Ajax Sucks Most of the Time (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox December 2005) - why Jacob Nielsen is right - sometimes.
Archive 24.11.2005 - 7.12.2005
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 wants to tighten copyright law
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.
Is Sony in Trouble with Apple Now?
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.
Strange Statements by Condoleezza Rice
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.
Blog Move
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 ...
Aperture at Ars Technica
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.
Oh Man, with such judges we don't need criminals anymore ...
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.
Off with the barriers
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 ...
Is it finally Otto Orwell's turn?
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.
Geißler (and others) about his (and their) party
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.
Trolls in comments - failed the intelligence test
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.
"Bild" as a Cultural Problem by Gerhard Henschel - harsh settlement with the worst sleaze sheet of Germany.
Boßdorf falls again
This time not because of the occasionally stupid cycling race commentary, but because of possible contacts with and activities for the Stasi.
Whether you make him the program director or fire him - please just make sure he is spared from us as a commentator in the next Tour de France (and bring Aldag on board for that, he can do it).
EU will Telefondaten sechs Monate speichern - and the sheer incompetence (some call her Federal Minister of Justice) is so busy patting herself on the back that she completely misses the mark. That this minimal consensus is a total disaster for data protection and privacy is, of course, completely irrelevant ...
Does the FDP have to pay a million fine? - the Möllemann time bomb continues to tick.
Userscripts.org - Universal Repository - a hub for Greasemonkey scripts. Mountains of scripts. For almost everything, and a bit of the impossible.
Did RWE know about defects in power pylons? - since the Spiegel article will soon disappear behind the paywall, here are the most important facts in the Tagesschau report.
akismet.py - Python interface for the (central) Akismet Spam Scanner.
Data Non-Protection Declarations in Insurance
Because I'm currently interested in dental supplementary insurance (and my health insurance is trying to sell me a private insurance), I've read through the hints and explanations. In doing so, I came across the following nice paragraph under the title "Release from confidentiality clause":
I am aware that the insurer verifies information about my state of health before concluding the contract, to the extent that this is necessary for assessing the risks to be insured in the case of the contract conclusion I am applying for and my statements give cause for it. For this purpose, I release doctors, dentists, members of other healing professions as well as employees in hospitals and health authorities from their confidentiality, to the extent that I have been examined, advised and treated in the last 10 years prior to the application. This declaration is valid beyond my death.
It gets even worse - but I'll spare you the details. Great - the legislator is cutting back on the benefits of the statutory health insurance. Ultimately, the insured person is forced to take out supplementary insurance, at least if they cannot afford the treatments on their own and need to plan ahead. For this, however, they must then simply waive any confidentiality obligations towards the private insurance company - and even permanently, as death does not apply. Now, let's put all this into perspective - I pay a multiple of the measly 6.42 euros that the supplementary insurance would cost me to the statutory insurance. But there, I don't need to waive my confidentiality so drastically and unrestrictedly for dental services (in the above paragraph, the type of request is not even limited to the medical field of the insurance!) - but for the private insurance, I have to give up all rights to my data.
That's complete nonsense.
Additionally, of course, it also bothers me that the insurance company advertises in a leaflet about dental supplementary insurance that it has been tested with "very good" by Finanz Test, for example - but not for dental supplementary insurance, but for "single room rates". Which is really very informative for the assessment of the dental supplementary insurance ...
Development « Akismet - the Akismet API
Louie - a new event dispatching module for Python. Builds on PyDispatcher.
New Health System Cuts
It's quite amusing how Schmidt continues to play incompetent doctor games with the healthcare system, and the Union complains - because they weren't allowed to participate, and because the poor pharmaceutical industry is allegedly disadvantaged.
By the way, neither of the two coalition partners talks about the patients - the real victims of this concentrated incompetence ...
Sometimes you doubt Apple
When you send an email to support, for example, to register for the Apple Care Protection Plan (which constantly produced a strange error in the online system), and you include the serial numbers, contract number, and order date right away - and then receive a friendly email from Apple signaling their willingness to help. Along with a series of questions. About every single one of the points already provided.
Can't they read at Apple, or don't they want to read? Apart from the fact that I understand something different by a response time of one working day than answering a mail request from Sunday only on the following Thursday ...
I have almost accepted that I have to manually register an APP purchased in the Apple Store for hardware purchased in the same order, no matter how braindead that is.
SQLAlchemy README - another ORM for Python, heavily oriented towards SQL and offering a lot of magical syntax. Fascinating how in this area programmers try to abuse every language feature just to avoid writing SQL ...
Stockpiling of telecommunications data: The major factions give in
During a meeting between the leadership of the Christian Democratic European People's Party (EPP), the Social Democrats, and the Liberals with British Interior Minister Charles Clarke, the representatives of the two major political blocs significantly accommodated the wishes of the London negotiator on Tuesday. For example, they agreed to a planned obligation for telecommunications providers to store telephone data for up to two years.
An absolute catastrophe for data protection - the national governments will then retreat to "we have to do it, it's EU law" and data protection and the informational self-determination of citizens will continue to go down the drain. And the providers can stack terabytes of data waste, just because some overzealous data snoops have prevailed in their absurd data collection frenzy.
axentric. a web designer's “tackboard”. - generalized version of the yellow-fade technique by 37signals. Nice for highlighting parts of pages that shouldn't stay permanently.
Court hears case of "Bremer Taliban" right to stay - it's absurd that a foreign office actually believes that an absence due to (detention in Guantanamo, which is questionable even under US law and definitely far outside any German jurisdiction) can be considered a reason to terminate a residence permit.
Overview of new features in Apache 2.2 - Apache HTTP Server - what's new in Apache 2.2. Very interesting: the Event MPM. With this, Apache finally reports back at the top of the line for Keep-Alive sessions (previously, Apache had to reserve a worker for each Keep-Alive, which made Apache nearly unusable for streaming with a larger number of clients).
Private broadcasters via satellite only encrypted?
Private satellite channels only encrypted? - the private channels that still proudly call themselves FreeTV - want to charge fees. But - what's the point of private TV channels for the viewer then?
If the private channels want fees, I don't want their stuff - because it's so full of ads nowadays that it's barely bearable even for free.
And it's particularly amusing in light of the discussion that Saban sparked about the fee financing and advertising of public broadcasters...
What’s New in WordPress 2.0? · Asymptomatic - even though I will soon be leaving WordPress, it's always interesting to see what's going on there. Besides, at least the Metaeule will certainly continue to run with WordPress.
Again something from the crafting front
Content-type: matter-transport/sentient-life-form - for those who want to get a taste of where my blog is headed. Not quite finished yet, some bugs in my software, a few things waiting for patches in Django, but overall I'm already quite satisfied.
Google Groups : microsoft.public.windowsmedia.drm - the programmer of the Sony Rootkit asks in a newsgroup for free code for his work. Already strange ...
Cardinal Sayings Against iPod and Co.
Latest from the most idiotic old men's club in the world. A Cardinal warns against iPods and video cell phones:
Parents should not give devices that can play videos as Christmas presents, says the Bishop of Baltimore. One must protect children from pornography.
Well. One should not publish interviews with priests. Neither at Christmas nor at any other time. One must protect people from too much stupidity ...
In office for only a few days, but corrupt to the core?
Glos insists on the takeover of ProSieben/Sat.1 by Springer:
Federal Minister of Economics Michael Glos is counting on the planned takeover of the television company ProSiebenSat.1 by Axel Springer Verlag to proceed in a normal manner. However, he did not rule out that a so-called ministerial permit might also be discussed in this context. He hopes, however, "that everything will be resolved," said Glos in Munich.
Concerns at the Federal Cartel Office? Screw it, what does the government care ...
A prerequisite for approval is that the restriction of competition is justified by overall economic advantages of a merger or by an overriding public interest in the merger.
Likely, the private coffers of the Minister of Economics are then simply of overriding public interest, or what does he want to base it on? After the CSU supported the Kirch conglomerate in Bavaria far beyond its viability for a long time, is it now Springer's turn? It's already absurd what politicians will stoop to ...
Why our politicians don't want popular initiatives
After a referendum in Switzerland: Swiss agriculture remains GMO-free. The government had hoped for a different outcome. Well, in Switzerland there's something similar to democracy. Not here - it would be too much to ask if the stupid voters might spoil the politicians' bribes from the biotech companies ...
Another OPML server...
Phil Pearson does it again - this time he has reimplemented the community server for Dave Winer's OPML editor in Python (previously he had rebuilt the Radio Community Server, a project I was also briefly involved in). In any case, you can now also publish your OPML editor on your own Linux machine if you have Python and SCGI available there.
JobControl - Django Projects - Trac - a simple job control system for Django, with which you can set up background jobs.
The Failure of RWE
In times of crisis, you can fully rely on the fact that these overpriced energy suppliers can only do one thing: rip people off and exploit monopolies wherever they can. From the news:
Meanwhile, RWE has begun to assess and partially repair the damage. However, the power is expected to remain out in Steinfurt, Laer, Metelen, Horstmar, and Ochtrup until Monday.
How generous of them to finally start assessing the damage. How about at least restoring power to communication facilities? The phone service to Nordwalde still doesn't work - this is not just a total failure of Deutsche Telekom (which also has its share of blame), but also of the power suppliers. And how can it be that the power suppliers are unable to restore power supply in the district town? These are conditions like in the USA - only here no tornado has passed through, but just a slightly heavier snowfall.
Why these idiots and failures constantly think they need to raise prices when they can't even maintain something as basic as power operations, I just don't understand. The whole thing is an absolute failure and a total disgrace for RWE.
A snowflake falls ...
... and Münster is plunged into chaos. Buses with delays of 20-30 minutes, 20 kilometers of traffic jams on the highway in the evening that doesn't clear, and people needing to be supplied with blankets, tea, and gasoline by emergency services (where the locals didn't leave a path, so the emergency services had to drive over the fields ...) and no trains heading north at the station, with 50 travelers having to spend the night in the shelter bunker under the station.
It's always fascinating to witness how unprepared the city of Münster and many of its residents are for something as unusual as snow that actually stays for a moment. Suddenly, absolutely nothing works anymore. And people's minds freeze up just as quickly. Bunker - we have a bunch of hotels in Münster. If the train company can't transport their passengers, they should at least have the courage to offer them hotel rooms instead of sticking them in bunkers.
Oh, and in the Steinfurt district, numerous places are without power (20 according to the latest reports). Nordwalde is among them - so my parents and my sister's family are now sitting in the dark and cold. Hopefully, the power will be back there soon. Incidents like these always remind one how dependent we are on the power supply (and how good it is that in Münster the power comes underground - earthquakes are much rarer here than heavy snowfalls).
First impending departure of the government?
It looks like Gabriel is the first candidate for ministerial departure:
A criminal complaint has already been filed against Gabriel with the Braunschweig public prosecutor's office. He is accused of concealing an illegal sham activity for VW, perjury, and a breach of the rules of procedure of the Lower Saxony state parliament. Its president, Jürgen Gansäuer, now wants to have Gabriel's secondary activity checked for compliance with the regulations.
Well, the whole story at VW is also quite cute - the top harasser Hartz gets one dent after another (and the Berlin proletarians still don't find it embarrassing to associate the unfair treatment of the unemployed with such a name). And now there are indications that VW sponsored Viagra for the works councils for sex parties. What a pathetic bunch of louts on all sides ...
Family Update
Everything is fine in Nordwalde, my father was luckily back from the Sauerland very early on Friday and the power was also back on today at 11:00 - only the telephone took its time until 20:00 ...
AirPort Blog - a weblog about AirPort (Apple wireless solution)
Off to total surveillance
Matching the US military's satellite-communicating RFID chips, there's also some brainless news to report from Europe: EU committee approves compromise on telecommunications data retention:
Data protection advocates have rejected the agreements as a "disastrous breach" in telecommunications surveillance and a "massive restriction of fundamental rights." In their opinion, the question of the constitutionality of the bill would also arise in its revised form here in the country.
But the politicians involved in the compromise are celebrating the whole thing as a great success. Well, the constitution doesn't interest anyone here in Germany, especially not the current government - as can be seen from their budget for 2006, which is not in compliance with the constitution ...
Oh, and since we're on the topic of brainless ideas: the music industry demands the same access rights to citizens' dial-up data as those provided for combating terrorism. Another parallel to the brainless consequences of the fight against one's own population in the USA.