Bush recognizes parallels to 'Arnie'
Do they both have a pea-sized brain?
At tagesschau im Internet you can find the original article.
Archive 7.10.2003 - 17.10.2003
The Impressive Thing About Today ...
... was the inability of our Bundestag officials to conduct two votes without mixing up the ballot boxes.
First Look: Belkin Media Reader For iPod
Well - the thing is so big that they might as well have included the card reader with the drive in the first place. I mean, what's the point if the card reader is just as big as the iPod, and if the card reader needs extra batteries on top of that? Somehow not as great as it sounded. And the problems with the transfer didn't inspire confidence either - since when do you have to reformat a CF card if you deleted it while reading? Very dubious.
At iPoding there's the original article.
War on Terror Battle with Satan
And the UN gave such a madman a mandate?
At RP-Online: Politik I found the original article.
Truck toll: Contract is being disclosed
Anything else would be unacceptable either.
At heise online news you can find the original article.
Microsoft Receives Patent for Cookies
And once again, a patent that the world absolutely does not need.
At heise online news you can find the original article.
Rollup package for Windows XP heralds new update policy from Microsoft
Cool. Security updates only once a month. That's how Windows security issues are addressed.
At heise online news there's the original article.
Prosecutor threatens net activist with occupational ban
This is taking on highly absurd proportions these days. This is abuse of power in its most literal sense. This has nothing to do with rule of law anymore, it's the worst kind of state arbitrariness. Usually something like this only appears in reports by Amnesty International or the UN about so-called banana republics. Well, it seems we're not far from that anymore. Torture was already described as a viable means (P405). Recommended is the documentation on http://odem.org/ - there's a bit more information about it there. At heise online news there's the original article.
Telekom complains about massive devaluation of telecommunications secrecy
I'll say just one thing: Bananenrepublik At heise online news you can find the original article.
Toll basket for the Bundestag
Hold on: the company has a contract with the federal government, but refuses to let parliamentarians (who are, after all, a not entirely insignificant part of the federal government that has the contract with Toll Collect) see the contract? Can it get more absurd? How much evidence does it take to show that more than just stupidity is at play here? And why doesn't the federal government, as the second party to the contract, simply make its copy available to Parliament? Given the sum of money involved, it surely can't be the case that the government is operating without public oversight by Parliament (and with an explicit refusal to allow such oversight!).
I found the original article at TAZ.
Phonak: Seville becomes Hamilton's right hand
That promises a lot for the next tour. After all, Hamilton was fourth in the tour despite injuries, and Sevilla is no slouch either.
At RADSPORT-NEWS.COM - Nachrichten-Gesamtübersicht you can find the original article.
Saban conducts string concert on N24
And in a flash, Rupert Murdoch could also secure broadcasting slots in Germany. Not exactly a pleasant thought. But probably almost predictable if you consider the connection between Saban and Murdoch (P1359). I found the original article at dotcomtod.
Vulnerabilities in Exchange Server
Interesting that Microsoft assumes that no one is crazy enough to connect an Exchange server directly to the Internet without a firewall - To protect against attacks from the Internet, port 25 should be blocked on the firewall
At heise online news there's the original article.
Stopping Spam
Paul Graham examines and evaluates all known methods of responding to spam. As an overview of possible (and also possible future) solutions and an initial assessment, it's quite useful.
The Resurrection of SimplyGNUstep - OSNews.com
SimplyGNUStep is now based on Debian Sarge (the upcoming Debian version). So it's simply just a collection of Debian packages with current GNUStep applications. The previous project of the same name aimed to be a full distribution, with its own directory structure, just like NextStep was organized. I find the current incarnation much more sensible though - having yet another package system and yet another distribution doesn't really make sense, especially when Debian already offers everything in very usable form...
Cease-and-desist senders and profiteers: Lawyers speak out
Lawyers discussing a possible reason why lawyers operate as scammers on the Internet. It is simply the way it is: when blow flies appear in small quantities, they are useful. When the quantities become too large, they become a nuisance.
At Telepolis News there is the original article.
Karlsruhe rejects lawsuit against table prayer in kindergarten
But banning headscarves, that's what Mr. Koch wants (and is allowed) to do ...
At RP-Online: Politik I found the original article.
Mobbing due to unpopular website
Great - nonconforming opinions are apparently not even allowed to be held privately at Dresdner Bank. My expressions of opinion would probably also meet with disapproval at Dresdner Bank. Always stay nice and conformist with management, never speak up - that seems to be what is expected in times of high unemployment. Following any rules apparently doesn't apply to bank executives. They resort to the lowest drawer of mobbing and oppression. Our economy is built on such people. Doesn't that give us all courage? But what can one expect in terms of behavior from such a bank ... At Telepolis News there is the original article.
Open Letter to Martin Walser
I believe there's nothing more to add to that, except a hearty, approving yay. At INSTANT NIRVANA you can find the original article.
US Department of Justice Takes Action Against Greenpeace
Since we're talking about the misuse of the legal system for censoring unpopular opinions ... (a law from 1890?) At Telepolis News there's the original article.
US Marine restricts sonar use
Amazing.
At Spiegel Online: Wissenschaft there's the original article.
USA prevent resolution against Israel with veto
Class act. On one hand, the US government calls the UN obsolete, on the other hand they keep interfering constantly.
At RP-Online: Politik I found the original article.
W3C adopts new web forms
My feelings about this are mixed. Of course, good standards are helpful - especially when they make the end device and browser more powerful in function, and new, efficient user interfaces can be implemented based on them.
On the other hand, however, the multitude of standards and sub-standards creates so much technical overhead that it becomes harder for ordinary people to get into it. And regardless of how we feel about the result of invalid and partly haphazardly cobbled together HTML dumps, it is precisely this easy access and the fairly tolerant implementation in browsers that allowed HTML and the web to take off in the first place.
It's much more accessible for a lot more people to produce this format - if necessary, you take another site, look at the source and do something similar. Many started that way, many don't get beyond copying - but that doesn't matter, they are present.
Sure, designers recoil in horror, HTML standard purists too, as do software developers. I myself get screaming fits when I look at certain output on the web. But the fact remains that with more complicated techniques, these people wouldn't be here at all.
Would the web be better because of that? Is it really sensible to shield yourself through technical barriers and make the web more elitist? Or is it precisely the haphazardly hacked and sometimes truly awful content that makes the web what it is: an almost popular medium?
The new W3C standards are becoming ever more technical, ever more complex. And in doing so, they raise the barrier to entry. Sure, HTML 4 still exists and will certainly be supported for a long time - but it will become, so to speak, the dumbed-down version. The professional will throw XHTML and XForms around, the amateur with shoddy HTML 4.
I don't know what would be more fun for me. But I'm afraid it would be the shoddy HTML 4...
At heise online news there's the original article.
How to Silence the ODEM Founder
A report about the prosecution's censorship attempts against Alvar Freude. A great way to deal with critics. I wonder if perhaps one authority (Stuttgart public prosecutor's office) is just trying to give support to another authority (Düsseldorf regional president's office)? It's also great that the legal system is being abused for this.
At Der Rollberg you can find the original article.
Andrew Grumet's Commentary on Comment Spam
Evidence of automated comment spam on Moveable Type weblogs. It makes sense for spammers to concentrate on weblog software with significant market share, since they can then push out spam automatically. The infrastructure for relatively automated discovery of Moveable Type weblogs is already in place.
It becomes problematic when this automation reaches the point where it doesn't matter to the spammers whether an individual weblog is indexed by Google or not — then they come with the big watering can, just like with email today. And in the long run, there will probably be no way around registration requirements for comments (or at least some form of checking for humanity on the other end).
Things get really tricky when trackbacks are spammed — because these are inherently designed for automated ping distribution, moderating that becomes difficult. Sure, you can use heuristics to decide whether a spammer is a spammer, but they will occasionally fail.
Unlike wikis, weblogs are particularly interesting for web spammers due to their high prevalence and extensive interconnection — and many protocols (trackback, pingback, comments) are very much designed for openness.
Germany is the export world champion again
Faces of the Economic Crisis.
At tagesschau im Internet you can find the original article.
E-Data strengthens process due to patent infringement
Another piece of evidence for a ridiculous patent that is hard to beat in terms of banality and wishy-washy claims. And companies want patent protection for this? For downloading music with transfer to CDs? For storing software on data carriers when purchasing the software? For on-demand storage of electronic books on e-readers when purchasing? Absurd.
Even though Microsoft is hit again here, patents in such a general and banal form are simply economically damaging. Actually, even the dimmest member of the European Parliament should understand that. Actually.
At heise online news you can find the original article.
Cologne CDU admits to donation misconduct
It's become so commonplace by now that it's almost boring again. Frightening.
At WDR.de you can find the original article.
Reichmann in the Rockies
A report by Michael Reichmann on the Contax 645 combined with the Kodak 16 Megapixel digital back in use in the Rocky Mountains. And although he does not describe the combination as ideal at all (too many minor inconveniences in operation and interaction, plus power consumption), he is enthusiastic about the results and counts them among the best he has produced.
At PhotographyBLOG I found the original article.
Good Apple, Bad PC
Usually I find Jörg Schieb rather dull than entertaining, but his observation that the good guys in movies predominantly use Apple and the bad guys predominantly use Windows is simply true and correct. Just like in real life.
At WDR.de you can find the original article.
Loadbalancer in Python
A special feature of this load balancer (besides the fact that it's written completely in Python): it doesn't use multiple processes or threads, instead it uses asynchronous I/O. This allows many connections to be handled simultaneously in just one thread, which keeps the system load much lower than classical balancers that start a process or thread for each connection. It uses either Twisted or the asyncore module that comes with Python. And the whole thing is also blazingly fast - for example, the same approach is used in Medusa, a web server in Python that comes close to Apache's performance when serving static HTML pages. Here's the original article.
Twiki API
Wow. An API that allows you to edit a wiki via VoodooPad. I think I'll take a closer look at that, it could be interesting for PyDS. VoodooPad could then be used as a frontend, I would just need to make all important objects accessible via this API. And for Twiki there's already an API too. You've got to be able to do something with this kind of thing...
On the Re-Christianization of the West
No religious reference in the European Constitution!
At Telepolis News you can find the original article.
Israel has equipped submarines originating from Germany with atomic bombs
Did anyone really seriously expect that the madness with nuclear weapons could actually come to an end?
At Telepolis News you can find the original article.
Copy protection provider withdraws lawsuit threat
Did someone perhaps notice that fraudsters shouldn't stick their necks out too far?
At Telepolis News you can find the original article.
Zabel irritated after Ullrich's return: No break clown
I can understand that the idiotic reporter questions annoy him. After all, he has been searching for top positions in the world rankings for a long time, mostly in first or second place. A racing team can consider itself fortunate to have such a good racing driver. And Zabel is anything but a man for just a few races - he always does a full program throughout the year. How a reporter comes up with the assumption that there is no room for Zabel in the Telekom squad is really a mystery to me. But that's how it is, when reporters don't know anything useful to report, they just invent some nonsense to get themselves in the spotlight.
At RADSPORT-NEWS.COM - Nachrichten-Gesamtübersicht you can find the original article.
Copy protection manufacturer wants to sue doctoral student
Is there any more brain-dead activity than suing a doctoral student for exposing the bottomless stupidity of a copy protection manufacturer (actually more of a snake-oil salesman)? The company clearly sold something with its alleged copy protection that simply doesn't match the specifications - because it's not copy protection at all, just ridiculous. Now wanting to slaughter the messenger and then even claiming 10 million in losses from fraud money is really the height of idiocy. At heise online news you can find the original article.
Military sonar let whales strand
I'm not holding out much hope that the military will shut down powerful sonar systems based on the facts. In the long term, court rulings probably won't help either, as they'll simply pull out the big security card. As long as the militarists have their fancy toy, that's what matters, regardless of the consequences. The original article can be found at Spiegel Online: Wissenschaft (link).
No Napster 2.0 for the iPod
That's great. Napster will only support Windows Media formats, but no AAC and no MP3. Very sensible - how many players are there that can play this format? What market share do these few players have? Idiotic decision.
But idiotic decisions are what Napster is most known for
At Gizmodo there's the original article.
Cycling World Championships: Bronze in time trial for Peschel
Not bad for someone who had their lung punctured during the tour
At tagesschau im Internet you can find the original article.
Fun with the Nigeria Connection
Apparently one of the Nigerian scammers has finally been caught. Very good - even if the arrest is probably more due to the police's luck and the perpetrator's stupidity.
I found the original article at Der Schockwellenreiter.
Religion is cocaine for the people
|KK| Yeah, I can only agree with Mr. Schockwellenreiter on that. Update: Der Spiegel has the whole nonsense from the Vatican summarized and in German. Where does the Church get such brainless idiots from? Update 2: There's more at Telepolis. Update 3: Tagesschau also thinks nothing of Sex, Lies and the Vatican. At Der Schockwellenreiter you can find the original article.
Fast Track to Shopping Cart
Pointless Features the World Doesn't Need ...
At Spiegel Online: Netzwelt you can find the original article.
Sculley: Apple should have used Intel chips
Sculley confirms once again that it was indeed good for him and Apple to part ways. I mean, if he really thinks his biggest mistake was Apple not going with Intel chips, then his biggest mistake is probably that he carries around a very personal reality distortion field with him.
His Steveness certainly hasn't always had the right ideas (I'll hold it against him forever that he killed the Newton), but at least the computers became cool again under him. Ok, the fact that he was the boss of the systems shop that let itself be bought by Apple was less his merit than that of his people, but a little bit of luck is part of the business too.
At The Macintosh News Network you can find the original article.
Bill Bond
Yay! A Tarantino Bond would finally be the right answer to Triple-X
At Markus Kniebes Journal you can find the original article.
Building a Balancing Scooter
An overview of a DIY Segway. I particularly like this quote from the list of downsides of the device: I feel like a total techno-dweeb riding it around. It just screams "silicon valley nerd," even more than having 3 cellphones and a PDA strapped to your belt. OK, I am in fact a silicon valley nerd, but I don't want everyone to know it. Here's the original article.
07.10 - 05:03: Color Blind
Interesting - a service that simulates color blindness and thereby allows people with normal vision to understand how their websites appear to color-blind people. Particularly relevant for graphic designers and layouts that rely heavily on color.
I found the original article at ab::gebloggt.