XShelf 1.1.2 for MacOS X - Tool to simulate the old NextStep Shelf (interrupted drag-n-drop actions)

Acupuncture soon a statutory health insurance benefit?

Why should the effectiveness of acupuncture suddenly be better documented than traditional remedies, when only 1000 patients participated and - problematically by principle - no real double-blind test was conducted? Sorry, but the study doesn't really prove very much. Okay, it does provide an indication that the whole thing should be investigated further - but to claim that it is better documented than medication treatment strikes me as somewhat exaggerated.

At WDR.de you can find the original article.

The Suggestive Question of the Works Council

Well, one has to wonder what the works council got out of it in return for proceeding this way. Or what interests are behind acting like this - including at the union. Possible fears that colleagues might realize that a bad works council and an inactive union aren't helpful?

Of course, in their arguments they'll certainly claim that they prevented employees from being fired. And they'll probably pat themselves on the back and praise how well and prudently they acted. It's a lie, but it sure sounds good...

At Industrial Technology & Witchcraft there's the original article.

lispmeister: A booting CADR emulator

Great. Someone is building an emulator for the MIT CADR Lisp machine. Since many other systems originated from it (including the Symbolics machines), this could be a very interesting starting point for an open Lisp machine emulator - maybe someday I'll be able to run my Genera 8.3 on a free emulator?

At Planet Lisp there is the original article.

Last Flowers

Last Flowers

Although - if it gets warmer again now ...

Autumn Colors

Autumn Colors

The wine has already arrived in autumn. After all, it's the first to change color.

Caterpillar

Caterpillar

These critters are damn fast when you use the macro...

Weeping Willow

Weeping Willow

Still one of my favorite tree species. No matter what time of year (even in winter - through the often already formed buds).

TAO - Outliner for Mac OS X

Münster is the world's most livable city

Absolutely crazy. Münster is nice and all - but I definitely wouldn't call this provincial dump the most livable city. Seems like some people had rose-tinted glasses on when making their voting decision...

You can find the original article at WDR.de.

Opel Vote with Tricks

Yeah, those nice guided votes. Gives you a warm, democratic feeling in your belly.

At Industrial Technology & Witchcraft you can find the original article.

Pyro - About - Python Remote Objects

Study: Less Employment Protection Does Not Create New Jobs

Of course not. Only March hares and other crazy people believe such things.

At tagesschau.de - Die Nachrichten der ARD you can find den Originalartikel.

Sharp Kills US Zaurus Line

Sharp is now shutting down US distribution after European distribution. Just like Sony already did.

You can find the original article at Gizmodo.

Slashdot | IP Tunneling Through Nameservers

For people who still believe that a firewall could control traffic from inside to outside and back. IP over DNS is not just a pipe dream, but a valid concept with working example code. This way — provided you control a nameserver somewhere outside (which is nowadays possible for anyone with a cheap root server and a domain registration) — you can get through every firewall, as long as name resolution is allowed in the local network — even if the computer in question otherwise has no access to the outside (i.e. can neither send/receive mail nor surf the web — because if it can do that, it already has a trivial channel to the outside).

A good reason why you should implement nameservers on the firewall so that only internal hosts are resolved towards the inside, and resolution of external hosts should only be done on the proxy server. Or why in some areas you might simply need to cut the cable to the outside for security reasons.

Here's the original article.

Does focal length change perspective? - Another explanation of perspective and focal lengths

Psyche - Yet another Scheme in Python. I think I've seen this before

schemon - Scheme in Python with good language integration

STUDY WHAT WE DO

Interesting anecdote. Yes, the Bush administration doesn't care about reality and doesn't think to study it - it acts arbitrarily and autocratically without regard for facts. Unfortunately, as the rest of the world studies the wonderful new world that the Bush administration has created through its actions, it becomes clear that the Bush administration has lost touch with reality.

I found the original article at Gibson Blog.

What is "Perspective"? (2) - ... and why telephoto lenses don't compress perspective at all

A Logging System for Python - Logging infrastructure for Python - possibly use in TooFPy?

Animal Planet :: Corwin's Carnival of Creatures

Ok, so I knew that these critters are unusual for Chinese bird's nests, but I didn't know that they're the only true cave-dwelling birds among birds - and especially the only birds with sonar. Weird.

Here you can find the original article.

Path ... where is my application's home dir? - How to find the user path in Windows

syslog.py - Syslog Client in Python

[Web-SIG] Draft of server/gateway base class now available - Webserver Gateway Interface Referenz Implementation

Bibble Labs - Professional Photo-Manipulation Software

I don't often link to commercial software, but I'll make an exception here. The reason: the software - a pretty nice image management and processing application - now runs identically on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. For Linux, you can even choose between RPM and DEB package formats. And as a Debian user, I naturally like that sort of thing. The only thing missing now would be for them to learn that Debian, like RPMs, make sense not just for Intel processors, and to also produce a PowerPC version of it - then you could manage images on Linux-powered Macs as well.

Update: after I installed the test version, I have to say the program looks very promising. However, the current version still seems a bit rushed - at least in the OS X version there are one or two problems. Dialog boxes (particularly noticeable with all floating toolboxes) occasionally have disabled dialog elements, even though they can normally be clicked. The main window sometimes just won't minimize or collapse to the title bar (WindowShade). The Preferences dialog hung when I moved the mouse around a bit over the tooltips of the options. The (switchable) docking check for tools makes the response very sluggish and jerky.

However, I was immediately impressed by the proper support for Canon's RAW formats and the good integration of image edits - every change is visible live, even with .CRW files. And the changes are only saved as .bib files, the original files remain untouched. The background conversion works quite well too, although there's a small pause when a batch conversion starts, but after that you can browse through the images quickly again.

I only tried the Pro version because Work-Queues (consolidation of images from various folders) and multithreading would be important for me - my images are organized on disk chronologically and roughly thematically, but to compile a gallery or arrange a printing job, for example, I need to consolidate various image sources. And without multithreading you have to wait for the conversions - which can definitely be annoying.

Bibble might actually be a useful complement to iView Media Pro. Because with the latter, image editing is rather meager and primitive (especially the possibilities for influencing CRW files), but on the other hand, searching in large image collections is brilliantly well solved. Both iView Media (you might even be able to skip the Pro version) and Bibble can access the same directory tree without any problems, and this way you can use the strengths of both programs. The use of Photoshop could then definitely be dispensed with in one or another case, because really it would then only be needed for possible effects or special sharpening.

Compared to Canon's own software, Bibble wins by a mile in any case. It seems faster and is much more powerful. And the image results can easily be compared.

Here's the original article.

F#, a functional language for .Net

Sometimes Microsoft produces something nice. Ok, it's Microsoft Research - if anything intelligent is produced there at all, then it's there. But it's pretty cool to be able to use an OCaml-like language in .NET.

Not that I would use .NET anywhere

At Lambda the Ultimate - Programming Languages Weblog there's the original article.

Photo Matt - Bizarre Windows Behavior

Matt Mullenweg is really having fun with Windows: an automatic security update just rebooted his computer and ate a few hours of his work. Somehow I understand why I prefer Apple's method much more, which just tells me that something is available instead of automatically pushing it to disk. Above all, it's absolutely stupid that an automatic update bypasses all application dialogs for saving open files. But all the Windows advocates will now surely provide a thousand reasons why this was all the user's fault. By the way, Matt is no novice or anything like that - he's the programmer of WordPress and normally you can assume he has a reasonable level of computer competence. If even he has his system eat his data just like that, then this feature probably isn't that easy or obvious to disable or document. Here's the original article.

10,000 jobs are being cut

And so the extortion of workers and the lies about the location's weaknesses continue - squeezing out whatever can be squeezed and a bit more. Until it doesn't work anymore - and then it will be too late, because then it will crash. This madness should better come to an end before it shows results that we will all regret.

At WDR.de you can find the original article.

EU Energy Commissioner Failed

Hmm. Due to lack of knowledge about energy policy. 6. Sit down.

At Megawatt: The Last Latent Appliance Fetishist there's the original article.

Journalists and Bloggers Are Not Competitors

Of course, journalists are not competition for me

I found the original article at NETZEITUNG.DE Internet.

Heyms & Dr. Bahr Law Firm: OLG Hamm: No Copyright on Websites?

Sounds like one source that only existed initially really exaggerated things. The information trickling in now sounds more like someone recreated a banal layout and the first one sued against it.

Here's the original article.

Merz: Withdrawal is final

Good. We're rid of a troll. Hopefully he won't be forgotten as quickly as Lafontaine in the end. On the other hand - if the Mad Hatter of the Union pisses in the soup just like Lafontaine did for the SPD, then it could still get fun ... At WDR.de you can find the original article.

Rel: an open source implementation of Date & Darwen's Tutorial D

Sounds kind of interesting - a language built on SQL orientation and working with relational operators and set data types.

And yes, I'm back from Munich.

At Lambda the Ultimate - Programming Languages Weblog you can find the original article.

SCO vs. Linux: Form Your Own Opinion

Freely following the motto: don't believe any news report you haven't faked yourself?

At heise online news you can find the original article.

ffmpegX a VCD, SVCD, CVD, VOB, DivX, XviD encoder for Mac OSX - Combo installer for all possible video format converters

Court approves nuclear transports to North Rhine-Westphalia

Great. The most brainless of all variants won. The court has decided in its favor. Completely irrelevant that there has long been a decision that atomic waste should be stored temporarily near the producers. Completely irrelevant that it is absolutely absurd to haul garbage from Saxony to North Rhine-Westphalia. Completely irrelevant that for this transport, due to Saxon stinginess, trucks are to be used whose transport security costs many times more than transport by rail. The important thing is that ignorance and stupidity prevail and are even confirmed in court.

You can find the original article at WDR.de.

Münster: Tillmann remains mayor

Well, unfortunately the people here in Münster are just too lazy to go out and show that guy where his politics belong. So the Union together with the FDP will be allowed to muddle through Münster for another 5 years with the gigantic majority of the mayor's vote.

At least this stupid hole in the roundabout has been averted. But unfortunately there are still far too many stupid ideas that can occur to them. But maybe the other city councilors will be unusually united enough to at least spit in the Union's soup where necessary.

At WDR.de there is the original article.

Parliamentary committee rejects EU Justice Commissioner

Sorry, but what the heck is a papal advisor doing on the commission in the first place?

At tagesschau.de - Die Nachrichten der ARD you can find the original article.

Provider liable for domain loss

Hmm - could this perhaps also apply to this mess between Strato and Network Solutions? That could end badly for Strato though

At heise online news there's the original article.

Blow in the face of T-Online shareholders

Can you be more audacious in deceiving, cheating and ripping off shareholders?

At WDR.de there's the original article.

wxAcceleratorTable - How to make hotkeys for menu entries in wxWindows

wxValidator overview - How to transfer fields between form and dataset in wxWindows

Copy and Paste Judgment for Websites

If that really is in the OLG Hamm ruling - meaning websites with stylesheets and graphics have no significant level of creativity and can therefore be freely copied - then that would be a blow to all designers. I'm still hoping that with both websites it was really only about trivialities in the copy and not really about proper layout, but still - such a ruling would be an invitation to help yourself in the Internet.

At kniebes.net. you can find the original article.

FDP - Ifo Chief Wants to Cut Social Welfare by 30 Percent

Alarming demand. This would force social welfare recipients not only through economic hardship (which they already face de facto), but literally through life-threatening need to do anything to survive - if necessary also taking on illegal employment, accepting whatever they can get. An absolutely inhumane attitude is then the consideration that introducing people into work would be easier with a reduction in social welfare by one-third, and the saying that business leaders have plenty of work in their heads that just wouldn't be profitable is the icing on the cake of audacity. What he ultimately demands is the extortion of socially disadvantaged population groups and the introduction of serfdom - because people in such employment relationships as he envisions them are no longer able to defend themselves against abuse and misconduct due to their situation - for them it's about bare survival.

And someone like that is consulted to assess the business climate.

Here's the original article.

Daniel Barlow: Araneida 0.9 released

Exciting. This should be the first web server running in the CLISP environment - and thus can truly be ported to virtually everything that looks like a computer.

At Planet Lisp you can find the original article.

GEZ fee for internet PCs is coming

The Fee Extortion Central is really getting more influence then. Somehow absurd - the whole thing could simply be solved by treating public broadcasting stations as part of state infrastructure services and simply financing them through tax revenues. But of course that contradicts the idea of capitalism - and so the rules become more and more absurd.

So we'll forever pay GEZ fees on silly devices, have increasingly arrogant GEZ employees on our backs if we think we want to defend ourselves against it, have the ridiculous discussion about this topic over and over again. Meanwhile, tanks and bombers are still being built from tax revenues - those are of course much more important parts of infrastructure than broadcasting.

At heise online news there's the original article.

awaretek.com :: Python Tutorials - diverse Python Tutorials

gmail atom feed - Address of the Google Mail Atom Feed - unfortunately only Atom, no RSS

Laszlo - Products

Laszlo is the premier open source platform for the development and delivery of rich Internet applications on the World Wide Web. - what? This thing just got put under an open source license and is already supposed to be the "premier open source platform"? Zope, Drupal, Mambo, Typo3, Plone, Brickolage, Scoop, Xoom, Slash and all the others - are those all figments of imagination? Apart from that, LAMP is probably (unfortunately - I like neither MySQL nor PHP) the leading platform if you interpret platform in the usual sense.

Marketing hype has moved in with the companies into open source as well.

Here's the original article.