Image cropping with DHTML and PHP behind it. Could be quite practical in a photo plugin.
Archive 10.3.2005 - 18.3.2005
Search engine operator must be held accountable for defamatory entries
Search engine operator must stand for defamatory entries - please what?
Since no nude pictures of the moderator could actually be found on the Internet, the mere allegation of the existence of such nude photos already violates the general right of personality protected under Section 823 of the Civil Code (BGB) and obliges to refrain from such allegations.
May I translate that: because the judge has interpreted something into the given search query that isn't even there (that old pig), the dirty imagination of the judge is a violation of the search engine's personality rights against the moderator, which doesn't even appear on the page.
Search engines do not make any statements about their search results - they only provide hits for a keyword query. Has someone once again confused cause with symptom? Apart from that: where the hell is the alleged allegation to be seen - only in the fact that search results were found for given keywords? What a ridiculous nonsense.
Or is it just the attempt of a lawyer to provide his unemployed colleagues in the warning faction with lucrative sources of income with little effort delivered to the doorstep? I'm just asking. Quite innocently.
Agata Report is something like Crystal Reports, but for Linux and Open Source. Could be quite practical at times, especially since it can also generate reports that can easily run on a web server.
Contax sale
For the Münster locals: Köster near the train station is selling Contax N1 equipment (bodies, lenses) at quite good prices. These are likely remainder stock from the dissolution of Contax Germany. Since Kyocera is exiting the photography business and thus Contax is at an end for now, this could be the last opportunity to acquire one or the other lens. The lenses are manufactured by Zeiss and also serviced by Zeiss...
The Chancellor of Industry and the Lack of Concept
Well, the Federal Schröder really wants to blow money up the ass of big corporations through corporate tax cuts. Yes, exactly, the companies that either made huge profits and laid off large numbers of employees, or alternatively made huge losses and laid off large numbers of employees while increasing executive salaries. This will definitely boost the job market.
And the opposition? They call what the Chancellor proposes conceptless, which is correct - we already knew that. Because these are partly exactly the demands that Merkelnix and the Oberstauber themselves have made - and what the opposition is doing has been completely conceptless for quite some time ...
What I don't quite understand is how this nonsense is supposed to combat unemployment? Oh, the highways that the Federal Schröder wants to build (or whatever great traffic projects he has in mind). Well, then our tanks will soon be rolling quickly to Hindukush, where they are supposed to defend the Basic Law according to Strucki. Although this is actually much more urgently needed here in this country given Otto Orwell and the sheer incompetence of the Ministry of Justice (but perhaps it's better not to, given the rather strange attitudes in the Bundeswehr ...).
Somehow, the German politicians and their market rhetoric would be much funnier if they were governing a country other than precisely the country in which one lives ...
Basic rights without reason or ground - how citizens' basic rights are trampled on in the name of security.
FUD Campaign Against Linux
Linux Unsuitable for Large Enterprises? At least that's what the Agility Alliance claims. And who are they? Let's take a look at Pro-Linux:
The Agility Alliance, a coalition of various industry heavyweights such as EDS, Fuji Xerox, Cisco, Microsoft, Sun, Dell, and EMC, warns large enterprises against using Linux due to security concerns, scalability issues, and a lack of compelling cost advantages.
Ok. Microsoft. SUN. Cisco. These are, of course, three companies that are particularly predestined to recommend the use of Linux to enterprises.
Rasmussen's particular concern is the potential use of Linux on mainframes, so-called supercomputers. Here, the Agility Alliance believes that Linux does not have a compelling cost advantage over the operating systems promoted by the initiative and also has scalability issues.
Well. Where is IBM in this group - I mean, when it comes to mainframes, wouldn't it be practical if there was someone involved who actually offers real mainframes? Oh, I see, IBM does indeed promote the use of Linux on the mainframe. Well, well, the scoundrels ...
Gmail invitations: First interim injunction - please notify Wonko the knowledgeable.
Honestly? Just scrap the ProTour and its silly jersey again. It's just marketing hype and nobody will miss it.
Short trip to Cologne
Short trip to Cologne
On Tuesday, I spent a day in Cologne taking photos. Some of them are now online - but since I shut down the corresponding site in 2007, they are no longer available.
After the Job Summit: Brainlessness
After the Job Summit: Agreement on Tax Cuts - great concept. We don't have any money, but we give it away to companies. Who then screw us over again and cut more jobs, which means fewer people consume even less, and in the end, the economy complains again. And everyone pats themselves on the back for the great achievement they have accomplished.
In Kiel, the prime minister has to fail at a traitor from her own ranks and is probably forced into a grand coalition. In Berlin, pure lack of planning and stupidity is enough, without any elections. But the Berlin proletarians are really good at making decisions against the citizens ...
Online Systems Without Usability
The railway company should urgently fire the programmers of the online system. Today, I encountered the situation again where a reservation cannot be fulfilled - of course, this is only communicated at the very last step of the booking process. This is annoying, but still bearable - if it weren't for the fact that the only options left to me are the following:
- Book with reservation (which makes a lot of sense, if the reservation cannot be fulfilled)
- Book without reservation (of course, if the train is fully booked with reservations, I will book it without reservations ...)
- Cancel
And cancel with the railway company means exactly that: cancel the booking history. Back to the start. Do not pass simplified inputs or train changes. No, I have to start all over again. To find out that the second train is also overbooked.
Usability? Not at all. Probably doesn't exist in the vocabulary of the monkeys who programmed this brainless booking junk heap ...
It would have been so easy to at least offer "earlier train" or "later train" as buttons, or even the pinnacle of luxury: "search for a train with free seats", so that you can plan reasonably when you want to travel.
The horror of software patents
The horror of software patents and Microsoft - take a good look at what we can expect in Europe soon, thanks to idiots like Clemens and Zypries. Yes, exactly this kind of thing would also pass here according to Clemens - data storage methods are one of the examples that are repeatedly brought up from that direction as something worth protecting, even if it's just an algorithm + software. Great. So much for interoperability. But we software patent opponents are all completely uninformed and hysterical and, according to Clement, have no idea.
Incomprehension and Criticism Following Wolfowitz Nomination
Incomprehension and criticism after Wolfowitz nomination - somehow fitting. One of the biggest US war agitators is nominated as a candidate for the World Bank presidency and who says to support the "candidacy constructively"? The industrial chancellor. But his rejection of the Iraq war was of course not a bit of political calculation, no, he did it out of full conviction. Which is why he then also sees Wolfowitz favorably as World Bank president - because there he can cause even more and even more efficiently damage, without the US having to send troops again - and you don't get your fingers dirty with book money either ...
US Senate approves oil drilling in Alaska and once again sacrifices reason at the altar of the oil industry. Well, if a state even wages wars for oil (sorry, but apart from Blair, nobody believes in weapons of mass destruction anymore), you shouldn't be surprised that environmental protection is even less valuable to them.
Election Debacle in Kiel
Election debacle in Kiel. Great, with this we can then erase Schleswig-Holstein from the map of reason. No matter how the squabbling turns out, if your own people don't even stand behind their leader in the first decisive election, such a government cannot function. It's nice how you can rely on the fact that in times of need, your comrades will stab you in the back.
I feel particularly sorry for the SSW: they had to listen to a lot of nonsense and endure many insults for wanting to support the model - and now they get a kick in the back of the knee. And it should be clear that the SSW will be among the losers if a grand coalition comes about.
Action Alliance Against Spam
Action Alliance against Spam. And involved are the eco Association (yes, exactly those with the great Whitelist Project that ensures that the advertising of their members also lands in your mailbox undisturbed by provider filters) and the WBZ (yes, exactly those who issued a warning to eleg.antville.org in 2003 due to missing imprint). Uh - hey, how about the job as a gardener?
Ok, maybe the Federal Association of Consumer Organizations has a positive influence in this story, but I can't imagine that anything really meaningful will come out of it ...
Found in the young world: Bayerns Blinde sollen gefälligst zu Hause bleiben. As a blind person, you probably feel really well taken care of with a health insurance like that ...
Clement doesn't understand democracy
There is no other way to interpret the lies about the position of the Ministry of Economic Affairs on the patent directive. There is a clear and unanimous resolution of the Bundestag. But the Ministry of Economic Affairs shits on the opinion of the parliament as well as the experts.
By the way, the given example of "time and space-saving data storage" is exactly what indicates the problems: there have always been problems with patents on compression algorithms that de facto sealed formats for use in open source programs - which is a considerable obstacle to the interoperability that is being discussed everywhere. Microsoft would only have to store the XML formats in a proprietary binary XML format and could thus prevent, by patent, open source software in Europe from reading the documents.
Other - older - examples of exactly this problem are GIF storage and the LZW algorithm. Both have caused massive problems with interoperability and exactly that is what we will also face in Europe with the current directive.
The claim of the Ministry of Economic Affairs that there is nothing to fear is therefore nothing more than a stupid and transparent lie. Ultimately, the federal government is playing into the hands of the industry giants here, and at the expense of the middle class and open source software.
More on this, as usual, at the FFII.
Those who want to play with XMLHTTPRequest and Common Lisp should check out CLiki : cl-ajax, which provides the necessary framework for easily integrating Common Lisp functions into web applications based on Araneida.
I have never understood what the fact that a Java applet has a signature has to do with trustworthiness and why it should then have extended rights. In my opinion, the whole concept of signed applets with extended rights is a dumb idea - even if the user is specifically pointed out what this means (the extended rights) - on the basis of which facts should he decide whether he trusts the applet?
Fight Google with its own weapons
Mark Pilgrim developed a user script for Greasemonkey called Butler that attaches to Google pages (unfortunately only google.com - it doesn't work with google.de) and, for example, adds links that refer to other search engines, removes Google ads, and works a bit on the typography.
In principle, it's something like autolinking, but functionally goes far beyond that - with Greasemonkey you can fix shortcomings with small user scripts (in JavaScript, which must be activated for this purpose). And that's exactly what Mark does with the Google search results pages.
There is an entire repository with further user scripts for Greasemonkey. I particularly like the script for creating "persistent searches" in Google Mail. It integrates so well into Google Mail that you hardly notice it's not from Google at all.
Naked Objects are not indecency and impropriety, but simply the idea of exposing your objects in Smalltalk directly to the world - each object thus has its own mini-GUI so to speak. As a result, users work directly with the actual objects and many problems of GUI frameworks are eliminated - there is no longer a need to explicitly mediate between GUI and object, the objects do this themselves.
O2 warns oxygen fillers - yeah, of course. What a blatant nonsense ...
And for those who don't like or can't use Lisp, perhaps SAJAX - Simple Ajax Toolkit by ModernMethod - XMLHTTPRequest Toolkit for PHP can help, which supports not only PHP but also Io, Lua, Perl, Python, and Ruby.
SCO OpenServer 6 with a lot of Open Source - yes, this also means Open Source: that companies like SCO are allowed to use it. It's also fine: when SCO customers have first switched to all the Open Source applications and platforms, the switch to Linux will be much easier for them.
Usable XMLHttpRequest in Practice is an interesting little article that explains the use of XMLHttpRequest using an example and discusses usability aspects.
iTunes 4.7.1 quietly brings sharing restrictions - nice one, now Apple even DRMs self-ripped songs
ParenScript is a compiler that converts Lisp to JavaScript. Certainly a pretty brilliant thing for Lisp-based web servers and application frameworks, because the programmer can work in his familiar language tools. Clientside Lisp by detours, so to speak ...
Employers propose immediate program - one could also call it an "exploitation program". The industry dog has tasted blood ...
CherryFlow - Continuations in Python
CherryFlow is a continuation-based framework for Python and CherryPy. With it, you can also build continuation-based web servers in Python. The special feature: CherryFlow uses either Stackless' dumpable generators or StateSaver, a small C extension that allows copying running generators under normal Python. Exactly what I back then was looking for to complete my continuations for Python.
Debian plans to reduce the number of architectures - I don't know if that's such a great idea. The many architectures were one of the pro-arguments for Debian. Of course, exotic architectures can cause problems - especially when they simply can't keep up during the recompile orgies that are due for a release (I'm thinking of the 68K architecture here). Nevertheless, it's a shame if this aspect of Debian is weakened.
In the Firefox Help: Tips & Tricks I found the tip on how to block advertising images and videos with a user CSS. Certainly old news for most, but new to me. Nice, because for example Camino doesn't have a proper ad blocker like Firefox (yes, I'm back to Camino again ...).
Agreements on data retention cause outrage
heise online - Absprachen über Vorratsdatenspeicherung lösen Empörung aus
According to a result paper of the backroom talks with Deutsche Telekom, which is available to heise online, investigators and intelligence agencies are pushing for a storage period of 180 days for IP addresses and login data, the connection data in a landline call and in the mobile communications sector, in addition, the location identifier and "if necessary card number (IMSI) or identifier of the terminal device (IMEI)". Deutsche Telekom is said to have agreed to archive the corresponding personal data for this period. Currently, the company stores data for 90 days. Contrary to the requirements of the security authorities, Schily and Zypries are considering storing data for one year.
Great. The demands of the intelligence agencies are already absurd to the extreme - especially in mobile communications, this results in continuous tracking of all mobile subscribers - and Otto Orwell and the combined incompetence of the Ministry of Justice are even demanding more. Great democracy, I feel so safe with so much surveillance.
Brand name "Milka" wins against Mrs. Milka - and thus joins the current series of nonsense.
Crooked Otto
Schräger Otto
A very crooked dog, the tower. Somehow, you can photograph it however you want, it always looks crooked. This is because the base of the tower is an oval and the windows are not always the same on the floors. Somehow it always looks like a spiral, but they are just normal floors. Many partition walls probably don't have offices ...
Vacation booked for May ...
... it will be Flensburg. And timed so that we can experience the Flensburger Rum Regatta.
Time to Ditch iChat
And why? Well, AOL's strange terms of use for AIM enforce the surrender of all rights and all privacy in the data transported over the AIM network. Verbatim:
In addition, by posting Content on an AIM Product, you grant AOL, its parent, affiliates, subsidiaries, assigns, agents and licensees the irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide right to reproduce, display, perform, distribute, adapt and promote this Content in any medium. You waive any right to privacy. You waive any right to inspect or approve uses of the Content or to be compensated for any such uses.
Sorry, what? Have they gone mad? These terms of use should actually be completely illegal in Germany - I don't think you can absolve yourself of all responsibility and the user of all rights through a disclaimer ...
iChat is based on AIM as a transport network. Hence the subject. It's time to work with clients like Fire where you can switch to Jabber for example - a network of servers that, on the one hand, are not under the central control of a company and, on the other hand, can be easily expanded with your own server. Moreover, the technical protocol is better ...
The CCC also operates a Jabber server. The topic of AOL terms of use was also taken up there. The use of the server is also free of charge and no changes are currently planned. So I am now available via instant messaging at hugo at jabber.ccc.de, if I am reachable. The AIM and ICQ (also belongs to AOL!) accounts that I still have will probably be closed. Jabber accounts are now really trivial to get and there is no reason to use the outdated and proprietary protocols anymore. (Found via Ted Leung)
Orwell with Delay
Pläne für EU-Beschluss: Bundesregierung will das gläserne Handy - not only the mobile phone, but also email connection data, SMS connection data, etc. are to be stored centrally. What utter nonsense. On the one hand, it is absurd to create these amounts of data when only a tiny fraction of them is relevant to the authorities. On the other hand, it is even more absurd that this whole mess is paid for by tax money and indirectly by customers through the burden on companies. We are paying for our own surveillance.
It is always shocking how far this SPD government is willing to go to fulfill Schily's paranoia and the omnipotence fantasies of intelligence agencies and parts of the law enforcement authorities.
It is time to promote projects like tor, pgp, and similar services and combinations thereof (how about Internet telephony over tor, encrypted and signed with PGP keys?). Tor, in particular, plays an important role in hindering connection analysis. This general suspicion by the state is simply unacceptable.
However, it is a permanent mystery to me why allegedly left-wing politicians do not take notice when their proposals receive applause from prolethicians like Beckstein. Where are the supposedly concerned people who wanted to advocate for the interests of citizens? Where do they stand against the hardliner direction of Schily and his ilk?
Zypries will expand DNA tests
Zypries will DNA-Tests ausweiten
Moreover, Zypries wants to restrict the so-called judicial reserve: In the case of anonymous crime scene traces and with the consent of a suspect to the test, a judicial order would no longer be required.
Not only can a repeat burglar end up in the genetic database according to the draft - at least if the police think he might also do more than just burglaries (and to secure the data we simply suspect everyone) - but the last hurdle, namely the judicial decision, is also simply bypassed.
Otto Orwell is working on 1984 and the combined incompetence of the Ministry of Justice on the police state. I did learn that the Ministry of the Interior is responsible for the police and the Ministry of Justice for the courts, and that the separation of powers between the executive and the judiciary should also be reflected in these ministries, but that was probably just a rumor ...
In any case, both are working hand in hand to dismantle the liberal component of our democracy - more efficiently than any Union government. And the opposition is laughing at the stupidity of the government - they are doing all the things that a Union government would not have dared to do, as they would have had to fear re-election ...
Poly/ML Home Page
Poly/ML is a very fast implementation of Standard ML 97. Interesting feature (apart from performance): the system is much more oriented towards Lisp systems than towards classic command-line compilers. You have an interactive working environment and an image that is automatically saved when the session ends and thus makes all definitions available again in the next run.
The advantage of this way of working is simply that you can adapt your system to your own needs over time. Together with the FFI and external libraries, you can gradually put together a nice environment that is optimized exactly for the intended goals. In addition, you often save extra object databases: you simply save values (or in the case of ML, structures) in the image and keep them there.
Since Poly/ML simply hangs the image in the address space using mmap and does not first read and then write it later, the whole thing is also quite fast - with image systems, the system start often bothers.
Oh, and by the way, Poly/ML runs smoothly under OS X ...
The speed of the compiler unfortunately does not necessarily continue in the generated code, as can be seen from this comparison. But just like with OpenMCL, the fast environment is definitely advantageous for prototyping. You can then set a compiler that takes longer but then spits out better optimized code like MLTon.
Ruby stuff for Macs
Ruby stuff for Macs is a ready-made DMG for both Panther and Jaguar with pre-installed Ruby 1.8.2 and various extensions (including Rails and Rubygems!). Unfortunately, the 10.2 DMG is broken - I've contacted the author.
You can of course also compile Ruby yourself, it's not particularly complicated. For OS X, there's also DarwinPorts. However, the port under 10.2 is acting up and cannot be compiled cleanly. Something in the iconv module - syntax error.
Somehow my system doesn't like Ruby today
Update: now the package works.
The fate of reduce() in Python 3000
The fate of reduce() in Python 3000 - well, it's probably time for me to switch languages. Because anyone who is so stupid as to cut themselves off from Lisp roots will only manage to rebuild more powerful possibilities with primitive means. Ruby also looks very useful and I'm slowly getting used to the syntax ...
Anonymous functions (lambda in Python, blocks in Ruby or Smalltalk) are far more than just obscure Lisp relics. I have many code snippets that live precisely on the fact that I can pass around anonymous code blocks - ultimately, this is about writing your own program structures. In Smalltalk and similar languages (and to some extent in Ruby) you can use this to extend and develop the language itself - which is one of the strengths of Lisp and its friends (and that's why it's also found in Smalltalk and its friends - the Smalltalk developers had a lot of Lisp know-how).
Languages that castrate themselves at this point and think that iterators and list comprehensions (basically nothing more than loops written in shorthand) are a viable replacement for being able to program your own control structures and your own language tools have become completely uninteresting to me. I don't like language designers who think they are smarter than the later programmer and want to impose a language corset on them.
UnCommon Web Tutorial
The article hyper-cliki : Web/Continuation describes how to write web applications with the continuation-based web framework UnCommon Web in Common Lisp. Very interesting, as Common Lisp itself is much more handicapped with continuations than Scheme - in Scheme continuations are first-class objects by standard, in Common Lisp they are not.
Continuation-based web servers have the advantage that the actual code can be structured very similarly to classical applications. You don't have to deal much with the event model of classical web programming and you rarely have to deal with explicit session constructs, because the session in a continuation-based web system is implicit.
There are continuation-based web frameworks for the following languages:
- [Smalltalk][1]
- [Common Lisp][2]
- [Scheme][3] (unfortunately no direct link to the web server itself)
- [SISC Scheme][4]
- [Ruby][5] [twice][6]
- [Python (via CherryPy and either Stackless or StateSaver)][7]
There are certainly more, but these are the ones I could find quickly.
WP: Gravatar Signup [ Tempus Fugit | TxFx.net ] is a small plugin that allows users to sign up for a Gravatar directly from the comment form, making it as easy as possible for people without a Gravatar to get started (and thus spreading Gravatars). Fun idea.
Scam Star Laurenz Meyer
400,000 Euro severance for Laurenz Meyer - wow, yes, certainly these were very tough negotiations in which he managed to pocket another 400,000 euros. He will surely also waive the 80,000 euros that he was going to donate to SOS Children's Villages anyway. That's how you really cash in - Meyer shows how it's done.
I'm curious to see if RWE will keep their word and transfer the money...
By the way: take a look at what comes up on Google when you search for Laurenz Meyer. And I think this can get a bit "nicer"
Borderline Chaos is a rather nice WordPress theme - I like the strong colors and the quite simple layout. Might be an idea to build on ... (yes, yes, someday I'll do more than just talk about layouts)
CherryOS Violates the GPL
Pro-Linux News: CherryOS violates the GPL:
Since the release of the commercial emulator, the free project has been busy comparing the codebase of CherryOS and PearPC. The project is now 100% sure, according to a programmer speaking to Golem.de, that the manufacturer is using the code of the free projects in an unlawful manner.
Another store that believes it can get away with GPL software unpunished. What's so hard about just adhering to licenses? Just because something is free software doesn't mean there are no conditions for use ...