Materialized Views in PostgreSQL - interesting alternative to denormalization (or a technique for organized denormalization that doesn't trample the relational model too much, as the logical view remains the clean normalized form, but automatic performance-optimized denormalizations occur)
Linkblog - 13.2.2008 - 5.3.2008
The RIPE analyzes the Youtube-Hijacking - interesting to read.
Programming Nu - had I already seen that? It's something like F-Script, but with Lisp-like syntax instead of Smalltalk-like syntax.
BKA Chief completely off the rails - "Above all, there should be no further speculation in public about the possible technology of the so-called federal trojan, explained the top policeman to Spiegel Online." - what does this guy think he is, that he wants to forbid the population from thinking and discussing?
PyGUI - I'm usually a wxPython programmer, but one should always look over the fence. And the fence here looks quite usable, at first glance.
vimperator - ok, I've seen something like this before, an extension that transforms Firefox into VI operation, but this one seems to go a few steps further than others. Strange.
Abramowitz and Stegun: Handbook of Mathematical Functions - certainly interesting for all number crunchers. And since it's online, sometimes faster than a dead-tree version.
Changes - graphical diff and merge. Looks very nice and can be integrated into various tools and version controls. Could be a usable alternative to the rather stiff XCode FileMerge. Also works via SFTP on remote servers. And the scripting language is F-Script, how cool is that? Unfortunately, it only runs from Leopard onwards.
Flying Meat: Acorn - an image editor previously unknown to me, which offers some interesting features, especially text layers (which I miss in some other tools, simply packing texts as bitmaps onto a layer is really not the same). I should take a look at it. No, Gimp is not really always the answer to the question "image editing?".
iMaginator - a tool that builds on Core Image. Comes with a whole set of Image Units that you might be able to use in Acorn as well (it can handle Image Units). Sounds quite interesting for some of the problems I keep encountering in image editing.
Special report: Fixing short iPhone battery life - I need to take a closer look at this, as I have the impression that the battery life of my iPhone is suboptimal. The WLAN part sounds particularly interesting - perhaps I can simply turn off WLAN, since I have an EDGE flat rate anyway.
vi & TextMate together at last - well. vi operation for Textmate. What I have learned, however, generally from all these projects (also those for Emacs): nothing is like vi, except vi (ok, I prefer of course vim, some comfort must be there). And shockingly, vi is still one of the easiest editors for me to use ...
ANT (ant is not TeX) - an interesting approach to tackle the topic of text layout. Syntax very similar to TeX, but different internals and some nice features.
Karlsruhe leaves little room for covert online searches - "Moreover, the highest German court has established a new fundamental right to the 'guarantee of confidentiality and integrity' of information technology systems." - now it's a matter of waiting and seeing how our prolethicians will try to hollow this out again. Bavaria has already been making a lot of noise and wants to continue. NRW will surely try to fiddle with something and whether Schräuble will backtrack is more than questionable. Nevertheless, thanks to Karlsruhe.
abyssoft teleport - didn't I already have this? Control two Macs with one keyboard and mouse. With GUI.
FSClass 3.0 - allows extending Objective-C classes and creating new classes in F-Script without having to directly access Objective-C. If someone would build a decent class browser around it, with which you can interactively create methods instead of having to go through files, then OSX would almost be something like a Smalltalk system.
Learn F-Script in 20 Minutes...and Have Fun Playing with Core Image - nice tutorial for F-Script. Interactively explore the OSX API through image experiments.
LEGO Universe: 'LEGO Star Wars Multiplied By A Million' - wow. A Lego-MMO!
Mathomatic - small command line program for symbolic manipulation of equations. Very practical, you can solve an equation for various variables with a few characters - great for everyday mathematics.
Murphy's Law Strikes Again: AS7007 - what Pakistan did with Youtube, it has already happened in a much more severe way. In 1997.
Rope, a python refactoring library ... - not looked at in detail, but saved for later. Could definitely become interesting.
Steuer-Razzien: Bisher fast hundert Geständnisse - "In the Liechtenstein tax affair, 72 self-disclosures have been received so far. This was stated by the Bochum public prosecutor Hans-Ulrich Krück. Speaking to journalists, Krück further explained that in the course of the investigations, confessions had been made in 91 cases. In some cases, taxes have already been paid to the state. So far, 27.8 million euros have been handed over, but the amount is increasing daily." - the data purchase has already paid off!
Django snippets: MintCache - interesting idea to avoid the "Dogpile-Effect": if the regeneration of data takes longer than new requests come in, the requests that trigger the regeneration of old data pile up, and this makes the generation time even longer. This cache idea triggers the regeneration on the first access to outdated data, but simply delivers the previous old data to all others, thus avoiding multiple regeneration and the associated annoying load effect.
Cryptanalysis of A5/1 - "What's new about this attack is: 1) it's completely passive, 2) its total hardware cost is around $1,000, and 3) the total time to break the key is about 30 minutes. That's impressive."
Erlware - the start of a package repository for Erlang. Could be very interesting - I know it from Perl's CPAN and Python's cheeseshop, both of which provide a lot of relief when using available modules.
memcachedb - interesting project. An implementation of the memcached server protocol, but the key/value pairs are not held in memory, but in a BerkleyDB database. Therefore, it is not as fast as memcached, but persistent across process runs. Since many languages have memcached bindings, a nice low-level database for typical key/value situations - could be interesting for use from LSL with a small HTTP REST frontend.
New Research Result: Cold Boot Attacks on Disk Encryption - wow. Simply amazing. This looks really bad for disk encryption - at least when it comes to high security requirements.
AquaCurry - even though I have turned my back on Haskell and its relatives, I can't quite let go. Curry is another representative from the broad field of functional languages, although it is also represented in the area of logic-based languages (i.e., the area where Prolog and its relatives are often found). And there is a GUI environment for the Mac. In addition, the project is based at the University of Münster, and the part is called Münster Curry Compiler. Of course, I have to take a look at it.
djapian - Integrate Django and Xapian to allow full-text search over database models. Sounds nice - would have saved me a lot of work when creating my own blog software.
Harsh criticism from Liechtenstein due to tax investigations - cute, how this carnival prince talks about "democratic states". Does he even know what democracy is, as a monarch? Of course, I understand him, since his entire business model only consists of "helping moneybags to rip off the tax authorities". Annoying when this operetta state is suddenly brought into the public eye in such an unpleasant way.
OS 2008 Hacker Edition - Nokia is being mean right now, but still, it should be noted that their OS 2008 (actually written for the N810) is now also available in a Hacker Edition for the old 770. Since with 2008 you get a Mozilla-based browser, it is definitely worth considering. It simply renders better than Opera.
Romanian union criticizes Nokia's "new form of slavery" - yeah, yeah, capitalism makes everything better. Or so. Hey, even Ford knew in the 20s that 40-hour weeks are the maximum and more hours don't bring any productivity gains. But what do today's CEOs care. Whatever can be squeezed out will be squeezed out. Regardless of whether only garbage comes out in the end.
Thousand Parsec - turn-based space exploration games in python. Sounds a bit like time-sliced Eve Online without graphics. Open Source on WxPython.
chumby - damn. Still only available in the USA. I also want a useless gadget on the table!
Command line Haskell and error handling examples - those who want to know why I decided at some point that Haskell is a stupid language should check out the link. A language in which such a banal problem as summing numbers in a file undergoes such extreme changes just by adding error handling may excite mathematicians and computer scientists, but is simply unproductive. And yes, I know that large projects with Haskell are successful and the programmers are enthusiastic about it (pugs and darcs come to mind spontaneously). Doesn't change my judgment about Haskell.
Cooperative Linux - crazy, the Linux kernel recompiled as a Windows executable. Booting Linux happens by running the Linux kernel and all drivers are redirected to Win32 APIs.
Comment: Stasi statement a super-GAU for Die Linke - why the demand of a Left Party deputy of what the Interior Minister is diligently implementing should now be a super-GAU ... (ok, ok, I understand, the Left should distinguish itself argumentatively from the CDU - and whoever believes that there are significant differences between parties, for whom I have a cheap bridge in Brooklyn). The way in which the press is now stirring up this - admittedly stupid - statement, while at the same time a federal minister sworn in on the constitution tramples this constitution underfoot, is already highly embarrassing.
Pisa losers are victims of their media consumption - no wonder. Just take a look at the current reporting in the media. A child can't learn anything decent from that. And the brutality in the business section. Or did I misunderstand something?
Steueraffäre: Mehr Fahnder und härtere Strafen gefordert - ah, right, it's election campaign. Only the stupid Westerwelle hasn't noticed again and quickly takes the side of the tax evaders. The real joke, however, is the appeal from the Union's mouthpiece Pofalla to the code of conduct and morality of the economy. I'm actually just waiting for an explicitly formulated "Tightening of tax law harms the economic location Germany" from some party blowhard. Preferably something from the allegedly left spectrum, for entertainment purposes.
WiebeTech Micro Storage Solutions - HotPlug - Move a computer to battery power and transport it without ever shutting it down. - coolio, easily pack up and carry a computer while it's running. And thus, for example, negate disk encryption - because if the user is logged in, access to the encrypted media is usually possible (at least if the encrypted drive is logged in). Clever idea.
Become a Mac OS X Services Ninja - how to build services (those integrated editor extensions in OS X) with F-Script. Looks really interesting - I should really get back to F-Script, especially since I'm in a Smalltalk phase again.
SCO vs. Linux: Complaints until the end, but without Darl McBride - "An additional $95 million should be provided as a loan over a period of five years, which will be offset against the claims from the lawsuits with Novell, IBM, Red Hat, Autozone, and other companies. The interest on this million-dollar loan should be 17 percent above the current interbank credit rate. Currently, the interest would be approximately 21 percent." - And if they don't pay, the big men with the clubs come and smash a few kneecaps? That sounds more like loan sharks. Therefore, it's probably bearable if they go down with the nonsense of SCO.
Zumwinkel steps down as Post chief - and others may face similar publicity. It remains exciting. Thanks to the well-meaning sender of the data from the Liechtenstein royal bank ...
Atomic Commit In SQLite - very interesting documentation about write access in SQLite, definitely worth considering for your own projects where stable writing is important.
Astana not to Tour 2008 - maybe something could actually change, and if only by making a few other teams more well-known, because they have come into the races through wildcards, which the "usual suspects" are denied in 2008.
German government considers "Big Brother scenarios" with RFID to be far-fetched - and once again proves how clueless and technically inept they are. Or how bought. I have no idea which would worry me more ...