The Schräuble again - "The State Security of the GDR had several hundred thousand employees, made people spy on each other, and created an 'atmosphere of fear.'" - doesn't even know what he's complaining about, it fits ... (okay, there's still some catching up to do in terms of denouncing, but we'll manage that). The biggest alarmist is the wheelchair user himself, who, without any real verifiable facts, invents all sorts of threat scenarios and then solves them by hollowing out the Basic Law. And thus poses a far greater danger to the constitution than the terrorists who were recently arrested in such an advertising-effective manner (and then released again due to a lack of anything concrete).
Archive 20.9.2008 - 14.10.2008
SAP will sparen - tjaja, does anyone remember the whining of the business administration students at SAP, how terrible the interference of the union would be and that it would be impossible for a few troublemakers to push through a works council election, because SAP is so great and a works council would be so stupid and all that blahblah?
Also Kohl tested positive - Holy Cow! I'm starting to feel sorry for Holczer. How cycling can become a sporting event again after the recent pharmacy parade is becoming increasingly unclear to me. If even sympathizers like Holczer, who is not from the "old stable" but rather a newcomer, is being completely taken advantage of by his riders, what is left? And how can cycling motivate sponsors like Gerolsteiner - who have always worked with the rather "nice" image of the Holczer team and have not built up a performance pressure like Festina - to stay involved? Ultimately, cyclists are destroying their own livelihood.
Government supports banks with up to 400 billion euros - Money for social benefits? Forget it, we need to have a balanced budget! Money for incompetent bankers? Of course, how many hundred billion shall it be?
Buzzaire - Metered Dose Caffeine Inhaler - well, that's pretty crazy: a caffeine inhaler. I guess when you use it, any warranty on your body is void ...
Downloading Hugs - I just have to play with Haskell again (and fail again with this quirky language ...). And there is a quite nice Windows version of the "small" interpreter Hugs - might be something for my Eee-PC.
ECMAScript 4 - Progress - those who want to know why ECMAScript will again be dumber in the next version than it could be, can take a look at which points are all rejected by Apple ...
IM Functionality On Twitter Suspended Indefinitely - somehow Twitter is reducing itself to irrelevance. First, SMS is turned off for almost all relevant regions of the world (except in this strange bilingual North American area and in the largest banana union in the world - oh yes, and also in India), now IM is finally going down the drain at Twitter. What remains? A rather meager web application that you have to painstakingly poll on the go if you want to see what's going on.
.:: NOTEPAD++ ::. - since I'm still setting up my Asus, I've blogged about it - could this be an alternative to Textwrangler on the Mac?
Overclock Your Body With Geek Cuisine - Alternatives to coffee. Although my Nespresso makes such good espresso that I tend to rely on it for my regular caffeine supply.
Shapeways | passionate about creating - 3D print-on-demand. Could be interesting.
Slipstream - Intuition + Money - An Aha Moment - interesting development in silicon wafers. If the 100-fold performance can also be implemented in real products, that would be fantastic news for solar cell-based solar energy.
T-Mobile Board Calls Own Corporation a Mess - "At Vodafone, former Federal Family Minister Renate Schmidt is to serve as an ombudswoman to improve customer data protection and compliance with regulations. The SPD member of parliament will be available as a contact person for employees at Germany's second-largest mobile network operator starting in November if they are confronted with legally or ethically questionable matters or even suspect violations of the law," the company announced in Düsseldorf." - huh? Politician as an ethical advisor? Goat? Gardener?
The ORIGINAL Illustrated Catalog Of ACME Products - no comment.
the world's most bad-ass grotesques and gargoyles - since my character in SL is usually a gargoyle, a very fitting link.
Why 42 ? - for reference.
MyDigitalSSD - and that's where you'll find the cool SSDs for the Asus. Up to 64GB and all as SLC (which is significantly faster than MLC, making the D: drive on the Little Fat one much faster - C: is already designed as SLC).
SSD expansion to 32 or 64 GB - yeah, I know, a 32G SLC SSD costs just as much as the Eee PC and that's completely crazy. Yes, ok, I got it. I'll bookmark the link here anyway for future use. Who knows, maybe I'll still be overcome by the urge.
eeebuntu - available with Netbook Remix and classic Gnome. Should also have quite comprehensive drivers for the hardware.
Ubuntu Eee - one of the many Ubuntu-based EEE PC distributions. This one sounds very complete and uses the new Netbook Remix interface. According to forum comments, it also runs smoothly with all versions and has full drivers installed.
UMTS USB Sticks: with Xandros (Linux) OVERVIEW - and as I can see here, things still look pretty bad for my UMTS stick under Linux (I have the black thing from TMO), so I'll probably have to continue using Windows for now.
Abbyy FotoReader: OCR with the digital camera - not a bad idea at all. And could even be quite useful in combination with little-fatty (my Asus 901) and my upcoming digicam (which has a special document mode).
Report: Erotic entrepreneur stores T-Mobile customer database - the whole thing is getting more absurd and strange. Although admittedly, storing the 17 million Deutsche Telekom data sets with an erotic entrepreneur has a certain charm. Especially since he probably knows more about data protection and securing customer data than Deutsche Telekom apparently does ...
OLG Hamburg: RapidShare is liable as a co-contributor for copyright infringements - new from the Internet's nutty ideas. "RapidShare could, for example, exclude the use of its own service with dynamic IP addresses and require users to use static IP addresses without the intervention of a proxy server." - clear, because there are also rows of static IPs for users with dynamic dial-up. Here the donkey is kicking the camel: Rapidshare is anything but rapid if you are not already registered, and IMO really dispensable. Just like the opinion of the OLG Hamburg on various Internet topics.
Orbited – Networking for the Web - an interesting project that offers communication channels over other protocols for web applications via HTTP and JavaScript.
Schumacher under doping suspicion - Holy Cow.
Unity creates games and 3D applications for the iPhone [Update] - ouch, the price for the iPhone option is quite steep. However, Unity is quite an interesting story, so this could lead to some new games. And particularly interesting: Unity also supports network games and has basic functions in the server for persistent worlds (though you still have to do a lot of programming yourself). Could definitely cause some stir. But for my hobby budget definitely outside the realm of reason.
Apple and Windows - Fail
Well, for a few days now I have a cute Asus EEE-PC 901 at home. The thing rocks! I thought I'd stick with Windows, so I can at least use some of the familiar programs and sync my bookmarks between the Safaris, etc. And what happens? Apple is a total failure.
First of all: I don't use an admin account under Windows, I use a normal account and only the admin for installation. For this I have also set up my own admin, as I wanted to put my user profiles on drive D: due to the stupid partitioning of the SSD. It all works quite well. But Apple has dumb ears.
On the one hand, Apple still messes around on drive C:. Then I can't specify for all installers that they should install to D:, instead they install on the system partition. Or iTunes: it demands the installer on the disk in the admin's home directory (which was not readable for others before), to then locally install something (whatever) for the user. If that would work, ok. But it doesn't - iTunes runs through the entire installation sequence with searching for MP3s and all that crap every time it starts.
And setting my iTunes media library to another drive doesn't work either - my 16G Class 6 SDHC will probably remain locked for iTunes, because the library is always reset to D:. Rarely stupid.
And MobileMe? Well, it worked once and messed up my bookmarks, but since then it doesn't work anymore - the control panel takes my data and logs me in, but as soon as I reload the panel or go to the sync settings, my user data is supposedly incorrect. Rarely stupid.
All in all, Apple's offering for Windows leaves a rather pathetic impression - sure, some of it may be due to the non-admin user, or the profiles on drive D:, but hey, similar things exist on the Mac as well, and Apple handles them there. So what's lost on Windows?
Safari works well, but against Chrome it doesn't stand a chance on the small Asus box - too slow. Although Google also didn't exactly cover itself in glory with the Chrome installation, which is forced into the user profile (not changeable without hacks).
Do they want to force me to put Linux on the box? Then there's not even the temptation to look at Apple's stuff...
Update: with an admin user, iTunes works - even with the media library on the SDHC card. Do they have a total screw loose at Apple?
Update 2: After finding a tip in a web forum, I uninstalled all the iTunes stuff and QT and then started the Apple Software Updater under my normal account with "Run as..." and then with the admin user and installed iTunes and QT with it. Intuitive is something else, but at least iTunes now works with my non-privileged account. MobileMe still makes its fuss, though, despite installation via this method. Approaches to debug it? None. Oh, and of course the software ends up on C: again instead of D: ...
Oh yeah, and why the hell does every stupid installer put icons on the desktop without asking? Ok, some ask, but the ones from Apple - no. Bah.
17 million customer data stolen from T-Mobile - bad enough that so much data is circulating without the public knowing for 2 years. Embarrassing, however, is also the reaction of the press: the few celebrities stand out barely, with 17 million, but apparently they are much more important ...
Betrayed and sold - how was it again, Mr. Schäuble? Are the data safe with the state?
Tiny Nation Premiere - if anyone wants to see what you can do in SecondLife. Absolutely awesome Machinima.
Guppy-PE: A Python Programming Environment - and another tool that (among other things) helps analyze memory leaks. Also for Python.
Hypo Real Estate: Taxpayers step in to fill the gap - sounds all incredibly professional again ...
Landtagswahl in Bayern: CSU loses absolute majority - there are simply news items that you like to read. Again and again. A lot of entertainment value is coming our way!
PySizer - a memory profiler for Python - interesting tool, one should take a closer look at it. Maybe not entirely stupid for finding memory leaks.
Wal-Mart latest store to shut DRM key servers - and the next DRM debacle. After Microsoft (who backed out) and Yahoo now Wal-Mart.
Neat Image /Mac - best noise reduction for digital cameras and scanners on Mac - blogged for future reference, as I might need it.
papert: logo in your browser - had I already had that? Doesn't matter. It's nice, can be linked multiple times. Logo in JavaScript in the browser.
Zabel steps down from cycling - but still rides in the Münsterland-Giro on October 3rd - should I go to the city to watch the final laps?
AK Vorrat publishes secret data exchange agreement - with what our politicians are doing and how they trample the constitution and civil rights, we don't even need terrorists anymore. Soon politicians can justify any nonsense by referring to the nonsense of their predecessors. Recursive dumbing down. And who did it? The crazy wheelchair user and the federal incompetence.
GTK+ on OSX - maybe this is finally the first step towards a native version of GIMP. Although there will probably still be some visual shocks for Mac users - the X mindset is still deeply ingrained in many programs.
IBM warns standards bodies to shape up - this could be the storm that ISO and ECMA have sown with the OOXML nonsense.
Leica S2 with 56% larger sensor than full frame: - oomph. Oh - what will this thing cost? Probably two arms and two legs.
Sigma announces DP2 large sensor compact - will the new processor improve the DP1's poor performance? That would be desirable, as the DP1 is quite good in many areas in terms of image quality - only its terrible performance causes the subject to fall asleep before the photo is taken. If the new processor helps, that could be a nice leap forward for Sigma.
Home Page for ATS - interesting functional programming language with eager evaluation and special support for imperative concepts and parallel programming. Particularly interesting: their compiler currently beats C++ in the Language Shootout - generates faster code.
MailWrangler and the Apple App Store - Apple really has a screw loose. How many flashlight programs are there in the Apple Store? But a gmail-Auth-Switcher - which would really be damn useful, I love MailPlane on my desktop - is not allowed in?
Making (some) sense out of sensor sizes - because I always look for this from time to time, finally blogged.
tms - a very useful command line tool for Leopard, with which you can look very detailed into TimeMachine backups and find out what the hell was actually backed up there. Helpful when you're sitting there again and wondering why the stupid system wants to back up 1.3 GB now (probably it was the system upgrade) ...
Confidentiality, integrity and verifiability - with whom? - "Private service providers are to join forces to form a network of certified citizen portals, which is to be financed either by savings in the economy and administration, for example by eliminating the need to send invoices, or by an "E-Porto". - thanks, but no thanks.