Zypries accuses critics of data retention of lacking expertise - reading such statements from the federal incompetence (some insist on calling her the Federal Minister of Justice) is quite amusing. If we talk about lack of expertise here, then this first and foremost applies to our politicians, who are completely ignorant of facts and realities. When she then makes such an accusation, among other things, to the Federal Data Protection Commissioner, it only becomes ridiculous.
Linkblog - 24.9.2007 - 5.11.2007
Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard: the Ars Technica review - a very good overview of all possible aspects of 10.5 - from the kernel inside to the GUI on top.
Doing the Leopard Moan - I think I'll wait a bit with the update ... (until the manufacturers of the many little helper tools have converted the first quirks of the system and Apple's new ideas into usable tools that help you get over them). Am I actually a Mac heretic if I say that I would prefer to have this stupid Dock completely unplugged? I mean even the one from older versions, not just the one from Leopard.
TidBITS Macs & Mac OS X: Getting to Know Time Machine - sorry, but after all the features that Apple apparently left out of the release (AirPort Disc for backups, controlled archiving of old files, etc.), Time Machine sounds anything but impressive.
CCC hackt Hamburger Wahlstift - "The CCC particularly criticizes that, according to the new Hamburg election law, only the digital crosses recorded by the voting pen should be considered as an expression of the voters' will. The paper serves only as a voter-soothing decoration, as the votes on the paper are to be recounted for verification in only 17 of the approximately 1,300 polling stations. Votes that are clearly cast with a conventional ballpoint pen or fountain pen are to be sorted out as invalid, so that in case of doubt, the computer is decisive, not the votes on the paper."
Cowboy Programming: Mature Optimization - Mature optimization is any optimization done early in development that you know in advance will provide a significant performance boost without unmanageable side effects. Mature optimizations are often well-known techniques that were successfully used before. Mature optimizations include small local modifications, coding standards, and architecture-level design decisions.
heise online -Softwarepatent-Gegner beklagen Deal der EU-Kommission mit Microsoft - "The Commission does not understand how Open Source works," Benjamin Henrion, the Brussels representative of the FFII, also shakes his head at the negotiated agreement. The authority has naively accepted the promises of the Redmonders that they will now abide by the rules. Meanwhile, Microsoft has been planning for years to control the Open Source economy through commercial property rights on computer programs. This plan has now advanced considerably. "Kroes has ensured that software patents of the EPA, which the EU rejected in 2005, now strengthen the monopolist's grip for years to come."
Is the inflation rate really alarming? - if "economic experts" dismiss the price increase of milk by saying that computers and TVs have become cheaper, then I'm not surprised at the miserable state of our society anymore. How mentally impoverished must one be to actually compare a product that almost everyone buys regularly with something that is rather a rare purchase? With these flimsy arguments, everything has been twisted into a "perfect world" for years. No matter how ridiculous it is upon closer inspection. Experts? Really? Sorry, I call such people blabbermouths.
Lawyers prohibit viewing the HTML code of their website - and linking is absolutely forbidden. Very naughty, these links ...
Clozure CL IDE for Tiger - OpenMCL is now called Clozure CL and a first demo of the upcoming IDE is available. Unfortunately, the Clozure CL people have no interest in making an Intel-32 version, which is why my MacBook Pro (with Core Duo and not Core 2 Duo) is left out.
Arcor must block YouPorn - not that I want to defend large porn offers now. But what is visible here is how the internet is increasingly being destroyed with warnings, court orders and all that machinery. Because the collateral damage is quickly large - but that doesn't interest anyone. Ultimately, it's all about someone wanting to make more money and, without their own ideas, simply playing the lawsuit card. No matter how absurd and nonsensical the approach (blocking websites) is. Some people are bothered by porn without age verification, others might be bothered by virtual worlds without proper age verification, the next person is bothered by bread images. And the state is bothered by all kinds of information offers if they do not correspond to their own ideology. And so everyone happily runs around, uninformed by facts, and screams for blocks. No matter how ridiculous the whole thing is.
Concern for user rights due to copyright filters for Web 2.0 - I don't like either the greedy vultures of the media companies or those of the Web 2.0 companies. Neither really cares about the content or the actual customers - both are only interested in how they can make as much profit as possible with as little investment of their own from the creativity of others. Choosing between the big media companies and the big Web 2.0 platforms is like deciding between Microsoft and IBM - just because one of them has swallowed more chalk than the other, that doesn't change the fact that both are wolves. Those who think differently should read the Terms of Service of various Web 2.0 platforms - content appropriation and cover-your-ass at the expense of the user are common practice. Believing that Google and Co. are the good guys is highly stupid.
annalist - about life under general suspicion and observation by the BKA. Because the man researches certain topics that then stand out in cross-references to search queries. And does anyone still believe that this whole surveillance fetishism in Germany is completely harmless?
How does one become a terrorist? - about the background of the proceedings against Andrej H. (about whose surveillance by the BKA his wife reports in her blog)
CL-OBJC project - Cocoa applications with sbcl or Allegro.
Hello, Bob. Hello Joe. - Bob Ippolito on Erlang development and his (good) experiences.
Jobs looks forward to hundreds of iPhone applications - oops, this is coming faster than expected. It could get exciting to see what appears when the SDK is available.
First Impressions of the Nikon D3 - wow, I rarely read such an enthusiastic review on Luminous Landscape.
Voting machines and the limits of freedom of information - so much for our democratic order, which is based on trust in elections and their correct conduct. Why should any citizen trust a voting machine if its function is considered a state and corporate secret and the protection of corporate interests outweighs the protection of citizens' interests? This is about voting machines, not some stupid hi-fi device ...
Amazon's one-click patent largely invalidated - well, that's almost brilliant.
Dot-com fever stirs sense of déjà vu - it's just Bubble 2.0 after all
It Only Tuesday - "Not only do Americans have most of Tuesday morning to contend with, but all of Tuesday afternoon and then Tuesday night," National Labor Relations Board spokesman David Prynn said. "If our calculations are correct, there is a chance we are in effect closer to last weekend than the one coming up."
Nokia announces N810 Internet Tablet with GPS and OS 2008 - wow. With a keyboard this time. Looks nice.
OOXML Payback Time as Global Standards Work in SC 34 "Grinds to a Halt" - hopefully ISO draws its conclusions from this and renovates its structure at that point. And kicks the buy votes out again.
Biometrics opponents charged with trespassing - 'According to the police report, a total of six people entered the swimming pool in the early afternoon – "disguised as regular bathers".'
Canon announces lenses with 200mm f/2 and 800mm f/5.6 - hmm, the 200mm could be quite nice on the 10D - for nature photography. On the other hand, I probably wouldn't use it enough to justify overcoming the resistance to buying it.
'Second Earth' found, 20 light years away - hmm. Right in our backyard. Too bad we don't have anything useful to send there to check it out.
Patent lawsuit over Linux desktops - my old Xerox Lisp machines and the old Symbolics from the early 80s had that too. Another example that many patents are just nonsense.
Re: digitool MCL clozure OpenMCL - yay! MCL will soon be open source - only for PPC, but if the OpenMCL people bring their backends into it, it will soon be available for Intel as well. Would be very nice, even if it might only have historical significance.
Tale of Tales - I didn't know this one. Beautiful. And strange.
Population aged 16 and above should provide fingerprints for ID cards - with absurd justifications and silly promises ("no storage"), which won't be kept anyway. Just further into the surveillance state - the demand for the "use of fingerprints already available" will certainly come very shortly after the rollout. Just like with the toll data.
Kirch is back on the big stage - because once cheating isn't enough for the DFL.
Text & Tables: Google has not corrected criticized Terms of Service - one might think that Golem is riding on that a tiny bit. So let's help them through links, okay? Spread the word.
SWIFT withdraws EU data from easy access by the USA - they say. they plan.
Creative Commons sues - because a photographer is too stupid to correctly read the CC licenses (which really do have very easy-to-understand descriptions as cover sheets). Stupidity apparently wants to be rewarded in the USA.
Berlin court bans storing of personal data - ouch. On the one hand, of course commendable when the amount of data is reduced that is left behind everywhere. Detailed log files from web servers that in the standard settings of many installations sometimes run for a year or longer - that is already bad in terms of data protection. On the other hand, a flank for warnings will certainly be opened again: anyone who has their web statistics publicly accessible documents their IP address collection via log file. It will be interesting to see what comes out of it.
Pandoc - also an option. A Haskell program (hey, I've been looking for an excuse to despair at Haskell again!), which translates between various structured languages. It can convert Markdown to S5 (which shouldn't be particularly difficult, as S5 is normal HTML), but also various other formats. I like Markdown, use it for example in my blog software.
Slides with S5 - Cognitiones Publicae - that's really a nice little toy. S5 and Wiki integrated - and it looks like it's also quite good. Maybe I should set up a PHP environment (i.e. an isolated padded cell in the high-security wing) again.
Outrage over EU plans for «web censorship» - latest from Looney Land. We have funny years ahead of us, with crazy politicians with control freak neurosis and the most absurd ideas about reality.
Flying Logic : Software for Visual Planning Support - hmm. Constraint Solver as a graphical tool. Sounds quite interesting.
Netherlands: End for Nedap Voting Computers - and what about us? Everything is still being declared as totally secure. Keeping your head in the sand prevents you from noticing what's happening around you ...
Black money affair: Kanther gets away with a fine - not everyone is equal before the law. Or does anyone believe that as a regular citizen they could have wriggled out of it so easily? Against a clear violation of the law by a federal minister (who, like all officials, has sworn an oath to our constitution - but what is that worth these days)?
Tour: Rasmussen had artificial EPO in his urine - new techniques, already hard at work. Well, we can probably bury cycling for good now, because by the time the associations and anti-doping agencies catch up, the topic will have spread far and wide again. What really gets to me: this silly whining of the caught and suspected, their pathetic media fuss.
What the end of the world looks like - «Approximately 20 million curies, half as much as during the Chernobyl disaster, were released», explains nuclear expert Vladimir Kuznetsov. A radioactive cloud drove a veritable swath of contamination hundreds of kilometers into the Urals. But containment of the accident damage only began ten hours later. The local administration waited for a signal from Moscow.
Bounce ban for federal mail servers - what I think of the various anti-spam list operators is generally known if you've been reading along here. Why administrators still use these pathetic lists, even though it's clear that each of these lists will eventually become an absurd farce through silly power games, I'll probably never understand.
PIN-Code and fingerprint - it seems the idiots in Berlin still haven't quite figured out that the internet is international - and stores abroad will ignore their great control fetishism. But of course, they will continue to try to sell this to us as a great idea for consumer protection.
Police intervention at demo against the surveillance state - "The police command, which initially had 450 officers present, defended the use of force after half of the distance covered with the argument that there had been numerous violations of regulations, such as against the height and width of the permitted transparents and against the ban on covering faces, 'in relation to the entire history'. In addition, radicals had already caused 'evil destruction' at tables and chairs of the luxury hotel Adlon during pre-checks of bags." - great de-escalation strategy and very appropriate for the topic, right? Does anyone need a bucket of sarcasm?
Experts have significant concerns about data retention - but this will certainly not impress any politician much. The critics simply pay too poorly.
Buy two OLPC notebooks, donate one - hey, why should the second device go to a child of the buyer? If the buyer wants one for themselves?