A Lisp Comic That Explains Macros
Nice Thing - an explanation of Lisp macros for beginners. In the form of a comic. Macros are called - fittingly for the topic - SPELs.
Archive 22.11.2004 - 7.12.2004
TP: Election Fraud in Florida?
Oh man, the whole chaos with the elections in the USA is slowly taking on quite absurd proportions.
Although you're not sure what's more absurd: what is claimed to have happened, or the figure making the claims. I wouldn't be surprised if both the guy is a crackpot and the accusations are true anyway...
CDU party conference approves healthcare compromise
What a load of garbage: the alternative to health care reform - which is already stupid enough - has a billion-dollar funding gap and is being cheered by the union party congress. How stupid do you actually have to be to get accepted into the party? Is that enough to be declared incompetent upon joining the party?
At tagesschau.de - Die Nachrichten der ARD you can find the original article.
Knuth: Open Letter to Condolezza Rice
An open letter from Donald Knuth to his student Condolezza Rice. Written back in 2002, but I stumbled across it for the first time. Fundamentally I don't see how the government of my country has done anything whatsoever to address and correct the root causes of international terrorism. Quite the contrary; every action I can see seems almost designed to have the opposite effect --- as if orchestrated to maximize the finances of those who make armaments, by maximizing the number of people who now hate me personally for actions that I do not personally condone. How can I be a proud citizen of a country that unilaterally pulls out of widely accepted treaties, that refuses to accept a world court, that flouts fair trade with shameful policies regarding steel and agriculture, and that almost blindly supports Israel's increasingly unjustifiable occupation?
If I were to write something along those lines, I'd immediately be accused of salon anti-Americanism...
Once Something Against the XML Hype
YAML is a very interesting and compact markup language. But one that is not based on XML or SGML; rather, it is principally oriented toward the old RFC mail formats. The genius of it: the contents are much easier for humans to read than all those angle-bracket dialects. And for the computer, the whole thing is also quite simple to parse - and it's still powerful in its expressive capabilities. If you feel like processing YAML files with Python, Syck is an extremely fast library that also offers an interface for Python. In the Active Storage Framework for Python I use YAML for database backup and restore and as a native data format. Importing YAML data into the database is thus very easy - and since YAML is hierarchical data and the Active Storage Framework for Python is a hierarchical database, everything fits together wonderfully. And you don't have to be afraid of hurting yourself on all those angle brackets.
Only 88.41 percent for Merkel
In the morning, the Union still loudly proclaimed that cohesion should be demonstrated through an even clearer endorsement of Merkel. Well, that went completely wrong.
But Merkel will certainly spin the whole thing positively again, that much is for sure ...
At WDR.de you can find the original article.
Language-Independent Types for YAML - type tags for YAML sources
Pixelog - Very nicely made picture blog with pleasant layout and good photos
ASPN : Python Cookbook : Spreadsheet - a few ideas for controlled eval in Python
E.ON and RWE want to increase electricity prices
Proper rip-off. What else is the monopoly for anyway
At tagesschau.de - The news from ARD you can find the original article.
Federal Court of Justice issues ruling on domain grabbing
Hmph. On the one hand good - because not everyone can just have their domain taken away. On the other hand, though, also bad - the domain grabbers will be happy now. And anyone who's dealt with such people knows how amusing it will be to get a domain back out from someone who just registered it as a speculative object. Whether we'll have to expect similar conditions as in the USA in the near future remains to be seen. At least with .com, .net and .org addresses, one increasingly finds only generic pages from grabbers who are setting up shop there.
At heise online news there's the original article.
Living Code
A weblog from someone who programs in Python, PyGame and PyObjc under OS X (with Renaissance as a GUI system). With complete example applications available for download. If you want to take a closer look at something like this, you might find one or another piece of information there.
M-Audio Ozonic Keyboard and FireWire Interface
Holla the forest fairy! That thing is pretty neat. For me it would be — lacking musical ability — more of a torture instrument, but still, with GarageBand and a properly cross-configured software synthesizer, that would definitely be a lot of fun.
At Gizmodo there's the original article.
Renaissance - GNUStep GUI description language and library also for OS X Cocoa
SCO vs. Linux: A Journalistic Revelation
The Latest Absurdities from Absurdistan
At heise online news you can find the original article.
Pyco - Tiny Python Distributions - build small Windows EXEs from Python tools.
Lasso - Souk - Python module for integration of the Liberty Alliance Single Signon Protocol.
Film Foundation Honors Artists and Cinemas
In Münster, Cinema and Schlosstheater each won a prize (20,000 and 15,000 euros). Congratulations to them! After all, these are our last bastions of independent cinemas - Cinema has existed since my school days with long cinema nights and lard sandwiches during intermission.
At WDR.de you can find the original article.
Module Pycaml
Interesting project: someone has written a reimplementation of the Python/C API for OCaml (of course the native-code compiler, not the bytecode interpreter). This makes it possible to do the following things:
- Write Python extension libraries in OCaml
- Use Python-C extension libraries in OCaml
- Use Python modules in OCaml (generally use the Python interpreter in OCaml)
- Use the Python toplevel for OCaml
It all sounds very exciting and could be very interesting for some applications - OCaml produces very fast code and can easily compete with C in this area. Especially for implementing the parts of code that are too slow in Python, OCaml is of course much more interesting than C because of its significantly better type safety.
Aiming at Saturn's moon Titan and ... letting go
I find it very nice that the landing capsule is supposed to land on my birthday.
At WDR.de there's the original article.
Pro-Linux News: Daffodil Replicator becomes free software - Replicator that is database-agnostic and supports PostgreSQL among others
Python Packages Index: pyDB2 0.996a - DB/2 API for Python - need that at work
Debate on Integration Reignited
Yes, sure, immigrants should swear an oath to the constitution. Not every German has done that - except if they're a civil servant or served in the Bundeswehr - but you can certainly demand it of immigrants. Because terrorists would never swear falsely and would be completely frightened away by it anyway and run off.
And when it comes to German language skills: we still have Bavaria in the Federal Republic, don't we?
At tagesschau.de - Die Nachrichten der ARD there's the original article.
Fangs: The Firefox Screen Reader Emulator Extension - Standards-schmandards
A screen reader emulator for Firefox. So you can see how your own pages would come across in a screen reader.
tsearch-v2-intro - Introduction to tsearch2 - a full-text index technique for PostgreSQL
Tsearch2 - full text extension for PostgreSQL - Further documentation on tsearch2
Aldipod at Heise
So actually the apple is the same as the pear. The person eating it just has to come to terms with the fact that it tastes different.
At Der Schockwellenreiter I found the original article.
Luminous Landscape field test the R-D1
The first test of the R-D1 that I've come across so far. Well, 3000 dollars (or euros) is no small change and not everyone can just pick one up right away - so it can take a while before the first tests come in. The camera is still interesting. But simply incredibly expensive.
At Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com) you can find the original article.
Yet another Project in Python
If you've taken a closer look at the Toolserver, you may have already suspected that I want to do more with it. A second project that I started a few days ago will serve the same purpose. Active Storage Framework for Python is a Python framework for putting data into databases. However, not one of the usual object-relational mappers, but its own database structure that simply misuses a SQL database underneath as a data storage — I didn't want to reinvent everything. The ideas of the Active Storage Framework for Python come from Userland Frontier and Mumps — so a hierarchical namespace in which all elements are automatically persistent and in which many object types are mapped as tables (similar to Frontier). The whole thing uses pretty much every introspection feature of Python that I know. Ok, there are some programs from me that use even nastier methods, but sometimes I'm ashamed of the particular hacks there — what I've done here is considerably cleaner. Mainly getattr and friends. Though taken to excess. As a starting point for the Active Storage Framework for Python, the README is a good choice. If you want to try it out: PostgreSQL and psycopg must be installed. Otherwise you just need a database and you can get started. The Active Storage Framework for Python creates the database schema automatically. At the moment it's only available in CVS, since I'm currently — it's still 0.1.0 — tinkering wildly with it. Interfaces and data structures can still change significantly.
Toolserver Framework for Python - Slides
Anyone interested in the project Toolserver Framework for Python - a server written in Python that makes creating web services simple and convenient - can take a look at the presentation I recently gave to colleagues about it. To view the presentation, you need a reasonably current browser that supports and has JavaScript and CSS enabled. Yes, even the devil's tool works with it.
If the slides seem too vague without my commentary, you can simply print the presentation in your browser. This pulls a different CSS stylesheet and the printout includes supplementary explanations. Basically what I talked about. The presentation system used is actually quite clever - it's S5 by Eric Meyer. Practically perfect for quickly putting together presentations with notes and publishing them on the web. And I still prefer vi to PowerPoint. Here's the original article.
Half a million euros fine for Prince Ernst August
Can't they finally lock this guy up?
At tagesschau.de - Die Nachrichten der ARD you can find the original article.
Large Surveillance Operation on Internet Relay Chat
What a pile of rubbish.
At heise online news you can find the original article.
Criticism of ITU Proposals for Network Management
And again new brain cramps from the ITU - this time even with obvious evidence of this bureaucratic monster's technical incompetence. Sorry, but geographically or politically oriented allocation of IP addresses is simply and plainly gross nonsense - merely submitting such a proposal already disqualifies one from further discussions about technical matters of the Internet ...
Yes, RIPE and other IP registries are certainly also geographically organized - but their organization is based on the rough geographic structure of network topology. Breaking that down to such silly concepts as nation states would be utter lunacy.
At heise online news you can find the original article.
NRW-FDP: The Bankrupt General
So the self-proclaimed party of business has really brought in a real expert
At WDR.de you can find the original article.
SimpleTAL - standalone TAL and METAL implementation
ATM as Gaming Console!
Ouch. That almost hurts.
I found the original article at Uhu's Weblog Droppings.
Infinity-to-the-Power-of-Infinity - Small application for creating icons from other icons
Gap in Sun's Java Plug-ins Grants Access to the System
Holla the Forest Fairy! Now it's getting exciting, when the first cross-platform worm or virus will be based on this.
From a purely technical standpoint, something like that would certainly be pretty cool nonetheless
At heise online news you can find the original article.
VW probably won't pay trade tax again
Yeah, faces of the crisis. Of course you can't burden a corporation like Volkswagen with something as trivial as trade tax. Where would that leave us. Unimaginable.
Strategy of the day: rake in billions in profits abroad, take losses only in Germany, pay no taxes, and still complain about the Germany location.
Hey, there must be a reform for that. After all, the millions missing in tax revenues in Wolfsburg have to be squeezed out of the citizens somehow.
At tagesschau.de - Die Nachrichten der ARD you can find the original article.
ADAC warns about light mobile vehicles
Because our streets aren't unsafe enough yet and because we don't have enough accidents, people are now being allowed on the road under EU pressure who a) lack adequate training (training? A theoretical exam and half an hour of driving practice can hardly be called that) and b) lack adequate equipment (ridiculous plastic boxes without any noteworthy safety features).
What's the point of this nonsense?
This Class S license is a completely stupid idea. Hopefully these shoeboxes on wheels will stay absurdly expensive enough that ideally only the dumbest people fall for it and buy them. Traffic will then do its part to provide the appropriate evolutionary pressure...
Digital Lumber, Inc. - A complete nameserver in Python
Patents Should Meet BASIC Tests of Reason
Ouch. A couple of employees from the Microsoft Visual Basic Team apparently filed a patent on the IsNot operator - yes, something like a "not equal to", but for object references instead of values - what a bunch of nonsense. And cheekily, they also claim in their application that Borland Delphi is a Basic derivative — while ignoring the fact that Delphi is Pascal, which has a quite different history...
The whole thing has the feel of a joke, but unfortunately it appears to be true.
pyeBay - Use the eBay API from Python - Python API für eBay
Python IAQ: Infrequently Answered Questions - Partly witty, partly serious answers to not entirely obvious questions about Python
Schrempp's luxury Mercedes stolen
A certain mocking grin on my face I cannot deny
At tagesschau.de - Die Nachrichten der ARD you can find the original article.
Seehofer steps down as faction vice chair
Well. At least some form of consistency - although it would have come across considerably more consistently if he had done it right away. Of course, that doesn't make all this fuss any more intelligent and doesn't improve this silly health mess of the Union ...
At tagesschau.de - Die Nachrichten der ARD there's the original article.
Slate Language Website
More interesting is actually Slate. On the one hand, the implementation is freely available to play around with, and on the other hand, the language at least came into the world with a concept - Smalltalk with multimethod dispatch à la CLOS and a prototype-based object system à la Self. All of it, though, in classic Smalltalk syntax. That's at least a vision - let's do what Common Lisp has been able to do for a long time, but in Smalltalk.
But then I still ask myself why not just use Common Lisp, where you'd simply have to build the prototype-based object system as a package, but macros, multimethod dispatch and other fun stuff are already done? Programming language designers are masochists
Solar Powered iPod Backup
Cool. A solar-powered battery charger for the iPod. But looking at the weather outside right now, I probably need a charger that runs on pedal power instead - there's no sun to work with here.