... thrilling right to the end. A devilishly close yellow jersey. And a victory for Armstrong that he really had to work for. The 2004 Tour can be like that as well.
I'm wondering, though, what they want to name after Alexandre Vinokourov in Kazakhstan now, since he did finish in third place.
Ugh. Couldn't they have tested that before storing the waste accordingly? Yet another proof that throughout the entire nuclear industry supply chain, the supposed safety measures are all just speculation—no one has ever really bothered to seriously investigate them. That's why new risks keep popping up that were previously unknown. But what do we do? Keep producing that garbage, keep hauling it across the country, keep storing it in unsuitable facilities. Until someday it goes bang. But of course the nuclear industry has nothing to do with it and everything is safe.
At Spiegel Online: Wissenschaft there's the original article.
And the misery never ends ...
At heise online news you can find the original article.
The Apple customer from the Heise report linked here, who had problems after moving, has since been contacted by Apple and is now allowed to play his songs in Canada after all (and also access his account, but can't make any new purchases).
His conclusion is similar to what I wrote in the comments to my post: DRM creates a very poor position for the customer. He therefore no longer wants to buy DRM-protected media.
The question is how much longer DRM-free alternatives will continue to exist...
At algorhythm there's the original article.
Oh yes, the wonderfully absurd arguments from the marketing folks. Nobody pays the total sum (assuming it's even actually that high - the assumptions of these pseudo-experts are completely arbitrary), since it's distributed across all companies. If you break it down to the individual employee, you save a few euros per year. The 6 minutes per day certainly doesn't justify the immense investments a company would have to make in an archive system. You need other motivations for that, not just a bit of email searching. But that's much more effective for advertising ...
At heise online news there's the original article.
... in this weather. As Jan Ullrich had to find out - a crash, and the stage win (he probably couldn't have taken the tour win today anyway) was gone. But that's cycling for you: it's not just speed that matters, but also skill. And unfortunately Jan Ullrich didn't look as good as Lance Armstrong there, and that cost him seconds. But still, he put in a super time - because despite the crash, Lance Armstrong only managed to gain just 11 seconds, and that's saying something. This year Armstrong really wasn't given anything for free, not even the final time trial.
Of course it's a shame anyway, but I think Jan Ullrich can be more than satisfied with his performance. We haven't seen him perform this well in a long time. And in next year's Tour he might finally break Armstrong's winning streak.
Oh, and of course an incredible performance by David Millar, he really deserved that stage win, because Lance Armstrong couldn't catch him either!
And then there was Tyler Freaking Hamilton, who just managed to take second place in this stage and thereby lap the two Euskatel riders in the overall standings. Incredible performance!
So, after Schockwellenreiter wrote about it, now the overview page is here too. And wonder of wonders, it's the same one as for the ping. So much functionality, and everything with just one address!
And his suspicion that Python is involved is correct too. The XML-RPC server is written in PHP (almost the original one from Reinvented Technologies, just ported to PostgreSQL), but the cronjob (the part that runs every 5 minutes) is written in Python.
The overview page is especially helpful when first trying it out - you can see when the ping goes through and whether it goes through. Oh yes, you should only ping either weblogs.com or simon, otherwise you get strange error messages back from weblogs.com.
Of course everything is still beta at the moment, so if you try it and find problems, please send me a message and I'll take a look at it.
A couple of ribs broken and one seems to have pierced into a lung. Let's hope the doctors can get it under control, because the loss or severe impairment of a lung would end his athletic career. :-(
The weather today combined with the track is really very dangerous. Let's hope no more serious crashes happen.
The designer of the ingenious Minox 8x11mm cameras passed away on July 17, 2003, at the age of 97.
In his honor, load a film into your Minoxes again and take a few pictures.
For everyone whose software doesn't support multithreading, a Ping-Cacher in PHP is linked. It probably still needs a MySQL database and presumably the ability to set up PHP cron jobs. Pings then don't go to weblogs.com, but to the Ping-Cacher. And it forwards them.
Hmm. You could actually run that centrally in one place, then others could use it too. Not everyone needs to operate something like that. Ok, I've put something together, it's running on my server. If you want to ping weblogs.com but don't feel like waiting for weblogs.com, you can instead simply send a weblogUpdates.ping call (same format) to http://simon.bofh.ms/ping/. That gets stored in a database (PostgreSQL, not MySQL, but basically the same script as in the link). Behind it runs a cron job that starts every 5 minutes and sends pending pings. I'll probably also build an overview page that's similar to the one on weblogs.com, so you can see the pings with me right away and also get their status displayed.
Maybe Microsoft should just uninstall the entire TCP/IP stack with the next service pack, then they'd have a chance of finally securing it.
At heise online news you'll find the original article.
Pretty absurd the whole thing. And once again so beautifully customer-friendly.
Well, outside the USA there's no Music Store anyway, so it doesn't really matter to us for now. But it doesn't exactly bode well if the whole thing actually runs in Europe too.
Sure, Apple probably only bought usage rights for the USA — they have to pay royalties to the music industry. But you can't really call something like that customer-friendly, especially when you consider that purchased goods become invalid just because you move.
In any case, a nice example of the nonsense we're headed for if DRM continues to spread.
Cool! Knoppix is my favorite emergency distribution - just insert and boot, the computer remains unchanged, but a completely functional Linux based on Debian is available. With it, you can usually get just about anything repaired, except hardware damage.
Something like that for the Mac would certainly be nice too - also to show Mac users a Linux without having to repartition their disks.
At heise online news there is the original article.
That's nice of the Gates Foundation to give away Palms, and not those dreadful Pocket PCs
At heise online news there's the original article.
... but it wasn't boring. A tremendous solo effort by Tyler Hamilton (yes, the one with the damaged shoulder) over two category-one mountains. Completely alone since the second one (Col Bargarguy). And then still riding the long flat descent into Bayonne solo. Wow. And he still takes almost two minutes from the rest of the field at the end. How much strength does he have left?
Oh, and Zabel wins the sprint of the main field. 17 points on the way to the green jersey. Slowly but surely the squirrel gets fed.
Clever: first secure immunity against corruption investigations and then consolidate total media control. Really, all he needs now is to found his own religion. Church of Corruptology or something like that.
You can find the original article at tagesschau on the Internet here.
Tyler freaking Hamilton. Yeah, that fits. For Tour de France 2003 there's the original article.
Well, if they're setting themselves up like that for sprints, then I expect Gerolsteiner to take over the green jersey next year!
Please, please, dear Apple engineers, also replace the mail server in regular OS X with Postfix. This Sendmail is simply unbearable. Yes, you can patch it. Yes, I know how to do that. But I can't be bothered to fix it again after every upgrade. Sendmail belongs in the retirement home.
At MacGuardians there's the original article.
It's really outrageous what this company is getting away with. Still this lazy drivel when asked for concrete evidence. I hope that finally some company will put a stop to all this. The whole SCO action stinks miserably to high heaven.
At least here in the country, a stop has been put to this nonsense.
At heise online news you can find the original article.
What nonsense. I hope someone sues SCO over this story. The whole thing is taking on increasingly absurd proportions. Still no evidence for SCO's claims, but they're already busily ripping people off.
At heise online news you can find the original article.
With friends like these, you don't need enemies anymore ...
You can find the original article at Spiegel Online: Science.
That's just pure label fraud. Allegedly, the measures are supposed to reduce contributions to 13 percent by 2006. Nonsense. Why would the insurance companies do that if they're not forced to? And even if they did it contrary to expectations: what good does that do if the savings go toward a mandatory dental replacement insurance? And what about the other co-payments? 300 euros per hospital case - great, what's Grandma Kasulke supposed to do with her tiny pension? Sell the PC with the freshly installed Linux because the gallstones have to come out?
It's all rubbish, the mess politicians cobble together. Of course, the ordinary citizen has to foot the bill again. As usual, twice over - with higher fees and lower benefits.
People called the railway company out on that as advertising fraud. Politicians celebrate stuff like this as a major success.
... as Vinokourov had to painfully notice, he lost over 2 minutes. That's tough. But Armstrong also had to work hard. That he ultimately won at the finish line and put 40 seconds into Jan Ullrich is certainly also because he was probably riding mainly on adrenaline. After all, this was Armstrong's first crash in the Tour and not exactly a minor one, so the body's own doping certainly works very well. Incredible what these riders can pull off, even when they crash like Majo and Armstrong.
I think it's good that Ullrich waited for Armstrong. Okay, some will certainly argue that Ullrich waited too long, but ultimately he just gave Armstrong back what he had received from him back then. Simply a very nice gesture that shows these two riders really want to know who is stronger, not just who gets more luck.
And one thing is certain: the tension remains high until the last stage, because the overall victory will probably be decided on Saturday in the time trial. And that's also nice after Tours where the outcome was sometimes almost decided in the first week.
Ugh. Mud-slinging. They should face each other on the Tour rather than in the courtroom.
Wolfowitz is increasingly taking on the characteristics of Comical Ali. I mean, who else if not the Americans has interfered in Iraq in the most persistently disruptive way? It's simply absurd what kind of loss of reality politicians are capable of...
I found the original article at Warblogs:CC.
More tour blogs (or related):
... in any case, his attack towards the end was top-class. Well-placed and well-executed. With that, he made an impressive showing and reiterated his claim to a podium place in Paris. And Armstrong now has to fight on two fronts. That will take energy, even if he has something planned for tomorrow - he will have to work hard for it. The main rivals now just 15 and 18 seconds behind the yellow jersey - the Tour hasn't been this exciting in many years.
Hmm. Sounds interesting - a high-performance template engine in C, with bindings for various scripting languages including Python. That could be fun to play around with - Cheetah is great, but can be a bit sluggish sometimes. An efficient template language could make it possible to provide templates to users in the Community Server as well. Let me take a look.
What is this militaristic shit supposed to be anyway? Why do we need this crap? We should actually have overcome this nonsense in Germany by now.
You can find the original article at tagesschau on the Internet and here.
This must be the most absurd reason for a product name I've ever heard
At PhotographyBLOG there's the original article.
Patents are a pain in the ass - even though I can't help but crack a smirk when Amazon now gets a taste of its own medicine.
At heise online news you can find the original article.
I had already read about it elsewhere, a really great idea that the White House came up with there. Well, the idea is so stupid that it will probably be implemented in Germany soon too... I particularly like the "are you for me or against me" question that you have to answer. Who still believes that negative votes don't go straight into the electronic shredder?
At Spiegel Online: Netzwelt there's the original article.
... at least if it continues the way it did today, with Jan Ullrich and Alexandre Vinokourov constantly attacking and keeping pace with Armstrong. The Euskatel riders Majo and especially Zubeldia attacking, and Armstrong who is really being driven into the ground. That costs strength. If this continues, it will be a very tough Tour for Armstrong. And then this final attack by Jan Ullrich on Armstrong! Wow!
An absurd story about how John Gilmore (co-founder of EFF) was denied a flight with BA from the USA to London because he was wearing a button that said "Suspected Terrorist". Well worth reading. If anyone thinks there's even a shred of sense left in this so-called war on terror - forget it.
The ridiculous license can stick it where it's eternally dark
At heise online news you can find the original article.
This practice fee for self-initiated doctor visits—even with your general practitioner—what's the point of this nonsense? In the end, it just means people won't go to the doctor to save money. And then they get really sick and end up causing hefty costs to the healthcare system when they need much more complex treatments.
It should give healthcare system reformers something to think about when someone like Geissler takes a stand against this dismantling.
At tagesschau on the Internet there's the original article.
Strike! heise online news has the original article.
Absurd. And calling something like this an "Author, Consumer and Computer Owner Protection and Security Act" is pretty audacious. How does such an excessive penalty threat protect a computer owner? But with "Protection and Security" you can apparently get any nonsense approved in the USA ...
At Spiegel Online: Netzwelt there's the original article.
Ok. Metallica's music is shit. Their web design is shit. And their behavior probably too - or why would a band come up with the idea to sue another band because they unlawfully used the chords E and F, which according to Metallica in this combination are a sign of Metallica? Mr. shit brain from heaven!
Update : Ok, apparently it's a hoax. The music and the web design are still shit though. At least I wasn't the only one who fell for it, so I'm in good company
Was expected — if an ex-Microsoft executive is running the show, it's clear that FUD replaces facts in the discussion.
At heise online news you can find the original article.
I like Tinderbox - really. Very cute program, tons of interesting features. And it's a real adventure: many features are documented nowhere and pop up somewhere at some point and you're quite amazed that it exists. At Tinderbox Wiki I found the original article.
So the pings to central directories have been running in their own background thread from the very beginning at Python Desktop Server. This is definitely recommended for http://weblogs.com and http://blo.gs. I'll continue pinging there, not because I think weblogs.com itself is important - but the changes.xml from there is used by various services as a control file to, for example, pull the RSS feed into the database at http://feedster.com/. The original article is at Der Schockwellenreiter here.
... as today's stage of the Tour shows. Jan Ullrich with a mercilessly good time, basically a demolition of the opposition. Tyler Hamilton with a fantastic time with a broken collarbone - if he hadn't crashed at the start of the Tour, I believe he would have given the favorites a serious scare this year. Vinokourov with arguably his best time trial of his career. And Lance Armstrong way behind Jan Ullrich - who took 1 minute and 35 seconds from him! And now the Pyrenees are coming! And another time trial! That makes the whole Tour as exciting as it hasn't been in years! Ullrich just 34 seconds behind Armstrong in the general classification, and Vinokourov still only 51 seconds behind Armstrong!
Wow. I'm running out of exclamation marks.
And here a newspaper proves how little it understands what the internet is all about. Here a search service is even being sued because it links directly to articles. People, think about it: if deep linking is banned, weblogs won't be allowed to link to the articles themselves anymore, only to the publisher's main pages. Anyone who sets a link would first have to check whether it's even legally feasible. Otherwise, he could be sued by such an ignorant organization.
Possibly Handelsblatt is also among those who complain about how much weblogs are displacing their quality content from Google search results.
Originally I reflexively linked to Handelsblatt. But I don't set links to such ignorant people, it could improve their Google ranking after all.
I can only hope that the BGH puts an end to this nonsense.
At heise online news there's the original article.
Hachja, how much that reminds me of the stories with Theo de Raadt in the NetBSD project. Especially the reasoning comes across as very familiar to me
At heise online news there is the original article.
As usual, the linked list is missing the Python Desktop Server again. Unbelievable! By the way, there's now also a Windows installation package for Python Desktop Server available at http://simon.bofh.ms/~louis/. The original article can be found on netbib weblog.
It's like this: how much content disappears behind paywalls or registration barriers? Google and other search engines don't register! How much content disappears behind format barriers? Google does open some common formats, but not all and not in all variations. How much content disappears behind no-linking barriers? Content in proprietary formats simply don't have links pointing into them - and therefore have poor Google rankings too. The same applies to deep-linking preventers.
Example: those dreadful Flash movies where, sensibly enough, the "Skip Intro" link is inside the Flash movie instead of outside in HTML. And where do these geniuses place such a traversal preventer? Right on the homepage. So every bot already fails at the index.html and doesn't search further. Just like everyone who doesn't have Flash. Or everyone who is, for example, visually impaired.
People, get this straight once and for all: you all have a blind buddy, and that's Google (and its colleagues). Sites with poor accessibility, with JavaScript-programmed links instead of normal links, with too much Flash and proprietary formats - all of that makes life difficult not only for the blind, but also for search engines, which are still significantly blinder. You're not only excluding a population group, you're excluding yourselves from the internet infrastructure (links and search engines). And then you expect sympathy?
Instead of thinking it through and putting the content out there, preparing it and linking it where and how it's reachable for search engines, you'd rather spend vast sums on search engine optimizers to push your meager content up in Google. And then of course you're offended when stupid weblogs simply climb up, just because they work exactly as search engine programmers currently imagine it ...
At Der Schockwellenreiter you can find the original article.
Don't worry, the politicians will manage to prevent any influence of reality and facts on their actions. We can rely on one thing: once politicians have found a scapegoat, no statistics from the Federal Statistical Office will stop them from continuing to spread their false opinion into the world ...
At tagesschau im Internet you can find the original article.