UFRaw - a free raw converter based on DCRaw and LittleCMS. Sounds quite interesting.
Archive 23.2.2006 - 4.3.2006
Back to the Concentration Camp Chickens
Several federal states want to overturn the ban on laying hen batteries:
In several federal states, there are efforts to overturn the ban on laying hen batteries. Spokespeople for the ministries of agriculture in Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia confirmed a report by the news magazine "Der Spiegel" that there is broad support for the reintroduction of small cages for laying hens. According to the report, the initiative is also supported by Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
Great. What a fantastic idea. Let's just turn back the clock. What, there were once reasons to move away from battery cages? Doesn't matter, who cares. Great, the cages meet the EU requirements - but your intelligence is below the minimum requirements for humanity. So that animal cruelty becomes standard again - no matter how undignified it is for a supposedly intelligent and sentient being as the perpetrator. The main thing is that the money flows. Everything else doesn't interest anyone.
Land of the Stupid and Unfree
Remember this for the next discussion with the America lovers who always tell you how free and great life is there. Because the Americans have just thrown away not entirely unimportant parts of their constitution.
Larry's Distorted Reality
I sometimes really wonder what kind of herb Larry Ellison smokes to come up with such nonsense:
"Open source becomes successful when major industrial corporations invest heavily in that open source project," Ellison said at a Tokyo news conference. "Every open source product that has become tremendously successful became successful because of huge dollar investments from commercial IT operations like IBM and Intel and Oracle and others," he said.
Yes, financial support from companies has indeed benefited one or another open source project. But to conclude that without this financing the projects would not be successful is completely crazy. On the contrary: many companies only invest in projects that have already become successful without external help. Smaller projects with less visibility have no chance of getting money from large IT companies - these are sometimes supported by companies, but then usually by companies that have directly started this project or market direct products based on it.
But of course, with the successes that a number of open source database systems have, he naturally has to rattle loudly and talk nonsense so that no one notices how pathetic Oracle really is by today's standards.
Data greed is awesome?
One can almost see the drool dripping from the corners of the mouths of the police officials and the minister when reading the article about the Federal Constitutional Court ruling on the seizure of computers and emails. Funny, how the politicians only mention in passing that the seizure itself was absolutely not in order - instead, they immediately start screaming for legal extensions so that even more can be collected.
The restriction of the Federal Constitutional Court - that seizures must be proportional and appropriate - can certainly be forgotten, because no one will take that into account. And with the constant change in communication structures towards electronic means, one can then safely consider the secrecy of telecommunications as a done deal.
Why I Don't Like PHP Software
Wordpress is indeed one of the better systems written in PHP. And what happens? There are several sloppy programming practices found within it. Yes, I know, this happens in other languages too. The point is: the Wordpress programmers are relatively well qualified and relatively careful in their work - and yet such problems occur. Among other things, because in PHP the sources lie within the server root, meaning files that are actually only used internally are accessible via HTTP. And because PHP solutions do not inherently perform input validation and proper text quoting. No, sorry, but I simply do not like such a mess.
Sacrificing Jobs on the Altar of Stock Prices
The Deutsche Telekom presents record figures - but because the stock price is poorly valued, 32,000 jobs have to be cut. How, companies also have a responsibility? Nonsense, ownership only obliges to want more ownership. Stock prices don't buy telephones, order DSL, and download music from silly second-rate online offers.
Make a gardener out of it
And then with Monopolgarantie. Extremely clever decision, will definitely give a huge show. Which ultimately proves that ICANN does not care about the interests of the user on the Internet, nor the interests of the alternative registries.
Censorship by Lawyer
The expected abuse of the - not yet final and legally specialized - judgment against Heise for use as a censorship hammer. And no, not even the judge himself meant that his judgment could be generally applied to forums, but what do lawyers care. Somehow, threatening, intimidating, and extorting money from people used to be considered a sign of the mafia ...
Blue Ball Machine - giant ball machine on a website. Beware, it has background music.
BranchBasedDevelopment - interesting list of points on how to work with branches in Subversion in a meaningful way.
Divmod - a whole series of very interesting Python projects. Of course, also its own web framework and its own ORM, but also a few smaller, interesting things like, for example, a Bayesian Classifier.
MacMini with Core-Duo
Sir Steve announces the MacMini Intel Core Duo - and I think I want one. After all, it's definitely nice to have two processors on your work computer. Especially if the chipset also steps up a bit - the one in the MacMini PPC is not exactly the fastest.
However, my dream setup (Core Duo, 2 GB Ram, 120 GB hard drive, Apple Care) would easily cost me 1500 euros. Ouch.
More Pictures from the DMC-L1
More pictures of the Panasonic Lumix DMC-L1 - the one with the Leica 4/3 lens. This will definitely be one of the things I'll get my hands on at Photokina. Fortunately, it's still a long time until Photokina, so I can put all photo purchases on ice for now. Maybe I'll forget about it by then ... (yeah, and pigs can fly ...)
NASA World Wind - Software like Google Earth, but with NASA satellite images. Unfortunately only for Windows.
Screencast about Web Applications
Steve from JPL has provided a comparison of various web frameworks as a video. Quite nice, even if he of course simplifies some things quite a bit. Warning: the video is very large (300 MB) and J2EE comes off badly.
Regarding the Django comments (after all, I am a Django contributor): I18N has been in the standard for a long time, but since Django moves very quickly, you can't expect it to take everything into account. And with the templates, he is not dependent on the Django template language, he can also use ZPT (the same ones as in Plone).
But the central point comes across well: forget J2EE, learn something else. And in this case, the decision between Plone, Rails, TurboGears, or Django is probably completely irrelevant - the main thing is that you learn something that you also enjoy programming with.
SonyStyle USA - PRS-500
The Sony eReader PRS-500 - the one with the electronic paper as display - is now out in the USA. 350 US$. But the software for the transfer seems to be only for the PC and somehow I don't read anywhere that you can just normally copy files onto it to read them. I hope they will provide more details that the device can also be used with OS X or other systems - on the other hand, Sony is one of the main proponents of DRM and similar nonsense, so it wouldn't surprise me if the platform remains a closed platform. Then it's probably waiting for the competition ...
Tail Call Optimization in Python
At the beginning of the month, I was still annoyed that GvR doesn't want tail-call optimization in Python - because he thinks that this is a feature that cannot have a simple interface. On [Lambda the Ultimate] there is also a comment on this - because logically, this statement by GvR has led to some amusement in the Lisp community. Especially cute about this: there is a solution to optimize tail calls via decorator - where Python simply fiddles around in the stack (thanks to stack introspection, this works quite well). So much for the topic of Rube Goldberg Device - the decorator is extremely compact, there is really not much complexity contained. Of course, the optimization is not really optimal - it avoids stack overflow, but uses exception handling to avoid function calls, which then affects performance a bit. But for the simple transfer of recursive algorithms, this can still be quite useful.
And why is something like this not built directly into Python as a better, more efficient solution? Python 2.5 gets conditional expressions inherited from Perl (value if condition else othervalue), but not something like a simple decorator to optimize certain function calls?
What Company Founders Imagine
No sooner do SAP employees want to establish a works council, than the SAP founder questions the company's headquarters in Walldorf:
Two days before a works meeting is held at SAP on Thursday with the aim of electing a works council, company founder Dietmar Hopp intensifies his warnings: The installation of a works council is a "backdoor for IG Metall", said Hopp, who rejects the rigid ideas of the union officials regarding working hours: "If someone has to ask the union whether I can call California at eleven o'clock tonight, then good night beautiful SAP", Hopp illustrated his concerns to Handelsblatt.com – "in the worst case" Walldorf as the location of the corporate headquarters is in danger, said the longtime chairman of the supervisory board, who withdrew from the committee altogether almost a year ago.
Exactly. Companies with a works council are not allowed to call abroad. With such pitiful babbling from company bosses and managers, I really wonder what makes these flatheads so special that they have to rake in so much money? Competence - whether professional (because labor law belongs to the professional field of a manager for me) or human, the founder of SAP has quite simply dropped his pants here, and what comes to light is simply just an ass.
Also shocking is the incitement against the unions from the alleged employee representatives - if you read through their outpourings, you are not surprised that the employees at SAP now want a works council. At least they have a real chance that someone is sitting there who actually represents the employees and not just his supervisory board position ...
Addendum: how well FUD works can be seen in the result. And how the alleged business papers slap their thighs with joy. Too bad for the employees of SAP - because sooner or later they will probably learn the hard way how stupid the idea is to waive their co-determination rights. But the polemic that a works council would only be controlled by the union (which is ridiculous, because it still depends on the elected works council members what they do) and that a works council allegedly does not fit the corporate culture has probably worked better than common sense. It is, however, typical daydreaming of employees in the IT industry, it was the same 20 years ago in the computer center. They had to learn it later too ...
Disk Inventory X - also provides overviews of where disk space is lost, but with a very clever graphical display.
ID-Design, Inc. | WhatSize - provides a good overview of where disk space is consumed.
Monolingual - removes language versions of OS X that you never use. Brings back a lot of disk space.
Digi-Wonder-Chip by TI?
A lot of marketing hype and loud noise, but if only a small part of TI's announcement of a new camera chip is true, that would be very interesting. In principle - at least that's how I read the announcement - it's a DSP specifically for photographic applications. TI is quite ahead in the field of DSPs and custom chips, so there might really be something to it. Let's see what remains of the promises when the first cameras with the part come out.
Instant Community Building
Here's what happens when the availability of "On Lisp" as a download is announced on Lemonodor. Apparently, not a single one of the commentators ever clicked the link or took a look at the site before commenting. This also happens with other postings on Lemonodor from time to time, but not as massively as with this posting.
Leica and Panasonic with Digi-SLR Combo
It was clear to me that after Zeiss entered the market with the ZF lenses and Nikon with the D200, I considered switching to Nikon. And now Leica is also in the mix, announcing the Leica D 14-50 mm F2.8-F3.5 for the four-thirds system. This not only brings the newly announced Panasonic Digi-SLR into play (which is likely based on the Olympus E330), but also the entire Olympus system. So another possible choice when switching? Especially since there are quite usable adapters for Contax-Yashica for the Four-Thirds system, so that I can probably continue to use all Zeiss lenses - unlike with Canon. Interesting is then also the image stabilizer and - probably inherited from the Olympus system - the ultrasonic chip cleaner in the body.
Textpander - a very nice tool that automatically converts abbreviations into long texts. It works in all programs via the UI Scripting interface (so activate Assistive Devices in OS X Accessibility Preferences).
Hetima:SafariStand - yet another monster plugin for Safari that includes everything possible, filtering, colored source, thumbnail previews on tabs, page modification ...
London 2.0 RC 4 - Monday 3rd April
At least they get it right this time and announce early: London 2.0 RC 4 - Monday 3rd April. Hey, if adrian_h is dropping in, that would definitely be an incentive for me to hop over to London (it's just something like 7-9 hours by train from my hometown) and join in
Now I only have to check wether I can do hotel booking and ordering up front for reasonable rates around here, but what I did see is that the cheapest tickets are 49 EUR for the full drive, so there is plenty space for the hotel costs.
Pimp My Safari - Plugins and tools around Safari.
stripsquad.se - very weird, very loud, very mean - I love it.
SurfRabbit - and another Greasemonkey-like tool for Safari (I don't know if the Rabbits are written in JavaScript, but the effects are similar).
Wow.
Nerdcore - A Blog about very cool Stuff. And so.
Imagine all the gray men in their suits in their lofts had no power over the sound in our ears, over the surfaces of our cities, over the things we read. Market analyses would not count, because the market, just like us, is a swarm of flies that cannot be predicted. The street would be full of unemployed lawyers. They would wander around, bleeding for their view of everything, together with their buddies, the business economists, the marketing guys, the bankers, the insurance Heinzes. Because they do not understand what it means when we come together and network, talk to each other. The human being is the smallest economic unit? Fuck you, the human being is all we have. And that is really a lot, if you just dare to think about it once.
Alleged Weather Manipulation?
Lightning strike reports alleged weather manipulation - Hoax? Joke? Or perhaps too much consumption of possibly not entirely legal means? The German Meteorological Society's information sheet also mentions this. So is there something to it after all? The report from Lightning strike sounds serious. Weather manipulation itself is indeed a real topic - and, for example, in the USA, it is indeed used in some areas, albeit on a relatively small scale (e.g., to activate weather fronts prematurely to avoid greater disadvantages for agriculture in certain regions). So should someone actually be experimenting with such things over Germany?
Democracy Player - an RSS aggregator that expects BitTorrent files in enclosures and automatically downloads them. Many features, essentially implements TV-on-Demand.
Google Macintosh Dashboard Widgets - what you see is what you get. Google Dashboard Widgets for Google.
Growl! - everyone knows it by now, visually appealing info windows, can also be used from scripts.
Live Thumbnails: Watch 'em Grow - interesting article about creating large images directly from thumbnails without changing pages. However, due to the invented attributes, it is not valid HTML4.
The Little Calculist: JavaScript language level - JavaScript as a language directly supported in DrScheme. This gives the brilliant tools of DrScheme for editing JavaScript as well.
Water: the structure and properties of liquid water - everything you want/should/know about water (yes, that H2O stuff).
iWeb and its Output
I recently tested two different editors for easy website creation: Sandvox and Rapidweaver. Now I've also created a site with iWeb. Sandvox was out of the question due to its gigantic memory requirements, Rapidweaver already showed some nice and interesting features and was especially fast. But the styles were not as professional as those from Sandvox. How does iWeb perform?
Well, take a look at the site. Right away, I noticed a whole series of problem points:
- The style in iWeb looks much "slicker" than in the rendered output. Font rendering is not really good on websites with every browser.
- The idiotic redirection and rather unusual folder names. Sure, I can name my site differently - but why the hell should I rename my site just because iWeb makes a folder name out of it directly?
- The URLs are anything but beautiful - and I generally find redirection on the start URL stupid, you can really proceed more intelligently and use the default document meaningfully. And take a look at the blog pages, see what URLs they get. Disgusting.
- With Lynx, you can't use the whole thing at all. The redirects are wrong and the links are no longer displayed.
- Even if the HTML code is validated, it is still not really semantic. Headings are not set as Hx, but simply made larger by styles.
- Layouts are not made with tables, but DIVs are misused as tables through inline styles. Sorry, but just changing the tag does not make a layout beautiful.
- The source code is completely unreadable and shit.
- The basic pages constantly contain JavaScript for various purposes. And no, iWeb has definitely not informed about this in the editor. How can you expect Mac users to then also think about the problems of JavaScript-based elements later?
- Why a company that programs its own text-to-speech software, builds its own spell-check solutions and otherwise handles text relatively well, makes the shortening of blog post texts in such a way that it is cut off in the middle of a word, only Apple knows.
- Accessibility? We don't need no stinking Accessibility.
I hope Apple will improve this significantly. I mean, semantic layout and source code that complies with accessibility guidelines is really nothing new. Why Apple produces such lousy HTML code is a real mystery to me.
Nikon D200 Full Review
Now at DPreview there is the complete review of the Nikon D200. When I look at the technical data and especially the measurements, Nikon has definitely landed a top device. In my opinion, this absolutely competes with the Canon devices. And when I also look at this cute macro from Nikon, it warms my heart - a 2.8 aperture, 150-degree angle of view with image stabilizer - that would definitely be something fine. Then, combined with the Zeiss lenses for Nikon F and the Katz Eye focusing screens (which do not change the displays in the viewfinder on the Nikon - unlike Canon cameras - and also do not cause a strong change in exposure measurement), this could almost mean photographic nirvana for me. Especially since the camera felt very good in my hand when I last held it at the photographer of least suspicion.
Ok, now I just have to figure out which lenses for the Nikon bayonet really have a usable bokeh - because what I have seen so far in the Nikon environment was not very convincing. Ok, the Zeiss lenses should be pretty great (I already have them for my Contax RTS III), but a few AF lenses would be nice. The macro would of course be at the top of the wish list, as I have learned to appreciate such a macro on my Canon (among other things because of the mercilessly good image quality compared to normal lenses).
In addition, I then have to find someone who buys my Canon equipment at an acceptable rate, or alternatively win the lottery or rob a bank ...
But it's strange, this is the first time a Nikon camera really triggers a "want to have" reflex - Nikon has never achieved that before, at most a "would be nice to have" effect was observable. And those who know me know that I hardly shy away from anything if the incentive is great enough.
Patent Office Idiocy in the USA
Software patents are indeed a wonderful thing, so none of the proponents of this brainchild will likely have any objections to the patent on every kind of Internet-rich client. If this holds, soon in the USA, Ajax applications will be considered patent infringements, and a small company without real products will then extort firms simply because they have a patent on something they themselves have not developed or even promoted in the slightest.
RubyForge: Ruby Port to Nokia 770 Internet Tablet: Project Info - Ruby is now also available on the Nokia 770. With Python and TCL, that's quite a number of on-board programming languages.
Scsh PhotoBase - is a photo management software like iPhoto, but written in Scheme and for use over the web. So far only an announcement, but the source will definitely be released.
How to rip off customers
RWE makes high profits at the expense of customers:
The energy company is boasting. The operating result exceeds the expectations of experts and even the slight decline in sales is not surprising. The main reason for the windfall was the high electricity prices.
Of course, the electricity price increase was solely determined by external factors and had nothing to do with RWE simply exploiting its regional monopoly. In this context, the statement from the NRW Ministry of Economic Affairs, which might want to cut the extortion by 25%, is rather laughable - because the entire electricity price increase simply serves to enrich the RWE corporation.
Tomato Torrent - a nice BitTorrent client for OS X.
Tor GUI Competition
I didn't know about the GUI Competition for Tor - a good tool for securing the privacy of internet users. I've been using Tor for a while now - and at one point I even ran a Tor router - but the use, especially with dynamic network connections, is still a bit clunky for regular end users. Of course, I also hold the opinion that end users should learn more about their computer and therefore the installation and use of Tor should also be feasible for these people - but if we really want Tor to be a sign against state data espionage, then we definitely need graphical interfaces for activation, use, and configuration. Only then will regular users also think about whether they should use it after all.
For this reason, I am also particularly pleased that the competition has now moved into the next phase - the actual programming of the GUIs. And as a stupid Mac mouse pusher, I of course also wish for an OS X interface for this.
By the way, there is a very practical - and in my opinion obvious - application of Tor: public WLAN hotspots. Communication usually takes place unencrypted on them. This makes all accesses directly visible to others - unusable for accessing sites for which you have a password, if these do not also offer SSL immediately. And particularly problematic with all the other unencrypted services with which one likes to play around on the Internet - IRC for example (a private chat is not all that private if you conduct it over a public WLAN hotspot ...). Tor can help here very easily - a local Tor installation on the computer and the client software configured accordingly and you already have a kind of super-VPN.
This is also a reason why I wish for a Tor port to the small Nokia 770 tablet.
I myself do not use Tor for all services - but I generally have a network configuration ready on the Mac, in which Tor and Privoxy are activated by selection (I would like to be able to toggle the socks-forward in Privoxy via a Privoxy-GUI - then I could keep the Privoxy environment generally active and only switch on Tor when needed). This way I can quickly and easily switch on Tor on the go. For Jabber I use Psi, for which I have the Tor service generally activated. For IRC I use XChat-Aqua, which can be easily equipped with various server configurations, so that I can activate or deactivate Tor (many IRC networks do not allow IRC use via Tor).
In my opinion, a GUI on the Mac should integrate into the network environments on the Mac, so that it makes corresponding changes when activated, just as the environment switch does. And you should be able to easily slip new configs under other programs, as was the case with the old Mac Locations, for programs for which the proxy must be entered manually.
Contaminated Cook
Koch advocates for a longer operating period for the "most unsafe" nuclear power plant:
The Hessian Prime Minister Roland Koch, on the other hand, spoke out in favor of an extension of the operating period. It is in the interest of the state to keep the power plant in operation for as long as possible, especially if the operator RWE is willing to upgrade the reactor, said the CDU politician in the state parliament.
What, this thing is one of the most failure-prone and unsafe power plants in Germany? What, the power plant has repeatedly been involved in incidents and the operator has repeatedly been involved in attempting to cover up these incidents? But of course, we simply believe the operator when he says he is upgrading and securing the power plant. Just as we believe him when he says that the whole increase in electricity prices is not simply intended to increase his profit at the expense of the citizens.