Hmm. Writing OS X Services in scripting languages like AppleScript or Ruby. That actually sounds quite interesting - for example, you could integrate reStructuredText or Markdown as a service and use it in any blogging software ...
I found the original article at welcome to macscripter.net | applescript and script resource.
Ouch. Bad times for photo flash units. They draw so much power that NiMh batteries typically have significantly longer flash charging times compared to NiCd batteries. And far from all flash units offer LiIon batteries.
At heise online news you can find the original article.
For Wordpress there is a German community website with documentation, tips and tricks. Perhaps interesting for one or another - I still get pimples from PHP, but if it has to be PHP and this glorified index-file-handler called MySQL, then please something like Wordpress Here's the original article.
Good news: EFF will support TOR (The Onion Router). That's a good opportunity to point out the excellent guide on using TOR and Privoxy. With it, you can not only reliably cover your tracks (you can't erase anything, as becomes clear again and again - but you don't have to make it unnecessarily easy for people) but also defend yourself against overly curious websites. All in all, a very sensible thing.
Update: I've installed a tor server on simon.bofh.ms. If this doesn't completely eat up my bandwidth (I have 250 GB free space on the server, which should be sufficient) and the server performance doesn't suffer either, it will become a permanent installation. Projects like tor live on the fact that as many people as possible participate and provide resources.
And tor is practically end-user friendly - although network speed over tor is of course not comparable to raw network connection. Concepts like Onion Routing always have performance implications. While tor is slower than naked internet access, it's quite usable - unlike freenet, for example, where access to sites becomes an absolute ordeal.
At raben.horst I found the original article.
Good then.
At heise online news there is the original article.
IRC is fundamentally a privacy problem when it comes to data protection: on one hand, an IRC user reveals quite a bit of data through their client and client connection — not necessarily more than with a web browser, but still enough to identify them. On the other hand, IRC is precisely the kind of place where people voluntarily say a lot about themselves — or at least claim to. So it makes sense that people want to appear anonymously on IRC — perhaps not in technical support channels, but there are other channels too.
So it seems natural to simply access the IRC network of your choice via Tor and thus achieve technical anonymization.
However, this presents some specific problems with IRCNet in Germany: on one hand, connections are not accepted from all external computers, and on the other hand, identd user resolution is required. Both of these, of course, create problems with anonymizing networks: I cannot ensure that I access a network through these methods and always come from a German node — the whole point of anonymization is precisely to distribute access across the entire world.
Additionally, an identd query creates a problem: it would have to be handled on the Tor server from which the connection goes out. This can certainly be done — there are identd servers that simply return default values for queries. But nonetheless, it's certainly a strange situation: in order to access IRC I have to allow access to my computer. By the way, this already creates a problem with firewalls if they don't properly provision identd responses.
The reason is of course clear: the network administrators want to ensure they have at least minimal control over what connects to their servers. An understandable requirement. On the other hand, this makes it difficult to operate, for example, help forums on the German IRCNet — I know from my own experience with a channel that it's absolutely not trivial for many users to configure their client accordingly. And anonymizing networks are completely left out.
I have no idea what the solution is here — except to move a help forum to a network that doesn't have these problems.
By the way, OS X users have another problem: IRC clients with SOCKS support (necessary for Tor) are few and far between. socat can help here — with it you can create a connection to a service via a SOCKS proxy without the client software having to support it. However, installing and using socat is not necessarily beginner-friendly. It's a shame that Apple hasn't implemented an appropriate mechanism in the operating system itself that would automatically use a SOCKS proxy — regardless of whether the client software supports it or not.
About time...
At tagesschau.de - Die Nachrichten der ARD you can find the original article.
Further nonsense from the law firm Waldorf and Statler (or something like that - the Muppets are far more entertaining than the rip-off lawyers of the music industry).
At heise online news you can find the original article.
Highly recommended interview. And hilarious. (Dallas was still unwatchable TV trash!)
You can find the original article at Industrial Technology & Witchcraft.
And goodbye ...
Also a way to renew the party: over the course of a non-governmental phase, lose all well-known politicians through suspicion of corruption and similar things. Those who aren't corrupt are then sidelined professionally (which doesn't really require much for some Union politicians). And yet Auntie Merkelnix keeps patting herself on the back about how well she's doing her job ...
While it's overall rather unproductive for the Union, I actually quite like that about it
At WDR.de you can find the original article.
Yeah, things are finally getting somewhere. Life without Microsoft - though on the Mac that was already possible thanks to RagTime and Papyrus Office. But with an open source software, the whole thing of course looks considerably better.
I found the original article at The Macintosh News Network.
Way cool: the most portable of all Common Lisps has received a few modernizations lately. And now McCLIM runs on it too - though of course only on CLX, and thus on OS X only under X11. But at any rate, it's quite an interesting platform. Especially since CLISP is the Common Lisp that most closely resembles a scripting language in terms of its environment.
Hmm. CLISP runs on the Zaurus. The Zaurus also has a system variant with X11. With CLISP+CLX+McCLIM+X11 you should be able to build the smallest reasonably complete Lisp machine in the world on the Zaurus.
At Planet Lisp you can find the original article.
The Goats While Gardening ...
At WDR.de you can find the original article.
They're actually even more audacious at SCO than our managers in Germany
At heise online news there's the original article.
Some of you may still remember it: the Bytecodehacks for Python. A wild module that allowed all sorts of shenanigans with code blocks - and was used, among other things, in older Zope versions for restricted execution of Python methods. Certainly, the whole thing is the wrong approach and violates good taste and sensible programming. I love it.
Postponed is unfortunately not cancelled ...
At Industrial Technology & Witchcraft you can find the original article.
Ugh. I just gave Jutta the Humboldt books for her birthday ...
At tagesschau.de - Die Nachrichten der ARD you can find the original article.
I can imagine that the Austrians might see it differently.
At heise online news there's the original article.
Nett - a SQL database in Python that supports significantly more than Gadfly (for example, simple joins, foreign keys, and null values). Ok, like Gadfly, it won't be a miracle for performance, but as a SQL option for installations that don't require a C compiler, it's certainly useful.
An interesting side note: the Xerox Lisp Emulator - an emulator developed by Xerox for their Interlisp machines - is included as part of the Grammars Writer Workbench. I still have a set of Medley Lisp floppies lying around at home - and two Xerox Lisp machines sitting in the corner. Nice devices with a neat graphical system. Ok, far from the performance of a Symbolics, but since they were my first Lisp machines, I like them anyway somehow.
Included with the Xerox files are emulators for DOS, Linux, SunOS and Solaris. So I might have a chance to get my old Medley Sysouts running on Linux.
Somewhere in there is also the Medley Common Lisp - so not just the Interlisp-D, which is somewhat archaic compared to more modern Lisps (for example, it only has dynamic scope). However, I would first need to dust off my old Interlisp-D knowledge to figure out how to open a Common Lisp listener on the machine again, if it's not in the root menu...
I found the original article at Planet Lisp.
Web-Demo against software patents by ffii. Get involved!
ReportLab - PyRXP - Very fast validating XML parser for Python - built on RXP
GNU Development Tools for the Renesas H8/300[HS] Series - Documentation on how to build a cross-compiler for the RCX
Lego-Mindstorms Simulator - Simulation of LeJOS programmed RCXs in Java
The problem with the rcxcomm stuff under 10.2 is that the headers from the JNI under 10.2 have incorrect links and therefore don't work. To fix it, you simply need to add to the line in lejos_2_1_0/rcxcomm/src/Makefile where CCOPT is defined:
CCOPT = -g -O ${JNILIB_TYPE} -framework IOKit -framework CoreFoundation -I/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Headers -I/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.3.1/Headers
The latter part is the new one - I simply added the correct include path and then it finds jni.h. And it can compile. However, I haven't tested yet whether the whole thing actually works.
Anyone who wants to see what's possible with LeJOS can have it demonstrated in this tutorial. Since the LeJOS documentation itself is limited to the API, this tutorial is all the more important. After all, the demo robots supplied with LeJOS are also quite sparse ...
I've installed LeJOS. Cool stuff - the first time I can actually use Java for something. The only thing that doesn't work on OS X 10.2 is direct communication between the host computer (OS X machine) and the target computer (RCX brick) via the IR tower - so you can't build distributed applications between these two systems. The reason appears to be an incompatibility with the JNI (Java Native Interface) used to integrate the communication routines (written in C) into the Java classes. Otherwise everything works quite well - even exotic sensors (I have the IR proximity sensor and the ultrasonic distance sensor from HiTechnicStuff) work flawlessly. And the VM is small enough at 16 KB that you still have plenty of space for your own Java programs.
There's also an emulator included with which you can test your RCX programs on the host computer. Very practical for debugging - the RCX is a bit too primitive for that anyway. Even though the emulator is very primitive - it just spits out traces of what happened. No graphical display, no sensor simulation, etc. But still better than nothing.
Important constraints of the Java VM:
I think I'll refresh my Java skills a bit during my pre-Christmas vacation and see if I can finally get my ideal freely moving robot working - one that doesn't bump into everything and at least builds up a rudimentary memory of its surroundings. After all, I have two RCX bricks - maybe I can finally realize my envisioned Lego truck with two brains (one for locomotion and basic collision avoidance sensing and one for spatial orientation). And as usual with Lego planning, you first realize that you simply don't have enough Lego bricks. I think that could go down in history as Hugo's first law: You never have enough Lego bricks.
Cool - a complete Lisp that runs directly on the RCX. Perfect for the holiday season.
Unfortunately no OS X version, only something for Windows or Linux - and the latter only for the serial tower. Let me see if I can get something working for OS X with the USB tower. I also stumbled upon TinySOAR, a complete AI Agent Runtime for the Mindstorms RCX brick. Also very interesting - and hopefully also runnable on OS X through its embedding in TCL. And also new to me is the Java VM for the RCX: LeJOS. I don't like Java much, but it's definitely interesting for the RCX. And the oldy-but-goldy: LegOS, the complete operating system for the RCX written in C. However, due to its rather hefty toolchain (a complete GCC configured as a cross-compiler), it's somewhat tricky to install. Besides, it's now called BrickOS and is incidentally also under the Lisp as runtime. Here's the original article.
Tjaja, the oh-so-upright lawyers. Sounds more like a case from a television court, specifically the most primitive private TV variety ...
At WDR.de there's the original article.
I think it's absolutely ridiculous that the tax authorities want to force this stuff on people before it's even available on all the important platforms. But the fact that you can actually file a tax return or submit a sales tax advance notification using only a tax number and address (which according to impressum requirements must be stated in that document anyway for businesses!) without any kind of verification whatsoever — that really takes the cake.
Brainless, thy name is tax authority ...
At tagesschau.de - Die Nachrichten der ARD you can find the original article.
Red-Green is trying to overtake the Union on the right. What a bunch of nonsense. These federal idiots have time for such crap.
And they keep lying.
At tagesschau.de - Die Nachrichten der ARD you can find the original article.
GadflyB5: SQL Relational Database in Python - 100% pure Python SQL database
Police State Hesse?
At heise online news you can find the original article.
And democracy is being trampled on. The European economy too. The only ones profiting from this are the large multinational corporations that are already trying to eliminate their competitors today in areas where it's possible - mainly the United States of Dementia - with idiotic patents. And of course the many patent shakedown companies that try to push through the most absurd things as patents just to make quick money without any performance of their own.
One has to ask oneself who the members of the EU Council (and the national governments supporting them) are actually being paid by. The whole thing simply stinks of corruption.
At heise online news there's the original article.
I don't believe even this watered-down form has a chance of really being implemented - too many refuse and stand against citizens' access to files. Which in my opinion is an absolute scandal in itself - we're supposed to cough up money for projects, but we should absolutely not see what is being done with it. Already absurd.
At heise online news there's the original article.
Not much comes to mind about that anymore
Barebones pure-Python PostgreSQL client - PostgreSQL client in pure Python - no C compiler required, therefore very portable, but also less feature-rich
We can and will solve the hamster question at the Neurath location.
At WDR.de you can find the original article.
Even though the blogosphere is now puzzling over what retractable batons are - the answer to Dreamworks is actually quite funny. Unfortunately, you can't write something like that in this country anymore, because our legal system is increasingly approaching the American garbage heap and, thanks to Schily and other blockheads, is even overtaking it on the right ... By the way, batons are rubber truncheons or police batons - retractable batons being those nice telescopic batons you sometimes see in movies. I won't translate what it means to sodomize oneself with retractable batons.
I found the original article at Der Schockwellenreiter.
REgurgitate - Example of how to tokenize Python code and rebuild it
StupidSheet - Another example for tokenize - a small pure-Python spreadsheet
An interesting article about the impact of blog spam, especially on Moveable Type hosters. Gigantic server load just because the comment forms of Moveable Type are most frequently attacked by spambots and because the anti-spam plugins for MT are anything but optimal for server load.
Eventually the film industry will then sue the plastic bag industry because you can secretly smuggle illegal DVDs in them...
At heise online news there is the original article.
Bruce Schneier with a few tips about computer security. I want to share the most important one here, because I absolutely agree with it: If possible, don't use Microsoft Windows. Buy a Macintosh or use Linux.
We're outsourcing our shit too. And our fee revenues right along with it. What a bunch of crap.
At WDR.de there's the original article.
Well. Dioxin in borscht. I also find the comments from the doctors amusing - they said they had no idea what a high dose of dioxin would cause - previous dioxin poisonings were usually from low doses over a long time. Now they know.
Dive Into Accessibility - Oldy but Goldy - still one of the best introductions to web accessibility
A fascinating project, the CIA Open Source Notification System. You stick a small script into your CVS and it diligently logs, saves, and distributes every commit. There are RSS feeds for every view and contrary to many other projects that aggregate some large amounts of data, this one is also blazingly fast. By the way, the title links to my user and shows my three projects being monitored there. So if you're curious what I'm currently breaking, you can subscribe to the appropriate RSS feed.