Free multidimensional OLAP server for Linux announced - could be interesting if it changes from the status announced to the status implemented.
Linkblog - 13.2.2005 - 23.2.2005
New iPod models at lower prices - well, I should probably plan a new purchase for March. A small iPod Photo with a camera adapter could be quite nice for on the go ...
Optic Nerve Cameras for the Blind - it does have a bit of CyberPunk, but for the blind, it is of course a real glimmer of hope. Even if certainly not everyone will be enthusiastic about the idea of a plugin interface to their optic nerve, or about having something tinkered with in their head and brain.
The Plugin API for WordPress lists actions and filters defined by WordPress. Currently being filled with content.
I've never understood how T-Online derives the alleged market leadership of Musicload. Probably just a blunt marketing lie with absurdly beautiful calculations like "all T-Online users are Musicload customers by definition, even if they never bought anything or will buy anything..."
Ape can transparently map Python objects in Zope to filesystem objects or PostgreSQL databases. Could be very interesting for work. Can also be used standalone (without Zope).
The Schill Party in Hamburg dissolves - and goodbye. Make sure the door doesn't hit you in the ass on the way out. No need to come back.
Ian Bicking compares FileSystemView vs. LocalFS as alternatives to store Zope objects in the file system.
Leica in financial crisis - oh Shit. Hopefully it works out anyway, or Hermes will shoot after. It would be a shame about Leica.
Microsoft will have invented the inequality command for Basic - and that over a month before April 1st ...
Sony exits the PDA business completely - and that despite having the Clie PEG TH-55, which is pretty much the ultimate Palm OS device ...
Batch Categories 0.9 can batch-process posts into new categories. It's more of a hack than a plugin, but still quite practical under certain circumstances.
All Clear: Mozilla is not disabling Umlaut Domains - although the solution is equivalent to disabling them: the browser simply displays the Punycode notation. So you can enter a Umlaut domain and land on the correct server, but that's it.
Hack a Bike - keep on hacking in a free world! - no idea how old it is, but the text was new to me. How the Berlin rental bikes were hacked. Even Bruce Schneier commented on it.
Image Headlines Plugin for WordPress 1.5 automatically creates image replacements for headers. However, it probably only handles simple images, so you would still need to place invisible text under the H-tag to ensure that search engines don't just take the ALT attribute of the image for the header. And of course, image replacements have a significant drawback: they do not grow when the user changes the base font size.
Paranoia, advanced - so I'm not the only one wondering about these slightly crazy measures. The crazy part: the Americans expect such a show from us. At this point, you almost wish the guy would stay away ...
Apache Rivet - Integrate TCL as an alternative to PHP into Apache and design dynamic pages with it. Fighting fire with fire?
mod_dosevasive is an Apache module that attempts to detect DOS attacks and then can hand them off to other mechanisms to block the attacker. It can, for example, generate firewalling rules that block this attacker. However, you should not run it on an SVN host, as an SVN update may under certain circumstances look like a scripted attack ...
Bernd das Brot as GDM Theme. For the real fans of Bernd. Everyone else can go home and stare at their textured wallpaper.
Who wants to know how secure or rather insecure the T-Mobile pages in the USA are (they were recently hacked), here is a small analysis: Ethical Hacking and Computer Forensics: Secret Service hacker, how did he do it? The result is that the hacker apparently used normal SQL injection or something similar and that it is quite easy to insert false information due to the system structure of their server.
Google pagerank extension for firefox and mozilla is exactly what it claims to be: a display of the Google PageRank in the status bar of Mozilla or FireFox. Practical if you need to or want to pay attention to PageRank.
HP Photosmart 8750 Printer Announced - hey, that sounds really good. Maybe it could eventually replace my Epson Stylus 3000. Archival-quality prints are definitely something that's still on my to-do list. And there's also a 3-gray ink cartridge available for the HP, which should make black-and-white prints look nice.
heise Security - Know-how - Consequences of the successful attacks on SHA-1 explains quite well what hash algorithms mean in security technology and how the current situation regarding SHA1 is to be assessed. Worth reading.
Alternative Rewrite Rules result in a significantly simpler .htaccess, especially one that doesn't constantly need to be updated by WordPress. This is particularly practical if you also use the .htaccess for other purposes. Additionally, Apache is not necessarily faster with the complex Rewrite-Rules from WordPress. I have activated them myself, let's see how WordPress 1.5 performs with these entries. If there are no problems, they will stay that way, because I like them much better than the other variant. And they don't have the problems that the others have - old mod_rewrite can only do greedy matching, which makes creating complex lists of rewrites quite hairy ...
Canon EF-S 60 mm F2.8 macro lens - could be a replacement for the 50/2.5 macro at the right price. Not that I wouldn't like the 50mm, but the 60mm is just the necessary bit longer in focal length and above all it goes directly without adapter down to 1:1. The 50mm only down to 1:2.
heise online - When Computer Oldies No Longer Want to Work [Update]. Great, the C64 was a duck and in reality it's something much worse ...
The Technorati Plugin Beta provides a similar list to regular comments - except the links and text excerpts come from the Technorati link cosmos for an article. I'm currently wondering whether something like this couldn't also be done meaningfully with blogger.de - this way you could also catch those who aren't automatically linked via Trackback or Pingback. Of course, you'd have to check for duplicates against the regular trackbacks and pingbacks. Hmm.
Cryptographic method SHA-1 cracked - ouch. If Bruce Schneier's assessment is correct, then that's it for SHA-1. A switch to SHA-256 or SHA-512 seems to be in order (though this had been hinting at it recently anyway).
Nikon Face-Priority AF is another step towards subject-tracking focus
Positivliste soll Marketing-Mails an Spam-Filtern vorbeischleusen - the whole thing is so absurd that I simply can't think of anything to write about it...
Study: Vioxx doubled heart attack risk - I said it before, I got that medication for half a year. Just great.
Workaround for IDN Spoofing Issue - Simply block all URIs that contain name components outside of 7bit-ASCII using the AdBlock extension.
APOD: 2005 January 21 - Metal on the Plains of Mars. Cool image - Opportunity finds parts of its own heat shield again. And even a small meteorite to boot. Maybe it will find Beagle sometime too.
Brandora, R/C X-UFO - hey, cool. Is it powerful enough to carry a small digital camera?
Fischer becomes NRW election campaign issue - Rüttgers must really be at the end of his rope if he has to resort to a federal issue instead of regional topics for his campaign. But well-conducted campaigning has never really been his strength anyway. Not that it would be particularly difficult to find regional issues - after all, the Red-Green government in NRW provides plenty of ammunition for that. Only it seems the Union is just too dumb to exploit it - probably because they themselves have no idea how NRW's problems could be solved. But opening their mouths and screaming to be voted in, that they can do ...
::: heimstatt jochen wegner - FARMER POPPE AND THE GOOGLIFICATION and the dumbing down of professional journalism. Why do they present themselves as something special when in the end they do exactly the same thing as the bloggers? (via Schockwellenreiter)
Internet Explorer 7 beta due out this summer - and apparently only for Windows XP SP2. Great. This means all those heaps of broken Windows systems out there will continue running around with the messed-up IE versions. On the other hand - if you look at how IE has developed, do you even want a new version to spread?
junge welt vom 15.02.2005 - Hungerlohn für Nachhilfe reports on the displacement of normal employment relationships by one-euro jobs. It was to be expected that this measure, too, would not really create jobs, but ultimately destroy jobs. But it is already a mockery that among the first to abuse one-euro jobs is the public sector itself ...
Neohapsis Archives - Full Disclosure List - #0258 - [Full-Disclosure] Advisory: Awstats official workaround flaw - I've now put that part behind password protection and that's the end of exploits. Without proper security measures, you can pretty much forget about awstats.pl - it seems to be a classic Swiss cheese...
phpOpenTracker is a live access analyzer for websites. It can be integrated directly into PHP applications or data can be collected from static websites via web bugs (small invisible graphics). You can use it to learn quite a lot about user behavior on websites. And Asymptomatic is currently working on a WordPress plugin for it, which will allow you to see the corresponding evaluations in the WP backend...
Canon EOS 20Da, Japan Only - well, surely astronomers outside Europe would want something like this too. And I think some infrared photography enthusiasts could be interested in it as well. In any case, I think it's good that some exotic variants of digital cameras exist, even if for me a pure B&W digital SLR without a Bayer filter would be more interesting (Kodak made them once, but unfortunately they've all been discontinued).
Cooperative Linux is a Linux kernel that runs as a normal process within Windows. Weird.
Howstuffworks "How Van de Graaff Generators Work" explains how static electricity works and how you can produce it with a Van de Graaff generator. Cool. Britzel
javascript:xmlhttprequest [JPSPAN] - XMLHttpRequest is what makes Gmail and other highly interactive web applications tick. Integration of JavaScript code with server code through small HTTP requests that then update only parts of the page.
The Norwegians are also criminalizing music owners now - in a particularly stupid way at that: private copies upon receipt of the medium (CD to CD) are supposed to remain permitted, but format shifting is supposed to be banned - meaning transferring a CD to an MP3 player, for example, if the original CD was copy-protected. What a brain-dead idea. (via Schockwellenreiter)
Sigma: 30-mm lens with F1.4 for digital cameras - could be quite interesting for my 10D, the angle of view is nicely close to the normal focal length I prefer, and the light intensity is a clear plus. On the other hand, of course the question remains whether the bokeh of the Sigma lens is typical for Sigma - i.e., poor...
Vytorin Self-Stirring Mug - completely crazy. A mug with a built-in stirrer. What would anyone need such nonsense for? At least the mug doesn't have a USB port ...
Wacom Cintiq 21UX Touch Screen Flat-Panel - awesome. 21-inch display with touch screen and graphics pad functionality. Finally, paint directly on the display with styluses. Does anyone have $2500 to spare for me?
How to determine the geographic location from a dynamic IP address. Ouch. Sure, the ISPs have names for their dynamic dial-in nodes and routers, etc., so the information must be retrievable from that somehow. So much for the idea of being anonymous through dynamic dial-in ...
Jens Voigt dominates at the Mediterranean tour - and demonstrates that we can probably count on great performances from him at the Tour again this year. A fantastic start to the season.