Practical Common Lisp is a new book about Common Lisp with many practical examples. Finally, a Common Lisp book that doesn't just delve into rather theoretical examples but addresses practical topics such as spam filters, web servers, HTML generation, ID3 tags, and other stuff. The book content is available to read online.
Well, Otto Orwell has messed up again: a Federal Data Protection Commissioner elected democratically (among others by his own faction) dares to take his role seriously and speak frankly about Otto's data collection mania. And already Otto attacks head-on, accusing him of having no political function and suggesting he should just keep quiet - what nonsense. The Federal Data Protection Commissioner has an important political function: he represents our (the citizens') interests in securing our data and upholding our right to informational self-determination. Among other things, against deranged and data-hungry interior ministers.
Great sign for a banana republic when the executive branch attacks parts of itself that have a controlling function. What's next - Eichel insults the Federal Audit Office as a bunch of bunglers who can't count?
But in the end, it probably just boils down to this: the dogs that are hit bark, of course ...
Contax – RIP or Resurrection - Thoughts on what could happen to Contax after Kyocera's withdrawal. Specifically, the 645 system is mentioned here, as it was allegedly developed by Zeiss and Kyocera was only the manufacturer - if this is the case, Zeiss could find another partner for production. Unfortunately, the 645 system is beyond good and evil for most financial possibilities ...
Nikon Encrypts D2X and D2Hs White Balance Data - they really have a screw loose. What's the point of encrypting the image data so that the user is forced to use the camera manufacturer's software to read it? It's not as if Nikon makes money from selling software - they earn (and not badly) from the cameras. And especially with professional cameras, such paternalism towards the user is just brainless nonsense. The image data belongs to the photographer - and all of it, not just the parts that Nikon kindly leaves unencrypted ...
Parliament in Kuwait approves women's suffrage - I would like to have something positive here for once. Even if it is only a small step in that direction - for the region, the whole thing is almost revolutionary.
DIHK against penalty for spam senders - no wonder, as many spammers in Germany are members of the Chamber of Commerce ...
But what also doesn't really sit well with me about this story:
In the future, it is to be prohibited to conceal or withhold the true identity of the sender in the header of a commercial email.
This may be a justified demand for commercial communication, but as I assess Otto Orwell, this will soon be extended to all citizens. And if he doesn't do it, lawyers will do it with cease and desist letters when, for example, the web server sends automatic notifications under the name www-data ...
Judgment against Kanther: Koch should provide an explanation - well, not just an explanation would be appropriate, but what would be right won't happen anyway: Koch's resignation. Because no matter how often he claims he knew nothing, no one believes him. The judgment itself is at least not as weak as the prosecution demanded:
With the penalty of one year and six months' probation and a fine of 25,000 euros for Kanther, the Wiesbaden Regional Court went significantly beyond the prosecution's demand.
Kanther wants to appeal. Let's hope the next higher instance doesn't cave. Although personally, I would have preferred it to say "without probation" ...
Can you actually have the Pope declared a hate preacher?
The future President of the Federal Chamber shows: Haider MP criticizes "brutal Nazi persecution" - must be the thin air in the Alps. Severe brain damage due to lack of oxygen.
The Carinthian Federal Councillor Siegfried Kampl and future President of the Federal Chamber criticized the "persecution" of Nazis in Austria after the Second World War. Furthermore, he referred to Wehrmacht deserters as "comrade killers".
In comparison, our local Nazis are quite cute ...
... Social elections. By mail. Lick and seal the envelope. Spontaneously thought of gender databases - and the planned all too easy access.
Bistro Intro is a Smalltalk variant that runs on the Java VM. I didn't know that before.
Seashore is an image editor that builds on GIMP things and uses the same format - but for OS X. You should keep an eye on it, could be quite nice for some simple purposes.
Westerwelle will no longer become Chancellor - this likely aligns with the will of 95% of voters
'Cool it, Linus' - Bruce Perens - a bit more information about the BitKeeper story. And I agree with Bruce - Linus should never have started this silly BitKeeper business in the first place. Andrew Tridgell is just doing what he does best - cracking proprietary protocols. It's silly to attack him for that.
Greens drop resistance against missile defense system - the next person who asks me where the money for social system support is supposed to come from: not doing MEADS (along with many other ridiculous military projects) would be a first start.
The more than 800 million that are now being invested in the development of this military nonsense would be better spent elsewhere - and no, there are not many jobs to secure in the arms industry. The arms industry's excuse is simply wrong. Hardly any other industry is already as far rationalized as hardly any other industry.
It's also very nice to see how the big parties show unity in this regard - when it comes to spending citizens' money on nonsense and mindless trash, they quickly agree. Just as when it comes to cutting social benefits.
By the way, there is a fairly simple way to protect soldiers in foreign deployments from enemy rocket attacks: not to carry out foreign deployments ... (and don't tell me the nonsense about defending the Basic Law in the Hindu Kush now)
Dirk Steins: Server Names - apparently, you can find the Simpsons quite often. In our case, the entire production DMZ is labeled with Simpsons names. The old production systems are all named after Lucky Luke characters, which unfortunately left a gap due to server death (William was hit). Our front-end computers are named after South Park characters. And the main firewall is named Kyle, with its failover system named Evil-Kyle.
It works quite well, Kyle is a huge asshole. Only Kenny, which we initially set up as a server in front of the firewall for playing around, just so we could once shout "My God, they killed Kenny, you bastards!" - he just doesn't want to be killed ...
Lafontaine is apparently about to leave the SPD - if you have nothing else to report and rather exude a lack of concept, then at least you can still celebrate your departure. One can only hope that the left-wing alternative won't have to endure this chaotic troublemaker ...
Growing resistance among cardinals against Ratzinger - it is allegedly just a rumor that rat traps are set up everywhere in the Vatican
"Auch Hondos B-Proben positiv " - well, that's that then
Opening of the House of Photography in Hamburg - then a visit to Hamburg will probably be due again ...
Homemade system as BitKeeper replacement - sometimes the arrogance of OSS programmers bothers me, who always think they can do everything better than others. How much more synergy effects would come into play if these programmers would concentrate their - undoubtedly present - programming qualities on a few projects? A good source management system with fast patch handling we could all use - but no one is served with two dozen half-baked solutions ...
Visa abuse already a topic in the Kohl cabinet? - the names are different, the faces the same. The slogans too. And we can be sure that this fact - that the Union government had exactly the same problems as the red-green government - will be deliberately ignored by the Union. Let's look forward to another election campaign of lies again.
Goldhamster turns 75 years old:
On April 12, 1930, a golden hamster burrow was excavated near the city of Aleppo (Syria), containing one female and 11 young animals. Of the young, three males and one female could be raised and bred at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. All golden hamsters in human care worldwide descend from this brother-sister mating that took place 75 years ago. In the wild, the golden hamster was considered lost or extinct.
So this is a joke, right? All pet golden hamsters are the result of inbreeding? Everything stems from these two animals at the beginning? And they haven't mutated into furry broccoli yet? Wow.
... on which Microsoft announces mountains of security vulnerabilities, almost all of which are associated with the execution of arbitrary code. Or Oracle names 89 security vulnerabilities in its database. And those are the days when you're glad not to use this software ...
... if I get the following message when accessing your weblog:
Sorry, your IP address is listed in the local realtime blackhole list. You may not enter this site.
then you have done something wrong by definition. Blogs are meant as a means of communication - and installing silly communication preventers just because you don't want links in your referrer log that come from spammers is simply ridiculous. In that case, you might as well take your blog completely off the network.
It is now official: Contax brand comes to an end. No sale to another, no continuation - the name Contax as a camera brand is gone from the market for now. Maybe Zeiss (who probably own the name Contax themselves and only licensed it) will find someone else for it - the Contax rangefinder camera (not the G series, but the new one based on the Voigtländer device) already has another partner. But the Contax we have known since the late 70s is now history.
Dvddisaster is a small program that stores error correction data for DVDs and CDs on an external medium so that a CD or DVD that has problems due to aging can still be read under certain circumstances. For this purpose, control data amounting to approximately 15% of the original data carrier is stored elsewhere.
Stumbled upon this at Spreeblick: what a game company considers suitable for ages 6 and up:
Your task: rule over your island, where pirates and prisoners reside. These two population groups must be treated completely differently. The pirates want to enjoy an undisturbed life of luxury to recover from their strenuous raids. You can best increase the productivity of the prisoners by spreading fear and terror.
Building brothels (and filling them with female prisoners), random executions, keelhauling - all to amuse the pirates and frighten the prisoners. Great training for the little ones for our wonderful world.
Hey, with politicians, bankers, and business bosses instead of pirates and the unemployed and foreigners instead of the prisoners, it could almost be realistic ...
Just found: PostgreSQL 8.0.2 released with patent fix. PostgreSQL has therefore received a new minor version in which a patented caching algorithm (arc) was replaced with a non-patented one (2Q). The interesting part: this is one of the patents that IBM has released for open source. And why did they switch anyway? Because IBM has released these patents for open source use, but not for commercial use - PostgreSQL, however, is under the BSD license, which explicitly allows completely free commercial use.
For PostgreSQL itself, this would not have been a problem: as long as it remains BSD, the use of the IBM patent would not have caused any problems. Only a later license change - such as when someone chooses BSD software as the basis for a commercial product - would have been excluded.
A nice example of how even liberally handled software patents cause problems. Because medium-sized companies that build commercial products on open source would have lost a previously available basis - solely due to the patented caching algorithm (efficient storage of and efficient access to data - so patentable according to Clements' idea).
In the case of PostgreSQL, it went smoothly: the patented algorithm is not faster or better than its non-patented counterpart. And for the software itself, nothing really world-shattering has changed. But this does not have to (and will not) always go so smoothly. In the field of audio processing and video processing, the patented minefields are much more extensive and therefore much more critical for free projects.
Okay, one might still argue that this would not have happened with a GPL license. But with a GPL license, certain forms of use as they already exist in PostgreSQL today (e.g., companies building special databases on PostgreSQL without making these special databases open source) are not possible. You can take a stand on this as you like - ideology aside - the PostgreSQL project has chosen the BSD license as its basis.
Even well-intentioned patent handling in the context of open source software would therefore be problematic. Exactly this is the reason why I am generally against software patents.
I already wrote about SORBS before. Not much has improved there. Today, I had a server listed in their directory again. And I wanted to know why - but you can only query the database if you are a registered and logged-in user. To become a user, you first have to answer a bunch of questions, such as phone number and address.
Ok, sorry, but you can't put it any nicer: the operators of SORBS are filter fascists. George Orwell would have had a field day with these nutcases - administrators are hindered in their work by the incompetent operation of their block lists and are then supposed to disclose their data. And of course, a user is also required for delisting.
That their web interface is a disgrace in terms of usability, I probably don't need to emphasize. Which fields are mandatory fields are only revealed in bits and pieces, which functions require registration are only known after selecting the function (and after submitting the associated form!) and various other obstacles.
And when you've jumped through their hoops, you get nonsense like this as a reason for the listing: "Likely Trojaned Machine, host running unknown trojan" - no, my machine does not have an unknown trojan installed. Presumably, the idiots have just stumbled over a port unknown to them (ports 8080, 8081 and 9999 are in use on the machine - by the way, with quite normal servers behind them) and once again brazenly claim that the machine is corrupted - but they are simply too stupid to build a usable list.
And yes, the ridiculous demand that you can only do the delisting from the listed machine itself and for that you have to run through their silly web interface again (which is quite ugly to use with Lynx - of course, on servers you probably operate graphical interfaces and VNC according to these great security experts ...).
I'll say it again: I won't go to great lengths if anyone uses this outdated and useless list on their server and emails are bounced as a result. Anyone who uses SORBS and therefore can't receive emails from me is simply too stupid for this world and can find a playground elsewhere. I've had it up to here with incompetent block list operators and incompetent mail admins who use these lame lists ...
/IE7/ is a project that teaches IE6 CSS properly using a JavaScript library. This should also make :before and :after work in combination with content: - not entirely unimportant for HTML-free rounded corners or HTML-free link identification through symbols ...
Found in Netzbuch: Cameropedia - a wiki with camera information.
The IE6 just can't handle :before when you want to insert content into the page via content: in the CSS. Quite annoying if you use it. The IE7 project that I wrote about in the previous article doesn't work reliably for me either - for example, under a Citrix server it won't execute it, probably because some security settings are missing there. Strange. Anyway, I looked at the problem myself and found a fairly compact solution, at least for my specific version of the problem: I just want to place icons before a link.
For this, links have one of three classes or no class: class="zu" defines a collapsed navigation element, class="auf" an expanded one, class="ohne" a link that should not be specially beautified, and all other links get a standard icon.
For this, I simply attach the following code at the bottom of the file just before the /body:
var links = document.getElementsByTagName("a");
for (var i=0; i
I then wrap the whole thing in a conditional comment for IE so that it is only executed by this. That's it. Simple and effective. Disabled JavaScript is not critical in my case, as without JavaScript on the system (it's a business solution with high interactivity) nothing will run anyway in the future - Ajax needs JavaScript as a component ...delicious:days is a visually stunning food blog from Munich.
For those of us who don't like Flash in the browser but still occasionally click on Flickr links out of curiosity, you know the feeling: you feel cheated because no image appears. And you wonder what the Flash is actually for, after all, you just want to display a lousy image ...
The solution for us anti-Flashers: Lickr: Flickr, without the Flash - a Greasemonkey script that rewrites the Flash stuff before display into a normal HTML+JavaScript story that works perfectly in Firefox without Flash. And finally, you can admire all those stupid pictures.
New meme at Pepilog: Post Firefox extensions. Well, ListZilla makes it quite easy, here are mine:
Found at Call it YASBLOG: Multimap allows zooming into a map down to a scale of 1:5000 - you can see where I live at the link, in case someone wants to nuke me from orbit
Ok, not as technically cool as Google Maps, but it works with German addresses. Very practical when you want to give someone an exact location - just set a link to the map.
However, I'm not sure if linking is allowed. Their terms of use state the following:
The reproduction, copying, downloading, storage, recording, broadcasting, retransmission and distribution of any of the maps and digital data shown on this site is not permitted without prior written consent of Multimap.com.
Hmm. Links are also digital data and therefore I should not use the link that was generated for me below the map without written permission ...
I like that the Charivari Puppet Theater is included in the map - few MĂĽnster residents know about it ...
SISC Scheme is a very complete Scheme interpreter and compiler written in Java. Particularly interesting: there is a continuation-based web framework for it.
Other interesting features include good integration into the Java world through the Java-Scheme interface. In principle, all libraries from the Java world are also available in Scheme.
SISC Scheme also supports SLIB (an extension library for Scheme with many useful modules) and various SRFIs (Scheme Requests for Implementation - the formal way to extend the Scheme language with standard modules).
The Studs MVC Framework is a port and extension of the Java Struts Framework to PHP. In doing so, frameworks initially map a J2EE-like basic structure for servlets in PHP. To me, that naturally sounds like fighting the devil with Beelzebub.
Jonathan Luster has released his Y! Terms Extraction Plugin for WordPress. It uses the Yahoo services to extract relevant keywords from a posting text and presents them as Technorati tags in the post. If anyone tries this out: I would be interested to know how well it works with German texts.
By the way, I would also be interested to know when blogg.de offers an API. I mean, it's about time to catch up with the features of Technorati and Yahoo, right?
Berliner Symphoniker to be disbanded - Helicopters against graffiti artists are fine, but there's no money for the Berliner Symphoniker. Why culture, it's nonsense, people might even enjoy it ...
Found at fx3.org: resizeable Textarea, a plugin that allows you to resize a text field in Firefox forms if it's too small. This is very practical for someone who frequently works with web interfaces of CMS or databases.
News from the God of Camera Lens Cross-Adapters: an adapter from SLR bayonet to Leica M with rangefinder coupling. Crazy: you focus with the adapter and read the distance from the adapter and transfer this distance setting identically to the SLR lens. So only a half coupling, but better than nothing.
Okay, I wouldn't want to focus a 100/2.0 from Zeiss on my M at full aperture, but for the usual suspects this whole thing could be quite practical. You save the purchase of a rather expensive Leica lens in some cases.
On the other hand, the adapter costs $325, which is a bit much just to use such exotic combinations. And in some cases it's simply better to get the cheaper Voigtländer lenses.
The idea is just so crazy that it's good again.
Schily will pursue sprayers with helicopters - now he has completely flipped out. Because we have way too much money and must throw it out the window for such nonsense.
VIA releases EPIA driver - might interest Jutta - the entire X area and the special chips are so far quite poorly documented and supported.
A reaction from Kiel to the accusations from Hesse that the anonymization service JAP would promote crime:
"We will continue to defend ourselves unequivocally when would-be internet police without any sign of technical understanding discredit data protection as protection for criminals in a populist manner."
Will this still sound the same after the formation of the grand coalition?