of social behaviour on the net, but they are not necessarily stupid.

Maybe I'm missing something or it's too early in the morning, but couldn't we ask the servers if they know about this person sending me the spam. I have a feeling that most of the spam I get comes from made-up people.

Oh, sure they are. They have been for some time now. Spammers are not interested in responses. One of the most important things to note: spammers don't care for email replies. They actually don't care for the recipient at all - all they do is send out mail, that's all. They are paid for that. There might be click-throughs (most of porn spam is to get people to click the links in the mail, that's why most porn spam nowadays is HTML with embedded images). But nobody in that business wants you to return anything to the sender.

So what to do about spam? The currently best practice is to set up a Bayesian mail filter like bmf or any of the like projects. There are some to integrate into mail clients, some to integrate into the mail server. Just watch out for them. I use bmf to filter mail on my server and it works quite well after feeding it several hundred mails and it gets better every round. False positives are down to only 2-3 a day (and mostly administrative stuff that is easily spotted in the spambox) and false negatives are down to 5-7 a day, easily spotted in the prefiltered inbox, too. The vast majority of about 70-80 spam mails per day are filtered out just fine.

Found on Scripting News.

Beitrag ohne Titel

What's wrong with Joshua Allen's coment on yEnc? One simple thing: yEnc tried to solve a problem in a way that is not stable: there are already implemented standards for encoding, but yEnc ignores them all and put's it's own on top of NNTP and Netnews. It ignores all RFCs in existance and reinvents the wheel.

Will this break things? Sure, it already did. Not everybody jumps on the bandwagon to implement yEnc, so people have to use external tools to get at the stuff they want. But since yEnc is implemented in the worst way possible, this won't always work. Take for example a bi-charset-Environment like the Mac OS. You usually use Mac charsets externally, but talk latin1 or other standard charsets on protocol level. So your data get's converted from one charset to the other. Since yEnc doesn't give applications not knowing about yEnc any clue about it's existence, the stuff get's broken.

yEnc makes almost all errors UUENCODE made, but adds several layers of it's own errors on top of it. This is just plain stupid. And that it "works" is no reason - it works to the extent that people using yEnc capable programs can exchange information. But the basic idea of the Internet is to enable as much people to use something as possible. That's why MIME is so complicated, it's idea is to set up markers in adavance to allow programs to know that something problematic is ahead, even if they don't know what it actually is - and hand it over to a helper application.

yEncs stupid idea of body-tags makes this automatic forward-compatible way of handling stuff problematic.

A very good discussion of the problems of yenc is at http://www.exit109.com/~jeremy/news/yenc.html - read it, understand it and you know what is wrong with Johns little talk.

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I've had a severe cold since Friday - that's why things are quiet here.

Photo album of the world's oldest photo club online

Photo album of the world's oldest photo club online - interesting not just for historians. The "Pencils of Light" are the images of the Edinburgh Calotype Club.

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Euro not such a "teuro" after all? - then I probably can't do math.

Found at tagesschau online.

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Goppel under fire for historical comparison - well, if the CSU were consistent, they would fire their secretary general. After all, they also demanded that Deubler-Gmelin resign because of an alleged comparison (which wasn't even proven, just blown up by the press). But I don't think the CSU will stand by their words one bit ...

Found at tagesschau on the internet.

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Arrest warrants issued in denture fraud scandal - please also arrest the dentists who participated in this mess. Especially at a time when funds are lacking in health insurance coffers and patients are being asked to pay, I find what came to light here quite appalling. Tough action needs to be taken and the dentists held accountable. That's the only way to get something like this under control - I still shudder when I think of the heart valve scandal...

Found at tagesschau on the internet.

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Massive oil slick drifting toward Spain - when will we actually learn from these disasters? When will tankers without double hulls be banned? When will finally a stringent control of tankers be introduced, a mandatory TÜV for ships, regular checks of officers and better monitoring of crews? Such disasters are preventable. But for every meager profit, everything that can be sacrificed is sacrificed. And nature has to bear it. "The authorities hope that the heavy oil will quickly clump in the cold water and not reach the sea surface."

Yes and? Do they believe that solves the problem? Let's just leave the mess lying around on the sea floor, it doesn't bother anyone. Are they completely insane?

Found at tagesschau on the Internet.

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Pieper wants to throw out Möllemann - me too.

Found at tagesschau on the internet.

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Schröder supports EU accession of Turkey - well, great, religiously-conservative oriented forces are winning elections in Turkey, the Kurds are still being flattened with (German-made) tanks and torture is a tried and tested means to an end, as you can read every year in the Amnesty International report. And our government? Wants to help this state into the EU. Anything else?

Found at tagesschau on the internet.

Beitrag ohne Titel

If everything works, this should show up on lifejournal and in my own sysadmins corner and so make my life easier, as I only need to edit one system to replicate posts to several hosts. Footbridge rules.

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Anyone who wants to populate multiple weblogs from Radio can do that with the Manila-Blogger-Bridge. But it can only handle Blogger-API and only one category, namely the homepage. However, if you'd like to selectively post one article here and the next one there, you should take a look at Footbridge. Very interesting tool, you can specify for individual categories whether they should be copied to Livejournal, Advogato, or to a Blogger-API system. Separately for each individual category. Very practical.

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DR-DOS lives - sometimes they come back. Only - who wants that now? I mean, except perhaps the fans of Pet Sematary and other horror movies ...

Found at heise online news.

I want a

I want one!

Java vs. Python

Java vs. Python - a fairly well-made comparison between Java and Python. Attempts to address all aspects. Actually, I only have two points of criticism:

Regarding remote methods and distributed programs, it is stated that Python would not provide anything by default. That's not correct, though - it comes with xmlrpclib, a module that makes it very easy to create servers and clients for XML-RPC calls. This is also used internally in the Python Community Server.

As a counterpart to the servlet architecture, only Zope is referenced, not the numerous servlet-like programs available for Python. Medusa is certainly one possible example of a very efficient server environment, but also Python Server Pages or Quixote provide quite a lot in that regard. And there is mod_python - admittedly not as widespread as mod_perl, but that will certainly come.

But overall still a fairly good comparison, and many of the points that make me prefer Python to Java are addressed.

Python JIT

Python JIT - something like that exists? I was quite surprised when I read the previous comparison article that such a project actually exists. It even goes one step further and, in addition to the classic JIT technique, wants to extract even more performance with the help of specialization of the generated code. Something like that has been done quite often in the realm of functional languages, so it's doable. In any case, a project worth keeping an eye on!

Waste in the Billions

Waste in the billions - yeah right, but it's always someone else's fault and never the government's. Regardless of whether it's conservative or social democrat. And anyway, the citizens are supposed to cough up the money. And it's clear that everyone knows better how to do it - except oddly enough, every government so far has been accused of wasting taxpayer money and the Federal Audit Office has virtually never had a good word to say about federal government spending. Well, the solution is obvious: raising VAT so the federal government can waste even more money ... The Federal Audit Office report will certainly go the same way as the PISA study: misunderstood, regurgitated and squandered for meaningless political activism. Results? None. We continue to become stupider and the federal government squanders our tax money. No big deal, in a few generations we'll all be too stupid to even notice ...

Found at tagesschau on the internet.

Employers advise on reforms

Employers advised on reforms - that will definitely be super effective. I would like to request the definition of a tag for HTML ...

And does anyone really believe that a blockhead like Hundt would deviate even an inch from his role as a tool of the C(D/S)U? Why do they even bother talking to him - it's pointless anyway. Hundt will only do anything with an SPD government if forced to. Otherwise, he will obstruct out of principle alone and boycott any attempt - just as he has repeatedly sabotaged every approach to an alliance for work.

But the SPD and the unions are so naively crawling to the cross anew each time. Don't they realize that they only make concessions but get nothing in return? That they are being duped? Or do they know exactly that and don't care, because they stopped caring about the ordinary employee long ago anyway?

Found at tagesschau on the internet.

Perhaps we are all already inmates of a total madhouse

Perhaps we are all already inmates of a total madhouse - a highly interesting interview. Worth reading. Could Robert Kurz perhaps actually be "Wonko the Sensible"?

Found at Telepolis News.

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eBay helps tax authorities - ok, people, now it's getting interesting. On eBay, pretty much everything you can imagine gets sold. And of course, the tax office wants its cut too. This could get really amusing - especially for those who have seen eBay as a good platform for buying and selling on a larger scale and who have been claiming it's all just private dealings. They're in for a surprise.

So, who among you has reported your sales correctly?

Found at tagesschau im Internet.