Crystal VST Instrument - Software synthesizer for OS X and Windows
Archive 29.10.2004 - 5.11.2004
Experiences with pycrypto
I recently posted a link to pycrypto in the blogmarks - I've now used it in the Toolserver Framework for Python to add encrypted RPCs and RSA authentication. I have to say, I'm really enthusiastic about this library - you can achieve results very simply and quickly, the interfaces of the various algorithms are very sensibly designed, and it's a good collection of algorithms - including often neglected areas like proper random number generation (including access to operating system mechanisms for this purpose, on Linux, OS X, and even Windows!). So if you're planning a project with Python and cryptography, definitely check out this library. It's so simple to use that it's even suitable as a standard library for small use cases - for example, for encrypting passwords or similar purposes. Somehow remarkable, I'm now using the second project maintained by Andrew Kuchling: in the Toolserver Framework for Python, the Medusa server is included as the web server - a fast and compact web server written in Python with many interesting extension options. The original article is here.
MidiKeys - Software keyboard for OS X
Seekbot Seitentest - Tool for analyzing the search engine friendliness of a page
Current Electoral Vote Predictor 2004
Andrew Tannenbaum on his experiences with the election results presentation - which didn't work out quite as well as he hoped due to excessive traffic. However, the last paragraph of his report is nice: Again, if you are a senior majoring in computer science and are seriously thinking of leaving the country due to the election results, you might be interested in my international English-language Masters program in parallel and distributed computer systems. If you are a faculty member in computer science, I would be very grateful if you would go to that Website and download and print the poster (a PDF file) and pin it to a bulletin board where potential students might see it and mention it in any classes you teach to CS seniors. Thank you.
Dowser - Meta search engine for the desktop in Python
M2Crypto Installer for Python 2.3 - Installer for M2Crypto - an open source Python crypto & SSL toolkit. - python, cryptography, SSL, S/MIME, ZServerSSL, ZSmime, PKI, Zope - And the grandfather of all crypto toolkits for Python
Python Cryptography Toolkit - Yet another cryptography toolkit for Python - more algorithms, fewer protocols
TLS Lite - Public key algorithms and other encryption stuff - in pure Python (OpenSSL support optional)
Coming to terms with the past with the wrecking ball
Well, it seems money and corruption win again. Regardless of whether history is disregarded or existing law is trampled on. As long as some ministerial official gets their cut.
I found the original article at Der Schockwellenreiter.
No bribes were given in the awarding of contracts for the BA's online job exchange
Sorry, but if no corruption was involved, then this absurd online job board is the best evidence of boundless management stupidity. Whether that's really the better result, I don't know.
I found the original article at NETZEITUNG.DE Internet.
Bush sees himself as victor
No matter how it turns out - I hereby declare Americans to be completely insane and a collective case for the asylum. The only positive thing about this whole mess is the proof that there are even more stupid voters in the world than those in Hesse.
CRN | Breaking News | Shadows Loom Over Sun's Open Source Plans
SUN's egg dance continues. Will the managers ever realize that all this fussing around just makes them look ridiculous and that such nonsense at best makes SUN itself obsolete at some point? I mean, at some point even the most ardent SUN supporter can't take the place seriously anymore. IBM will be happy - as the last major provider of large Unix machines (yeah, yeah, SGI still exists - but they're also disappearing more and more into oblivion).
IRCnet.org Webchat Login - Web interface for IRC
Anniversary - Two Years of Hugos House of Weblog Horror
Today it is exactly two years old (first entry was P2, back then still with Radio Userland). And it has over 3600 entries (together everything that can be called an entry in my software).
Buyers on eBay enjoy right of withdrawal
I think that's right - at least since I've thought about it a bit more. Yes, it makes sales via eBay harder for commercial sellers. But the situation where a dealer could simply shirk their obligations by offering goods on eBay as an auction would really be something strange. From P2813 the question remains of how eBay will implement all this. Actually, they should now integrate a reversal button so that a return can also be reversed with regard to eBay fees, because ultimately the sale didn't come about and eBay would then have to refund the sales-dependent fees. At NETZEITUNG.DE Internet I found the original article.
Gap in Internet Explorer enables full system access
Please, people, just throw IE off your hard drive. That thing is unacceptable. Take one of the many better alternatives, for example Firefox. But finally dump this garbage heap where it belongs.
And another note, because the Heise article doesn't make this clear: this exploit is much worse because it doesn't directly affect JavaScript, etc., but only indirectly. And with that it can come into play everywhere the IE is also used internally (e.g. with the various nice tools that constantly fetch and display HTML from the internet for you!). The capabilities of this exploit seem to be quite serious.
At heise online news there's the original article.
Schröder and Eichel want to abolish Day of German Unity
It's too early for Carnival, so they probably mean the Moppelkotze seriously
At tagesschau.de - Die Nachrichten der ARD you can find the original article.
Update: White House declares Bush as election winner
Observers criticized that electoral procedures in many respects did not meet the best standards practiced worldwide. The USA had one of the most complicated electoral systems. Moreover, they complained that they had less access to the elections than in Kazakhstan, and observers were often not even permitted to get close, but could only position themselves dozens of meters away from polling stations. And the voting computers were less secure than recently in Venezuela. There, inputs were printed out and ballot papers were collected in urns as usual, so they could also be recounted. - United Banana-States of America indeed ...
At Telepolis News (03.11.2004) you can find the original article.
Useful VIM features - Nice little tips about VIM
Airspeed - Trac - Compact template engine with Cheetah-like syntax
ECL v0.9d released
ECL is a pretty nice Common Lisp - relatively fast and with the C compiler you can really get solid code. And the best part: it can be embedded in other programs. Common Lisp might be a bit overkill for a scripting language, but better to go big than small.
At Rainer Joswig's Lisp News you can find the original article.
Planet Planet! - Web-based aggregator in Python
Python ipqueue
Anyone who has always wanted to tinker with the TCP/IP stack in Linux, but doesn't like C and prefers to use Python instead: the linked project offers an elegant solution for that. It allows you to hook Python scripts into Linux's Netfilter. Transparent proxies and similar things can be accomplished with just a few lines of code.
Shrek II
I like DVDs where it's even worth letting the main menu run for a while
But the talent competition after the movie is just absolutely hilarious!
taz 3.11.04 X-Files in the Elbmarsch
In the end, the whole thing became a matter of faith, one that above all had to leave the nuclear-critical public bewildered. The citizens' initiative could only be trusted by those who believed in secret German nuclear tests, a covered-up accident, and numerous manipulated studies. Many things are possible, of course, but that doesn't make them probable. The cause of the leukemia cluster in Lower Saxony's Elbmarsch will probably remain unexplained forever. Yes, yes, all improbable and unproven and all that. But that doesn't make the children who have fallen ill with leukemia healthy and the dead alive again. But it's easier to portray critics as cranks and simply bury one's head in the sand. In a few years the problem will have solved itself biologically anyway, and then no one will care about it anymore.
Data cannon - Hacking biometric systems
Fingerprint scanners outwitted with household items. So much for the security of biometric systems, as Schily wants to have them built into identity cards.
freshmeat.net: Project details for Kernel TCP Virtual Server - Virtual servers (performance or failsafe clusters) based on protocol content directly in the Linux kernel
freshmeat.net: Project details for ProxSMTP - SMTP proxy with hooks for external filters etc.
I© love" You®
More madness around trademark law. Eventually we won't be allowed to say anything because absurd jurisprudence, brazen lawyers and incompetent judges consider this whole nonsense more important than protecting citizens from such rubbish. We can probably just wait for the first websites to be cease-and-desist letters because they have some word sequences in the title tag that some manufacturer has had registered.
At Telepolis News (01.11.2004) you can find the original article.
Linux: In Kernel GUI
Very interesting for control systems and perhaps also PDAs: a GUI system that runs completely in the Linux Kernel and is integrated into it, requiring extremely few resources.
Pasta: text pasting service for del.icio.us - Convert text via copy-and-paste into a website and automatically post to del.icio.us
Polar ice melts faster than expected
On the one hand, the effects are certainly threatening - and whether we can really still turn things around in time (and whether we can even change the outcome at all!) is still completely unclear. On the other hand, it's actually pretty exciting to be living in exactly such a time, when the magnetic pole will probably flip and maybe one of the bigger climate catastrophes is looming. I mean, who experiences something like that? Not just boring civil wars, social upheavals and similar nonsense, but real events with geological consequences?
I found the original article at NETZEITUNG.DE Wissenschaft.
#python discussion of how to implement the Halting Problem
Ouch. Such discussions hurt. Even when you only read them and don't have to take part.
Cease and Desist Letter to Kefk Network by Waldorf Law Firm
Another documentation of how this mysterious law firm in Munich attempts to silence websites through the use of cease-and-desist letters. This is the same case as in P2908. According to kefk.net, the following companies are among the clients represented by Waldorf law firm:
- BMG Records
- Edel Records
- EMI Music
- Sony Music Entertainment
- Universal Music
- Warner Music Group
Everyone is invited to draw their own conclusions.
Unfortunately, the cease-and-desist letter system is so perverse that private individuals can barely defend themselves against it - among other reasons because many legal protection insurance policies specifically exclude this type of proceedings. Ultimately, the very possibility of cease-and-desist letters makes the Internet into the lawless space it supposedly is not - but not for Internet users, but rather for lawyers.
Holocore / Mac OS X Software / OnDeck - Upload plugin for iView Media for image uploads to commercial image services
OkayRpcProtocol - YAML Implementors Site - RPC mechanism for YAML - interesting for TooFPy?
PyYaml - Trac - YAML parser for Python
SLiP << Projects << very simple website for Scott Sweeney - Shorthand notation for XML - inspired by Python
( Syck ): YAML for Ruby, Python, PHP and OCaml - Yet another YAML parser and emitter - this one focuses on completeness, speed and cross-platform support
Winter time change
What really gets me about this whole thing: these incompetent manufacturers of electronic devices with clocks. The rules have remained unchanged for many years, but even current devices rarely have automatic adjustment. No, you don't need a radio time signal receiver for something like this, a very simple algorithm would suffice. But what do the manufacturers do? If they're being generous, they at least build in a switch for manual adjustment of winter/summer time. Most of them, however, still demand that the customer manually adjust the time themselves. Then there are these ridiculous devices where you can't even set the hours separately, but have to run the whole time forward through 23 hours instead of simply going back one hour.
The manufacturers of overpriced consumer products clearly have never heard of usability...
And mobile phone manufacturers especially get on my nerves—they already get the local time transmitted via cellular networks, but still demand manual time adjustment. Even stupid video recorder manufacturers at least have the option to fetch the time from the video text, but mobile phone manufacturers are fundamentally too incompetent for that.
Oh, and PDA manufacturers whose PDAs don't do automatic time adjustment even though the time zone has to be configured in the device anyway (and therefore the rules for automatic adjustment are unquestionably established) deserve to be pelted with their instruction manuals.
YAML Ain't Markup Language - YAML language description
Backbone - a GNUstep-based desktop environment - Desktop environment for GNUstep
Index of /data/gnustep/ - GNUstep live CD - similar to Knoppix, but a decent desktop
Initiative New Social Market Economy
What's supposed to be new? Sure, the dismantling. And it's supposed to be made palatable to voters. With lies, lobbying, and distortion of reality. Organized nonsense, plain and simple.
I found the original article at Der Rollberg.
Couple could hardly be separated
Yeah, those Dülmen folks have always seemed suspicious to me
BSA Chief: Software Pirates Face Increased Crackdown
Their most popular lie: The software industry suffers billions in damages from software piracy. - No, that's wrong. There is no damage in the billions. They lose potential profits, but it's absolutely not proven that these would actually have been earned in a different scenario. And even the profits that actually didn't materialize are not damage - after all, there's no right to profits and no guarantee of profits. They can fail to materialize for all sorts of reasons. Software is simply not a thing, nothing that you produce and then steal. Software pirate is anyway a silly word: none of those people stand in front of the software crate with a gun or knife and demand it to copy itself...
I find this arrogant attitude of the BSA and thus also of the companies it represents (yes, that also includes IBM and Apple, who otherwise come across rather positively to me) almost as infuriating as the behavior of the music industry. This silly attitude that you have a God-given right to profits in the billions (because that's what they're talking about with their claim!) and the evil copiers are directly stealing them is nothing but silly window dressing.
Sure, a company that develops something and then explicitly can't market that product anymore because of illegal copies is in a tough spot - and then really does have reason to speak of damage. That has happened in the area of computer games (LucasArts never properly marketed two games because copies were already out there before they even hit the market).
But none of the companies organized in the BSA have such a position. On the contrary, the biggest rip-off artists are in there, squeezing every penny out of customers and not always delivering the quality that customers actually want - software updates that conveniently skip a major release because then you can charge money for the update. Buggy software that eats data, where the manufacturer then refuses all liability for these software errors (just like product liability in the software sector is a foreign concept for many companies in general).
Of course, companies have a right to enforce their contracts - software license agreements included. After all, no one is forced to buy this software. But this general criminalization of your own customers, this constant suspicion that they would always cheat anyway and this ongoing victim mentality especially of the software giants pisses me off.
At heise online news there's the original article.