Dolderer back at the top of Denic - one could have had the whole fuss cheaper and with less stress ...
Linkblog - 31.7.2007 - 20.9.2007
IE pwns SecondLife - bah. I've always had something against fancy URL handlers that also inherit parameters from the calls. The problem is - why should an application trust a URL? If a call is made via a URL, the program should always classify this as untrusted and never initiate an activity that could potentially be dangerous without informing the user. The culprit here is -autologin in SecondLife - it shouldn't work in this situation at all. The browsers should of course also check the data (and Mozilla's reaction is correct, that Firefox was fixed accordingly when the problem also appeared there), but the real problem lies with the Second Life client.
Ozbus, London to Sydney Bus Travel - Bus route. London-Sydney.
Tor-Server-Betreiber stellt nach Razzia Anonymisierungsserver ab - the biggest danger when using Tor or similar techniques: the technical ignorance of the authorities. They simply don't know what the stuff is and how they should react (taking the tor server would not have helped either, but would at least be logically justifiable). And of course the possibility for the authorities to intimidate people into stopping - which I do not want to imply here, I really just see the ignorance of the deciding official here. Tor is just exotic. For operators of such systems, however, this is part of the necessary risk assessment - you often and "gladly" encounter ignorance.
Published email traffic incriminates anti-filesharing service provider - Bock. Gärtner.
Merkel finds debate on online raids "concerning" - that's what you call democratic discussion, Mrs. Merkel. Have you looked in the Basic Law recently? The last time I checked, it still said we have a democracy. And something like freedom of opinion. And even that members of parliament are only bound by their conscience. But most of them have long since auctioned that off to the highest bidder. Funny enough, I find the ignorance of the prolethicians in Berlin towards facts much more concerning ...
SCO requests creditor protection - the IBM lawyers will have to hurry if they want to reach a settlement before SCO goes bankrupt. Or will there be another fool who throws money into SCO's coffers?
Anonymity network Tor "phished" - Encryption and network security is still difficult to understand for many. TOR secures the transport within its own network against manipulation and spying. Not the protocols that are used.
Lawyer Gravenreuth sentenced to prison - "In doing so, she acknowledged the fact that Gravenreuth was already convicted in the year 2000 for forgery in 60 cases. During the trial, the judge emphasized, according to taz, that the public must be protected from Gravenreuth."
EU Commissioner wants to "block dangerous words" on the Internet - yet another politician running amok, ignorant of the facts.
Microsoft receives patent for notification of changes in privacy policies - yet another trivial patent. And yet again by Microsoft. Okay, that the patent offices allow such things to pass is embarrassing. But that companies even dare to show up at the patent office with such a lump of nonsense ...
Bayern will schärfe Strafen für Gotteslästerung - they're crazy in Bavaria. Maybe we can sell that to the Vatican? Probably no other state would want something like that ... the Union blowhards obviously haven't heard of separation of church and state.
Leatherman Skeletool: The Lightweight Multi-Tool You'll Actually Use - clearly has a "must-have" factor. Preferably the carbon fiber version.
Shades - allows you to adjust the screen brightness on iMacs, and below the ranges allowed by OS X. It seems to use live filters, so it takes some graphics performance, and has the one or other glitch when you then start games like SL, but it seems quite usable as a first approach.
External Filters from Erlang - interesting post about managing a pool of external programs from Erlang and assigning tasks to them. All in OTP technology.
Mobile Processing - and here is the variant of Processing that creates applications for mobile Java devices (phones, etc.).
NASA World Wind in Processing - and here the two previous links combined. Call the navigable Earth from the interactive Java environment Processing.
Processing 1.0 (BETA) - interesting project that does with Java what you used to do with Logo - interactive graphics programming with a good set of simple libraries. And just like Logo back then, this is suitable for far more than just playing around. There are also books available.
World Wind JAVA SDK - the NASA alternative to Google Earth as an embeddable Java library.
Tin-Foil-Hats - and their effect. Or something.
BabelDjango - better i18n framework for Django. Looks quite nice and solves some of the problems I had with the gettext mess back when I developed the i18n stuff for Django.
Microsoft Allegedly Bullies and Bribes to Make Office an International Standard - about Microsoft's nice business practices.
Abmahnung: GEZ untersagt "GEZ-GebĂĽhren", "PC-GebĂĽhren" und "GEZ-Anmeldung" - actually still on vacation, but it was just too good to ignore. It has probably already been driven through the blogosphere (after all, it's 5 days old), but this is really a knockout. Society for Restricted Cerebral Function - or what does GEZ mean again? I must have forgotten ...
Court Rules: Novell owns the UNIX and UnixWare copyrights! Novell has right to waive! - "That's Aaaaall, Folks! The court also ruled that "SCO is obligated to recognize Novell's waiver of SCO's claims against IBM and Sequent". That's the ball game. There are a couple of loose ends, but the big picture is, SCO lost. Oh, and it owes Novell a lot of money from the Microsoft and Sun licenses."
The Shakespeare Programming Language - oh. shit. Someone definitely had too much time and too much beer.
We all have agreed to comment spam - "In the legal correspondence of the last few days, the opposing lawyer even insisted that the consent of the two million bloggers is available". Well, if my blog is included, there is no declaration of consent. And given the number of blogs, I generally doubt this statement as well. Blog spammers are the lowest of the low.
BrandweekNRX: Red Cross sued over its - Red cross! - uh. Sue the Red Cross over its symbol? They've completely lost it. If they've had the sign for so long - why are they only noticing the similarity now? I mean, the Red Cross has been around for a few years too ...
MathTrek: Cracking the Cube - they can solve the Rubik's Cube in 26 moves. I needed 26 seconds back then.
New FCC rules may impact Linux-based devices - the FCC thinks that Security-by-Obscurity is a great idea for radio technologies. And undermines both Open Source projects and the security of wireless solutions. Idiots.
TidBITS: New iLife '08 Revealed - sounds quite nice. And the expansion of .Mac sounds as if it could be interesting now. Not because of the disk space etc. - I have that on my own machines cheaper. But because of the extremely simple integration into the iLife tools.
Free ERP and CRM solution for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X - yeah, yeah, I know, ERP is boring and dull. But since I've been working in the field for 20 years, it's naturally interesting for me to see what open source solutions there are.
Major setback for US voting machine manufacturer - wow. I'd love to see something like this here in Germany.
Light Blue Touchpaper » Electoral Commission releases e-voting and e-counting reports - The Commission’s criticism of e-counting and e-voting was scathing; concerning the latter saying that the “security risk involved was significant and unacceptable.” They recommend against further trials until the problems identified are resolved. - Grossbritannien auch. Und wann wacht unsere Politik auf?
m-e-c AS2 ::: Open source AS2 software - EDI transmitted over the Internet. RFC 4130.
real-time GPS shark hunting - funny idea, in which a player takes on the role of a researcher and studies sharks. The player moves research ships, which are real sharks with GPS transmitters, whose signals are incorporated into the online game accordingly.
Amazon FPS, Amazon Flexible Payment Service - I didn't know about this one yet. A payment service as a web service for integration into your own systems. And it explicitly supports micro-payments through the aggregation of sub-cent payments. Sounds quite interesting. Specifically, the possibility of using Amazon account balances as an alternative to credit cards or bank accounts opens up completely new possibilities - and Amazon accounts are quite widespread. Does this whole thing already work internationally? It should actually.
Multiverse - now available in version 1.0. Currently clients only for Windows, the server however in Java, and thus multi-platform. Competitor to Unity and TGE - although Multiverse definitely focuses on MMOG. Maybe interesting for tinkering projects.
Under house arrest - how the blogosphere is silenced with cease and desist letters and court proceedings. Sure, you can sometimes win in the next instance - but it costs to get there first. And in many cases, the legal protection insurance has a clause in the contract that excludes the matter at hand. How convenient.
US-Election computers cannot guarantee trustworthy elections - this will certainly be completely ignored. Because, it's only about elections.
Virtualization Rootkit Blue Pill available - here comes the fun.
Zypries intensifies criticism of online raids - hmm. Are there elections coming up somewhere? Or is the ongoing discussion just an expression of the summer doldrums?
EU lawsuit against German data protection laws - because the data protection officers are not really independent. Will it have any effect?
1.3 Megapixel USB Digital Microscope - doesn't look bad. Could be a nice toy.
Leica M8 Review: 1. Introduction: Digital Photography Review - to be honest, at that price, some of the quirks are simply not acceptable. Sorry. And for the Leica fans who might want to hit me: I myself have an M6 and am very satisfied with it. The M8 is simply not the digital M I had hoped for (and the poor rangefinder base plays a part in that).
Scan This Guy's E-Passport and Watch Your System Crash - e-Passport. A complete disaster.
Results of the largest "hacker" test for US voting machines are available - the politicians will surely argue everything nicely after corresponding payments from the industry ...
Tough stance against drug offenders - naturally only against "hard" drugs. Such as hashish, for example. Because that is much worse and more serious than alcohol, which teenagers can already buy from the age of 16 in the form of beer. Because nobody becomes addicted to beer and no harm comes to society and the young people will cope with it very easily. But hashish, yes, that is much worse. The loss of reality among the prolethicians is really shocking ...
Project Wonderland - a 3D world software under GPL by SUN. Client and server naturally in Java. Sounds very interesting from the approaches - content is currently only enabled via X3D importer.
Skeptical Science and Technology Quotes - “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” - Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977