Content-type: matter-transport/sentient-life-form

Dumb User Interfaces (c) by Apple

What idiot at Apple had the brilliant idea of the icon configuration on the "desktop" of the iPhone? And above all, at whose expense is the great deed of updating a program to place the icon of the update not where the actual program is located, but to quickly place it on the first free spot of the first page with such a thing?

Either you have a cheerful icon shuffling after every update, or you are allowed to search for your icons after a series of updates to see where they have landed again. The pushing of icons is particularly great, of course, if you have all pages full - and if you don't have them all full, updates happily move across the pages. And has anyone ever tried to push an icon from the last page to the first one if you have more than just two pages? No fun, absolutely no fun.

The designer responsible for the iPhone's icon configuration deserves to be slapped. At least for a week. Non-stop.

Armstrong returns

Armstrong returns - even if no one wants him. Why send a doping zombie back into the race? He's certainly not credible anymore.

Federal Government Repurchases Federal Printing Office

Bund buys back Bundesdruckerei - and why did the complete idiots in Berlin take 8 years to have these security concerns? What was all this nonsense for - apart from pumping huge profits into the coffers of Apax, who got their purchase price back with the refinancing?

EU allows Bayer to import genetically modified soybeans

EU allows Bayer to import genetically modified soybeans - great, they can't be grown, but of course the stuff can be used as food. What nonsense ...

Former BND Chief: Plans for Secret Online Searches Unconstitutional

Ex-BND Chief: Plans for covert online searches unconstitutional - it's nice that he says that. But he is the former BND chief after all. Would he have said the same thing during his active time? Probably not. The wolf becomes a sheep more easily when he can only eat oatmeal.

Cappuccino Web Framework

Cappuccino Web Framework - something like Cocoa for the web with JavaScript (more precisely Objective-J, a language based on JavaScript)

Dark Roasted Blend: The Most Alien-Looking Place on Earth - wow!

Disco

Disco - Map/Reduce with server in Erlang and API in Python.

Django 1.0 released!

Django 1.0 released! - it took a long time, but that can certainly be beneficial for the quality. And here it is. Congratulations!

ThinkGeek :: Luxeed Dynamic Pixel LED Keyboard

ThinkGeek :: Luxeed Dynamic Pixel LED Keyboard - not bad either, but only Windows and not ergonomic.

ThinkGeek :: Optimus Maximus Keyboard

ThinkGeek :: Optimus Maximus Keyboard - does anyone have 1600 dollars for me? Well, it's not available in an ergonomic form anyway.

Copyright Infringement: Courts Set Low Bar for Information Claim Against Providers

Copyright infringement: Courts set low threshold for information claim against providers - "If other courts follow this extremely broad interpretation of 'commercial scale', it is to be expected that the civil courts will then be confronted with the same flood of applications that law enforcement agencies are currently confronted with." - well, that was to be expected. So once again, only hope remains for Karlsruhe and a somewhat more reasonable basic decision.

OpenCOBOL - an open-source COBOL compiler

OpenCOBOL - an open-source COBOL compiler - and apparently one that is actively maintained.

Sync trigger with Applescript ...

Sync trigger with Applescript ... - the path of the command line tool to trigger a sync is mentioned in the last comment. Very nice to build your own backup system, e.g. using Unison and iDisk.

Deutsche Bahn raises ticket prices by 3.9 percent

Deutsche Bahn raises ticket prices by 3.9 percent - particularly cute the "service surcharge": anyone stupid enough to join the 5 km long queue in front of the only one of 10 open counters at the station, after 2 hours of waiting behind a stinking fellow human with flatulence finally gets a bad-tempered railway employee, whom he then has to explain laboriously where he wants to go - and then gets the most expensive fare selected in a targeted manner, well, now he has to pay a service surcharge for this preferential treatment. So that the railway can be dumped on the stock exchange.

Trading with Resident Registration Data: The Shadow Registration Offices

Dealing with Resident Registration Data: The Shadow Registration Offices - how was that, Mr. Schäuble? "The data is safe in the hands of the state"? And of course, anyone who thinks differently is just a paranoid?

Scientists Discover Why Flies Are So Hard To Swat

The End for Gerolsteiner

Aus für Gerolsteiner - too bad, it was one of the more interesting teams and the way Holczer ran the show made this racing stable very likable.

Canon EOS 50D

Canon EOS 50D - if this comes out now, the 40D should soon be sold off. I should pay more attention, because the 40D would be a great upgrade for my rather old 10D ...

Gears for Safari

Gears for Safari - it's about time. Hopefully it will also appear in Fluid soon - because that would actually be the most exciting (to turn web applications into classic offline applications).

Redhat perl. What a tragedy.

Redhat perl. What a tragedy. - those who use Redhat: compile Perl yourself. Redhat seems to have a really big problem here.

Annals of the Patently Absurd

Annals of the Patently Absurd - Microsoft gets a patent on PageUp and PageDown? And someone still claims that software patents have any justification other than amusement and funding for patent lawyers?

Factor: a practical stack language: New optimizer

Factor: a practical stack language: New optimizer - very interesting description of the new optimizer in Factor. An advantage of the language: the main programmer documents very well in blog posts how he works on the system and what motivation is behind the changes. Always exciting to read. And the language is just nice.

Google: "No Trespassing" signs won''t stop Street View

Google: "No Trespassing" signs won't stop Street View - anyone who still believes that all these "social networks" have anything to do with social or nice can read the arrogant comments from Google in that article. "There is no complete privacy" - and that is immediately interpreted as "ignore no entry".

Jennifer Daniel Dot Com Was Taken

Jennifer Daniel Dot Com Was Taken - hmm. Strange. But somehow interesting.

Rabbiter

Rabbiter - interesting project based on RabbitMQ that could provide the basis for Twitter services. Everything in Erlang and massively designed for scalability.

Techdirt: Diebold/Premier Actually Admits Its Machines Are Faulty! And That It Lied About Antivirus Software...

Techdirt: Diebold/Premier Actually Admits Its Machines Are Faulty! And That It Lied About Antivirus Software... - and this will surely be ignored here in Germany. Or will someone finally wake up?

The Transterpreter

The Transterpreter - haven't had a Lego link in a while. Transterpreter provides an Occam environment that can run on a Lego RCX brick.

Index of /namespace/OmniOutliner

Index of /namespace/OmniOutliner - DTDs for the OmniOutliner XML format.

Amazon EBS - Elastic Block Store has launched

Amazon EBS - Elastic Block Store has launched - normal block devices for Amazon EC2.

Free Critical Mass Modula-3 (CM3)

Free Critical Mass Modula-3 (CM3) - actively supported Modula-3.

Phil Plait''s Bad Astronomy: Bad TV

Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy: Bad TV - good discussion (i.e. refutation) of the moon landing was fake spinners.

CPU Rings, Privilege, and Protection

CPU Rings, Privilege, and Protection - good overview article.

Drinking fruit juice 'may stop medication working'

Drinking fruit juice 'may stop medication working' - hmm, Mizolastin is not listed there, but the pharmacy already gave me information about grapefruit juice. Somehow silly, maybe I should drink my usual morning orange juice in the evening from now on ...

Peter's Evil Overlord List

The Associated Press: States discard expensive electronic voting machines

The Associated Press: States throw out costly electronic voting machines - only here do we still believe the manufacturers' lies more than the experts. There are no unhackable computers. As already in XKCD: "anti-virus programs on voting machines? You are doing it wrong."

The Great Consumer Crash of 2009

The Great Consumer Crash of 2009 - ouch. This reads like a script for a horror movie. And since we in Germany are usually a few years behind the U.S. in all stupid ideas, something similar will certainly hit us here as well (and some of the developments described there can also be observed here - such as living off the credit line).

BeagleBoard.org

BeagleBoard.org - nice small ARM-based computer with quite impressive performance. Could almost tempt me to play around with it.

Everything You Need to Know About USB 3.0, Plus First Spliced Cable Photos

Everything You Need to Know About USB 3.0, Plus First Spliced Cable Photos - 10x faster and therefore 9x more power - and then the laptop is 20x faster all ...

tunnelblick

tunnelblick - graphical OpenVPN client for OS X with all necessary binaries and tools. Could be really useful for me.

We're running out of IPv4 addresses. Time for IPv6. Really.

We're running out of IPv4 addresses. Time for IPv6. Really. - oops. it's getting tight now.

Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes

Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes - loads of practical scripts for iTunes.

Django on Jython: It''s here!

Django on Jython: It's here! - awesome! This makes Java as a platform more interesting to me again - the progress in Jython in the last few months has been gigantic.

Advertising and Privacy – Google Privacy Center

Advertising and Privacy – Google Privacy Center - important link, opt-out from the Doubleclick cookie mess. No idea if it's realistic, or just fake - but if the latter, that will surely come out sooner or later.

Edge Cases are the Root of all Evil

Edge Cases are the Root of all Evil - how edge cases are used in arguments to kill ideas. Interesting perspective - and have already often observed this in IT discussions.

Network Advertising Initiative

Network Advertising Initiative - and a whole list of opt-outs for other ad networks.

Pentagon apparently will ignore Guantanamo acquittals

Pentagon will apparently ignore Guantanamo acquittals - do we need more evidence that the USA has long left the rule of law behind? When will politics in Europe finally wake up and seriously stand up against this madness? If another state - for example, China - did something like this to opponents, the USA would be the first to shout "violation of international law." Of course, now all the US sycophants can scream "anti-Americanism" again - but seriously, can one still be pro-USA when observing this madness?

Cabinet Decision: High Penalties for Illegal Telephone Advertising

Cabinet decision: High penalties for illegal telephone advertising - will Unitymedia be impressed? They make unauthorized calls, they also suppress caller IDs. All signs are there.

No broadcasting fee for PC in law firm

No broadcasting fee for PC in law firm - "Moreover, the fundamental right to freedom of information ensures that one can inform oneself unhindered from generally accessible sources. The introduction of a broadcasting fee for an internet PC would create a state access barrier that has nothing to do with the information sources and contradicts the principle of proportionality." - whether the judgment can be upheld? After all, the general possibility of reception is the sole decisive criterion according to the argument of the GEZ. (by the way, I pay broadcasting fees for my Mac - but there is also a DVB-T receiver in it, which is even used once a year for the Tour de France)

Federal Audit Office Criticizes Work of Job Centers

Federal Audit Office criticizes work of job centers - and surprisingly finds exactly what everyone with common sense has already said: that 1-euro jobs bring nothing and that reorganizing from poor counseling at the employment office does not automatically make for good counseling at the job center ... but will our politicians learn from this? No, certainly not.