DOPE Squad Security - open source WLAN driver for Apple Airport. Designed for use as a passive WLAN scanner.
Archive 12.11.2005 - 24.11.2005
DragAndDrop - MochiKit - Trac - Drag and drop with MochiKit.
Holographic Storage Media with up to 1.6 Terabytes
News on holographic storage media:
The discs should initially only allow filling at 20 megabits per second and hold data for at least 50 years after writing.
Please with affordable media prices, then I finally have a usable archiving medium for images ...
How Secure is WEP, Anyway? - an interesting link about the security of WLAN, specifically how easy it is to crack a WLAN with WEP.
Weird Python 2.3 Bug
Some bugs you chase are really strange. Just take a look at the following Python script:
import re
r = re.compile('^', re.M)
src = '''<html> <head> <title>Logviewer</title> </head> <body> <div> <h1>Titel</h1> </div> <div> {{}}
{% block content %}
{% endblock %}
</div> </body> </html> '''
for match in r.finditer(src):
print match.start()
Looks quite harmless - it just returns the positions of the newlines (yes, I know, you do this differently - the source is not mine). The script has an infinite loop on the last, closing newline under Python 2.3. If you remove it (i.e., paste the """ directly behind the last tag without a line break), the script works. Under Python 2.4, both variants work. And you have to chase after things like that...
Do I really need to emphasize that this little snippet of code was hidden in a larger pile of code, or?
Sometimes OS X is a bit strange
I thought that since my computer is now a MacMini, and I no longer need to carry the computer around with me all the time, I could deactivate FileVault. Unfortunately, that won't work for now, as Mac OS X tells me that I need 4 terabytes of free disk space to deactivate it. I'll have to save up for a while before I can afford that.
I'm not the only one with this problem. Apparently, OS X makes a mistake in its calculation when it seems like there isn't enough disk space (even though my home directory only takes up 31 GB, but I have 44 GB free) when displaying the required additional disk space.
Microsoft to Standardize Office Formats in ECMA
Stephen Walli(Ex-Microsofter) über die zu erwartenden Fallstricke in der letzten Microsoft-Aktion:
It will likely be a royalty free license, because the current patent license around the proprietary specification is royalty free. That patent license, however, couldn't be sublicensed, so an implementer that wanted to license their implementation under the GPL couldn't. Indeed previous examples around the IETF SenderID standard would force users of other implementations to engage in a license with Microsoft which is a rather onerous problem for free and open source licensed software.
Der Hinweis auf die SenderID-Geschichte ist durchaus wichtig: dort hat Microsoft auch ständig davon geredet, das es ein offener Standard sei, aber dabei immer unterschlagen, das deren Verständnis von offenen Standards absolut inkompatibel mit vielen Bereichen der Open Source Entwicklung sind - mit Sicherheit wird Microsoft wieder die GPL blockieren.
Abgesehen davon, ich find es schon ziemlich armselig, wenn Microsoft sich schlicht weigert ODF zu implementieren und meint einen eigenen Pseudo-Standard ihres Krams machen zu müssen - zumal man ja genau weiss, wie sich Microsoft dann zu solchen Standards verhält. Die werden dann wieder in den passenden Stellen erweitert und schon ists vorbei mit dem freien Zugriff.
The Vienna Conclusion: Sponsorship+Politics=Influence
Strong move: according to Georg Greve, a closing statement of a WSIS working group in Austria was changed at the request of Microsoft. Instead of a sentence about the success of free software, there was suddenly a never-before-seen sentence about the advantages of DRM. This is how an unwanted voice is simply silenced - and then it is claimed that everything is fine ...
Vatican Paper: Gays cannot become priests
The pope's hunt for gays continues:
The Vatican does not want to see active gays and people who support the homosexual movement in priestly offices. There is only an exception if the persons concerned have overcome their inclinations for at least three years, as emerges from a document that the Catholic news agency Adista published on the Internet yesterday.
Exactly. Overcome homosexual inclinations. Yes, of course. Actually, one should sue Bildzeitung for its "We are Pope" headline for defamation ...
Web Development Bookmarklets - various bookmarklets that are very helpful for web development.
Closures python,scheme,ruby - a good explanation of the somewhat faulty lookups for lexical variables in Python (at least when an assignment is involved in an inner scope).
EU Advocate General against Data Sharing
Transfer of air passenger data is unlawful says the EU Advocate General:
The Advocate General at the European Court of Justice (ECJ), Philippe Léger, recommends that the agreement between the EU and the USA on the transfer of air passenger data should be annulled.
It's strange when data protection has to be saved by the ECJ because it is simply thrown overboard in Germany out of overzealous obedience ...
Did I already say, ...
... that a 20" Cinema Display is quite a fine thing? You can literally get lost on the screen ...
Light Field Photography with a Hand-Held Plenoptic Camera - I only understand half of it, but even that sounds really good. A camera that doesn't just capture pixels but layers of pixels - and then the focus point can be set afterwards via software. The site has some examples. For macro photography, the technology would be absolutely amazing ...
Linux on an Apple Powerbook G4 - even more about the Powerbook and Linux, here you'll also find decent keyboard layouts.
Routes 1.0 Released - this is the Python version of the URL routes from Ruby-on-Rails. Very interesting, I must sit down at some point and see if I can't build this into Django as an alternative URL dispatcher.
"The Whitespace Thing" for OCaml - Indentation as a syntax element (ala Python and Haskell) for OCaml. Interesting. Although OCaml already has minimal syntax overhead, so I don't really think it's necessary.
Ubuntu on the PowerBook G4 (powerbook5,6) describes some of the problems you have with Ubuntu on PowerBooks - for me as a reference when I switch my notebook.
Ubuntu and Powerbook
Ok, since my Mac Mini is working hard and everything is functioning as it should, I took the opportunity to install Ubuntu on my Powerbook. I wanted to finally check out how well something like this works today - back in the day, notebooks were quite an adventure with Linux.
Overall, everything looks very good - just like the first impression from the Live DVD. Everything starts properly, the components are mostly well recognized, and the settings are mostly sensible - especially the simple installation (for a test drive, I like to use the DAU mode, just to see how well the people understand their job) leaves a well-set-up desktop system.
Unfortunately, I have a notebook. And not just any notebook, but a Powerbook.
Well, the software itself runs. The desktop is nicely set up, and the selection of software is very useful - even all the notebook features are mostly installed. What was missing?
Well, let's start with the simplest thing: a Powerbook has a fixed keyboard layout - the keys are labeled. I'm not planning to rub off the labeling and repaint it to match a PC. Why don't the Torfnasen provide a Powerbook keyboard layout? I did find something on the net, but to implement it, some major efforts are needed (either applying a not fully functional patch or adjusting the X start process - neither of which are particularly DAU-friendly). Why isn't something like this included with the system? After all, anyone who has seen a Mac keyboard up close knows that it's really not identical to PC keyboards. This is further complicated by the fact that there are quite a few Mac keyboard layouts included - but they only make sense with old ADB keyboards, as they have completely different keyboard codes.
Next up: power management. A lot of software is installed, most of which comes without useful documentation. That's fine - in theory, everything should just be set up. And for the most part, it is set up: when I close my display and open it again, the daemon.log properly records that pbbuttonsd was able to execute the appropriate script.
It would just be nice if the script actually did something...
People, power management is not just a nice-to-have feature for a notebook; it's essential. And everything necessary for it is actually present. Please include it and use it. The Ubuntu installation looks as if the part that would execute the actions was simply left out. And I haven't found out on the fly in which package this might be hidden.
Then there's Bluetooth. The system recognizes all sorts of things, and something is being done with someone - but how, what, and where you can now do something with Bluetooth, that's not really clear. Hey guys, Bluetooth is really not ultra-new anymore, and for Linux, there's been something for quite some time - how about at least some rudimentary tools that show the status?
WLAN still doesn't work - but that's not Ubuntu's fault, it's the stupid manufacturer of the cards. 3D acceleration of the graphics also doesn't work, which is why the desktop is a bit sluggish than it should be - same reason as with WLAN. It's really a shame that hardware manufacturers put extra obstacles in the way of a free operating system.
Minor annoyances: the trackpad is set to be ridiculously sensitive - almost unusable for people with motor problems. More conservative settings would be much more sensible. And Gnome is still quite wasteful with screen space - hey, my notebook only has 1024x768, I can't just add pixels!
All in all, Ubuntu confirms its good suitability as a desktop system - because the installed system itself is really useful. But notebooks are still the last adventure for the toughest.
And my notebook? Well, I'll probably just go back to Tiger.
Dejavu - Trac - another Object-Relational-Mapper for Python. Sounds quite interesting in some points.
A Year on Mars
About the Super Performance of the Mars Rover:
The dramatic landing, during which the 180-kilogram vehicle crashed into the Martian rubble wrapped in airbags, is celebrating its anniversary these days, as a Martian year, i.e. 687 Earth days, has passed since then. To everyone's surprise, the Mars rovers are still functioning.
Really great what these little boxes are doing there. Let's hope for another Martian year. And please, a few more from the model series on a few other planets and moons, if you please?
Finally, the dialer value chain is being tackled
BGH ruling breaks dialer resale chain:
The "average informed and understanding telephone and internet user" is "not aware of the service chain between the network operator and the value-added service provider". Therefore, the "call to the value-added service cannot be interpreted as the user's intention to conclude a contract with the number administrator". The provider is "from the customer's perspective an agent of a third party".
Very good. This will finally make it more difficult for the dialer mafia to operate their money-making machines. It's about time. Yes, I understand that the intermediaries are not necessarily involved with the dialer scammers - but they have at least tacitly accepted that such businesses are conducted through them. And the constant hide-and-seek game of the dialer operators behind shell companies was really absurd.
Dispute over ARD election graphics settled
Democracy powered by Microsoft has come to an end:
The cooperation between Infratest dimap and Microsoft in ARD election broadcasts has ended, reported the leading North German Broadcasting on Monday.
About time. The ARD's dance around the issue had become simply ridiculous. No corporate advertising belongs in election broadcasts. Period.
Germany - Arms Dealer
First the Leopard II tanks to Turkey, now submarines to Israel - and then also with financing a part of the production by Germany itself. Quite a big action.
And no, what bothers me is not the word "Israel" - there could be any other country. What bothers me - besides the general fact of arms production and arms exports - is the part where Germany itself bears a third of the production costs ...
Well, Intel messed up again: Hyperthreading hurts server performance, say developers - what was the reason again why Apple relies on Intel processors? Better performance? Pfft.
Richard Stallman Gets in Trouble with UN Security for Wearing a Tin-Foil Hat - well, not a tin-foil hat, rather an ID card wrapped in aluminum foil. Due to RFID.
Taxi 3
Hey, wasn't that just Sly Stallone?
(And to be quite honest: the Bond rip-off at the beginning of the movie is just plain awesome)
Disgusting ...
... the fearmongering of the agitators against data protection and privacy, when the secrecy of telecommunications threatens to be taken seriously.
Definition: Embarrassing
People who write longer articles about their blog design.
Chancellors can commit perjury and maintain secret accounts, getting away with a mere threatening finger-wagging. But football fraud is severely punished in Germany.
Hibernate on your non-brandnew Mac - works on many old PowerBooks, except on the 12" 867Mhz PowerBook. Guess which one I have ...
Critical Vulnerability in Content Management System Mambo
PHP is increasingly becoming a security dump:
Not always does disabling register_globals in PHP increase security. Sometimes this opens up a vulnerability. This is also the case with the Content Management System Mambo, which, according to a posting on the security mailing list Full Disclosure, contains a vulnerability that allows attackers to execute their own code on the server.
This is certainly due to the fact that there is hardly any language - apart perhaps from Perl - that carries as much cruft as PHP. The result shows itself again and again in esoteric problems that even catch people who should be prepared for such things based on their experience.
A Millimeter
A Millimeter
The whole thing is really just a millimeter - more precisely, the centers of the two upper lines are one millimeter apart. The lower line is on the half millimeter. The blur is completely normal with the shallow depth of field that you have at such extreme magnification scales - 12x magnification relative to the camera chip of the EOS 10D.
Cactus Mite Revisited
Jutta and I have been playing around with macro photography again - Jutta has acquired a Zeiss cold light source, so there's finally enough light even for absolutely crazy magnifications. Result: the cactus mite visited again:
If you want a size comparison: the following image is a section of a fairly precise millimeter scale - the top two lines are one millimeter apart, the bottom one is on the half millimeter. The image field corresponds to that of the image above.
The slight blurriness comes from the extreme magnification ratio - about 12x magnification relative to the base area of the 10D chip - and from the optical system operated far outside its optical parameters.
The equipment used was a Canon EOS 10D, a Canon EF to Contax Y/C adapter, a Contax bellows unit, a Tokina ATX 17mm/f3.5 in retro position, and the whole thing then on a tripod and ball head (such an Arca Swiss Monoball is already something fine - the ideal ball head for macro work). Then some finesse, patience, and series shots with minimally changing distance between lens and subject.
e-Voting: Contesting the Bundestag Election Due to Voting Computers
Problems with voting machines in the federal election:
Wiesner criticizes in particular that the voting is indirect – via the voting machine and the software used – and it cannot be verified whether the vote is stored immediately and unchanged in the vote memory and subsequently in the electronic vote memory until the election result is determined is not changed.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed that he succeeds with his application, but I don't see any greater chances - because surely it will just be discussed to death again and by then the Federal Constitutional Court may decide, the current coalition will have long since gone to Orkus (they won't last 4 years) ...
Some things annoy me terribly
For example, if umlauts are not processed cleanly - as with pre_populate_from in Django. Therefore, I no longer use this in my CMSProject, but simply fill the slug in _pre_save. And then let a corresponding routine run there. Although this is not really perfect, but at least usable ...
And yes, this is a test post for the function to create a slug from a title with umlauts.
And then there was ...
... the bankruptcy of the Red-Black horror coalition and the loud howling and gnashing of teeth of all the interest group arse-lickers who now think they might lose their little butter. Meanwhile, the hunt against Hartz IV recipients continues and the welfare state is dismantled, but the police state is further expanded. Any sense is left out and therefore the little conjuncture is simply murdered with a VAT increase. The whole thing is then garnished with a clear violation of the constitution in the budget for next year. And these idiots stand up and celebrate themselves and their pathetic work.
When watching bad movies, you can always switch channels. Where is the remote control for reality, please?
Apples WebObjects with new licensing terms
Apple has clarified the licensing issues with WebObjects - Deployment on Linux boxes is now also completely allowed. Thus, the XCode environment with WebObjects is now completely free from development to deployment.
Taking Photos While Geocaching
A series of pictures taken during various geocaching tours. Some in the Coesfelder Heide, some near Wolbeck:
A Few More Pictures ...
... there is in my CMS Testbed(yes, I'm knitting on my own content management software again). And when I look at how little trouble my own software gives me and how much trouble Wordpress always causes (for example, today I couldn't upload any pictures without being able to find any reason - nothing in the log files, no error message, just the refusal to upload), then the switch could be getting closer and closer ...
Linux-Vserver on Debian Sarge - the title says it all. Bookmark for later - could be interesting for my server.