Anti-Grain Geometry - Texts Rasterization Exposures - everything you never wanted to know about fonts, hinting, and anti-aliasing, but you get told anyway.
Archive 13.7.2007 - 30.7.2007
Top official of the Federal Police had his employees' emails monitored - "The chain letter 'additionally burdens our IT network and reduces processing speed,'" explained department head Fritzsch in an employee letter, justifying the online raid. Well, well, abuse in online searches is certainly excluded in such officials ...
WGET 1.10.2 for Windows (win32) - you always need this from time to time.
"Second Life" for Germans - what nonsense. First of all, the German community in SL is already quite large, so a SL-in-SL for Germans already exists - and secondly, there is probably only pre-made content in this "Secret City". When will the press finally realize that the special feature of SL is user-generated content, and that no system without its own content creation can be a real competitor to SL? There.com is a competitor. OpenCroquet could be one. OpenGrid (based on the SL protocols and its open-source client, but its own grid) will certainly be one. But silly 3D-MySpaces and chat channels? Ridiculous ...
Investigation of the subscriber in file-sharing criminal proceedings is unlawful - the reasoning of the court reads so convincing and logical, I bet it will be overturned by a higher authority.
Japanese Watch Maker - fascinating watches.
Rasmussen fired and removed from the Tour - but is the replacement in the overall standings any better? Contador was a customer of Fuentes ... will Discovery be ready to draw similarly painful consequences? It is clear that only if the teams take a hard line can they retain any credibility. Rabobank's reaction may seem exaggerated - but the sponsor will certainly see it differently. A bank does not like it when its name is booed and hissed.
Stackless Python soll Eve Online schneller machen - as exciting as the software base is for me - as boring the game is for me. I've noticed again with Eve Online and Vendetta Online how incredibly boring space is for me. At least when it consists of zooming around in spaceships and trading. If someone ever makes such a game with the possibility to walk around on planets and create your own worlds, then I'm back on board.
The Church of the Latter-Day Dude - the dude abides.
Antique engines inspire nano chip - nano-computer inspired by Babbage's Differential Engine.
Playing it safe? - the movie now at archive.org. Go watch it!
British music industry attacks government - "... artists are having their works taken and record companies are being robbed of their investments ...". Please what? Can it get any worse? Artists are not being robbed of anything - this is simply a fact of the law, which after a certain period of time, causes copyrights to expire. This only concerns specific recordings, not e.g. song lyrics (which are protected for a longer period). The idea that it is the task of the law to guarantee an industry its sources of income is quite absurd. In other places, the same people would be outraged about state subsidies, but here it is loudly demanded. I mean, let's speak plainly: these recordings have been profitable for 50 years, secured by copyright.
…free your imagination… - a website that reports on newly discovered species.
iPhoto Library Manager - pimp your iPhoto.
Jamendo : Fabrice Collette - good French blues. Under CC license. I really should have learned French instead of Latin in school ...
Tour continues, despite all problems - "Is there more doping in the 100m race or in the marathon? For ten years we have been shortening the stages, with known success. People don't cheat because the race is hard, but because they want to win, for fame and money. If there were Olympic sack races, people would cheat there too to win."
We're All Gonna Die - "Will everyone forget about the scandals of June and July 2007 amid these deadly warnings of coming death?" - unfortunately, this also fits our situation far too well. Schäuble's saber-rattling.
DarwiinRemote - Driver to connect the WIIRemote to the Mac.
RE: question about Erlang's future - Erlang's status at Ericsson today (not as positive as one would wish, but an explanation for Bluetail and e.g. their SMTP server in Erlang).
The Real Problem With Alexa - taking a closer look at Alexa's number nonsense.
Judgment against Skype for GPL violation - it seems that with every case that is actually opened, the legal certainty of the GPL increases. Very good!
David Carr: Deadlines, Overtime and Undertime - what overtime really does in a programming project. Would be nice if managers read that. But they have been ignoring "The Mythical Man Month" for several decades anyway ...
What Linspire Agreed To - "It's worse than Novell's, actually. It's worse than Tivo, in my book. I know some say that Tivo doesn't interfere with you modifying, as long as you give up using the modified software on Tivo hardware. To me, that is a penalty not contemplated by GPLv2, because if you buy a Tivo, it's because you wanted to use the software with the Tivo hardware, but with Linspire's agreement, you have to give up pretty much all your GPL freedoms, as far as I can make out, and more. And what do you get in return for giving up everything? True Type fonts, Windows Media 10, DVD playback, patent coverage..."
Chax - miscellaneous iChat improvements - pimp my iChat.
Played through - Draw.
iGlasses for iChat AV - pimp my iSight.
Learning from Dave Winer - ok, only when it comes to blog comments. And yes, I have also drastically changed my format by using the link component much more strongly instead of the page component (pages automatically have comments for me, links do not). If I write longer texts, I might want comments. If I just point somewhere, rather not.
Tiny PC sips power, runs Linux - nice little box.
Trojaner-Basteln fĂĽr Dummys - ouch. Big ouch.
Jing Project: Visual conversation starts here. Mac or Windows. - sounds strange, but potentially useful.
Nokia veröffentlicht Browser für Maemo - nice. The Opera on the devices is not bad, but a Mozilla runs a bit smoother, as the Opera is of the older kind.
Project details for leJOS - now also for the NXT. It's exciting, on the other hand, Lego tinkering has a disadvantage: you have to put it away if you don't want to constantly trip over it ...
Schenk? - wasn't she the BDR president at the time when the BDR deliberately ignored all the allegations against Team Telekom because there was an Olympic champion and Tour winner and generally only great cyclists? Funny how the coat turns with the wind ...
The History of Software Patents (BitLaw) - in the USA.
Abmahngrund: Fotos vom Fotostudio - the whole thing is so strange that you don't even understand what was not understood at all. However, one should remember: it is best to fix in writing exactly for what a photo should be used.
Absurdities of the Media
In the doping circus, there's once again a real howler that I saw today in the Tour ticker:
Dear cycling friends! For good reason (the case of Patrik Sinkewitz), coverage of the 2007 Tour de France will initially be suspended until the allegations against Sinkewitz are clarified. We thank you for your interest! À bientôt, your tour.ARD.de team
Ok. So another rider under doping suspicion. Just like it's been all the time. Nothing really new - Team T-Mobile probably has a lot more to work through. Uh - and what is the point of stopping the coverage now? I mean, it was already pathetic enough - stopping it now changes what exactly?
The media could of course, instead of the great outrage, think about how much they themselves are involved in the whole mess. Wasn't there something about direct cooperation between ARD reporters and Deutsche Telekom? Wasn't there the years-long hype of the media around Jan Ullrich and the free mega-advertising for Deutsche Telekom? Wasn't it the case that for the German media, hardly anything else existed except Telekom and their team?
And all of this is completely innocent in the pressure that was built up? The Tour commentators this time had sayings ready that one should also talk about the non-winners - and yet again, as every year, they have fueled the winner speculation and stirred up the hype. But certainly, stopping the coverage will help the non-doping riders (if there are any, I don't know if that's the case) tremendously. And ARD is setting a real sign - of their own stupidity and arrogance, because the media, the sports associations, and organizations have diligently built up all this nonsense.
Cycling is left in the lurch - but the hypocritical directors and functionaries couldn't care less about that. Doping once brought in ratings, so it was ignored. Now they're just playing the big critic - and make just as ridiculous a picture as back then.
BrowseBack: Visual Web History You Can Search - looks quite nice. Could elegantly solve the problem of lost web pages. Disk space is not such a huge problem today.
"Amflora" comes: EU wants to allow BASF potato - "Germany, along with Sweden and others, is among the supporters - after all, BASF is a German company."
integer overflows - and how the PHP maintainers imagine preventing this ... is anyone still wondering about the many problems in the PHP interpreter? Maybe it's time for some of the maintainers there to learn how to program?
Microsoft's Digital Rights Management bypassed - well, anyone who relies on DRM is building on sand ...
iPod Operating System - someone hacks into the system level of an iPod. And finds a stripped-down OS X. Kudos for using SNOBOL for the example program.
Linux Creator Calls GPLv3 Authors 'Hypocrites' As Open Source Debate Turns Nasty - yet another case where I think Linus should just sit down and write code - and otherwise keep his mouth shut. Open source is always opinionated software and this silly bashing of Stallman (who admittedly is completely crazy - but which visionary wasn't?) is ridiculous. Without RMS, open source would not be what it is. Writing a kernel based on 1970s technology is one thing - but building a community based on (not only technical but also moral!) ideas is a completely different matter. The FSF people at least have an idea of a better society, whereas their opponents couldn't care less about society. On which side do the "hypocrites" sit, I wonder?
low-level network packets with python - we hack IP packets. And scan the network. And filter packets. With Python.
Tinderbox: Downloads - wow, a lot of changes since my last update. It might make sense to switch to a newer version again, especially since I now have use for statically generated pages again (on the other hand, I have thousands of other tools for that - but Tinderbox is somehow like a good old buddy you'd like to meet again)
Bishop demands creationism in biology class - Creationist nutjobs in Germany. Will surely find support from the Hessian education destroyer. This bullshit has no place in biology class. None. This sanctimonious act that one would advocate for multiple ideas and the fixation on only one idea is unscientific is simply nonsense.
Face Blindness (Prosopagnosia) and stones - anyone who wants to know how the world looks to a face-blind person, a rather interesting article.