Christiania should become more normal

The Danish government wants to normalize Christiania (the free zone in the middle of Denmark). The residents of Christiania (and not only they) see it somewhat differently of course: they see it as the destruction of their own small culture. That's why a demonstration is scheduled for August 30th - if you're in the area, you can demonstrate for a little bit of self-determined culture.

It's a shame how small autonomous groups are destroyed everywhere. In Germany with its obsession for order, you'd expect something like that by now (unfortunately), but in Denmark it used to be different...

Here's the original article.

Müller wants to favor parents in pensions

What nonsense. If this idiot hasn't noticed yet: we childless people already pay heavily in taxes because we have no children. Of course it then makes sense to be penalized again in retirement. What else? Bring back the Mother's Cross?

At tagesschau im Internet you can find the original article.

How Wikis Grow and Thrive

Anyone who has ever wondered what it would look like to visualize changes in wikis has found an answer with IBM Watson Research Center. Fascinating graphic depictions of, for example, vandalism in a wiki and the reactions to it.

Here is the original article.

Microsoft blocks international conference on open source

Does anyone still need proof of why monopolies and overly powerful lobbies are bad? If it were up to Microsoft and the BSA, probably even mentioning Open Source would already be punishable.

At heise online news you can find the original article.

PHP under different user permissions in Apache

An Apache module that allows PHP code to run under a different user than the one Apache is running as. This would make it possible to set up a separate environment for each user on the server using Unix file permissions and restrict them to that area - safer than the normal variant where all PHP scripts run under the Apache user. However, installing it alongside normal PHP is not so straightforward, since both depend on the same MIME type. Still, I could take a look at that.

Here's the original article.

Producing Postscript with Python

Anyone who wants to produce Postscript files (including multi-page publications) with Python can do so with PyScript. The approach is quite interesting: basically a graphics library that translates to Postscript. So you can develop everything in Python, modify, combine, and layout all graphics there, etc., and then use the result as a Postscript file (e.g., convert to PDF).

Here is the original article.

Spam filter for IMAP mailboxes

Those working with IMAP4 mailboxes instead of POP3 often get ignored by various filter programmers - many can only handle POP3. The link goes to a filter that uses SpamAssassin against an IMAP4 server: emails are sorted out and thrown into a spam folder. The nice thing about it is that this filter doesn't need to be built into the mail client, but also not into mail delivery. Instead, you can simply run it outside of the mail program - it can run on any machine that has access to the mail account. Quite practical if you have your mailbox with a hosting provider and want to run the filter from your own server, but your mail program runs on a notebook (and you want to avoid downloading spam mountains while on the go, for example).

Oh, and the fact that the little program is written in Python is also not without its advantages - instead of SpamAssassin, you could also integrate SpamBayes, for example.

Here's the original article.

And once again a little something about the SCO farce

SCO did release its old Unix sources up to 32V as open source. There was an announcement from back then by Caldera (now SCO). Allegedly, there was supposed to be a restriction to non-commercial use in this release. Needless to say, there is no restriction on use anywhere in the announcement, nor is there a restriction to 16-bit versions alone, as SCO is now claiming through Blake Stowell.

Could it be that SCO was a bit unprepared for the whole operation?

Here's the original article.

Why does Windows have features like BEAR, BUNNY and PIGLET?

Answers to a question I never asked myself

Here you can find the original article.

Backup software for Mac OS X and DVD-R Writer

On the Subject of Backup Software

For this reason, I'm looking for backup software that can split a volume across multiple DVDs during backup. I do my actual backup with psync, but that only backs up to another volume - in my case a FireWire drive. Occasionally, I would like to burn disk images that I can store away and that are not as susceptible to defects. Any suggestions? By the way, Apple Backup would meet these requirements. Unfortunately, Apple forces you to have a .Mac account in order to start the backup program. So you can only use and restore your backups if you still have a .Mac account. I don't really think that's fair - data backup should be something that isn't tied to a 99 euro per year internet provider...

The Evil Computer Eater Has Struck Again

At Jutta there won't be any updates for now: both the iBook has a disk failure, as well as her Linux desktop. Somehow there's a problem here, first my desktop Mac and now Jutta's two computers.

Hopefully Apple will recover the disk contents during the repair, or I'll figure out beforehand how to save the disk contents, otherwise it's going to get really messy ...

Pretty strange story with the iBook: after a while the drive just keeps clicking, as if it's hammering the read head against the end of the platter. Sometimes it's not even recognized at startup. Sounds like it's done for ...

Small update: the Debian machine is still running after all, there was just a knot in the filesystem, possibly from an earlier crash. But the iBook drive is probably really done for, but we managed to copy down the most important files ...

MacOSX::File and psync

Probably already blogged about elsewhere, but since I just installed it again: psync is a very practical software written in Perl that makes it possible to copy an entire Apple OS X volume in such a way that the result is even bootable afterwards. With this you can, for example, very easily mirror your boot partition to an external FireWire drive and use it both as a backup and as an emergency system.

There's also a GUI available for anyone who doesn't like using the Terminal.

Here's the original article.

OpenOffice for Mac OS X without X11 is taking its time

It's a shame, but not really catastrophic. On the one hand, there's already a very usable X11 implementation for Jaguar, and on the other hand, X11 is likely to become a standard component with Panther and should be even more tightly integrated (for example, X11 applications should be able to be started normally by double-clicking and will load X11 if necessary). This would give X11 a similar status to the Classic environment: not perfectly integrated, but at least well integrated enough to live with. And for those willing to pay a few euros and support a German software company, there's still Papyrus X - we'll certainly forgive them for calling it Papyrus OS/2 in the page title. At heise online news, you can find the original article.

Schill apparently threatened with outing during prime time

Does this Schill guy really believe that at a time of "I am gay and that's fine" Wowereit, anyone would be interested in such alleged outings? But what can you expect from someone like that in terms of common sense ... Anyway, the main thing is that he torpedoes this right-wing populist pile of garbage out of the Hamburg Senate

I found the original article at RP-Online: Politik.

SCO vs. Linux: The Time of Conspiracy Theories

And on to the next round of the show with the exciting title: How the SCO Management is demonstrating even more clearly that it has lost touch with reality. At heise online news you can find the original article.

Venus Flower Basket as Optical Waveguide

Cool. Small fiber optic networks in the deep sea. Do they perhaps already have ATM at 5000 meters depth without us knowing about it? At Telepolis News there's the original article.

Beust throws Schill out

So there I am, just spending 3 days in the hospital (medical technical term: thermocoagulation of an osteoid osteoma), and someone goes and kicks Schill out. I mean, I think it's nice and all, but if I could have experienced it live, it would have been even nicer.

At Nochn Blogg. you can find the original article.

Humpback whale jumped onto sailboat

Always these intrusive hitchhikers

At tagesschau im Internet you can find den Originalartikel.

Canon EOS-300D / Digital Rebel

Hey, that's already a start. Street price should land around 1000 euros, which is already significantly more acceptable than previous prices for digital SLRs. However, it's a Canon, who wants a Canon anyway

But it could be that this is where the price drop for digital SLRs finally begins and other manufacturers follow suit. Sooner or later they'll have to do it if they want a piece of the cake.

At Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com) you can find the original article.

Erik Zabel can still win

So well then, it works

At tagesschau im Internet you can find the original article.

Hessian tax investigators put on the brakes?

Oh how nice, a little scandal in Hesse that could develop into a full-blown scandal. But in a country where a leading politician can simply shovel double-digit millions abroad and doesn't have to go to jail for it and the Minister President isn't held accountable either, something like this certainly won't make big waves. Hesse is just Germany's banana republic number one.

At tagesschau im Internet you can find the original article.

Hamburg government crisis: mud-slinging over Beust's sexuality - Politics - SPIEGEL ONLINE

Wow, they're completely crazy in Hamburg.

Here's the original article.

I am an old National Socialist

It's about time that public broadcasting lived up to its mission. Unfortunately I missed the documentary. Hopefully more will come in that direction. Because a genuine reappraisal of the entire RAF history and its background - particularly the state hysteria - would really be necessary.

You can see how easily terrorist organizations and their attacks are used to trample on citizens' rights right now.

At Telepolis News there's the original article.

SCO: The 'Proof'

Cool. If that's all SCO has, then it's going to be really amusing when they get torn apart in court ...

At das Netzbuch you can find the original article.

Anyone Could Come Along Then

Transparency of the administration to the citizen would make fraud, waste of money and nepotism just as difficult as it would expose the sometimes abysmal incompetence of the public administration. So, what does the good politician do? It's obvious: put a lid on it and cover it up. That's how Büssow already rammed through his appalling blocking order.

At Spiegel Online: Netzwelt there's the original article.

iPod - really a nice gadget

But the thing does have a few catches:

• when synchronizing contacts, iSync hangs if, for example, MailSmith is open and using the address book. I also had a sync hang in another situation (which I can no longer reconstruct). I'll have to keep an eye on this.
• in general, it would be nice if there were a button or control method on the iPod to forcefully abort a transfer process if something gets stuck. As it is, you have to pull the cable in a pinch, but you really don't like doing that.
• while a sync is running, no music can be played. Yet Apple has had multitasking since OS 7.5 or so.
• the battery cannot be removed and was chosen so that it matches the iPod's lifespan (the original quote doesn't need commentary)
• no cable reel for the headphones. I had something like that on my old Aiwa headphones, which made it possible to wind them up neatly. The iPod headphones encourage you to just ball up the cord.

The little device is somewhat heavier than I expected, but feels quite premium for it. And the accessories go well with it and are also quite well built (for example, the remote control also makes a fairly premium impression).

Quite a lot of small parts, but quite intelligently used multiple times - for example, the FireWire cable is simultaneously used as a cable for the power adapter for on the go, so you only need one cable. And everything in a format so that it fits well into the included accessory bag.

But what's really cool is the control via the touch elements, especially the wheel is amusing: essentially a round touchscreen that understands exactly two gestures (turning left and turning right). The user interface could be more intuitive, but it's okay.

In any case, it's good that there are no moving or protruding parts on the outside, so nothing can break off or get stuck.

All in all, quite a musical 30GB hard drive, and that's what it should be after all.

PowerBooks are coming

I assume a new 12-inch PowerBook will be coming. Why? Simple: I just bought one. Now there are only two possibilities: either the old ones become drastically cheaper (which I can't quite imagine) or a new one comes out. This always happens to me...

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

Vatican and abuse cases: Report on cover-up order

That fits perfectly. Always keep the lid on tight.

At RP-Online: Politik I found the original article.

SQL Slammer impacted US power plant control

Cool. So it wouldn't be the first time if the worm actually had something to do with it ...

At heise online news you can find the original article.

Microsoft lets worm attack run into empty space

Cowardly Chickens!

At heise online news you can find the original article.

Is there a connection between blackout and Windows worm after all?

Oh, that would be nice if the worm really had something to do with the power outage. Oh, how nice that would be.

At heise online news there's the original article.

mySTEP 1.1

What all exists out there: a port of an OpenStep subset to the Zaurus, so you can build programs for the Zaurus with Mac tools and Mac sources. Wild.

At VersionTracker.com - Mac OS X I found the original article.

New Sony: F-828

Wow. The feature list really does sound impressive. Could this device perhaps replace my good old Olympus E-100 RS? Actually, all that's missing for my happiness is image stabilization.

Here's the original article.

RSS - where is the link to an article?

They should simply take the GUID instead of the content of the link tag. After all, the GUID in radio blog postings is always the link to the article itself (that's how it's defined anyway - only if the GUID element is marked with isPermalink="false" is it not the case). The Python Desktop Server does it exactly the same way, the link element contains the link of the posting, the link to the posting is in the GUID. So it's more of a problem with NetNewswire, that it doesn't ask the user which link it should pass as the link to the blog posting ...

At Der Schockwellenreiter there's the original article.

SCO Licenses Also Due for SCO Linux ...

From the SCO FAQ on Linux licensing:

If I am running SCO Linux or Caldera OpenLinux do I need to obtain a SCO IP License for Linux? - Yes.

This means that SCO itself sold products that are illegal (by their own definition). But SCO certainly sold these products to customers who in good faith purchased them from SCO believing the business was legitimate. Does this now mean these customers can sue SCO for fraud?

In any case, this should be a goldmine for any consumer protection advocate — a company that sells a product and then later comes along and tries to charge people again for the same service they already purchased.

Absurd. Completely absurd.

Here's the original article.

Americans Throw Subways into the Sea

Today must be the day of the absurd - disposing of asbestos-contaminated subway cars in the sea is completely insane even by American standards.

Here's the original article.

GNU Project's FTP Server Hacked

Ouch.

heise online news has the original article.

Reader-Submitted: Fox "News" claims sole use of "fair and balanced"

What? Of all people, the warmongers at Fox News claim a trademark on "fair and balanced" and try to prevent the publication of a book that strongly criticizes right-wing media? Absurd.

At Morons Dot Org you can find the original article.

SCO declares GPL invalid

This is really audacious now: they release software under a license that explicitly permits free distribution and use. This fact is actually well-known in the industry - so one would think that this license choice by SCO for their own distribution was deliberate. Nobody forced SCO to distribute their distribution. At that time, the GPL was quite convenient for them. But now they simply sit down and declare the GPL unilaterally (and retroactively) invalid. Idiots.

At heise online news there's the original article.

Power Outage in American Northeast

Funny - the entire American Northeast and parts of Canada are without power. The pictures from New York are already absurd: thousands of people trudging among the cars on the streets, the whole thing reminds you a bit of an anthill.

Then they should start training midwives diligently, in 9 months they'll probably be urgently needed in larger quantities.

The current rumor about the cause is incidentally an overload of the hydroelectric power plant at Niagara Falls.

Here you can find the original article.

WyPy - Wiki in Python

Probably the shortest wiki in Python, just 23 lines of highly unreadable and cryptic source code. And thus proof that Python's mandatory indentation in no way prevents the creation of stupid code. Here you can find the original article.

10 Python pitfalls

An interesting article about potential pitfalls for Python newbies.

I found the original article at Tao of the Machine.

blogg.de: XML-RPC Interface

Well then, let me try that right away ...

At Nochn Blogg. you can find the original article.

Ralle the Switcher

Hey, another one - I just got my PowerBook too. Really nice devices these are. I went with the 12-inch model because it's nicely compact and power-efficient. Though with SuperDrive, if you're going to do it, do it right - DVDs are quite useful as a backup medium.

However, I'm not a switcher, I've been doing things sensibly for a long time

At das Netzbuch you can find the original article.

FaceSpan 4.0

Interesting part - basically something like Visual Basic, just with AppleScript as the language. Sure, you can do some of that with AppleScript Studio, but FaceSpan was quite a manageable software under OS Classic back then, and if they were to transfer that concept to OS X, it could be very interesting. Especially through the support of scripting systems (Apple Events as well as Cocoa Scripting), you can nicely integrate other applications - FaceSpan would thus be ideal for creating graphical automation tools. Basically what TCL/TK is under Unix.

At welcome to macscripter.net | applescript and script resource there's the original article.

Aldag wins "Giro" in Bochum

Pretty cool how Aldag got away from both Zabel and Ullrich

At RADSPORT-NEWS.COM - News Overview I found the original article.

Dear Mr. Burg, esteemed readers: Copyright and source attribution, part two

I can understand if small business students get worked up because their credits (wow, I feel like I'm in a video game here) supposedly fail them. But if they then extra push back but aren't even capable of researching properly themselves - because then they would have noticed that readers of Thomas' weblog can definitely find their way back to the original article, even if it's somewhat inconspicuous given the IMO improvable layout - then it just gets silly. But if they then go ahead and steal graphic symbols from blogger.com, instead of painting their own, then it becomes additionally embarrassing too

Ok, welcome to the summer break of summer breaks

But it does raise an interesting topic: types of weblogs and their function on the net. For me there are three primary weblog types - certainly there are many subtypes, but these three strike me spontaneously when browsing through the net:

• Link hubs: these consist of 90% links and third-party quotes, only a small portion is original content. This mostly consists of explaining why I want to see a link, not what it says - because that's already at the original location. SWR and Randgaenge are very link-hub-heavy.
• Content blogs: Writers who produce more original content than foreign links. Often strongly article-formatted - meaning longer texts. The eDingse probably fall into that category, even if their content is deathly boring
• Diaries: well, I don't need to say anything about those, nobody likes them anyway

What's the point of all this now: quite simple. Here two formats collide: more link-hub-oriented ones (SWR and Randgaenge) meet more content-oriented ones (eDingse). Result: the link hubs do what they do: they see interesting content and link to it. They usually only link to the place where they read it - precisely where the interesting stuff was that they're referring to. Links from link hubs are simply to be understood as hey, take a look, there's really cool content there. Not editorial work or content work in that sense (I'm not denying either to SWR or Randgaenge - I'm only referring to the primary character of the two blogs at the moment! Both can certainly write!) but rather directory service and attention filter.

Is it sensible for a content producer to then get upset that Randgaenge linked to SWR and listed it as the source, because Thomas certainly read the content at SWR? No. That's actually highly nonsensical.

The reason: the link hubs are precisely the distributors through which content gets to others. Not everyone reads eDingse or other content - usually you read a few specialized blogs and a set of link hubs. The latter nicely filter for you where you want to read further. Anyone who reads link hubs knows that they have the beginnings of link chains there that eventually lead to the content. That's completely normal. Nobody would believe based on the quote at Thomas' blog that the text was written by Jörg, just because SWR is listed as the source. If a content blog severs ties with link hubs by threatening them with legal action and wielding the copyright club over a couple of sentences of quotation, then ultimately they make their content less accessible - because link hubs will generally simply ignore and exclude the content afterwards.

As a content writer to believe that the whole world reads your blog directly and that you thus reach your entire audience shows little understanding of how things work on the internet. Link hubs are quite important for this, as they perform a purely subjective pre-filtering that readers explicitly choose themselves - because the one doing the pre-filtering covers part of their own information needs.

It's equally counterproductive for link hubs to mess with content producers - however, the link hubs have the longer lever here, as content producers generally create and publish content based on their own interests (internal drive, value chain or similar motivations). And link hubs can link to what's public.

Sure, a content producer can now shut down their RSS feed. But that doesn't hurt the link hub - they just read something else, link to something else, or occasionally browse manually (if they think something interesting is happening there).

What gets hurt regularly are readers who suddenly no longer have access. And what gets hurt are currently still non-readers who possibly learn nothing about the content because it's not linked.

And what's the function of public diaries? No idea, I'm still puzzling over that

Here's the original article.

Notebook da ...

... and now we're installing diligently

Script kiddies?

Welcome to the wonderful world of Windows bugs. Lately, there's been a universal exploit for XP and 2000 for the RPC bug that works independently of Service Pack level and similar factors. And this opens the door wide for script kiddies in Windows - if you're running your Windows system without a hotfix, you'll soon become an involuntary employee of some script kiddies ...

At INSTANT NIRVANA you can find the original article.

Saban criticizes Middle East reporting

Oh - is this now ushering in pro-Israeli propaganda reporting in private television? Away with journalistic freedom? So that we too are blessed with reporting like Fox? It's also absurd that he's proposing to take advertising away from public broadcasting by replacing it with one or two hours of educational programming. What does he actually think, that anyone wants someone like that to educate their children? So that they are normalized early on into his lobbying worldview? I hope that politicians will also give this absurd proposal a firm rejection early on. All a nice picture of the fact that things can indeed get much worse than they already were with Kirch.

I found the original article at RP-Online: Multimedia.