"Bild" as a Cultural Problem by Gerhard Henschel - harsh settlement with the worst sleaze sheet of Germany.
Archive 22.11.2005 - 3.12.2005
Boßdorf falls again
This time not because of the occasionally stupid cycling race commentary, but because of possible contacts with and activities for the Stasi.
Whether you make him the program director or fire him - please just make sure he is spared from us as a commentator in the next Tour de France (and bring Aldag on board for that, he can do it).
EU will Telefondaten sechs Monate speichern - and the sheer incompetence (some call her Federal Minister of Justice) is so busy patting herself on the back that she completely misses the mark. That this minimal consensus is a total disaster for data protection and privacy is, of course, completely irrelevant ...
Does the FDP have to pay a million fine? - the Möllemann time bomb continues to tick.
Userscripts.org - Universal Repository - a hub for Greasemonkey scripts. Mountains of scripts. For almost everything, and a bit of the impossible.
Did RWE know about defects in power pylons? - since the Spiegel article will soon disappear behind the paywall, here are the most important facts in the Tagesschau report.
akismet.py - Python interface for the (central) Akismet Spam Scanner.
Data Non-Protection Declarations in Insurance
Because I'm currently interested in dental supplementary insurance (and my health insurance is trying to sell me a private insurance), I've read through the hints and explanations. In doing so, I came across the following nice paragraph under the title "Release from confidentiality clause":
I am aware that the insurer verifies information about my state of health before concluding the contract, to the extent that this is necessary for assessing the risks to be insured in the case of the contract conclusion I am applying for and my statements give cause for it. For this purpose, I release doctors, dentists, members of other healing professions as well as employees in hospitals and health authorities from their confidentiality, to the extent that I have been examined, advised and treated in the last 10 years prior to the application. This declaration is valid beyond my death.
It gets even worse - but I'll spare you the details. Great - the legislator is cutting back on the benefits of the statutory health insurance. Ultimately, the insured person is forced to take out supplementary insurance, at least if they cannot afford the treatments on their own and need to plan ahead. For this, however, they must then simply waive any confidentiality obligations towards the private insurance company - and even permanently, as death does not apply. Now, let's put all this into perspective - I pay a multiple of the measly 6.42 euros that the supplementary insurance would cost me to the statutory insurance. But there, I don't need to waive my confidentiality so drastically and unrestrictedly for dental services (in the above paragraph, the type of request is not even limited to the medical field of the insurance!) - but for the private insurance, I have to give up all rights to my data.
That's complete nonsense.
Additionally, of course, it also bothers me that the insurance company advertises in a leaflet about dental supplementary insurance that it has been tested with "very good" by Finanz Test, for example - but not for dental supplementary insurance, but for "single room rates". Which is really very informative for the assessment of the dental supplementary insurance ...
Development « Akismet - the Akismet API
Louie - a new event dispatching module for Python. Builds on PyDispatcher.
New Health System Cuts
It's quite amusing how Schmidt continues to play incompetent doctor games with the healthcare system, and the Union complains - because they weren't allowed to participate, and because the poor pharmaceutical industry is allegedly disadvantaged.
By the way, neither of the two coalition partners talks about the patients - the real victims of this concentrated incompetence ...
Sometimes you doubt Apple
When you send an email to support, for example, to register for the Apple Care Protection Plan (which constantly produced a strange error in the online system), and you include the serial numbers, contract number, and order date right away - and then receive a friendly email from Apple signaling their willingness to help. Along with a series of questions. About every single one of the points already provided.
Can't they read at Apple, or don't they want to read? Apart from the fact that I understand something different by a response time of one working day than answering a mail request from Sunday only on the following Thursday ...
I have almost accepted that I have to manually register an APP purchased in the Apple Store for hardware purchased in the same order, no matter how braindead that is.
SQLAlchemy README - another ORM for Python, heavily oriented towards SQL and offering a lot of magical syntax. Fascinating how in this area programmers try to abuse every language feature just to avoid writing SQL ...
Stockpiling of telecommunications data: The major factions give in
During a meeting between the leadership of the Christian Democratic European People's Party (EPP), the Social Democrats, and the Liberals with British Interior Minister Charles Clarke, the representatives of the two major political blocs significantly accommodated the wishes of the London negotiator on Tuesday. For example, they agreed to a planned obligation for telecommunications providers to store telephone data for up to two years.
An absolute catastrophe for data protection - the national governments will then retreat to "we have to do it, it's EU law" and data protection and the informational self-determination of citizens will continue to go down the drain. And the providers can stack terabytes of data waste, just because some overzealous data snoops have prevailed in their absurd data collection frenzy.
axentric. a web designer's “tackboard”. - generalized version of the yellow-fade technique by 37signals. Nice for highlighting parts of pages that shouldn't stay permanently.
Court hears case of "Bremer Taliban" right to stay - it's absurd that a foreign office actually believes that an absence due to (detention in Guantanamo, which is questionable even under US law and definitely far outside any German jurisdiction) can be considered a reason to terminate a residence permit.
Overview of new features in Apache 2.2 - Apache HTTP Server - what's new in Apache 2.2. Very interesting: the Event MPM. With this, Apache finally reports back at the top of the line for Keep-Alive sessions (previously, Apache had to reserve a worker for each Keep-Alive, which made Apache nearly unusable for streaming with a larger number of clients).
Private broadcasters via satellite only encrypted?
Private satellite channels only encrypted? - the private channels that still proudly call themselves FreeTV - want to charge fees. But - what's the point of private TV channels for the viewer then?
If the private channels want fees, I don't want their stuff - because it's so full of ads nowadays that it's barely bearable even for free.
And it's particularly amusing in light of the discussion that Saban sparked about the fee financing and advertising of public broadcasters...
What’s New in WordPress 2.0? · Asymptomatic - even though I will soon be leaving WordPress, it's always interesting to see what's going on there. Besides, at least the Metaeule will certainly continue to run with WordPress.
Again something from the crafting front
Content-type: matter-transport/sentient-life-form - for those who want to get a taste of where my blog is headed. Not quite finished yet, some bugs in my software, a few things waiting for patches in Django, but overall I'm already quite satisfied.
Google Groups : microsoft.public.windowsmedia.drm - the programmer of the Sony Rootkit asks in a newsgroup for free code for his work. Already strange ...
Cardinal Sayings Against iPod and Co.
Latest from the most idiotic old men's club in the world. A Cardinal warns against iPods and video cell phones:
Parents should not give devices that can play videos as Christmas presents, says the Bishop of Baltimore. One must protect children from pornography.
Well. One should not publish interviews with priests. Neither at Christmas nor at any other time. One must protect people from too much stupidity ...
In office for only a few days, but corrupt to the core?
Glos insists on the takeover of ProSieben/Sat.1 by Springer:
Federal Minister of Economics Michael Glos is counting on the planned takeover of the television company ProSiebenSat.1 by Axel Springer Verlag to proceed in a normal manner. However, he did not rule out that a so-called ministerial permit might also be discussed in this context. He hopes, however, "that everything will be resolved," said Glos in Munich.
Concerns at the Federal Cartel Office? Screw it, what does the government care ...
A prerequisite for approval is that the restriction of competition is justified by overall economic advantages of a merger or by an overriding public interest in the merger.
Likely, the private coffers of the Minister of Economics are then simply of overriding public interest, or what does he want to base it on? After the CSU supported the Kirch conglomerate in Bavaria far beyond its viability for a long time, is it now Springer's turn? It's already absurd what politicians will stoop to ...
Why our politicians don't want popular initiatives
After a referendum in Switzerland: Swiss agriculture remains GMO-free. The government had hoped for a different outcome. Well, in Switzerland there's something similar to democracy. Not here - it would be too much to ask if the stupid voters might spoil the politicians' bribes from the biotech companies ...
Another OPML server...
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.
JobControl - Django Projects - Trac - a simple job control system for Django, with which you can set up background jobs.
The Failure of RWE
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.
A snowflake falls ...
... 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).
First impending departure of the government?
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 ...
Family Update
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 ...
AirPort Blog - a weblog about AirPort (Apple wireless solution)
Off to total surveillance
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.
DOPE Squad Security - open source WLAN driver for Apple Airport. Designed for use as a passive WLAN scanner.
DragAndDrop - MochiKit - Trac - Drag and drop with MochiKit.
Holographic Storage Media with up to 1.6 Terabytes
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 ...
How Secure is WEP, Anyway? - an interesting link about the security of WLAN, specifically how easy it is to crack a WLAN with WEP.
Weird Python 2.3 Bug
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?
Sometimes OS X is a bit strange
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.
Microsoft to Standardize Office Formats in ECMA
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.
The Vienna Conclusion: Sponsorship+Politics=Influence
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 ...
Vatican Paper: Gays cannot become priests
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 ...
Web Development Bookmarklets - various bookmarklets that are very helpful for web development.
Closures python,scheme,ruby - a good explanation of the somewhat faulty lookups for lexical variables in Python (at least when an assignment is involved in an inner scope).
EU Advocate General against Data Sharing
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 ...
Did I already say, ...
... that a 20" Cinema Display is quite a fine thing? You can literally get lost on the screen ...
Light Field Photography with a Hand-Held Plenoptic Camera - I only understand half of it, but even that sounds really good. A camera that doesn't just capture pixels but layers of pixels - and then the focus point can be set afterwards via software. The site has some examples. For macro photography, the technology would be absolutely amazing ...
Linux on an Apple Powerbook G4 - even more about the Powerbook and Linux, here you'll also find decent keyboard layouts.
Routes 1.0 Released - this is the Python version of the URL routes from Ruby-on-Rails. Very interesting, I must sit down at some point and see if I can't build this into Django as an alternative URL dispatcher.
"The Whitespace Thing" for OCaml - Indentation as a syntax element (ala Python and Haskell) for OCaml. Interesting. Although OCaml already has minimal syntax overhead, so I don't really think it's necessary.