FeedWordPress
FeedWordPress is a plugin that turns a WordPress installation into a planet site: essentially a public aggregator, except that the entries go into a WordPress database.
Content-type: matter-transport/sentient-life-form
Jamba facing problems in the USA?
Don Alphonso explains why Jamba might not exist soon. Because if the lawsuit in the USA is successful, it could not only wipe out Jamster, but also have an impact on Jamba. In a way, it would be something if Jamba was torn apart by lawyers ...
The Page for Ural and Dnepr Drivers
The page for Ural and Dnepr drivers - you can find things like this when you search for old (programmer) colleagues on the net. Well, Marc has always had a weakness for crazy vehicles.
Police Fear Anonymity and Cryptography on the Internet
The police fear anonymity and cryptography on the internet - and therefore, for example, rail against state-funded anonymization services. However, this is simply the usual conflict of technology: the application can happen in two ways. No one talks about the reasons why anonymization services and encryption systems are quite legitimately used; only criminal use is the topic. Should we ban hammers and sickles, after all, you can kill people with both.
What is worrying about this development is that the use of cryptography will probably be restricted - or as it is called in modern German: regulated - in the short or long term. And at some point, the situation will arise where encrypted emails are already considered suspicious. Suspicion is no longer needed to spy on someone. And what is more obvious than to assume illegality of someone who encrypts their emails?
Every society must deal with abuse of the system and abuse of society - and with those who completely fall out of societal norms. This is annoying and in many cases even tragic - but cannot be changed. However, the problem is not solved by putting the entire society under general suspicion. Ultimately, what remains is a society that is no longer worth living in and preserving because everything is based on surveillance and denunciation. Restricting the rights of ordinary citizens does not result in a single fewer criminal - rather more, because more and more citizens will resist the regulations (and according to the definition of people like Otto Orwell, are then simply criminals).
What is completely ignored here, in my opinion, is the point that crime does not only consist of the perhaps technically difficult-to-access encrypted channel - there must always also be effects outside. Child pornography is not only traded on the internet - it is also produced at some point. Organized crime does not only organize the exchange of PGP keys on the internet - it organizes human smuggling, illegal gambling, drug trafficking, and who knows what else. Every crime therefore always has facets that take place quite openly and recognizably in society. Investigations are primarily carried out in this area to this day - the eavesdropping has not yet brought reproducibly better results than those already achieved through normal investigations. On the contrary: the eavesdropping, dragnet searches, and similar approaches have all failed, especially when considering the immense personnel deployments (and thus costs) of these actions. And no, the genetic sample was not decisive even in the Moshammermord case.
Regulating network technologies will not prevent their use for criminal purposes - it will only make legal use more difficult or stigmatize it. Someone who smuggles people certainly has far fewer scruples about violating cryptography laws than someone who only uses cryptography because they don't like the idea of the state reading everything.
BitKeeper Source Management System Now Only Commercial
Source management system BitKeeper now commercial only - for me, the choice of BitKeeper was a stupid idea anyway. And the argument that the other alternatives were not far enough at that time does not hold - then one would have simply continued working with CVS and waited until SVN or other alternatives were far enough.
Sun criticizes the GPL
Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's President and Chief Operating Officer (COO), once again criticizes the GPL and praises his own company as the biggest promoter of Open Source. Indirectly, Schwartz accuses other Open Source companies of lying.
At some point, this court jester must become embarrassing for the company.
TheMonadReader
TheMonadReader is intended to become a regular publication about Haskell. The first issue is linked. The whole thing is supposed to be less formal than classic scientific journals, so it could definitely become interesting. There is also an article about Pugs (Perl6 in Haskell) in the first issue.
Ego-Surfing
When you find an actor who shares your name, you naturally hope that they are someone who stars in action movies, plays cool roles, maybe even does something serious and important - basically someone who wouldn't be embarrassing to mention. Well, shit happens.
Public Law Nonsense
The fact that WDR offers its radio programs as streams only in RealAudio or Windows Media format - nothing with reasonably open formats like MP3 - is weak. Very weak. I don't like it when my GEZ fees are used to install even more spyware on my computer and to promote the use of these formats through public broadcasting ...
Online Magazine and Journalistic Honesty
News - Bombenstimmung im WWW - someone is upset here that George Orwell didn't censor the entire internet right away because there are so many bomb-making instructions on the net. If you read the article more closely, you will find a gem like this:
His company, a Hamburg-based internet filter provider, discovered a shocking record during the regular update of their blocking systems.
Well, so an online magazine has done nothing more than give a filter company free advertising and disguise it as a journalistic contribution. And then simply use the link to the filter manufacturer as a source - of course, filter manufacturers are always so neutral in their assessment of the net ...
Since the online magazine has an editorial staff according to the imprint, they probably think they fall under the category "professional journalists". Well, in that case, I would rather take a stack of bad blogs as reading material than such a stealth advertising heap ...
Pugs - pugscode
Pugs - pugscode is a Perl6 implementation in Haskell. Even crazier: the entire project is primarily coordinated in an IRC chat and the collaborative work is done with SubEthaEdit. Is this already Nirvana?
Judgment in the case of the music industry against heise online
The judgment in the case of the music industry against heise online is available in writing - and the judges once again prove their incompetence on the internet:
In the opinion of the Munich judges, heise online has deliberately provided assistance in an unauthorized act by setting the link to the company's homepage and is therefore liable as an accomplice according to § 830 BGB like the manufacturer itself. The fact that a download of the software is only possible with two further clicks does not contradict this. The decisive factor is solely that the readers of the report are directed directly to the website via the link set. It is also irrelevant that readers can find the product via a search engine as well. By setting the link, finding the product is made "inconveniently easier" and the risk of infringing on legal rights is significantly increased.
I consider myself - and a large part of the German internet user base - quite capable of finding a product at least as quickly with a search engine and a manufacturer name as well as a product name as with a manufacturer link (depending on the manufacturer's presence, the way via search engine can even be more efficient).
Ok, if the judges explicitly want to exclude themselves from this circle of minimally competent users, fine. But I consider a judgment that presupposes such incompetence in users as a personal insult.
That they did not throw press freedom overboard as well can almost be seen as a stroke of luck in this case ...
Jehovah''s Witnesses: Soon a Church in NRW?
Jehovah's Witnesses: Soon a Church in NRW? - what nonsense. I'm already annoyed that this other sect - the Catholic Church - is recognized as a church and thus state-subsidized, but with the Jehovah's Witnesses it really stops. They are not just misogynistic and rigidly hierarchical like the Catholic Church, their structure is even more based on the suppression of the individual. But irrational nonsense is in high demand.
Okay, We Give Up -- We feel so ashamed
The Scientific American had an extremely bitter April Fools' joke: Okay, We Give Up -- We feel so ashamed. But I can somehow understand.
Papal Pontificate: Criticism from Politics and the Church
Papal Pontificate: Criticism from Politics and the Church - the critical voices should not be drowned out by all the papal eulogies that are currently rustling through the forests of pages ...
Government study warns of blockade by software patents
Government study warns of blockade by software patents:
The study urgently demands, in particular, a strengthening of the interoperability clause in the planned EU legal framework. Otherwise, given the still "generous" practice of the European Patent Office (EPA) in granting protection rights for computer programs, there is a risk of destabilization and partial death of the IT market in Germany and Europe.
But Clement - our super pipe of all - still claims that everything is completely made up and that we should keep the church in the village. What a charade at the expense of our own economic location.
And the German companies against software patents won't bother him much either - probably he hears nothing because his head is still up the ass of the big entrepreneurs. That puts pressure on the ear ...
Systemhaus BOG files for insolvency
Systemhaus BOG files for insolvency - I already noticed it last week. It would be a shame if the store was gone - I haven't had much to do with them (only a few minor contacts when I still had to deal with cash register systems), but BOG has existed in Münster since I've been in the industry (even a bit longer) and somehow it's part of it for me ...
Has anyone ever noticed ...
... is the Merkel pear becoming more and more similar optically? I was already unsettled by the metamorphosis of sneaker-Joschka into the Genscher sticker, but I'm starting to worry if we don't have a few stereotypes in Germany that compulsively want to be filled - no matter with whom.
Or are they Bauhaus politicians - form follows function?
Mysterious ...
Javascript Windows
Javascript Windows simulate a desktop within a webpage. You have a launch bar and small applications that must be HTML-based, which then appear in windows that the user can move, minimize, maximize, and close - basically a desktop, but within a webpage. Crazy idea.
On Biometrics, Data Retention, Science, and Censorship
Found via rabenhorst and IsoTopp: How a conference organized by the BSI deals with critical voices - they simply remove them from the planning.
The BSI is an institution under the BMI - and thus our beloved Otto Orwell. Has someone at the BSI gotten cold feet that they could upset the actual master of the house?
Epson R-D1 Review
Epson R-D1 Review - I think I already said it, but does anyone have 3000 dollars for me?
HP Photosmart 8750 Photo Printer
The review of the HP Photosmart 8750 Photo Printer sounds quite good - well, the speed less so (13 minutes for an A3+ print is quite a lot), but time is my least concern when printing. And built-in networking is very nice - we have several computers to connect after all.
A Response to the Noise
A Response to the Noise is photomatt's response to the search engine spamming story. As I read through it, I once again notice how incredibly stupid decent programmers behave outside their neatly ordered computer world...
Well, he dismantled everything that was involved and eventually Google might give him back his PageRank (update: has given back) and life goes on. His explanation sounds stupid enough to be believable.
Was Danilo Hondo tested positive for doping?
"Outrage and lack of explanation" at Team Gerolsteiner, because Danilo Hondo tested positive for stimulants at the Murcia Round. Oh shit.
I hope that was a mistake or there is an explanation (medication or something similar). Otherwise, that would be pretty bad, especially for Team Gerolsteiner, which has gained quite a bit of sympathy - precisely because of its rather human appearances, it comes across much better than the T-Mobile team.
Html Validator for Firefox and Mozilla
Html Validator for Firefox and Mozilla - wow. Great extension: it directly validates the displayed webpage and integrates into the source view for debugging errors. Very nice - and has been featured in several weblogs in recent days (I don't remember where I first saw it).
Lufthansa Anniversary Offers Bring Web Server to a Standstill
Lufthansa's anniversary offers bring web servers to a standstill - after suing various people because of the online demo I now wonder: is Lufthansa going to sue its marketing department?
RFC4041: Requirements for Morality Sections in Routing Area Drafts. A...
RFC4041: Requirements for Morality Sections in Routing Area Drafts. A.... - exactly, this has been pending for a long time. We finally need to route in a morally correct way!
Security Risk: Password Protection for Hard Drives
Security risk: Password protection for hard drives - yes, great, what a stupid idea by the manufacturers
upcoming change in PLT Scheme v300
upcoming change in PLT Scheme v300 - lambda, filter and fold out. Right. After all, Python's Guido has already demanded this.
America: Where A Bumper Sticker Gets You Banned
America: Where A Bumper Sticker Gets You Banned - free speech means only being allowed to express the government's opinion. Dissent is punishable ...
Brussels heads for a clash over data retention
Brussels heading for a showdown over data retention - yet another case where democracy and substantive concerns are simply ignored. Otto Orwell will be pleased, the citizens will have to bear the consequences. General suspicion of all EU citizens is indeed something fine, making the whole life of the investigators much easier - "in doubt for the accused" and other presumptions of innocence simply slow down too much when you are on your way to the police state ...
Call for strict regulation on organ donations
Call for strict regulation on organ donations:
Those who do not want to donate organs should not receive any in an emergency, says the President of the German Society for Internal Medicine, Manfred Weber.
He probably took the Hippopotamus Oath rather than the Hippocratic one ...
Wordpress Website's Search Engine Spam
Seen at Netzbuch: Wordpress Website's Search Engine Spam - photomatt funds WordPress servers and the first WordPress employee through search engine spam. This is done through articles and hidden links to various high-cost search terms that then point to search engine spam pages provided by a service provider. photomatt is just the middleman - the spam bot, only he doesn't spam comments but search engine results.
In German: that's absolute crap. Such behavior is - especially for someone who suffers massively from spammers with his software - absolutely unacceptable behavior. The talk of "if the community doesn't like it, I'll stop" is bullshit - why did he even start such crap? Especially since blog software is repeatedly accused of being a search engine polluter, one should be very careful in this area with stupid ideas and not pour more oil on the fire ...
At the same time, this is another good reason for me to use GPL software: if it were a company whose actions I cannot accept, I would have to refrain from using the software. So I can continue to use the software - because the actual programmer is relatively indifferent, I can fork it anytime and go my own way with the software. The separation between the software provider and the software itself is much more open.
Let's see what comes out of the community discussion on the topic, if necessary, it's time for a fork ...
First fallout: wordpress.org has been removed from the Google index.
And since the discussion about the financing of projects keeps coming up and is used as an excuse for the behavior: sorry, but that's bullshit. You can't sanctify the means with the purpose - someone who suffers massively from spammers and indeed fights against them cannot resort to similar means. And yes, it is and remains spam: anyone who abuses search engines - and thus the searchers! - to push their ranking is a search engine spammer. Period. The comment spammers also like to excuse themselves by saying they only use open resources and don't really spam - bullshit, both.
class.jabber.php
class.jabber.php is a PHP class for programming Jabber services.
Preserve Code Formatting
Preserve Code Formatting protects PRE and CODE blocks from wptexturize.
Schröder: Arms Deliveries to China Even Against the Will of the Bundestag
Schröder: Arms deliveries to China even against the will of the Bundestag - where would we end up if the opinion of the Bundestag mattered at all, when you can properly export weapons to a country where political opponents - if they are lucky - disappear in prison for life, people are regularly executed and human rights are generally considered a problem for other people.
The economy must hum, and if it's only the arms industry. This does not create jobs - after all, the arms industry is rationalized like no other economic sector - but it brings money to the moneybags and that's the only thing that counts. And ultimately, it is only consistent: in one's own country, employees are sacrificed for the stock price and in China then the political opponents and other inconvenient people.
What a real industrial chancellor is, he does not care about human lives or democracy.
Response from the BMWA to my fax
On the topic of software patents, I also contacted the BMWA by fax. While the BMJ sent a polite and factual - albeit, in my opinion, somewhat dreamy and detached from reality given Minister Clement's course - response, the BMWA adopts a tone that I find somewhat snippy (annoyed?):
Dear Mr. ..., thank you for your fax dated March 06, 2005, in which you address the adoption of the directive on computer-implemented inventions in the first reading.
I do not share your criticism of the procedure at all.
The purely formal adoption of a text already decided is absolutely usual, indeed mandatory, due to the linguistic diversity in the EU. This is also the view of the Member States, which had or have substantive concerns. This has nothing to do with disregarding democratic rules of the game. The directive is, by the way, by no means adopted yet.
We are certainly in agreement on the objective. I can assure you that the positive economic development of the software industry is close to my heart. However, the often-expressed claims that patent protection for software would be newly introduced or expanded are factually incorrect. Despite all criticism in detail, one should "keep the church in the village".
The German software industry has developed economically well under the existing legal framework with computer program patents. This will not change fundamentally through international harmonization. We are explicitly not taking the path in Europe that is rather progressive and, above all, hostile to small and medium-sized enterprises, as in the USA. The two legal systems differ significantly here.
Yours sincerely on behalf of
Thomas Zuleger
Well. Suspension of democratic decisions and ignoring one's own federal parliament is for Minister Clement just mandatory. Great. Really gives me confidence that we will be well represented by this minister on this issue ...
deNic out of .net application?
Reading through the report at Heise, it all sounds rather like collusion in favor of VeriSign - the biggest rip-off merchant in the domain business. Pretty absurd, the whole allocation, if indeed the company that has been accused of unfair practices in recent times (pre-registration of IDN domains without basis, wildcard A-record on .com) gets the contract. I suspect the problem with deNic was simply that it is not a US company, because Internet administration is still far too US-centric.
Friday 08.09.2000: Drips and -esses - The three protocolists save their cynicism for the sequel
Friday 08.09.2000: Drips and drips - The three protocolists save their cynicism for the sequel - about the book Helmut Kohl, the power and the money from the Steidl publishing house. I'll probably have to get it.
Easier access to accounts and travel data demanded by intelligence services
Easier access for intelligence agencies to accounts and travel data demanded - what is a right-wing agitator against informational self-determination and data protection actually doing in the SPD? Oh yes, I forgot, Otto Orwell is also in the SPD. Strange party, calls itself "social" and has a bunch of asocial people sitting in Berlin ...
Study Certifies Windows Better Security Than Linux
Study certifies Windows as more secure than Linux - of course, if I compare the security of RedHat and Windows and find out that the company RedHat is even slower than Microsoft, then I conclude that Linux is less secure than Windows. Because it is completely unthinkable that people who operate servers either run essential packages from upstream or get their patches from elsewhere. And there are naturally no other distributions than those of a company that charges exorbitant prices for open source and otherwise behaves in business more like Microsoft. And all of this financed by Microsoft. This is certainly a very relevant study.
The fact that it is nowhere considered whether the respective errors could actually be used for attacks and whether they are relevant for the scenario at all - who cares. Let's just throw everything into one pile. The fact that Microsoft does not publish all bugs and therefore an objective assessment of open bugs in Windows is completely impossible - who cares. The fact that it is nowhere independently documented when Microsoft was first aware of a bug and therefore an assessment of the actual duration during which one was unprotected from the respective bug is not possible - who cares. The fact that Microsoft has recently introduced bugs again (I recall the LAND attack), which had been around for a long time and that this casts a pretty bad light on their development methodology - who cares.
But how they now believe that anyone could see this as an objective measurement of vulnerability and why such things are labeled under the keyword "Research", I find really ridiculous ...
The SimCam: Film and Digital Camera Simulator
The SimCam: Film and Digital Camera Simulator is a camera simulation for photography beginners: you can play around with aperture and shutter speed and take virtual photos and then see how the result looks. Relationships such as depth of field, camera shake, correct exposure, film speed, etc. become directly tangible, even without a camera. Fun idea.
Terms and Conditions for Blocked Phone Number Published
Terms and conditions for blocking phone numbers published - hmm, funny idea. Let's see how practical this will be.
Yahoo 360 Degrees
Missed the all-around view. Anyone who also wants to check out the toy: theoretically, I should be able to send invites. If you think I actually should have passed you an invite and really want one to check it out: speak up. Oh yeah, you need a Yahoo ID for that. Oh, and if you want an invite even though I've never linked to your blog here or know you from anywhere: at least come up with an interesting reason why I should invite you.
BBEdit 8.1 brings Subversion support
BBEdit 8.1 brings Subversion support - maybe I should upgrade now, Subversion integration is quite practical.
Cat2Tag Plugin
The Cat2Tag Plugin is something that was still missing for my photo blog: a way to work with WordPress categories like Flickr tags.
The most common tags (20 pieces, can be changed to all) are offered in a small JavaScript bar and additionally there is an input field for tags in which you can simply manually enter further ones (or click on the most common ones from the list). The default category is simply listed as a word in the tag list. New tags can be created simply by using the same. Very practical.
The hierarchy of the categories is of course not displayed - but this is not really interesting with tags anyway, the hierarchy does not play a real role with tags. Similarly, the tag description (category description) is not maintained, which must then be manually edited afterwards if you want to have something meaningful there (e.g. for the feeds).
The plugin still has one problem: it does not correctly convert the sharp s "ß" when shortening umlauts from tag names. But this seems to be a problem that WordPress also has - even when manually creating categories, the "ß" is not correctly resolved. One should therefore be careful with them. And of course, umlauts are not converted to their long form but to their base form - "ä" becomes "a". This makes the tag URLs somewhat problematic, as users need to know how the tag name is converted to the URL if they want to hack the URL themselves. But this is also a general problem of internationalization.
An idea for improvement would be an additional query string rule with which URLs with tag combinations (nature+animals) could be realized.
Otherwise, however, a really nice plugin with a very practical functionality for me.
Pheed RSS Specification
The Pheed RSS Specification is an extension for RSS that allows you to explicitly include links to photos. Could be interesting for my Fotoblog. However, WordPress has few hooks for manipulating feeds.
Around Cologne ...
... won David Kopp. Not Zabel. Not Hondo. On the contrary, Hondo completely miscalculated by focusing on Zabel and could only manage a training sprint in the main field. One might say that they forgot about cycling altogether due to all the tactics. Above all, Holzer's decision to bring Rene Haselbacher back to be prepared for a potential merger was probably just a shot in the dark - if you don't bring about the merger, you only lose a good sprinter in a chasing group.
Great for Wiesenhof to be able to field the winner in such a well-known race. And superb performance by David Kopp, who apparently had endless strength today.
SCO Uses Legal Documents from Groklaw and Tuxrocks
SCO Uses Legal Documents from Groklaw and Tuxrocks - wow, great, the advocates of their own intellectual property steal IP from other authors for their websites without citing the source. How embarrassing is that ...