Archive 31.5.2007 - 25.6.2007
XGP - OS X IDE for GNU Prolog (which includes a native code compiler). Hmm.
Top speed limit for all EU cars from the factory? - fittingly with panic comments. Because the freedom of the German is measured by the top speed. Screw privacy and surveillance state, if we are only allowed to speed, Germans are happy. No matter how stupid the idea is in terms of traffic and the environment.
Binary marble adding machine - just so cool!
Paul Dowman » Ruby on Rails EC2 “Appliance” - maybe not a bad idea to play around with EC2.
Complaint against BBC over video format - "According to the BBC, one reason for the decision to use the Windows Media format was that the rights holders demanded that the films contain a 30-minute timebomb to prevent permanent access to the data. Only by complying with these conditions was the TV-on-demand service possible at all." - the logical reaction to this was probably unthinkable for the BBC: to simply scrap the whole project and publicly name the real culprits. Instead, they prefer to play the role of Microsoft's lackey.
Yahoo Censoring Open Source - if you need more reasons to kick Yahoo to the curb.
Music industry wants unrestricted access to user data - because the music industry is above the law. When will this madness end? I have already drawn my conclusions - by largely ignoring the meager work results of the music industry and preferring to stock up on new songs at Magnatune or Jamendo. It's much more exciting there.
Programming Experiments: Initial Release of my web tools - two small libraries, especially Weberl is interesting as it is based on OTP for configuration and structure and works with classic Erlang Behaviours. OTP thus offers very simple scaling to multiple web hosts.
An analysis of EOS-1D Mark III autofocus performance - Canon will probably need to improve this a lot.
Anthracite - MacOS X Software for Web Mining Automation. Looks nice, something like Pipes for the desktop.
Spamhaus.org relativizes nic.at listing - I think I've said before that I don't think much of spam list operators, because they all go crazy sooner or later. Of course, Spamhaus is more important than laws ...
Atomic bomb explosion in Czech breakfast television - cool action
"Skulptur Projekte Münster 07" - finally it's starting. I like the Skulpturprojekte - the integration of art and normal space is simply the right way. Museums are always so stiff.
Third View - Photos from the 19th century re-taken in 1970 and the 90s. Interesting Flash site.
Schneier on Security: Portrait of the Modern Terrorist as an Idiot - our Proletarians in Berlin should perhaps read this too. But for them, one would surely have to translate it into Bild-Speak ...
Anger about new Flickr filters - "If you use a Yahoo ID from Singapore, Germany, Hong Kong or Korea, you cannot turn off the safe search due to local business conditions. [...]" - it's time for a service that offers the features without this silly idea of censorship. Picasa is not an alternative - the features are just too meager, the interface too brittle.
Yahoo shareholders reject human rights proposals - "The shareholders of the internet service provider Yahoo have followed the board's recommendations and rejected two proposals at their annual general meeting (PDF file) that were intended to push the company towards greater human rights engagement. The proposals, supported by Amnesty International, demanded, on the one hand, resistance against censorship efforts in countries like China and, on the other hand, the establishment of a company-internal committee for human rights." - it's all about money, not about rights or the consequences of one's own greed. They just sell out dissidents to the governments of the countries where they smell big money. Doesn't matter, they're not shareholders.
ZFS is in MacOS X 10.5 - Golem.de - "ZFS is only equipped with read support and can only be used via the command line - integrated ZFS partitions cannot be written with Apple's operating system." - damn. That's useless.
Expert report confirms manipulability of voting computers - will certainly be ignored by the prolethicians in Berlin, just like all other facts.
httplib2.py - better HTTP library than the one in the standard library.
No labeling required: EU allows traces of GM in organic food - great. Because GM crap doesn't respect field boundaries, organic food is simply redefined and made even more meaningless than the EU organic label already is. All for commerce. The stupid little coins that are probably more important to corrupt politicians shoved up their asses by lobby groups than effective consumer protection ...
Media-Saturn parts ways with lawyer Steinhöfel - "The new head of the company, Roland Weise, is concerned about a better image in the public eye and towards the competition."
CSC possibly stops cycling sponsorship - «It would be a natural decision to withdraw, send Bjarne Riis a check and ask him to remove the company logo from the bikes. This would do more for CSC's image than they could pay in Danish kroner»
Reportage: Twenty in a Cage, 24 Hours of Light - "Many of the G8 critics taken into custody had to be released again. Because many were taken into custody solely due to 'suspicious hooded jackets, sunglasses, and scarves' or because of radios in their luggage, explains one of the duty lawyers."
Sun: ZFS becomes the new file system in Apple's Leopard - hopefully not just in the server version. HFS+ is somehow more of a hack than a file system.
Camino. Mozilla Power, Mac Style - and in new version out. Download.
MarsEdit - can also preview Markdown. Might be interesting for me, as I like to base my projects on Markdown.
Microsoft threatens its Most Valuable Professional - Do ya feel lucky, punk?
The contact lenses that could restore 20/20 vision - sounds interesting. Although I have been wearing my glasses for decades and they don't really bother me. Could I sleep with contact lenses?
3 awesome free Math programs - Short introductions to the major players in the open source environment.
A 10 minute tutorial for solving Math problems with Maxima - very interesting, Maxima seems to be much further along than when I first saw it.
Linux.com | Encrypt and sign Gmail messages with FireGPG - could be interesting. However, I still don't like Firefox on the Mac - it's just not a Mac application in behavior.
MailTags - interesting plugin that allows you to tag emails (in Mail.app).
Pistol Shrimp - wow. 100km/h fast water, at 5000°C temperature (for a brief moment).
Relocating iTunes Music Libraries to Removable/External Storage Media - this might allow me to place my iTunes Library on the server and only keep a part on my local drive. However, I would then have to sort the music myself. Too bad iTunes can't simply mount remote libraries, then I could save myself the trouble and move rarely played songs to another library.
wxMaxima - a GUI for Maxima. Should also compile on OS X.
RTL won't let itself be copied - and here I am thinking: "You don't even want RTL's garbage for free" ...
TV Ad Sound Levels - why some ads sound louder than the program, even though they are not.
UBERWACH! - funny action. Turn the tables and monitor the monitors!
Google Gears for WebKit - an interesting approach to providing web applications locally. Basically just a smart cache, nothing more. But sometimes these low-tech approaches are simply the most efficient solutions. And nicely, they also have the whole thing ready for WebKit in the source - the downloads are only for the Mozilla family so far (and of course once again nothing for Camino).
HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc copyable again - Hare and Hedgehog.
Personal History: How I Spent the War - Günther Grass on his time in the Waffen SS.
trackback - commandline client for trackbacks.
Federal Council committees for clear expansion of telecommunications surveillance - because, the police state is not yet fully and perfectly established. I hear in the background the cool giggling of former Stasi officials. They are starting to feel quite at home.