The Flensburg Regional Court strengthens the position of providers against surveillance demands - but how long will this last, given the activities of the EU and our federal justice incompetence?
"Under no legal aspect" can an access provider be required to "store any data or information," the court from the far north makes clear.
Linux Daemon Writing HOWTO - how to write a daemon under Linux (general information)
Yaws - another web server in Erlang - this one is HTTP 1.1 compatible and contains approaches for web development
Python Cheese Shop : python-fastcgi 1.0 - FastCGI implementation based on the OpenMarket FastCGI C library and therefore significantly faster than pure Python solutions.
Python OpenID 1.0.1 Released — OpenID Enabled - OpenID client and server in Python. I should check it out, could be quite interesting for comment functions.
I can only agree with Petra Tursky-Hartmann - the way this nonsense was pushed through is terrible. Really terrible. Pure activism without any real meaning - but you feel so terribly safe when everything is properly recorded and archived. The whole data waste doesn't provide any information - on the contrary, it will cause trouble. But who cares if citizens soon get into trouble because viruses or spam with forged sender addresses are sent to random addresses, and then a citizen of Arab origin is considered a terrorism suspect. It doesn't matter, it doesn't affect good German citizens.
And we are still allowed to drive faster than 130 on the highway. We are free.
Addendum: At XS4ALL there is a nice Lifecounter, which counts how many CDs are necessary for storing the email log data since September 2005 ...
and then give us even more advertising junk:
"For the European Commission, improved control by the end consumer means that we need fewer legal regulations," emphasized media commissioner Viviane Reding. "Therefore, the core of our proposal for a new, modernized TV directive is a fundamental deregulation of audiovisual rules."
For the population, improved control of the elected officials through strong blows with sticks and kicks to the soft parts means that we get fewer brainless legislative proposals. Therefore, the core of my proposal for a more efficient design of European politics is the introduction of corporal punishment for members of the European Commission.
Hacking the jProject - The Daily WTF - ouch. An order system where each order is stored in its own table in the SQL Server. Great idea.
How-To Guide for Descriptors - a very good explanation of how properties work in Python and what the magic methods get, set, and del are all about (and how getattribute plays into this).
Jacobian.org : Django performance tips - Jacob, one of the Django Core-Devs, writes about performance tuning for Django applications. Strongly aligns with my experiences.
What would actually happen if the GNOME developers went to the Linux Kernel Mainling list and announced that they recommend users to use FreeBSD because the chroot model of Linux is pathetic, and the kernel APIs are a mess anyway, and Linux still doesn't have really good filesystem notifications, and the development of Linux simply doesn't take GUI requirements into account enough. Therefore, they would suggest users to use FreeBSD, because the Linux kernel programmers are all idiots anyway.
What would Linus' reaction look like?
pgpool page - interesting connection proxy for PostgreSQL with connection pooling and database failover.
Zypries will Dateitauschbörsen bekämpfen:
The Minister of Justice wants to help protect copyright and trademarks better. On the Internet, this primarily affects file-sharing networks.
Disclosure of names. Fixed compensation claims. Right to demand bank and business records. But she doesn't talk about how all this mess should be controlled so that it is not further abused, does she, the Federal Incompetence.
His latest move: FDP will not form a coalition with the Greens at the federal level
"The Greens are a political opponent and not a strategic partner," said Westerwelle after the board meeting. Furthermore, it is not the FDP's task to lead the Greens out of their insignificance, said the FDP leader. However, Westerwelle does not see the "collegial parliamentary work" with the Greens endangered by the renunciation of the coalition option.
So, two things are really impressive about this:
What kind of stuff is he smoking, anyway?
How mentally deranged do you have to be to publicly call for a mass lawsuit against Wikipedia (see the report at netbib), and then explicitly list making money as the goal? To stand up as if Wikipedia were an evil corporation that needs to be sued into the ground? And then not even have the guts to put their pathetic name next to it, so you can directly see what kind of sausages are behind it?
Stealing and modifying the Wikipedia logo to use it for their own site wasn't even too embarrassing for them.
I feel a bit weird about this: I rip audio drama CDs where the tracks are not numbered sequentially, but are just titles. After ripping, I put the titles into a fixed playlist so that they are in the correct order there. When I look at the order, it's all mixed up. So far, I can't recognize any meaningful pattern that could be the basis for this. Of course, this is extremely annoying, especially with audio dramas - since many audio dramas do not have the explicit order in their booklet, I sometimes have to sort them together laboriously myself.
With the Otherland CDs, it was nice: those who did the CDDB data entry had numbered all the small pieces sequentially. Now with "Wachen! Wachen!" I have to sort all 5 CDs again - fortunately, the titles on the pieces are identical to those in the booklet, so I can do this manually.
But it's really quite stupid that I have to do this - because why do I have a computer? Why can't iTunes just leave the order of the tracks as they come in?
Guardian Unlimited Special reports How planespotters turned into the scourge of the CIA - Article in the Guardian about how the CIA was "caught" by plane spotters (and possibly continues to be caught).
And the DRM nonsense continues
EFF member Cory Doctorow warns that the widespread use of CPCM would mean the end of free software. The requirement to make the system robust against any modification is incompatible with FOSS concepts. Furthermore, national copyright policy could be easily circumvented by CPCM, as US cultural exporters dictate the political rules. The EFF wants to prevent the standard at all costs. "This is," according to Doctorow's opinion, "no specification that can be used for good purposes, period."
If you read through the description of the whole thing, someone is ultimately demanding total control over any form of computer or media device - ultimately over any device that could even come close to media content. Complete madness, the whole thing. The frightening thing about it: with the brainless prolethicians like we have running around in Berlin and in Europe in general, it is almost to be feared that such nonsense will prevail and the freedoms will simply be traded for dying industries with bloated and outdated business models to cover up their management errors.
And will anyone get upset about it? Oh well. You can still drive faster than 130 on the highway, we are free ...
There is currently a lot of activity in the area of Microformats - the idea behind it: to store information blocks not in XML, but in predefined HTML. CSS classes are then used to define what a single format is. Logically, there are problems with colliding styles - what a surprise. I myself am always amazed at how much energy developers can spend on stupid ideas.
We once had HTML that not only dealt with semantics but also with layout. And that produced the all-time favorite FONT-TAG orgies on HTML pages. Over time, most people have come to the realization that separating semantics and layout makes sense - semantics as a basis for marking up content, layout in the CSS files, and as a connection between these, the IDs and classes on tags. Additionally, with DIV and SPAN "anonymous" tags without predefined semantics (except "this is a block of text" and "this is an inline stretch of text" - where this meaning can be easily overloaded), for things that don't work with the normal semantic markup (which is mainly due to the rather stupid idea of HTML that there are markings for headings, but no markings for sections of text to which these headings would belong).
What do Microformats do now? Well, the same stupid idea of misusing something - namely in this case the connecting pieces between semantics and layout mentioned above. Microformats give these a meaning - for example, a DIV with a class 'description' would then be the description of a review - read the details in the hReview reference. Sorry, but this must inevitably lead to conflicts - have the idiots never heard of namespaces? The Microformats explicitly address XHTML - and that has exactly the purpose of embedding namespaces. And if you think you have to implement such a stupid idea - couldn't you at least be smart enough to give the parts more cryptic but unambiguous classes?
As I said, it's amazing how much energy goes into such stupid ideas that are doomed to create more problems than solutions.
Deadlock - interesting article about deadlocks in systems and about zombie processes, signal handling, etc.
Would actually hacking the security system for securing the one-way deposit be a terrorist act?
Concerted action against freely accessible sheet music and song lyrics
MPA President Lauren Keiser expressed extreme annoyance to the BBC about the allegedly illegal sites with guitar licks and sheet music templates and would prefer to see their operators behind bars. Basically, music is subject to copyright not only as a concrete performance, but also in any printed notation.
Soon you'll end up in jail if you accidentally fart to the beat of "All My Ducks" ...
UCI's response to the Grand Tours' ranking idea of the three major tours:
"As the only actor in this reform who does not want to defend or promote its own economic interests, the UCI will never share such a superfluous and dangerous vision that harms the development of cycling," said an official statement. The introduction or amendment of the regulations is solely the responsibility of the international federation.
You can already see how the UCI troops are forming to infiltrate the offices of the three major tour organizations and arrest the ringleaders. After that, there will be a penal camp for recalcitrant tour organizers who do not want to submit to the UCI. Maybe they will also get support from 'Mad Eye' Serlet?
The US of A, Land of the Free and the Stupid, is once again playing the top bully:
Even experienced summit participants from Western Europe are shocked behind the scenes by the boorish behavior of the American chief negotiators, who act here like John Bolton at the UN, and "hide their academic education well."
I am shocked at most by the naivety of politicians who are so surprised by America's behavior - as if the current reports do not speak a very clear language that the current US administration does not give a damn about the wishes of others and that international law does not have a particularly important status for them. Why should they behave differently at the climate summit?
Even more shocking, however, is how Merkel is constantly talking about how relations with the USA need to be improved - I would be happy about that, but please only with a next, possibly rational administration that is accessible to arguments. The current one is not coalition-capable, to use a term that is often used here for something as harmless as the PDS ... (fear of pale-red marked Ossies, but want to be with something like Bush - I call that shocking)
A rather ugly - but still useful - monkeypatch:
# monkey-patch for auth.users
from django.models.auth import User
def user_pre_save(self):
if not self.password.startswith('sha1$'):
self.set_password(self.password)
User._pre_save = user_pre_save
Put this into your model file (or somewhere else that is loaded early on) and you will be able to set passwords in the admin by entering clear text passwords. If the password starts with 'sha1$', it is seen as already encrypted and nothing happens. If it doesn't start with that string, it is converted using the standard Django function for password encryption.
No, this isn't something that should go into core - it's far too ugly for that. But at least it allows you to set passwords through the admin, without requiring the user to calculate the actual password hash.
Sony caught in another DRM snafu
Stop me if you've heard this one before. A record label uses DRM to sort of keep its customers from copying the music. It turns out that the software poses a threat to the user's PC. So the label issues a patch... which opens up another security hole. If you guessed that the label in question is Sony, you'd be correct. If you guessed that I'm recapping last month's rootkit debacle, you'd be wrong.
Oh well. Rarely so stupid at Sony. Will they ever learn?
Oh, and the fact that I probably won't get an Aibo offered now is, to be honest, pretty irrelevant to me.
Frequently used: SystemExit. A Python exception that many people don't know. The special thing about this exception: it is not an error. It also does not occur unexpectedly. It is simply triggered by sys.exit. The idea behind this is that you can insert an end processing in the dynamic flow (e.g. some file cleanups), without linking into global exit processing (with all the problems that entails).
The problem is that many programs and libraries install a global exception handler. One that catches every error and sends it nicely formatted by mail, logs it somewhere or something similar. I do this all the time. It also works great - except when you actually want to initiate an early end in your program. Then nothing works anymore - because you get corresponding errors for a non-error.
This becomes particularly critical in connection with multiple processes. If you start a process during operation, you also want to terminate it without executing any subsequent code. You can best see this in an example program:
import signal
import os
try:
pid = os.fork()
if pid:
print "Elternprozess", os.getpid()
else:
print "Kindprozess", os.getpid()
sys.exit(0)
except:
print 'Fehler aufgetreten in Prozess', os.getpid()
print "Das darf nur der Elternprozess ausführen", os.getpid()
This code simply has a global error handler that catches errors in a rather unspecific way. Within the code, a parallel process is started with fork. However, since SystemExit is treated like all other exceptions, the child process is not terminated correctly - a process copies the entire state of the parent process, including return addresses, open error handling, files, database connections and so on.
This is of course fatal - because here sys.exit is caught. So there is an error message for the quite normal sys.exit(0) call. And even worse: since SystemExit is not treated separately, it continues normally afterwards - and the child process runs into code for the parent process. Code runs double, which can have critical results under certain circumstances.
If you can fully control the entire software stack, the solution is simple:
import signal
import os
try:
pid = os.fork()
if pid:
print "Elternprozess", os.getpid()
else:
print "Kindprozess", os.getpid()
sys.exit(0)
except SystemExit:
raise
except:
print 'Fehler aufgetreten in Prozess', os.getpid()
print "Das darf nur der Elternprozess ausführen", os.getpid()
This simply re-raises the SystemExit - i.e. triggers it again - without making a message. In most cases, Python's standard handling will then kick in and convert the SystemExit into a normal termination.
But what to do if you have several stacked variants of the wrong error handling? I had something like this with Django and FLUP (the FCGI/SCGI server for Python). In Django I changed it, then the error hit in FLUP. What do you do then?
The solution is a bit more brutal:
import signal
import os
try:
pid = os.fork()
if pid:
print "Elternprozess", os.getpid()
else:
print "Kindprozess", os.getpid()
os.kill(os.getpid(), signal.SIGTERM)
except:
print 'Fehler aufgetreten in Prozess', os.getpid()
print "Das darf nur der Elternprozess ausführen", os.getpid()
Ultimately, the process simply commits suicide - it sends itself a SIGTERM, i.e. a termination signal. The same one you would normally send from the shell. However, you must then ensure that any necessary post-cleanups are either already done, or then run in a SIGKILL handling routine - otherwise you may have problems (e.g. database transactions should already be committed).
With this solution, you also have to be careful that no open resources block the process - otherwise you may produce zombie processes. Often it is better for such multiprocessing to start a management process much earlier in the system - outside the error handling chain - and then use it to start processing processes. However, this then has the disadvantage that processes started in this way do not inherit the environment of the parent process. Therefore, you usually have to make more preparations to perform the desired actions. Incidentally, Apache pursues a similar approach - there the processes are created from a very early basic state, so that they come as resource-free as possible.
Vampire - An extension of mod_python that makes it more developer-friendly. For example, it can also perform automatic code reloading.
Is she alive? At least there are rumors about it. However, sentences like this one make me a bit irritated:
Leiter des Dharma-Projekts soll Bertrand 'Mad Eye' Serlet sein, Senior Vice President of Software Engineering bei Apple, der auch schon an der Entwicklung von iCal und iSync beteiligt gewesen sein soll.
I mean, come on, what kind of names are these? Mafia? Mercenaries? Lost Wild West figures?
Apple Aperture Review - or: Beware of Version 1.0 | The Voice of the Free World - found in my comments (originally on the old site) a scathing review of Apple Aperture. The article is in German and very interesting, as it is written from the perspective of a regular user.
... to find a website about erectile dysfunction medications, penis enlargement, and all that junk that's offered in spam, which has a seemingly correct German imprint with address, VAT ID, and all that. Ouch. Did the operator read a bit too much spam?
Even more shocking when such a website is then apparently promoted by the owner in blogs by entering it as a homepage in comment functions. Double ouch.
Learning Seaside - cool demo of what can be done with Seaside (Smalltalk web framework) and AJAX. Essentially a database interface with a freely configurable database model - something like Google Base, only cooler.
So, I have just completed the switch: on the old address, only the big redirector is running now, which pushes everything here. In the process, all the old redirects from the time before WordPress have also been eliminated. It's incredible how many still want to collect old RSS feeds from the PyDS era. Never mind, they are finally gone now, the WordPress stuff is largely redirected, and otherwise, pure Python is working here again.
Ajax Sucks Most of the Time (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox December 2005) - why Jacob Nielsen is right - sometimes.
Commentary - Sticky notes for websites, implemented as WSGI middleware. Very interesting, could be particularly interesting for source views or similar, or for longer texts.
France is going completely crazy now:
The background is an EU copyright directive from 2001. However, the French draft law goes far beyond its approach. For example, the use of free software to play multimedia files should be prohibited, as these can also read copy-protected DVDs. Even the dissemination of information about such tools should become punishable in the future.
This is absolutely outrageous. Now France is taking the lead, and certainly others will follow - if this nonsense goes through. And this clearly shows what the whole thing is about. Against the consumer - who is only allowed to use software approved by the respective industry - and especially against open source, which is a thorn in everyone's side anyway.
File-sharing software that does not prevent infringements from the outset is also to be prohibited.
This clearly shows how little technical knowledge the responsible parties have - or who is bribing them.
Secret function in Sony BMG copy protection
As computer scientist Alex Halderman discovered, the free software «DRMS» is included in «XCP», which can be used to circumvent the «FairPlay» copy protection used by online music market leader Apple. However, «XCP» does not use «DRMS» to crack music: «Instead, the program's code is used to supplement Apple's copy protection.» The routine is currently inactive, however.
It would be nice if Apple were to cause a bit of trouble for them now - after all, Sony BMG was one of the labels that caused Apple trouble over prices. It could be amusing to watch. The slowly mounting lawsuits against Sony could also be interesting. And never forget: BMG stands for Bertelsmann Music Group.
pyinotify - very nice, finally a usable wrapper for the notify function in Linux. With it, Python programs can be informed about changes in the file system - ideal for directory monitoring.
USA ban cruelty in interrogations:
After massive European criticism, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced new guidelines from her government for interrogations of terrorism suspects during her visit to the Ukrainian capital Kiev. From now on, representatives of her country are worldwide prohibited from treating prisoners cruelly, she said. This applies "to US officials, wherever they are, whether in the United States or outside the United States."
Does this imply that it was previously allowed, or am I misunderstanding? Because if it was not allowed before, there would be no reason for the explicit ban - then they would have talked about the incidents being condemned most severely and investigated with the utmost rigor - or whatever politicians say on such occasions when they have to lower their pants due to lack of control. But if she really said what Tagesschau reported here - then there was definitely a tolerance, possibly even an order, to torture.
Discover Music - Pandora - automatic music recommender - I should take a closer look at it when it works.
Campaign against free software in France - the madness from the USA regarding activities against free P2P software is now spreading to Europe. France is certainly just the beginning, more is to be expected ...
Immortal Letter Exchange - and pigs can fly. Somehow.
Well, here it is - I'm finally moving my weblog here to the new software - no more PHP for my main blog. Right now, both systems are running separately, I'm just synchronizing the content to the new blog. In the next few days, however, I will install a redirector here that redirects all important URLs to the new system. Most comments are transferred, only the comments on blogmarks are lost, the new software no longer has a separate page for links where comments could be placed - it doesn't make sense anyway, anyone who wants to discuss the links should use the contact options of the linked page.
Otherwise, the new system is of course completely created with Django - finally everything in Python. That was also the main reason. Moreover, the ever-increasing PageRank, all the many links and the - for my expectations huge - traffic became increasingly unsettling, something had to be done about that. And the simplest solution is still to change the domain.
Oh, by the way, feeds are also redirected, but if you want, you can already subscribe to the new feed at the new address.
If you notice anything about the new system, either write here or over there in the comments (where it then works). I have tested almost everything, but errors still creep in from time to time ...
Ars Technica tests Aperture - and is less impressed by the program than by the size of Apple's manhood:
Jumping headfirst into the fully mature digital imaging market requires the shameless bravado of a one-legged man at a butt-kicking contest or any number of contestants on So You Think You Can Dance?
That's quite a vivid expression.
Based on the description, I'll stick with iView MediaPro - it runs well on old machines and does almost everything Aperture does. And where it doesn't, external programs do. And I still find Aperture's system requirements obscene.
I'm sorry, but the judge at the Hamburg Regional Court apparently interpreted the current legal situation in a very strange way:
The panel explained that it was convinced that the publisher could be held liable for the contents expressed in the forum solely through dissemination, even without knowledge. After all, he could check the texts automatically or manually beforehand. The way the publisher operates the forum so far even potentially incites infringements, emphasized a judge. It was unacceptable that "those whose rights are violated have to chase after you". The publisher's objection that automatic filtering had proven not to work and that manual checking of each contribution was simply not feasible given over 200,000 postings per month was not accepted by the panel.
It's strange that the legislator wrote something completely different into the law - which explicitly only requires knowledge for action. And this absurd belief in technology, that something like this can be automatically filtered out - the judge certainly did not demonstrate technical competence.
Hopefully Heise will defend itself appropriately against this and hopefully fare better than, for example, in the "Link to Brenner Software" story ...
Paj's Home: Cryptography: JavaScript MD5: sha1.js - JavaScript implementation of SHA1 - practical if you want to avoid plaintext passwords in web forms. Of course, you should always have a fallback, because not everyone has JavaScript available or activated. The site also has MD5 and MD4 implementations and a few other snippets on the topic.
To those involved in the investigations by federal authorities:
As Schäuble explained, currently, for example, the Federal Criminal Police Office can only intervene if there is a "criminal procedural initial suspicion." This condition is to be abolished. Schäuble justified this by saying that the path from the intelligence service's findings via the state police to the BKA is too cumbersome.
And what do you think, will these special rights be used only for combating terrorism? Or are the control functions that still exist in the executive gradually being lost?
It's nice how the Union and the SPD agree on the curtailment of civil rights and the curtailment of control functions ...
At least Schily knew about the CIA renditions:
The "Washington Post" reports that the US government informed Schily in May 2004 about the illegal rendition of the German Khaled al Masri. The then US ambassador Daniel Coats personally visited Schily, the newspaper writes, citing several intelligence sources.
It would be nice if one of the SPD's biggest agitators against data protection, civil rights, and common sense were to be politically held accountable, even if he is already out.
CDU state premiers criticize Union election campaign - Geißler is not one of them, but still part of it:
The former CDU General Secretary Heiner Geißler leveled serious accusations against his party in the same publication. The electorate had rejected the market-radical politics of the CDU just as much as the "ideologically akin Agenda 2010" of the SPD, according to the politician. Geißler called it a "historical irony of party history" that those within the party ranks who had been denouncing the alleged "social democratization of the CDU" for years and had pushed the party leadership into a neoliberal position with this argument, had thereby contributed to the SPD being able to continue governing for another four years.
I admit, I kind of like Geißler, even though he definitely belongs to the wrong political direction. Especially in recent years, he repeatedly manages to point out to his people what they are doing wrong. And since it is the Union, we can be sure that his opinion will continue to be ignored.
How cute. I have this little question game against spam on my site. And I personally find the questions to be exceptionally simple. Downright banal, so to speak. Not worth mentioning, really.
Well, now the question arises as to how the brilliant comment with the text "You are so stupid" could come about - and with the text added by my system that the corresponding commentator gave the wrong answer to my little question game.
Cute, really cute.