Phil Pearson does it again - this time he has reimplemented the community server for Dave Winer's OPML editor in Python (previously he had rebuilt the Radio Community Server, a project I was also briefly involved in). In any case, you can now also publish your OPML editor on your own Linux machine if you have Python and SCGI available there.
In times of crisis, you can fully rely on the fact that these overpriced energy suppliers can only do one thing: rip people off and exploit monopolies wherever they can. From the news:
Meanwhile, RWE has begun to assess and partially repair the damage. However, the power is expected to remain out in Steinfurt, Laer, Metelen, Horstmar, and Ochtrup until Monday.
How generous of them to finally start assessing the damage. How about at least restoring power to communication facilities? The phone service to Nordwalde still doesn't work - this is not just a total failure of Deutsche Telekom (which also has its share of blame), but also of the power suppliers. And how can it be that the power suppliers are unable to restore power supply in the district town? These are conditions like in the USA - only here no tornado has passed through, but just a slightly heavier snowfall.
Why these idiots and failures constantly think they need to raise prices when they can't even maintain something as basic as power operations, I just don't understand. The whole thing is an absolute failure and a total disgrace for RWE.
... and Münster is plunged into chaos. Buses with delays of 20-30 minutes, 20 kilometers of traffic jams on the highway in the evening that doesn't clear, and people needing to be supplied with blankets, tea, and gasoline by emergency services (where the locals didn't leave a path, so the emergency services had to drive over the fields ...) and no trains heading north at the station, with 50 travelers having to spend the night in the shelter bunker under the station.
It's always fascinating to witness how unprepared the city of Münster and many of its residents are for something as unusual as snow that actually stays for a moment. Suddenly, absolutely nothing works anymore. And people's minds freeze up just as quickly. Bunker - we have a bunch of hotels in Münster. If the train company can't transport their passengers, they should at least have the courage to offer them hotel rooms instead of sticking them in bunkers.
Oh, and in the Steinfurt district, numerous places are without power (20 according to the latest reports). Nordwalde is among them - so my parents and my sister's family are now sitting in the dark and cold. Hopefully, the power will be back there soon. Incidents like these always remind one how dependent we are on the power supply (and how good it is that in Münster the power comes underground - earthquakes are much rarer here than heavy snowfalls).
It looks like Gabriel is the first candidate for ministerial departure:
A criminal complaint has already been filed against Gabriel with the Braunschweig public prosecutor's office. He is accused of concealing an illegal sham activity for VW, perjury, and a breach of the rules of procedure of the Lower Saxony state parliament. Its president, Jürgen Gansäuer, now wants to have Gabriel's secondary activity checked for compliance with the regulations.
Well, the whole story at VW is also quite cute - the top harasser Hartz gets one dent after another (and the Berlin proletarians still don't find it embarrassing to associate the unfair treatment of the unemployed with such a name). And now there are indications that VW sponsored Viagra for the works councils for sex parties. What a pathetic bunch of louts on all sides ...
Everything is fine in Nordwalde, my father was luckily back from the Sauerland very early on Friday and the power was also back on today at 11:00 - only the telephone took its time until 20:00 ...
Matching the US military's satellite-communicating RFID chips, there's also some brainless news to report from Europe: EU committee approves compromise on telecommunications data retention:
Data protection advocates have rejected the agreements as a "disastrous breach" in telecommunications surveillance and a "massive restriction of fundamental rights." In their opinion, the question of the constitutionality of the bill would also arise in its revised form here in the country.
But the politicians involved in the compromise are celebrating the whole thing as a great success. Well, the constitution doesn't interest anyone here in Germany, especially not the current government - as can be seen from their budget for 2006, which is not in compliance with the constitution ...
Oh, and since we're on the topic of brainless ideas: the music industry demands the same access rights to citizens' dial-up data as those provided for combating terrorism. Another parallel to the brainless consequences of the fight against one's own population in the USA.
News on holographic storage media:
The discs should initially only allow filling at 20 megabits per second and hold data for at least 50 years after writing.
Please with affordable media prices, then I finally have a usable archiving medium for images ...
Some bugs you chase are really strange. Just take a look at the following Python script:
import re
r = re.compile('^', re.M)
src = '''<html> <head> <title>Logviewer</title> </head> <body> <div> <h1>Titel</h1> </div> <div> {{}}
{% block content %}
{% endblock %}
</div> </body> </html> '''
for match in r.finditer(src):
print match.start()
Looks quite harmless - it just returns the positions of the newlines (yes, I know, you do this differently - the source is not mine). The script has an infinite loop on the last, closing newline under Python 2.3. If you remove it (i.e., paste the """ directly behind the last tag without a line break), the script works. Under Python 2.4, both variants work. And you have to chase after things like that...
Do I really need to emphasize that this little snippet of code was hidden in a larger pile of code, or?
I thought that since my computer is now a MacMini, and I no longer need to carry the computer around with me all the time, I could deactivate FileVault. Unfortunately, that won't work for now, as Mac OS X tells me that I need 4 terabytes of free disk space to deactivate it. I'll have to save up for a while before I can afford that.
I'm not the only one with this problem. Apparently, OS X makes a mistake in its calculation when it seems like there isn't enough disk space (even though my home directory only takes up 31 GB, but I have 44 GB free) when displaying the required additional disk space.
Stephen Walli(Ex-Microsofter) über die zu erwartenden Fallstricke in der letzten Microsoft-Aktion:
It will likely be a royalty free license, because the current patent license around the proprietary specification is royalty free. That patent license, however, couldn't be sublicensed, so an implementer that wanted to license their implementation under the GPL couldn't. Indeed previous examples around the IETF SenderID standard would force users of other implementations to engage in a license with Microsoft which is a rather onerous problem for free and open source licensed software.
Der Hinweis auf die SenderID-Geschichte ist durchaus wichtig: dort hat Microsoft auch ständig davon geredet, das es ein offener Standard sei, aber dabei immer unterschlagen, das deren Verständnis von offenen Standards absolut inkompatibel mit vielen Bereichen der Open Source Entwicklung sind - mit Sicherheit wird Microsoft wieder die GPL blockieren.
Abgesehen davon, ich find es schon ziemlich armselig, wenn Microsoft sich schlicht weigert ODF zu implementieren und meint einen eigenen Pseudo-Standard ihres Krams machen zu müssen - zumal man ja genau weiss, wie sich Microsoft dann zu solchen Standards verhält. Die werden dann wieder in den passenden Stellen erweitert und schon ists vorbei mit dem freien Zugriff.
Strong move: according to Georg Greve, a closing statement of a WSIS working group in Austria was changed at the request of Microsoft. Instead of a sentence about the success of free software, there was suddenly a never-before-seen sentence about the advantages of DRM. This is how an unwanted voice is simply silenced - and then it is claimed that everything is fine ...
The pope's hunt for gays continues:
The Vatican does not want to see active gays and people who support the homosexual movement in priestly offices. There is only an exception if the persons concerned have overcome their inclinations for at least three years, as emerges from a document that the Catholic news agency Adista published on the Internet yesterday.
Exactly. Overcome homosexual inclinations. Yes, of course. Actually, one should sue Bildzeitung for its "We are Pope" headline for defamation ...
Transfer of air passenger data is unlawful says the EU Advocate General:
The Advocate General at the European Court of Justice (ECJ), Philippe Léger, recommends that the agreement between the EU and the USA on the transfer of air passenger data should be annulled.
It's strange when data protection has to be saved by the ECJ because it is simply thrown overboard in Germany out of overzealous obedience ...
... that a 20" Cinema Display is quite a fine thing? You can literally get lost on the screen ...
Ok, since my Mac Mini is working hard and everything is functioning as it should, I took the opportunity to install Ubuntu on my Powerbook. I wanted to finally check out how well something like this works today - back in the day, notebooks were quite an adventure with Linux.
Overall, everything looks very good - just like the first impression from the Live DVD. Everything starts properly, the components are mostly well recognized, and the settings are mostly sensible - especially the simple installation (for a test drive, I like to use the DAU mode, just to see how well the people understand their job) leaves a well-set-up desktop system.
Unfortunately, I have a notebook. And not just any notebook, but a Powerbook.
Well, the software itself runs. The desktop is nicely set up, and the selection of software is very useful - even all the notebook features are mostly installed. What was missing?
Well, let's start with the simplest thing: a Powerbook has a fixed keyboard layout - the keys are labeled. I'm not planning to rub off the labeling and repaint it to match a PC. Why don't the Torfnasen provide a Powerbook keyboard layout? I did find something on the net, but to implement it, some major efforts are needed (either applying a not fully functional patch or adjusting the X start process - neither of which are particularly DAU-friendly). Why isn't something like this included with the system? After all, anyone who has seen a Mac keyboard up close knows that it's really not identical to PC keyboards. This is further complicated by the fact that there are quite a few Mac keyboard layouts included - but they only make sense with old ADB keyboards, as they have completely different keyboard codes.
Next up: power management. A lot of software is installed, most of which comes without useful documentation. That's fine - in theory, everything should just be set up. And for the most part, it is set up: when I close my display and open it again, the daemon.log properly records that pbbuttonsd was able to execute the appropriate script.
It would just be nice if the script actually did something...
People, power management is not just a nice-to-have feature for a notebook; it's essential. And everything necessary for it is actually present. Please include it and use it. The Ubuntu installation looks as if the part that would execute the actions was simply left out. And I haven't found out on the fly in which package this might be hidden.
Then there's Bluetooth. The system recognizes all sorts of things, and something is being done with someone - but how, what, and where you can now do something with Bluetooth, that's not really clear. Hey guys, Bluetooth is really not ultra-new anymore, and for Linux, there's been something for quite some time - how about at least some rudimentary tools that show the status?
WLAN still doesn't work - but that's not Ubuntu's fault, it's the stupid manufacturer of the cards. 3D acceleration of the graphics also doesn't work, which is why the desktop is a bit sluggish than it should be - same reason as with WLAN. It's really a shame that hardware manufacturers put extra obstacles in the way of a free operating system.
Minor annoyances: the trackpad is set to be ridiculously sensitive - almost unusable for people with motor problems. More conservative settings would be much more sensible. And Gnome is still quite wasteful with screen space - hey, my notebook only has 1024x768, I can't just add pixels!
All in all, Ubuntu confirms its good suitability as a desktop system - because the installed system itself is really useful. But notebooks are still the last adventure for the toughest.
And my notebook? Well, I'll probably just go back to Tiger.
About the Super Performance of the Mars Rover:
The dramatic landing, during which the 180-kilogram vehicle crashed into the Martian rubble wrapped in airbags, is celebrating its anniversary these days, as a Martian year, i.e. 687 Earth days, has passed since then. To everyone's surprise, the Mars rovers are still functioning.
Really great what these little boxes are doing there. Let's hope for another Martian year. And please, a few more from the model series on a few other planets and moons, if you please?
BGH ruling breaks dialer resale chain:
The "average informed and understanding telephone and internet user" is "not aware of the service chain between the network operator and the value-added service provider". Therefore, the "call to the value-added service cannot be interpreted as the user's intention to conclude a contract with the number administrator". The provider is "from the customer's perspective an agent of a third party".
Very good. This will finally make it more difficult for the dialer mafia to operate their money-making machines. It's about time. Yes, I understand that the intermediaries are not necessarily involved with the dialer scammers - but they have at least tacitly accepted that such businesses are conducted through them. And the constant hide-and-seek game of the dialer operators behind shell companies was really absurd.
Democracy powered by Microsoft has come to an end:
The cooperation between Infratest dimap and Microsoft in ARD election broadcasts has ended, reported the leading North German Broadcasting on Monday.
About time. The ARD's dance around the issue had become simply ridiculous. No corporate advertising belongs in election broadcasts. Period.
First the Leopard II tanks to Turkey, now submarines to Israel - and then also with financing a part of the production by Germany itself. Quite a big action.
And no, what bothers me is not the word "Israel" - there could be any other country. What bothers me - besides the general fact of arms production and arms exports - is the part where Germany itself bears a third of the production costs ...
Hey, wasn't that just Sly Stallone?
(And to be quite honest: the Bond rip-off at the beginning of the movie is just plain awesome)
... the fearmongering of the agitators against data protection and privacy, when the secrecy of telecommunications threatens to be taken seriously.
People who write longer articles about their blog design.
PHP is increasingly becoming a security dump:
Not always does disabling register_globals in PHP increase security. Sometimes this opens up a vulnerability. This is also the case with the Content Management System Mambo, which, according to a posting on the security mailing list Full Disclosure, contains a vulnerability that allows attackers to execute their own code on the server.
This is certainly due to the fact that there is hardly any language - apart perhaps from Perl - that carries as much cruft as PHP. The result shows itself again and again in esoteric problems that even catch people who should be prepared for such things based on their experience.
Jutta and I have been playing around with macro photography again - Jutta has acquired a Zeiss cold light source, so there's finally enough light even for absolutely crazy magnifications. Result: the cactus mite visited again:
If you want a size comparison: the following image is a section of a fairly precise millimeter scale - the top two lines are one millimeter apart, the bottom one is on the half millimeter. The image field corresponds to that of the image above.
The slight blurriness comes from the extreme magnification ratio - about 12x magnification relative to the base area of the 10D chip - and from the optical system operated far outside its optical parameters.
The equipment used was a Canon EOS 10D, a Canon EF to Contax Y/C adapter, a Contax bellows unit, a Tokina ATX 17mm/f3.5 in retro position, and the whole thing then on a tripod and ball head (such an Arca Swiss Monoball is already something fine - the ideal ball head for macro work). Then some finesse, patience, and series shots with minimally changing distance between lens and subject.
Problems with voting machines in the federal election:
Wiesner criticizes in particular that the voting is indirect – via the voting machine and the software used – and it cannot be verified whether the vote is stored immediately and unchanged in the vote memory and subsequently in the electronic vote memory until the election result is determined is not changed.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed that he succeeds with his application, but I don't see any greater chances - because surely it will just be discussed to death again and by then the Federal Constitutional Court may decide, the current coalition will have long since gone to Orkus (they won't last 4 years) ...
For example, if umlauts are not processed cleanly - as with pre_populate_from in Django. Therefore, I no longer use this in my CMSProject, but simply fill the slug in _pre_save. And then let a corresponding routine run there. Although this is not really perfect, but at least usable ...
And yes, this is a test post for the function to create a slug from a title with umlauts.
... the bankruptcy of the Red-Black horror coalition and the loud howling and gnashing of teeth of all the interest group arse-lickers who now think they might lose their little butter. Meanwhile, the hunt against Hartz IV recipients continues and the welfare state is dismantled, but the police state is further expanded. Any sense is left out and therefore the little conjuncture is simply murdered with a VAT increase. The whole thing is then garnished with a clear violation of the constitution in the budget for next year. And these idiots stand up and celebrate themselves and their pathetic work.
When watching bad movies, you can always switch channels. Where is the remote control for reality, please?
Apple has clarified the licensing issues with WebObjects - Deployment on Linux boxes is now also completely allowed. Thus, the XCode environment with WebObjects is now completely free from development to deployment.
A series of pictures taken during various geocaching tours. Some in the Coesfelder Heide, some near Wolbeck:
... there is in my CMS Testbed(yes, I'm knitting on my own content management software again). And when I look at how little trouble my own software gives me and how much trouble Wordpress always causes (for example, today I couldn't upload any pictures without being able to find any reason - nothing in the log files, no error message, just the refusal to upload), then the switch could be getting closer and closer ...
Who wants to have a good laugh: RatcliffeBlog—Mitch's Open Notebook: Measuring podcasts: The right first step - about the pathetic attempts of Audible to make money from podcasts. Regardless of what you think about podcasts (I don't think much of them, their accessibility is simply terrible), Audible's ideas (which sell DRM-infested audiobooks) are simply laughable.
Their rootkit nonsense is now also affecting Macs:
Sony BMG has turned the Windows universe against itself with the XCP copy protection from First 4 Internet. Now a copy protection method also appears that is supposed to perform similar tasks in the Mac cosmos as the XCP software. Until now, there were hardly any Trojans and rootkits known for Mac systems.
Great. Hardly any rootkits and Trojans - until now the music industry pushes such nonsense in our face. What are they smoking at Sony-BMG anyway? One thing is clear: a CD from them will not come into my player again. Stigmatizing consumers as criminals and whining about how bad they have it, and then launching an attack on my computer with CDs? Forget it.
SAP Executive Rants Against Open Source:
Otherwise, it is important not to mess too much with the code of high-quality software programs.
Wait a minute. "High-quality software programs". He works at SAP? Where do they have any high-quality software programs? I mean, if you don't consider "high-quality" as "hopelessly overpriced junk", as he probably does?
And therefore, here are only sporadic updates when I feel like it and have the time. Given the interesting project and the quite pleasant weather, this will probably be rather rare.
To continue playing a role in the Berlin government, the SPD sells out job protection:
The experts from the Union and SPD have agreed to further relax job protection in a grand coalition. As reported by the "Bild am Sonntag," the probationary period for new hires may be extended to up to two years in the future. "This does not shake the substance of job protection," SPD labor market expert Klaus Brandner told the newspaper.
Okay, the whole thing is from Bild am Sonntag, so you can't put much stock in the truthfulness, but if it's really true, that's quite an outrageous audacity. A probationary period of two years is de facto an abolition of job protection, no matter what this SPD blowhard says - new hires then have no security at all, and the slightest disagreement and the contract is terminated. That's simply absurd.
Especially since employers already have a comparable option with fixed-term contracts today, only the employee then at least has some security for the duration of the fixed-term relationship - with the idea sketched above, there is no security at all.
And let's be honest: a boss who needs two years to determine if a new employee is suitable for the job (and that's exactly what the probationary period is for, not as a dishonest way out for the abolition of job protection), must either be a lying piece of shit, or dumb as a piece of bread in the puddle...
The lies of the SPD in recent years (with Hartz IV and all the crap from Schily) and in the current coalition negotiations is in any case a clear sign that the SPD no longer deserves its own name. It has nothing to do with social anymore. This is the sale of the welfare state purely out of power greed and obsession.
Coalition of Social Democrats and Christian Democrats to review data protection:
Under the title "Germany – a safe and free country," the fight against terrorism is described in the paper available to heise online as "a very important task for all German security authorities." In addition, a "claim" of citizens is postulated "to be protected from crime." According to the interior experts of the grand coalition, other constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties must be subordinated to this. It is necessary to examine, as stated in the eight-page contract document, "to what extent legal regulations, for example in data protection, stand in the way of effective combating of terrorism and crime" and whether the "proven security architecture" needs to be further developed.
Speechless.
Open Letter: The Wealthy Want to Pay More Taxes:
Krämer said it cannot be that seriously considering an increase in the value-added tax without also taxing the wealthy more. An increase in the value-added tax would hit average earners, retirees, and the unemployed much harder.
Funny how people with money can understand this, but our federal proles can't ...
She shows herself in the position on (not quite?) General Secretary Nahles:
Nahles had previously been sharply attacked within the party. The spokesman of the conservative Seeheimer Kreis, Johannes Kahrs, said in the ARD morning magazine: "I think it is absurd that someone is rewarded as a regicide who, with his stubbornness, has led the party into crisis."
I think it is absurd that a right-wing pile of trash like the Seeheimer Kreis gets a voice in the SPD at all. He should just go over to the Union ...
The "regicides" were, by the way, not Mrs. Nahles, but the party executive - of whom 8 also did not attend the meeting. But criticizing them, the little coward naturally does not dare, because they could cut him back in his perks and trim him down to what he is: nothing.
But unfortunately, the SPD executive probably does not have the guts and will chicken out in front of the conservative forces and thus help to make the SPD just as boring, uninteresting, predictable and insignificant with new personnel as it already is. Just a red-painted Union. Who needs that? When we have Stoiber and Seehofer?
In the Land of the Free and the Brave:
The United Nations has accused the United States of imposing unacceptable conditions on a planned inspection of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Even China does not set such conditions for visits to its prisons, said the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Manfred Nowak, in New York.
With the current administration, perhaps rather a land of cowards and liars?
At Heise, there is a report about the problems with Sony BMG's copy protection:
This software emulates rootkit functions - rootkits also hide their (illegal) activities from the computer user. The copy protection installs filter drivers for CD-ROM drives and IDE drivers, through which it controls access to media.
Ultimately, this is another breach of user data integrity. And considering the idiotic copy protection laws in Germany, you're not even allowed to do anything about it. And so, the individual's right to their property (this is not just about Sony's silly CD, the entire computer is affected!) is once again sacrificed on the altar of the music industry's arrogance.
By the way, this copy protection also includes monitoring functions for media other than its own protected content - and in my opinion, this massively violates data protection regulations, because regardless of what Sony wants to protect, what else is going on on the computer is none of their business.
Another reason not to buy CDs from Sony BMG.
Stoiber is not going to Berlin - the signs of decay of the grand coalition are already evident before it even comes into being, and they are really quite amusing. On both sides, people are falling apart like cardboard boxes.
The entertainment value of this Berlin docu-soap is certainly remarkable.
DjangoTesting is part of my DjangoStuff project and is the start of a testing framework for Django, modeled after the testing framework that Ruby on Rails provides. Currently only model tests are implemented, request/response tests are planned.
The testing framework is built solely on unittest and django, so you don't need additional modules (besides my DjangoStuff project, of course). It provides python-based fixture notations (fixtures are just python classes with attributes in a DATA subclass) and a basic command line utility to make use of those tests and fixtures.
Tests and fixtures are stored in applications and projects, so you can have application specific tests (especially usefull with generic applications) and project-level tests that will integrate stuff over several applications.
I think a good testing framework would really be important for Django applications, especially for applications that should be shared between projects. But I do think that a good testing framework needs some banging on, too - so I started it as a small subproject on my own. But if it grows into something useful, I will opt for inclusion into Django trunk.
Go together - education only for those who can afford it. The others should better stay stupid: Chances of inequality have grown further. And our state governments (on whose behalf education policy grows) will make sure that this remains the case. With certainty at least in the Union-governed countries, to which NRW unfortunately now also belongs.
For someone like me, who comes from a working-class family, this development is more than shocking. In my time, children from working-class families were not the majority in the classes at the grammar school, but there were some there. But with today's developments - school fees, teaching material fees, later tuition fees - the politicians make it very clear what they think of workers: nothing at all.
We are Germany? Up the arse. Money is Germany.
I can't help but crack a small, nasty grin about Müntes' preferred candidate for General Secretary losing to Andrea Nahles. Guess that's nothing for Münte as the new Wehner, pulling the strings from behind and everyone dancing to his tune - he's been whistled off.
If you have any evil plans for a switch statement for Django (hia rjwittams! ), you might want to look into my TagLib. There is a case/when/otherwise statement in there. It's quite easy to use:
{% case variable %}
{% when "value1" %}
{% endwhen %}
{% when "value2" %}
{% endwhen %}
{% otherwise %}
{% endotherwise %}
{% endcase %}
The reason for the tag structure is that the django template parser only looks for parameterless block-closing tags in the parsefor function and so you can't just pull an easy one like this:
{% if condition %}
{% elif condition %}
{% else %}
{% endif %}
You would have to copy over much from the template parser to get a parsefor that looks for a token with a tag and parameters to close the current block.
So I opted for the scoped tags approach where the "case" tag only sets up a context variable "case" and populates it with a dictionary with "value" and "fired" - with the latter one a trigger that can be fired by any "when" tag to prevent other "when" tags or the "otherwise" tag to fire themselves. A bit ugly, but working.
Walking along the canal and captured a few impressions:
Adhoc organization is what I named the basic design decisions for my new content management system (blog system, personal wiki, digital image shoebox - whatever). It's coming along nicely, even though up to now I only used it as a sample application to make use of my little tools from the DjangoStuff pseudo-project. And it still is one of the best ways to see how tagging or searching or the new calendar tag or other stuff is used.
But it's coming along so good that I think I will be able to change over some sites in the near future. The basic design decisions are somewhat documented in the linked document in my trac-wiki. The main objective for me is to get something that I can use as easy for image presentation as for text presentation and that allows me to really integrate both parts. So that articles really can consist of a multitude of media and text.
It's quite fun to work on a project where you tear down the model and rebuild part of it from time to time, or make major refactoring decisions that leave you with a broken heap of python-bullshit for a while
Do site operators actually look at their own sites? If I need 30 seconds to close a page on Netzeitung because a crappy ad banner is blocking all resources, I don't find that funny anymore. I already thought it was stupid that you could barely scroll through the TV program on Yahoo because of all the Flash ads. But a newspaper that claims to understand the internet should perhaps take a look at its own pages and do some quality assurance on the ads it places ...
From creativepro.com - Stripping Raw Naked - an interview with the maker of Aperture:
JS: It depends on what you do with Aperture. I mostly run it on my 15-inch PowerBook. That's not to say that I don't enjoy the refreshing wind-blowing-through-my-hair feeling when I sit down in front of a G5 running Aperture. But a PowerBook is fine for what a lot of photographers do in the field with their laptops: browse images quickly and step through the thumbnails. Maybe tag the images they like, maybe zoom in closely on one. The photo edit stage. For that, a PowerBook does take a speed hit, but it's totally usable.
This is where our scheme of loading a proxy image comes in -- the 1024 proxy is often all I need to see at this stage. Depending on how many megabytes each image is, Aperture on a G5 can load the full Raw image in less than a second. On my PowerBook, that same image may take three to four seconds to load fully.
For heavier duty image processing, faster GPUs and multiple processors are of huge benefit. Aperture does make extensive use of dual processors, but you do not need a Quad [a new model from Apple that has two dual-core processors].
That sounds more usable - if a 15" PowerBook is actually considered operable.