I'm back

After an unintended break thanks to a disk crash on my Hetzner server, I'm back now. And looking back, I have to say that Hetzner's support went well. I only have standard support, so support is only available during the specified service hours. Both days (on Monday because of the system setup on a new disk and on Tuesday because of the server restart due to a hang) they responded immediately in the morning. When I pointed out further disk errors (or rather CRC errors), they also responded immediately and rebuilt the system - apparently their disks are usually in swap frames, which also explains how they were able to install a new disk for me so quickly.

Well, let's see how long it lasts this time. In any case, I was able to test my crash recovery and have to say it works surprisingly well. Okay, there were a few minor issues of course, but it's all manageable. Only http://muensterland.org/ suffered, as the server's database file had to be rolled back one day since the most recent file didn't work. Well, manageable problems...

It's getting worse

Conscience examination for Lower Saxony hat-wearing women. All of course in the name of combating terrorism.

At Telepolis News (01.05.2004) you can find the original article.

Hondo Didn't Quite Have His Legs After All

Tough - Hondo ran out of steam in the final meters, Krohn passes him. Too bad for Danilo Hondo, especially after already crossing the finish line on the wrong side of Zabel in Cologne. Still, a great performance to lead for such a long time. Not everyone can do that.

Zabel overthought the tactics and Kummer started the chase race far too late. Annoying, because it was already visible earlier in the race. Well, nothing you can do about it - if they'd attacked earlier, they might have run out of breath and it wouldn't have worked anyway. One thing is clear: racing around the Henninger Tower is and remains an exciting event.

Dell goes crazy

Cool. Dell keeps data from computer buyers on record. That's okay. But the fact that this data can then be retrieved unprotected over the web using the identification numbers on the device - and even for people who just guess the numbers - isn't that a bit exaggerated when it comes to helpful data protection? Can you make sense of it?

At The wonderful world of Isotopp you can find the original article.

EU Council approves new regulations to protect intellectual property

Great, now the blatant rip-off by the music and film industry is also being opened wide in Europe. The lobbyists have prevailed and the will of the people is being trampled on. The voter simply still has the worst lobby in Europe.

At heise online news you can find the original article.

PyLinda - Tuplespaces in Python - this time a fairly complete version

Around the Henninger Tower: Zabel wants to stop Rebel

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that he makes it.

I found the original article at Radsport-News.com.

Accessfs: permission filesystem for linux - virtual filesystem for managing capabilities and port bindings

Ear Monitors (R) brand by Future Sonics, Inc. - High-end in-ear monitors with sound isolation

Hybrid RAW Conversion

An interesting approach: take linear RAW images and create a black and white image from them, using it to gather detail and brightness information and, for example, determine sharpness. Then create a second image that adopts the color values - in this image, for example, apply noise reduction and similar mechanisms. After that, combine these two images - take the brightness (and thus the contrasts) from the black and white image and merge the color values from the black and white image. As a result, you get an image with good sharpness and good color, but fewer artifacts from the respective optimization steps (since each optimization is only applied to the elements that can handle these optimization steps without creating problems).

Here is the original article.

Leak in Soyuz Helium Tank

The team has a satellite phone with them to get help. Calling home I found the original article at NETZEITUNG.DE Science.

Calls of Love from the Depths

Screaming Fish - I'm always amazed at what nature still has up its sleeve ...

At NETZEITUNG.DE Wissenschaft you can find the original article.

rssh - restricted shell for scp/sftp - Another shell for ssh that only allows certain commands

scponly homepage - Shell for ssh use that allows only specific commands

Specification for Fault Code Interoperability - Standard Error Codes in XML-RPC

Opportunity Has Also Crossed the Finish Line

Yes. Let them run as long as possible!

At WDR: Landing on Mars you can find the original article.

Debian: Free, but Delayed

That's just how it is with Debian. Philosophy is important - sometimes just as important or even more important than the releases. I like it anyway - or precisely because of this? Because no other distribution really puts so much value on the ideas of Free Software - and is really consistent in what it does.

Sure, it's annoying sometimes when releases take years to come out. On the other hand, that's exactly what the Testing and Unstable distributions are for. Although as a user, I really only use Testing, or Stable on production servers.

Backports are relatively simple and allow you to update individual packages - but of course you're then responsible for the updates yourself. Sure, for pure users that's certainly not an option - they just want to install and not compile. On the other hand, you should always keep in mind that Linux is just a Unix - and being afraid of the compiler when using Unix is pretty out of place.

One thing is certain: I've played around with many distributions and also experimented more seriously. Except for Gentoo, none really impressed me, and Gentoo is too heavy for me for smaller machines and servers - I don't really want to fire up the compiler for every package when the machine's main load is for something else (server) or it's simply too small to convert some monster packages.

At heise online news there's the original article.

heise Security - News - Microsoft wanted to prevent publication of exploit against IIS

Well, Microsoft will probably never learn ...

Here you can find the original article.

Hugo's House spruced up a bit

I've been tinkering with the templates a bit and experimenting with a neat little script. As a result, each month in my blog now gets its own title image - the old text title had to go (but it's still defined as a popup title on the image, and of course it's in the title tag). At least this way my images get looked at occasionally, even if it's just a small strip from the middle that's being used.

[I18n-sig] Unicode surrogates: just say no! - Guido van Rossum explains why UCS-4 for internal strings is the best choice in Python

Bibble Labs - Professional Photo-Manipulation Software - RAW picture software for Mac and Windows

Boyz need Toyz

Jo, he's really nice, that 33er - if you look at the description, then programming-wise it's much closer to the old 41er. Ok, that's not necessarily more comfortable than RPL on the 48s and 49s, but somehow it awakens nostalgia in me. Besides, the price of 50 euros is much more reasonable. For Jutta that would be something for work, after all it can do RPN and base conversions too. However, it has an internal accuracy of 15 digits - no idea if that's enough for her work. At Der Schockwellenreiter there's the original article.

This must be fake.

Really. That can't be real. Here's the original article.

DeDRMS cracks Apple's iTunes copy protection

And on it goes with Johansen vs. Apple.

At heise online news you can find the original article.

EU wants to approve genetically modified corn

That's bullshit.

At tagesschau.de - Die Nachrichten der ARD you can find the original article.

Little Snob - automatic classification of numerical datasets using statistical methods in Python

Steinbrück Criticizes Chimney Sweep Monopoly

Everything comes around again - P1350. Whether Steinbrück's arguments are better than those of Mr. Theisen? At WDR.de you can find the original article.

The Omni Group - Applications - OmniWeb - Beta

I've installed the current beta for Omniweb 5 again over the last few days and have been playing around with it. I have to say, I'm impressed. The annoying caching bug is gone and overall Omniweb is very responsive and quite reliable. I haven't experienced any crashes in recent days. And the highlights of the new version are really great:

• The tabs with thumbnails I find brilliant, as they let me see much faster which window I need, even when I have many tabs open.
• Site-Preferences are a good idea, even if I probably won't use them very often. But they're much more intuitive to use than the similar feature in iCab.
• I can imagine Workspaces being very practical for Zope development, since I typically have a series of related windows open there. However, I haven't tried it yet. At work I still use Linux.
• The bookmarks are quite nice - similar to Safari, but also with integration of Safari bookmarks (without constant new imports). And bookmarks can be synchronized across other computers via WebDAV - if I finally get a Mac at work, that would be very nice. Of course, most of it ends up in my Blogmarks, but I still need some bookmarks - for example for my work.
• The security system makes a very well thought-out impression. For example, you can define yourself which applications you trust to open files directly with them.
• Since the Safari rendering engine is used, you have the same capabilities. For example, the already installed SVG plugin is being used directly. Unfortunately, this also brings Safari's rendering errors along... (overflow: auto on PRE for example, when there's only too much text in width, but not in height...)

Let's see how this develops further, but based on my gut feeling, I'd say OmniGroup must be pretty close to a release.

Update: As I just noticed, it even has an RSS feed reader built in. Integrated into the bookmark management and automatic updating. And it also supports RSS autodiscovery. Nice. Not really useful for me (since I use other aggregators), but nice.

Here's the original article.

DIGITAL RADIO - DAB Receiver - List of digital radio (DAB) receivers

DIGITAL RADIO WEST | Ihr Sendernetzbetreiber in NRW - Digital radio in North Rhine-Westphalia

Today the Digi was cooperative for once

And that's why there are a number of new images in the image blog. And since I've already thoroughly overwhelmed my creative abilities with the invention of titles and descriptions, here's just an overview of the images. All the images were created when I went to buy cake today. An extremely satisfying result - nice images and cake

Blue Bears?

Blue Bears?

No, but at least blueberries ...

Sea of Blossoms

Sea of Blossoms

A true sea of blossoms presents itself here.

The Color Pink

The Color Pink

or is it Pink?

A Wide Field ...

A Wide Field ...

... at least for the insect.

Spring Green 1

Spring Green 1

In the image only one color - in the eye a feeling.

Spring Green 2

Spring Green 2

Only one color in the image - a feeling in the eye.

Even More Green

Even More Green

Yes, I'm running out of image titles and associations. Are you just noticing that now?

Ecological Niche

Ecological Niche

Each has its own little habitat.

Do pompoms grow on trees?

Do Pompoms Grow on Trees?

Beautifully kitschy.

Valles Paries

Valles Paries

Looks like on Mars ... (and please don't hit me for my terrible Latin)

Joseph's Church Economic Building

Economic Building of the Joseph's Church

No, I still don't like the organization church. Nevertheless, some of their buildings occasionally offer nice subjects.

Forgent sues 31 companies over JPEG

One reason why it should be mandatory for formats that become IETF or other standards to be generally released from all patent holders as a matter of principle. Unfortunately, the opposite is rather the case.

At Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com) there is the original article.

Nikon Coolwalker MSV-01 Digital Photo Storage Viewer First Look

Interesting device: There are plenty of mass storage devices for images, some also with display of stored images. But this one is special because it can also display the Nikon NEF format - i.e. the RAW images from Nikons.

Here is the original article.

Wolfram's Future Math

Excerpts from A New Kind of Science - very interesting images and explanations about them - especially if you're interested in cellular automata and the complexity of their results. It reminds me of experiments I did in school with cellular automata - the results were often just as fascinating as exploring the Mandelbrot set, but much easier to perform on computers with limited resources. I found the original article at Lambda the Ultimate.

Kill Bill Vol. 1 - DVD

Hmm. Was there also a censorship beep in the cinema over Uma's performance in front of the little girl when she says her name? I can't remember that at all.

News from the Devil's Digi

My digital camera wants to annoy me. Now it's running again - first it wasn't responding anymore (P2160), now it worked right away. Apparently it worked so hard during its last use that it needed a week's vacation first. Strange. Maybe that was just a fear reaction that it's now working - where I threatened to buy a new one ...

UNIX History - Unix History Chart

CD-RW better for archiving than CD-R?

Just one paragraph in the text, but the hint sounds interesting: CD-RWs don't use color particles that get hit by the laser and can fade later — instead they use metallic elements that reflect light differently. These elements may not be as susceptible to environmental parameters as the color particles in CD-Rs. Something similar seems to be the case with DVDs. So it could make sense to archive on RW media. Here's more information. Here's the original article.

Cinema: Death in the Children's Room

It'll take me a few more days before I get to see it. So please hold back on the spoilers!

I found the original article at DIE ZEIT: Feuilleton and the original article.