Praise and criticism for strategy paper - well great, why do you vote for the government if that's what comes out of it: Praise comes instead from the CDU. The paper has great similarities with the Union's government program. Found at tagesschau on the internet.
Kick-off X-Mas Roll-Out Memo 1. Since X-mas 2003 is practically already at the door, it's high time to start the Christmas roll-out and prepare the Christmas mailing campaigns just in time.
The kick-off event (formerly 1st Advent) for this year's SANCROS (SANta Claus ROad Show) is already taking place on November 29, 2003. Therefore, the official come-together of the Organizing Committee under the chairmanship of the CIO (Christmas Illumination Officer) was already held on January 6.
For the first time, we... [ Industrial Technology & Witchcraft]
Yeah, always these rushed releases, and by Epiphany the first bugfix release is already due...
Found at Industrial Technology & Witchcraft.
The feeling is apparently deceiving: Euro is no "Teuro" - well great, so now we all just eat potatoes with turkey schnitzel and lettuce and give up any form of enjoyment, then everything will become as cheap as the wise guys want us to believe.
Found at tagesschau im Internet.
Court: Internet cafés need arcade licenses - and internet cafes in department stores or city libraries? The arcade license has the consequence that minors are no longer allowed inside (which is also mentioned in the article). Are minors now not allowed in the city library either, because the terminals standing there are also gaming systems? And does Karstadt now have to check IDs in the computer department because the internet cafe is located right in the middle of the computer section? It all sounds somehow a bit half-baked...
Found at heise online news.
No compensation for chocolate fan - I would have been genuinely shocked if this nonsense had actually been upheld. We're not in the States, where people apparently need instruction manuals for chocolate bars ...
Found at tagesschau on the Internet.
Federal Security Authority Distributes CD with Instant-Linux - pour 5 liters of boiling water, stir, let steep for 5 minutes, done.
Found at heise online news.
Polyhedra Polymath. > Prof. George W. Hart, of the Computer Science Department at SUNY Stony Brook, has an enviable web presence. His Encyclopedia of Polyhedra alone is worth the visit, his geometric sculptures make the nerd in me weep at their beauty, and his trilobite recipe looks mighty yummy.
Damn. This could have been straight from asr, but it's just something I found on Metafilter. But Trilobyte recipe? This would even be strong for asr people ...
Gefunden bei MetaFilter.
MS licensing. >An explanation of Microsoft's licensing model (from a person that actually likes their software... but not their licensing). Read it and weep. Specially interesting is the situation they got in which they had to pay a license for the new Office (XP) simply to be able to run Office 2000.... which they had already purchased!!
Truly insane. Another one of the advantages of a monopoly: you can force people to pay for a product they don't use, but rather to continue using the one they have already purchased from you. >[via Abort, Retry, Fail?]
Not much can be said about this. Only that people who buy from the devil will suffer what the deserve - okok, we do have some Microsoft stuff, too. And usually we do weep when we read the licenses ...
Gefunden bei Abort, Retry, Fail?.
What is RSS? - Mark Pilgrim describes the history and technical details of the RSS variants used on the web. He also provides descriptions of how to parse most of them. For anyone who wants to write their own aggregator, this is certainly a good starting point to get an overview.
Found at Meerkat: An Open Wire Service.
Happy Birthday Perl - hey, in 3 more years Perl will be of legal age
Found at use Perl.
On the subject of rail price reform: Panorama tears apart the new pricing system right now at the moment. Well, it's always important to read the fine print - and not to withhold it from customers, as the railway likes to do in advertising. The points of criticism are the usual ones: limited discount seats, ticket binding to specific trains, overnight stay requirement at the highest discount level, upgrading of regional trains to intercity trains. Hmm. They left out the horrendous cancellation fee.
And Mehdorn interspersed with his constant claim from his standpoint that it would be cheaper for everyone, just not for a few. And that it didn't get more expensive, but rather the offering got better. As they say here in Münsterland: He's lying.
Also very interesting is the report about Ooops-Koch. Things slip out of his mouth from time to time - well, it seems that flirting with the ultra-right is rather the rule than the exception for him. How else should one interpret it when he writes a foreword for a book by authors clearly to be classified as far-right extremists? Allegedly only because he wants it to be discussed, he certainly wouldn't endorse all the ideas. Laughable. When someone frequently lets things slip that so much remind one of brown sauce, then on the inside they're the same color.
should we patent air too?. An article from News.com: America Online has quietly secured a patent that could shake up the competitive landscape for instant messaging software. Ouch. Granting such a patent - I can only imagine that the responsible official was asleep at the wheel. After all, there are almost certainly cases of "prior art" - that is, previously existing implementations. Moreover, such general patents are even dumber than patents themselves already are, since they can be applied to just about anything imaginable.
Well, eventually Billyboy, Elly or one of the Steves will probably patent the 0 and the 1 and then we'll have to pay licenses for every bit in the computer ...
[original link via Abort, Retry, Fail?]
Found at Abort, Retry, Fail?.
Bundestag says goodbye to the Committee for Internet Policy - well great, the only place in the Bundestag that dealt directly with the net and the net community and didn't try to regulate the net with various special interests (like the alternatives proposed by the Union in the article) is being shut down. Idiotic. But of course, the committee opposed the Union's clientele a bit too often, something like that has to be prevented at all costs.
Update: It looks like the committee is getting a reprieve and can continue to exist for now.
Found at heise online news.
Relief in the Union - Regret in the SPD - whether I want anything to do with the identity of Germany, which according to Stoiber is preserved by the rejection of the immigration law, I seriously doubt. The rejected form is already far too strict for me. But what one really ought to explain to the Union is this: the court did not judge the law or reject the matter, but rather the circus act in the Bundesrat. And a Brandenburg Union politician had no small part in that either. Found at tagesschau on the internet.
Doubts about Gorleben's Suitability as Final Repository - well, so let me summarize this again:
Suitability as a final repository site is defined, among other things, by the acceptance of the local population. Okay, I don't need an expert committee for that, everyone knows it anyway. And that nobody is willing to have radioactive waste lying in front of their door should also be clear to everyone.
Trittin commissioned the study and now accepted it. So he is interested in the result after all - he himself emphasizes that based on the aspects of the report, Gorleben's suitability is questionable. Why on earth should a decision not be made before 2015? If the site - as Trittin himself says - is a burned site, why burden the people there with the waste for another 13 years? Why continue making expensive transports there that would possibly have to be transported somewhere completely different if the site were abandoned - with all the complications and costs that would entail? Found at tagesschau on the Internet.
BinTec is insolvent - I'm not entirely sure, but I think we've just selected BinTec routers as standard at the company - okay, that fits so far, but usually once we commit to a supplier, they're already in trouble, if I think back to ArcNet, Carbon Copy and a few other strategic decisions
Found at heise online news.
Just posted! Canon EOS-1Ds review - okay, now DPreview has their final test report on the 1Ds online too. If you're thinking about buying something like that, I still find DPreview's tests to be one of the better forums on the web - both in terms of factual presentation and partly also in terms of assessment.
Photo Quotes has quotes from well-known photographers about their work and what makes it special. In addition, sample images from these photographers. A nice compilation.
Pixelnhance has a new version that makes it easier to adjust the maximum dynamic range in an image than before (simply double-click on the histogram). Pixelnhance is altogether a very nice image editing software that is particularly ideal as a complement to iPhoto.
Dark humor against software patents - a witty idea. Especially the example patent from Canon with the violation by a one-line shell script is quite something. Thanks to Industrial Technology & Witchcraft for the link.
Found at Industrial Technology & Witchcraft.
Pentagon Considers Secret Program to Manipulate Public Opinion in Allied Countries - yeah, great strategy. OK, you could actually change your behavior so that it's acceptable to allied countries - after all, that would be the basis of friendship as people usually understand it. But the Americans prefer to deceive their friends, manipulate them, and if necessary put them under pressure. Nice new (old) world...
Found at Telepolis News.
Möllemann will sich im Januar erklären - wow, that's what I call delaying tactics of the highest order. Found at tagesschau im Internet.
For Python hackers: check out Psyco and Pyrex. Very interesting ways to speed up Python code when you're working heavily with arrays or numbers and can't make progress with the usual methods (like a better algorithm, for example).
Psyco is a form of just-in-time compiler for Python, but it includes rudimentary type inference — it determines at the time of code analysis what values can actually arrive. This of course helps primarily in areas where specializations are included in this compiler. Current focus areas are arrays and lists of basic types, especially numbers, and arithmetic expressions.
Pyrex is something completely different, but no less exciting. Pyrex is its own language that is very closely modeled on Python, but combined with C. This makes creating Python extensions much easier than with C or C++ alone, because you program in a way familiar to Python users, but can work with C type declarations.
Merz rails against union power - Merz is really not quite of this world. The call for union members with CDU party membership to leave the union is truly absurd - without a union, these people would be at the mercy of their employers, who also happen to carry CDU party books. That's quite a strategy.
I personally think all union members with CDU party membership should leave the CDU instead.
Found at tagesschau on the internet.
6/2/02: How to create a directory in Radio's Outliner - I don't know exactly what it's for yet, but I think I'll use it. Somehow it's cool, even though I don't know exactly why. Hmm - I often feel that way about David Winer's ideas for Radio, it must be my fault
Found at Scripting News.
more viruses. From News.com: Email viruses doubled in 2002. And this, with MS's supposed new focus on "security". Oh well. Good thing that other virus-free solutions are coming along :-).
[via Abort, Retry, Fail?] Yep, looks like Microsoft really succeeded in their security focus - especially IE and OE should be burned, blown up and pulled out of reality. Please.
But it won't happen, I fear. Instead of that they will produce even more shit and name it .NET and even more stuff will go bozo.
Gefunden bei Abort, Retry, Fail?.
Unix interactive: New paths to insolvency - wow, that's practically local news (I'm sitting in Münster)! Well, except that Unix interactive existed, I can't say anything else about the place ... [via Dotcomtod]
Found at Dotcomtod.
Substitute funds should cut vacation pay - and once again employees are supposed to finance the incompetence of managers and the mistakes of management...
Found at tagesschau on the internet.
CIA receives anti-terror killing list - can it get any more perverted? The fact that the USA disregards human rights in terrorist interrogations is already well known. But now people are supposed to be simply murdered with state authorization - that tops everything we've seen so far. Have the Americans actually ever read their own constitution, which grants every human being the right to a fair trial?
Found on tagesschau on the Internet.
Merz accuses successor Merkel of breaking her word - hehe, so much for one crow not pecking out another's eye. Well, it's actually unfair to the crows to compare them with Merkel and Merz ...
Found at tagesschau on the internet.
Court blocks far-right websites - oh no, don't give Büssow any more ammunition ...
Found at tagesschau on the internet.
Wage agreement in banking - well great, performance-related pay components. Is Verdi crazy to accept something like that? Does anyone really believe employers will voluntarily increase anything, like this silly "can be increased by 20%" clause for the 13th salary? Sure, it can be, but it won't be. Employers will much rather use the "reduce by 10%" option. As usual, the employee foots the bill. No wonder the employer representatives are talking about a milestone - for them it's cheap in the end result. Only meager increases and the option to reach into employees' pockets...
Found at tagesschau on the internet.
If you go by the search queries in the referrers to my website, the Canon Powershot G3 seems to be a device that many are interested in. And since it's apparently searched for frequently, here's the link again to the test report at DPreview.
It's a delight to just switch off and configure out broken NT machines, when they go bozo. Ok, usually we try to repair stuff, but since the machine that broke down twice today is the last NT based machine in our production environment, I wasn't that keen on getting it back to work. So I just switched the last three shops running on that box to dummy pages, unconfigured everything monitoring this POS and am done with it. On Monday the shops are transferred to a newer box on Linux.
But there is still a question: when a machine has automatic memory error discovery and automatic bank disabling, why can't this POS just do what it is expected to do and switch off the broken memory bank and go on? It worked the last time, why doesn't it work this time? Bah.
Mehdorn Air in Nosedive - a very good summary of facts and commentary links around Deutsche Bahn AG's new pricing system. As a summary, one can say that Deutsche Bahn is engaging in considerable nonsense here; what is promised in advertising simply cannot be achieved by everyone based on the framework conditions alone.
For me, this definitely means fewer train trips, because on the one hand spontaneous journeys are no longer possible and on the other hand day trips have become more expensive for me (among other things because the large discounts require at least one night in between), and I therefore have to think about whether I really want to do this. Which of course annoys me - I've been a long-time BahnCard holder and actually really enjoy traveling by train. But when you're supposed to pay more for less service (like with the InterRegios that have been converted into ICs), that's where I draw the line. And these strange clauses, such as super saver discounts only being provided for 10% of seat capacity and no such prices being available once these are booked, that's bordering on false advertising.
And things like absolute train binding don't appeal to me much either - I like to change my mind and take a different train, and that option disappears with this system.
Sorry, Mr. Mehdorn, you've missed the mark. Grade: 6, sit down.
Political Majority for AWACS Deployment - Liars. There's nothing more to say about it. Why is there so much fuss about Germany not participating in an operation against Iraq, only to then provide aircraft and soldiers? You can't appear credible that way ...
Found on tagesschau on the internet.
Banks Unwilling to Pass On Interest Rate Cuts - Rip-off artists. Of course - a glaring example of how managers and entrepreneurs like banks simply don't do what the Union always claims: invest, stimulate the economy, support markets. The banks are just raking it in instead of picking up on the ECB's impulse and passing it on. And so the ECB's interest rate cut fizzles out almost without effect - there are effects, in the banks' coffers.
And meanwhile the banks continue to ration and ration, cut more and more jobs, and charge fees for non-services (everything runs automatically and is performed by the customer themselves, but the fees and costs for bank accounts are going up - hasn't anyone noticed this?).
Found at tagesschau online.
Stir over Bonn Riefenstahl Exhibition - well, anyone who thinks they can separate Riefenstahl's art from the art of German fascism is seriously mistaken.
Found at tagesschau on the Internet.
Phillip Pearson: "Prototyping a very fast XML-RPC server." - fast? Ok. But why C++? Yuck ...
Gefunden bei Scripting News.
Koch causes scandal with Nazi comparison - Deubler-Gmelin had to resign for far less clear words. But of course everything is completely different with the Union and of course it's not as it appears and of course we can't quite understand any of it. Sure. Probably he was just playing politics again.
Found at tagesschau im Internet.
Clearance Sale/2 at IBM - oh well, those were the days when OS/2 was hip and cool
Found at heise online news.
Schily warns against public service strike - of course he doesn't believe that every day he refuses to negotiate seriously damages the negotiations ...
Why is it that employers can't come up with anything better during wage negotiations than constantly talking about how a strike would only harm the negotiations? Have they never heard that the strike is precisely the primary means of pressure for unions in negotiations, and that without strikes or strike threats we would still be living in the working world of the last century?
One would think that these supposedly highly educated and well-trained employer representatives would at least have picked up a minimum of understanding about this. And another illusion shattered ...
Found at tagesschau on the internet.
Möllemann apparently set up illegal account - wow, this is getting juicier and juicier.
Found at tagesschau on the Internet.
Internet filters blocking educational websites - could the Regional Court of Düsseldorf please read this as well? And maybe think about the fact that these are exactly the arguments why everyone who understands the issue tells him that his blocking orders are nonsense?
Found at heise online news.
SPD denies Schröder's resignation threat - well great, as if the opposition's poison wasn't enough, now they're tearing each other apart. Schröder and Müntefering should think carefully about whether they can afford to pull such stupid actions as they're doing at the moment. You get the feeling that the government leadership and party leadership wouldn't even talk to each other anymore ...
Found at tagesschau online.
Market researchers expect Linux software from Microsoft - do I want that? I don't think so. Somehow I find that rather a deterrent vision ...
Found at heise online news.
NRW-FDP wants to expel Möllemann - 6, 5, 4 ...
Found at tagesschau on the internet.
In the Ghost-Town-Gallery there are many pictures of abandoned towns on the American continent. A whole lot of really beautiful photographs. Absolutely worth seeing. Found via Researchbuzz.
Third proceedings against Möllemann - and it continues down the drain...
Whether any of the proceedings will actually lead to a conviction, though? After the actions surrounding Kohl, who despite proven donation concealment and his refusal to disclose donors can still sit in the Bundestag with lies and fraud, I no longer expect anything from our legal system in the fight against corrupt politicians...
Found at tagesschau on the internet.