Archive 6.4.2004 - 22.4.2004

Ullrich cancels Liège and Henninger Tower

Bah.

At least Team T-Mobile still has a couple of other good riders, and maybe Vinokourov will have the right legs for the Tour again. And Gerolsteiner is also doing quite well with Hondo.

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

A, B, C, ... D! The Programming Language - OSNews.com - Description of the D programming language

Alan Kay to receive Turing Award

Great!

I found the original article at Lambda the Ultimate.

Castor Transport: NRW sues, Saxony grumbles

Yeah, Saxony wants to save money, so NRW should spend millions on a transport that makes no sense and isn't necessary. Great idea.

You can find the original article at WDR.de.

iamphet.nm.ru - Scheme stuff (MzVim) - Integrate MzScheme as a scripting language in VIM

Minister Schmidt sees 'educational catastrophe' coming

I see a catastrophe coming in the face of mindless politicians. Nobody's interested either.

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

Walloon Arrow: Ullrich climbs off bike after 100km

Oh man, this won't work like this ...

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

dkbza - pydot - Python Interface for the GraphViz DOT language

Apple Xsan: an Overview

Yummy! Do I have a chance to motivate my employer to switch everything to XServes? Probably not. Too bad, actually.

At Industrial Technology & Witchcraft you can find the original article.

The New Power of Authors

Well, as soon as there's something somewhere that someone could benefit from committing fraud over, there will be at least one fraudster who exploits it. It's kind of like a law of nature - and it applies to authors too.

At NETZEITUNG.DE Voice of Germany you can find the original article.

MS Explorer 'Patch': Either 14 Holes or No SSL

It's kind of funny how this software monstrosity is falling apart these days. Not really high-quality software, that sort of thing.

At Industrial Technology & Witchcraft you can find the original article.

Apple's jackboots step on PlayFair in India.

Well, let's see where PlayFair shows up next. It has a bit of that tortoise and hare quality to it.

At kuro5hin.org you can find the original article.

Calzone

I don't often do this, but I have to vent my frustration: my calzone had tuna in it. Yuck. There you are hungry, have to wait over an hour for the calzone, and then something like that – tuna in the calzone without being asked.

angry face

Here's the original article.

DarwinPorts Home

I was actually a Fink fan until recently (if only because it's based on Debian utilities). But since Fink has been behaving very strangely for me lately (for example, the Fink mirrors weren't all reachable because their nameserver apparently was misconfigured or because their SVN port simply didn't work, or because support for 10.2 is a bit strange), I decided to try DarwinPorts. And I have to say, I really like the system.

However, what I don't like so much is the fact that not every program works out-of-the-box. mtr, for example, complains about raw packets that it can't generate because it's not suid-root. True - it wasn't. I don't simply install ports as root - I use a normal user for the build. That all works fine because the user has the necessary permissions. But an mtr that is suid-gb can't generate raw packets anymore, even when used by root...

However, the normal user will probably rarely stumble over this, and normal applications should work pretty much right away.

What really puzzled me, however, was my attempt to install Subversion. Okay, I can understand that Subversion needs a web server - after all, it's essential for the server (although personally I would prefer a separation into a Subversion server and a Subversion client). But that Apache2 should be fetched just so a local installation of it runs on the machine, just because you might need the Subversion client - I think that's rather awkward. Especially since there are Port variants for exactly that purpose - but Subversion only offers a mod_dav_svn and a Python variant. In the mod_dav_svn variant, Apache is a prerequisite - but I actually just wanted normal Subversion. Strange. Okay, well, I admit - if you know what APR is, it also becomes clear where Apache2 comes in. Here's the original article.

German Phonetic Alphabet - German Phonetic Alphabet

Are warning letters no longer allowed to rake in money?

This might put a stop to cease-and-desist letter mania for some. If those sending cease-and-desist letters have to reckon with consequences that go beyond normal court costs, they might think twice about it in the future. On the other hand, there are still far too many situations where absurd cease-and-desist letters are successful.

At Industrial Technology & Witchcraft you can find the original article.

Staged victory for Darwin opponents

No Church!

I simply don't understand why people want to push through such nonsense and why politicians let themselves be harnessed to such an absurd cart. Ok, it's the Berlusconi government, which has barely missed a single gaffe and embarrassment so far, but even for them it's actually a pretty absurd matter.

Reality does not bend to the superstitious notions of some church bigwigs and their crazy followers. Evolution is reality, whether these nuts like it or not.

I hope the Italian Constitutional Court stops this nonsense before it spreads any further. It's bad enough that this nonsense keeps bubbling up in America, it doesn't need to get state support in Europe too.

At heise online news you can find the original article.

Shanghai: Transrapid route sinking, hardly any passengers

73 passengers a day? And run a Transrapid for that? You might as well sink it and plow it under, that would be cheaper.

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

GROKLAW - Linux as Security Risk and the Answers to It

At groklaw there is a summary of reactions to the nonsense that was spouted by the head of Green Hills Software.

Here is the original article.

Linux 2.6 and mISDN HowTo - HowTo for ISDN over CAPI with Linux 2.6

Embedded Systems Developer: "Linux is a Security Risk"

Oh man, there's someone who, in a desperate attempt to hold onto his slipping furs, shot way over the mark and made a fool of himself.

At heise online news there's the original article.

Erik Zabel wins Rund um Köln

Rode out brilliantly, absolutely sovereign. A bit of bad luck for Danilo Hondo, who was on the wrong side of Zabel. But Zabel's performance was absolutely brilliant - and with that he gets his 186th victory and ties with Cippolini.

My Digital SLR is probably dead now

As I wrote in P2139, my digital SLR (a Kodak DCS 520) was acting up. Today the digital camera part won't turn on at all - the analog part, which is an EOS 1N, works perfectly. Only the digital component supplied by Kodak refuses to respond. Shit. And I've only had the camera since January - but purchased it privately. Now I'm wondering whether I'd be satisfied with a 10D or possibly even a 300D - both are significantly slower than my DCS 520. Ok, the resolution is higher, the images larger, but I don't really need that necessarily. With the DCS 520 I was already able to print images at 20x30 cm even though it only delivered 2 megapixels. Has anyone else previously owned a fast digital SLR and switched to one of these slower Canons? Or does someone have a pro SLR for work and a consumer SLR for private use and can say something about how they subjectively compare? So it's not about the specs on paper, but about the subjective frustration that could arise from possibly slower response times. An EOS is important because only with those do I have the chance to continue using my Zeiss lenses with an adapter. Besides, I already have a quite nice lens for Canon - the 2.5/50 macro. Otherwise the Nikon D70 would be significantly more interesting from a specs standpoint, since it's considerably faster.

Somehow digital is annoying. Analog is much more reliable and the selection isn't fraught with nearly as many compromises. But unfortunately you don't get the image right away, which you sometimes would like to have...

Update: after some calculations and considerations I've added the D70 back to my selection. The speed and some missing features of the 300D make the D70 significantly more attractive - after all, you can get it together with the 60mm Micro Nikkor for the price of the 10D body, with sometimes significantly better performance. Which of course doesn't really make the choice any easier...

Stop Church Exits with Tax Advantages

No Church!

What a stupid idea. Tax benefits for those who are church members. Is there really no proposal so dumb and absurd that some stupid CDU/CSU politician won't put it on the table?

The taxpayer is already financing the church anyway. Directly through tax collection executed by the state, indirectly through the many kindergartens, schools and hospitals that are allegedly run by church organizations but ultimately operated with taxpayer money.

The Catholic Church is one of the richest organizations in Germany, is tax-privileged through its church status and is now supposed to be additionally subsidized at the wish of these CDU/CSU clowns? Ridiculous!

At tagesschau.de - The ARD News you can find the original article.

Wiki Software at Webware

An interesting wiki software in Python that works with restructured Text instead of any wiki markup language. Very interesting because ReST is very powerful and also very pleasant for web-based editing - no markup, but mainly just formatted ASCII text. Unfortunately currently only available via Subversion.

Here you can find the original article.

Zope.org - Readme file for ZopeEditManager 0.9.3 - Integrate External Editor in Zope under OS X

30-meter spruce for Easter bonfire

This Easter bonfire nonsense is getting on my nerves big time. The whole area stinks like a cold ashtray. Disgusting. And every farm thinks it has to burn its own Easter fire. Nothing but pyromaniacs around here ...

At WDR.de you can find the original article.

Apple protects itself from 'Playfair'

Was to be expected that Apple would take action against it. Hosting the project on Sourceforge was really a bit too bold.

It could be interesting to observe how this develops further. For Apple, it could become a real problem if the music industry thinks their DRM implementation is too lax - and, for example, prefers Microsoft's model.

On the other hand, Apple now has such a large market share in music downloads that it's probably somewhat difficult for the music industry to take action against Apple without shooting themselves in the foot. Though they're dumb enough to try anyway.

At Industrial Technology & Witchcraft there's the original article.

For Radio Programmers

I wasn't familiar with him. Very practical! Especially since I finally got access to cable radio yesterday.

At Wortfeld you can find the original article.

Sun discontinues development of UltraSparc V

Ouch. Ok, it was foreseeable - the new chips were announced repeatedly, but never appeared. Still - that's quite a debacle. SUN simply doesn't have enough resources to abandon a chip line in the sand without it having an impact on the company ...

At heise online news you can find the original article.

Bush knew about 9/11 weeks in advance

It's quite remarkable how more and more keeps piling up, and this president can still manage to stay in office. He's easily surpassed Nixon and Clinton in terms of misconduct.

At Industrial Technology & Witchcraft you can find the original article.

Notebook Fuel Cell for Ten Hours of Runtime

Eventually it will get to the point where you can pour aquavit or whisky into your notebook to run it.

At heise online news there's the original article.

MacBiff - IMAP4 mail checker for OS X 10.3

PLT Spy - News

With PLT Spy - the Python implementation for the PLT Scheme runtime - development continues. The current approach is to bring the CPython API to PLT Spy and integrate it into the PLT Scheme runtime, making it possible to use CPython extensions. The goal is to be able to use almost all extensions and also the original C code for standard types in PLT Spy, thereby making all CPython libraries available at once.

That sounds very good, but it raises the question of why one should still use PLT Spy - the linked article provides some answers, but concrete details will only be apparent once things have progressed further.

Here you can find the original article.

Dragnet search does not lead to success

And Schily of course still sees the dragnet investigation as successful. Top marks on the open-ended idiocy scale ...

At heise online news there's the original article.

Spyware manufacturer wants to go public

Audacious. Data protection violations without end, fraudulent software installation (because nowhere does this garbage warn that data is being spied on and forwarded), and the whole thing packaged in a form that's more reminiscent of viruses and worms than proper software (namely piggybacking on other programs). And something like this wants to go public.

At heise online news there's the original article.

Divmod.Org :: Home :: Projects - A bunch of very interesting Python projects

Dnsmasq - a DNS forwarder for NAT firewalls. - DNS proxy for small systems - Alternative to PDNSD

Logilab.org - Aspects - Aspect Oriented Programming with Python

Schrempp confirmed despite shareholder criticism

He's running the company into the ground economically. Makes stupid decisions and grandiose projects that fail. Approves himself a record salary despite the company declining and employees losing money and jobs. Gets criticized by shareholders. And the consequence: discharge of liability and confirmation in office, extension of the outrageous contract until 2008.

Shareholders are complete idiots.

At tagesschau.de - Die Nachrichten der ARD there's the original article.

Introduction of new identity documents as 'gigantic laboratory test'

And we are the rats in the maze.

At heise online news you can find the original article.

Experiences with the Krasnogorsk FT-2 Panoramic Camera

A website about the predecessors of the Horizon Panorama cameras. Worth reading alone for the factory name - Krasnogorsky Mekhanichesky Zavod - Jaroslav Poncar has posted pictures taken with the camera online.

Here you can find the original article.

The Fantabulous Icon-O-Matic! - Icon Builder on the web

AIDS Medications Cheaper for Developing Countries

First Signs of Intelligence?

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

Amadeus II - Edit Sounds

Nette Software. Load sounds, edit, look at spectra and save again in the desired target format. Makes a very good impression on me. But I'm also a layman when it comes to this sort of thing ...

Here you can find the original article.

Drop Target for my Brain

The description of Near Time Flow sounds very interesting. A free-form database where you throw text snippets, regardless of source. The software records the sources along with the snippets. You can edit and expand the snippets. You can travel through time and view older states. You can access the original sources and overlay Flow data on top of them. You can send data to other users in a peer-to-peer network fashion, with Flow automatically determining which transmission method works best. You can access your data stocks via RSS and perform full-text searches. And all of this with a nice OS X interface.

Somehow it sounds like something Tinderbox could have been if it had been conceived much more openly.

And above all, it sounds like it comes much closer to the idealtypical Zettelkasten. Tinderbox with its agents and links is quite nice, but Flow sounds like the Zettelkasten nirvana could be reached.

At PragDave there's the original article.

Genetically modified wheat sown in Germany for the first time

On top of it all. And the citizen is also supposed to foot the bill for police operations - even though nobody wants the genetic garbage, except for the corporations and some bribed local politicians.

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

Fastpath and faster upstream for T-DSL without setup fee

The faster upstream would be nice...

At heise online news there's the original article.

ICANN Defends Ban on VeriSign's Sitefinder

ICANN does something useful.

At heise online news you'll find the original article.