Hymen reconstruction? What else is next? Wouldn't it make more sense to fight against this cultural nonsense, the idea that a woman must be a virgin until marriage? But no, instead we're deceiving ourselves. It doesn't matter that the world has long been very different from what reactionary fools imagine, as long as appearances are maintained. And if appearances are damaged, there's someone who will polish them up again for cash...
Oh man, what a mess. Couldn't they just get back into the press with cycling performances? A "well-rested" 12th place at the Tour de Suisse is certainly not what I had in mind...
Once again something about the SCO case: someone from the Free Software community reports here about his visit to SCO and what he is allowed to tell about the whole story under the NDA. If his assessment is correct, then SCO has a bunch of nonsense there, but not much more. It remains interesting. However, I wonder when companies in the USA will finally start taking action against SCO's FUD campaign, as was the case in Germany with the preliminary injunction against SCO.
Anyone who deals with circuit simulation or is interested in it can find a graphical interface for Spice under the link, which allows you to operate the package in a somewhat more Mac-typical way. Spice is one of the most sophisticated systems for circuit simulation (so transistors, resistors, inductors and that sort of thing). Might be quite interesting for electronics hobbyists (for me it's not, I'm too stupid to hold a soldering iron the right way around).
Fitting for the summer slump, a nice dirty and disgusting affair. Isn't it nice how politicians are concerned about our boredom, right?
At tagesschau im Internet you can find the original article.
Here's the current nightly build of the Thunderbird mail client from the Mozilla project for OS X. Makes a very nice impression, for example spam filtering works significantly better than with Apple Mail when you use IMAP4. And it can also do threading with Mail. Nice. Very nice.
Wait a moment: The explicit mention of Christianity is "absolutely necessary". As a guarantee for human dignity and freedom, the document should also contain a reference to God. - somehow my ribs are hurting from laughing now. In whose name have more people been killed, disparaged and disadvantaged (and continue to be in some cases), if not in the name of various gods of various factions? These really don't belong in any constitutions. I recommend anyone who disagrees to read church labor law and the effects it has, for example, on hospitals or schools with church co-sponsorship (since they aren't fully funded by the church anyway, the state always contributes heavily). There is hardly anything more objectionable than the behavior the church displays in such institutions when employees don't belong to the church - and that despite the church sometimes not even bearing 10% of the actual costs. No religion in constitutions! For a clear separation of state (or confederation of states) and church!
At Der Rollberg there's the original article.
Well, now that the whole economy has gone to the dogs, the payment of insolvency benefits to the employers' liability insurance associations has naturally increased, Mr. Hundt. Just teach your members better business practices, then the payment won't be due so often and the levy will decrease again ...
At tagesschau im Internet there's the original article.
Nice little report about Möllemann's arms deals and those of his spiritual predecessor (in the sense that he displayed similarly creative financial conduct), Heinz Herbert Karry.
I found the original article at Telepolis News.
It's quite amusing how all these US hawks are so stupid and spilling the beans. What arguments for the war do Wolfowitz and Perle have left for Dubya and Blair after their recent statements?
I found the original article at TAZ.
This is really great: an OO extension for DrScheme built on Tiny-CLOS (where object-oriented here means the typical object+functional mix from CLOS — not those minimal OO systems from typical class-based languages). Very nice. And a large pile of additional tools and utilities on top. Basically you could say the programmer tried to implement large parts of Common Lisp in DrScheme. Nice, since I'm an old CL fan and Scheme fan, here I get the best of both worlds.
Unfortunately the system hasn't been extended to the GUI system, which still exists in the more classical OO form from DrScheme. A CLOS wrapper around it (or perhaps something like a tiny CLIM? Yeah, yeah, I'll be quiet, but one is allowed to dream) wouldn't be bad either.
Somehow DrScheme reminds me fatally of my nice Xerox 1186-compatible Lisp machines with their mix of Interlisp-D and Common Lisp in the operating system. There too the basic stuff is implemented in Interlisp-D (in DrScheme it's Scheme) and then Common Lisp is layered on top (in DrScheme then Swindle). Very nice approach.
And one more funny thing: a small graphical tool that visualizes lambda calculus. Programming with colored blocks to make things clear.
I think I like DrScheme
Should work with DrScheme 200 and newer. Of course it doesn't work with 204, which I have running. So it's back down to the software cellar again and time to fix the problems with a pipe wrench.
A quite interesting photography and image technology blog. Photos, explanatory articles, technical background - everything you can imagine. Quite well done. And the link collection in the blogroll on the weblog is also quite interesting.
Waaaaaa - Blockhead Bohlen for the Federal Cross of Merit? Is Griefahn still all there? And just because he pays his taxes in Germany? And because he puts himself in the spotlight with his trashy shows by rudely telling incapable kids that he thinks he's the show god? And please, what kind of role model is he supposed to be for young people: Be arrogant and misogynistic assholes? Siegmar help and prevent this horror.
At tagesschau im Internet there's the original article.
A very nice Scheme programming environment whose main goal is learning programming itself - building on Scheme language scopes of varying complexity. The whole thing is well-oriented to what is necessary at each respective level. In addition, a large collection of libraries with useful function definitions, a graphical programming environment, and a corresponding library for your own programs, many useful developer tools (and some optionally installable developer tools that you can't get elsewhere), and the best part: now also runs on OS X. Nice.
Notizgeblogged, in the Web Framework Shootout it's about comparing various web frameworks for Python. Quite interesting, and maybe I can steal one or another idea for the Python Desktop Server or the Python Community Server. At Richard's stuff : /python you can find the original article.
A series of tips about microscopy, microphotography and similar topics. Images, descriptions, link collection etc.
Oh goodness, a link battle in Blogistan.de. Folks, get out your chips, cola, and popcorn, sit back comfortably and enjoy the spectacle.
At Der Schockwellenreiter you can find the original article.
I'm indeed a Lisp fan. I love Lisp-like languages and, when possible, only use languages that offer at least a certain basic set of features that Lisp implementations also provide. But this goes too far: a typesetting system with the structure of TeX, but with Lisp syntax.
Somehow this reminds me of the problems I have with Common Lisp: I like the language, I find most of its features brilliant to divine and I certainly have usable implementations to choose from. I don't use it anyway: I would simply have to write too much text. The identifiers are as long as COBOL syntax elements. Ugh. Similar with Scribe: while the identifiers are short, I have to write all the clutter around it. And I get those wonderful blah-blubb-fasel-blubber identifiers for various control purposes. Who wants to write all that crap? What good is a typesetting system where I have to write more markup than I would write in plain HTML? If I wanted to write that much non-content, I could just use DocBook instead...
In the Schockwellenreiter forum there is a particularly sophisticated spambot on the loose. Cute. At Der Schockwellenreiter you can find the original article.
Idiotic. Dangerous. Ultimately economically damaging. What do these foolish politicians actually think? Who's going to get these patents? The small software houses? The freelance programmers? No. The big companies will have the advantage in the long run once again. Great - Microsoft, IBM and other patent hoarders can then use expensive patent lawsuits to squeeze small shops out of the market when they get in the way. And they can expand the madness they're already pulling off with software patents in the USA to the EU as well. And in the end, the customer will be the one footing the bill for this whole nonsense again.
At heise online news there's the original article.
Yes, great. An American senator wants to prevent internet users from using file sharing, if necessary by destroying their computers (presumably he means attacks via the internet on the operating system). Is it to be expected at some point that Americans will launch attacks on file sharing systems on the internet? Are there even more absurd ideas than those of this senator Hatch? Maybe he also wants to impose the death penalty for file sharing?
At algorhythm there's the original article.
Well, you can rely on the SUN chief making what would seem to be the stupidest possible attempt to position himself on a current topic and present himself as completely devoid of facts these days.
At heise online news you can find the original article.
Clear. The slump is simply because we all don't work enough. What, we have too many unemployed people we can't place because there isn't enough work available? Never mind, just work more, that'll help. Not the 4.5 million unemployed, not the economy, but the super minister can cozy up to employer representatives and distract from his lack of ideas, so at least it helps someone...
At tagesschau im Internet you can find the original article.
Today I finally received the package with my teleconverter for the Contax – a Mutar II, by the way (to combine with my Sonnar 2.8/180 to make it a 360mm). Very nice.
Not so nice: the package had been here for almost a week, just not with me, but delivered to a shop in the building. I didn't have a note in my mailbox, nor was one hanging on the door. If one of the shop employees hadn't spoken to me, I would have sent even more angry emails to the shipper asking where my package was.
Even more absurd: on the entire package it's impossible to tell which delivery service actually brought it to me. There's a customs declaration from the sender (it came from the USA), but no customs stamp or notification papers. A package service doesn't just hand over a package like that to somewhere random – there will most likely be a customs invoice following that the delivery service will want payment for.
Well, it's not the first delivery service that thinks they can't find me (even though the entrance is simply on the side of the building), but in this case I find it quite outrageous.
Of course, one could research whales without killing them, but that would take far too long - they could go extinct before then - according to the Japanese research leader for whale research (just now on the Tagesthemen). Is there any more idiotic nonsense to justify whale slaughter?
Sounds quite interesting, a database with pseudo-transparent access from Python. Objects are automatically read in and automatically written when changes occur. Objects are automatically added to the database when they are referenced by an already stored object. Databases are cleaned of garbage via reference-counting (unless you produce circular references). And there's checkpointing, which allows you to ensure that a database restarts with the last consistent state. In a broad sense similar to Metakit, but somewhat more focused on objects than on tables. This certainly allows for more elegant integration into Python code. The question is, how is the performance? Because many small object databases are terribly slow when the number of objects in them grows. And large object databases are simply overkill for something like a weblog tool. Here's the original article.
Exactly. That's it. Simply use a different search engine. Despite reports to the contrary, the Internet is actually bigger than what Google indexes, and the Internet works just fine without Google too.
(albeit admittedly somewhat more inconvenient in some places - and unfortunately humans are just so lazy...)
At Der Schockwellenreiter you can find the original article.
Well, Mr. Pinkwart, that's how you position yourself as the ideal replacement partner for the SPD in North Rhine-Westphalia. Instead of blocking traffic policy, you demand an end to coal subsidies, which certainly ensures that the SPD in North Rhine-Westphalia loses the next election. Great strategy, Steinbrück will definitely jump on that.
At WDR.de there's the original article.
So Firebird is quite cute. However, it's terribly slow (especially scrolling through pages is unbearable with this awful stuttering), I'm used to faster performance from Safari. But one thing is absolutely top-notch: the extensions (see link at the title). I loaded the Webdeveloper extension and the Checky extension there, the former provides a whole set of web developer tools (such as visual representation of document structure, quick source display, various validators, tools for images, forms, enable/disable various features, etc.). Checky is simply an extension that plugs a large collection of validators for various purposes into the document's popup menu - including auto-discovery of the corresponding parts (e.g., CSS or RSS feeds are automatically found and then validated on request). Great. Now just make the whole thing faster and then I'll be happy.
Wiglaf Droste settles accounts bitterly with Friedmann and all the coke noise. Nothing but the truth, the whole truth.
I found the reason: SCRIPT is an element that can be used both as a block element and as an inline element. A is an inline element. So I can use SCRIPT within A. NOSCRIPT, on the other hand, is a block element. So it's not allowed within an A. That's garbage!
Stupid W3C. Don't they have anyone there who can think? The SCRIPT tag has its counterpart in NOSCRIPT. So it only makes sense if I can use NOSCRIPT in the same place as SCRIPT. But that doesn't work. In the Python Desktop Server Javascript is used in comment links to insert the number of existing comments. There should be an alternative display for this (just a question mark) so empty brackets don't appear. But since the whole thing is inside an A tag, I can use SCRIPT there, but not NOSCRIPT. That's garbage!
Yes, I know I'm repeating myself, but with such stupidity you can only scream. Now I have to choose whether I want valid HTML or HTML that complies with accessibility guidelines. Unfortunately, it's not easy to change the technology in the Python Desktop Server because the Python Community Server only delivers static HTML and therefore dynamic content has to be inserted via Javascript. And that's exactly what Document.write() was invented for. And it could be trivially implemented with a NOSCRIPT alternative for those who don't have or don't want Javascript. Any suggestions (other than changing careers)? Update: here someone commented on this on the W3C mailing lists. The suggestion: set the whole paragraph as an alternative block. No thanks. So NOSCRIPT gets removed - because there are a number of browsers that render the contents of NOSCRIPT even when Javascript is enabled. Here's the original article.
So so. IBM is no longer allowed to use its own AIX either. So if IBM wants to respond to SCO now, they should do it now. The entire industry is waiting for IBM to give SCO a piece of their mind, so come on Big Blue, take them down!
Even though it's quite entertaining this time, overall the whole thing is just another proof of how idiotic all these patent and trademark proceedings are and how absurd such scenarios can become when lawyers and business managers smell money. The whole nonsense certainly no longer serves the actual purpose of patents - securing innovations and protecting inventors from exploitation by companies.
You can find the original article at heise online news with this link.
Great. So people will soon see poverty written on their faces.
For the money bags in parliament and party leadership, it's easy to pass something like this – it doesn't cause them any problems. But normal employees often already have problems with the co-payments for dental prosthetics that exist today. And the fact that dental prosthetic solutions and comprehensive coverage were introduced for good reason (because poor teeth and broken dentures come with various follow-up problems that the health insurance has to pay for anyway), the politicians daydreaming about this aren't thinking about that either. The main thing is to have some kind of position, no matter how absurd or silly it is.
At tagesschau im Internet there's the original article.
Nope, first city. We've been infiltrating the Montserrat domain (.ms) here in Münster for a long time.
At Der Schockwellenreiter there's the original article.
iCab requires me to write an ampersand as an entity within JavaScript code, even though the JavaScript code is marked as an HTML comment, so it shouldn't be relevant to the validator and should be ignored. Somehow people don't seem to get the hang of writing validators correctly...
Noted and blogged because I might want to play around with it - for example, to be able to run user code on the Python Community Server. Here's the original article.
Funny. Somehow sounds quite different from what he demanded back when he was minister under Kohl - back then it was all about privatization to the point of excess. But why should a politician care about what he said yesterday
At tagesschau im Internet there's the original article.
Could someone please explain to me what the heck is wrong with my use of NOSCRIPT? If I read the spec correctly, NOSCRIPT can appear within any block area. But the validator expects APPLET, OBJECT, MAP, IFRAME or BUTTON - at least that's what it says in the linked validation report. Very strange. Bug in the validator? The NOSCRIPT is supposed to be there only because the comment count and trackback count are written into the pages via JavaScript on the Python Desktop Server (can't be done any other way since the community server only gets static HTML). Weird. Here's the original article.
Well, that's not really a loss for the Mac community. It may have been ahead of the Windows counterpart initially, but they didn't do anything with it after that. And honestly: Safari, Chimera and Omniweb are all three far better. I only use IE anymore where some weird web idiots have cobbled together sites that have problems with non-IE browsers. And even for that it's not really suitable anymore, since IE 6 has new idiotic properties that dummy designers can eagerly abuse ... Alternatively, you can indulge in similar MS megalomania fantasies like Dave Winer. But honestly - does anyone still believe in his future predictions and market assessments? I personally think his claim that the Web now belongs to Microsoft and they're driving it over a cliff into the abyss to secure their old position as a software monopolist is just a teensy bit absurd ...
At heise online news you'll find the original article.
When will the railway finally realize that Mehdorn is doing more harm than good to the company?
At tagesschau im Internet you can find the original article.
Today, railway facilities are monitored by video. Tomorrow it will be intensified. Oh, you can also practically search for suspicious persons? Of course, terrorists have to be found, no one can object to that. Oh, doing that manually is too time-consuming? No problem, next week we'll just add automatic biometric systems that compare against a database of terrorists. Oh, the database also contains political opponents or civil rights activists? Never mind, some waste is always expected. Ouch, a bomb package in a public park? No problem, we'll just expand the video system. Oh, also include intersections and shopping zones while we're at it, for safety's sake, naturally. The secret services want access to it because they're also responsible for security? Sure, no problem. And we'll also avoid bothersome court orders right away, that has to be more efficient. Complete surveillance profiles of citizens without any possibility for them to defend themselves? Ridiculous, what these left-wing cranks keep babbling about, they're probably just terrorist sympathizers anyway, put them in the database too, Otto.
On the road to the surveillance state. All of course only in the name of security. No one can be against security.
At tagesschau im Internet there's the original article.
Hmm. That's strange somehow: they're supposedly leading in Linux antivirus scanners, but I've never heard of them in that field? I mean, it's not like I have nothing to do with the topic—we sell firewalls with integrated antivirus scanners after all, where we simply use Amavis, and Sophos as the antivirus scanner. By the way, Amavis is really a kind of market leader—just as open source. What's interesting is that on the Amavis pages a number of antivirus scanners are listed that are supported. Gecad (RAV) doesn't appear in that list. I also can't find anything about that scanner on OpenAntivirus.org. Ok, a few times it's mentioned in passing, but somehow I can't find anything to back up this market leader hype!
Sorry, but I have a strong suspicion that a small shop is being played up here as something it's not.
At heise online news there's the original article.
How much party donation did Microsoft probably give the CSU for this? But it seems to be proof that the CSU has no interest in a free market at all - because otherwise they should actually be pleased with the decision against a monopolist and for a much more diverse platform.
At Spiegel Online: Netzwelt there's the original article.
That's exactly what Homeland Security is for: suppression, surveillance, and regimentation of citizens in the homeland. Well, of course technically only of terrorist citizens, but for a respectable Republican, terrorist and democrat are the same thing anyway
I found the original article at Telepolis News.
IP addresses that lie dormant in network blocks because they're being used up in internal networks, for example, are stolen (through forged letters, etc.) and then traded on the black market. Weird.
SUN doesn't get it at all. No, it's not just about us Linux and BSD users wanting to use some Unix on Intel machines. Or how else would the SUN folks explain the many ports of both Linux and the various BSD kernels to all sorts of platforms? Intel is mostly used simply because it's a cheap (in both the positive and negative sense) platform. And it's not about just any Unix - both the Linux camp and the devil worshippers (sorry, BSD users
) have very good technical reasons why they rely on their respective systems. An important aspect is definitely the complete availability of source code and the ability to get involved everywhere, not just where the manufacturer graciously allows it. SUN is still far too arrogant to understand what's really happening in the market. And that's why sooner or later SUN will make itself obsolete - or will have to change course.
At heise online news there's the original article.
Ridiculous. The country with the largest military machinery, which has demonstrably fabricated evidence and used outright extortionist methods to start a war just to push through its own interests, which massively violates international law and wants to continue doing so, and violates international disarmament treaties—of all things, soldiers from this country should be spared from prosecution by the International Court of Justice? That's completely farcical.
At Der Rollberg there's the original article.