My Code Blog: ICFP Contest 2008 - umm. Navigation software. Written in the TeX macro language (with small Perl helpers for network access, which TeX doesn't have). I already find the idea of a sqrt macro in TeX sick (hey, that stuff doesn't even have all the basic arithmetic operations - it doesn't necessarily need them as a text typesetting system). Some people just have too much time ...
Archive 26.6.2008 - 16.7.2008
Postgres-R: a database replication system for PostgreSQL - worth a look?
SPD paves the way for sensitive data exchange with the USA - Special democratic data protection understanding: non-existent. Just casually sell data - and what is classified as serious crime is defined by the USA as they see fit (even here, terrorism has become a term that everyone can stretch to fit their needs).
5 reasons to avoid iPhone 3G - interesting contrast to the otherwise quite different assessment of the iPhone. I myself look at the iPhone more from the other side - in relation to other mobile devices, it is surprisingly open (because with most phones there is no direct native access to the basic systems, only via Java layers and frameworks). And the developer tax doesn't really bother me. On the other hand, I'm not Richard Stallman either.
Energy Social Tariffs: Federal Press Office admits mistake - well, when the prolethicians open their mouths, they lie. But it is embarrassing when they don't even know the problems they themselves have created. And of course, don't apologize for it, where would we end up if we considered citizens as equal.
Official Google Mobile Blog: Searching on an iPhone can be fun - well, and when you look at the comments, you get a laugh. Because Google was so smart to put the app only in the US App Store and not offer it internationally. Result: piles of "why isn't this in the XX App Store?" comments. And you would think Google would have understood the internet (and yes, Apple has always had a split relationship with country borders, just look at the "Apple-Germany tax" on all prices, I didn't expect much from them on that point).
Squeak by Example - those who want to get started with Squeak but don't know where to begin might find inspiration in this free book.
Mobile carrier T-Mobile to ban VoIP program for iPhone - quaint, really quaint.
The Omni Group - Developer - Source Code - I need to check that out. The OmniWebFramework sounds very interesting and could be of great help for a current project of mine.
Étoilé - interesting project based on GNUStep, providing an environment with libraries, frameworks, programming languages (a Smalltalk that can be directly combined with Objective-C) and tools. It's great that there are always activities in the GNUStep environment, as it operates somewhat below the horizon defined by Gnome and KDE desktop environments.
Data Protection Experts: Google Analytics Violates User Rights - well, this assessment was somewhat predictable. I'm curious to see what else will come up in the near future. Will Google give in? I doubt it. And even if they do - how credible would an (unverifiable!) assurance from Google be?
First Avatar Teleport from Second Life to OpenSim - sounds bombastic, but considering that only login credentials and no assets were transferred, it is not much more exciting than other distributed login systems such as OpenID. And about as exciting and impressive as exchanging an unprinted business card with a stranger.
Lively - well, everyone is certainly reporting on Lively, Google's web-integrated virtual world. I complain, of course - because there is currently only a version for Windows. Too bad. Hopefully there will be a Mac version to download at some point, I at least want to take a look.
Second Life counters Google's Lively - "That was quick. Only one day after the launch of Google's «Lively», Linden Lab surprises with a novelty from the recently struggling «Second Life»: Avatars should now be able to leave the closed world." - when you look at the quality journalism that the Netzzeitung delivers, you can only shout "yes, please!" at the news of the impending closure of the Netzzeitung. "Struggling" with the numbers that Linden Lab recently provided for their network (e.g., the millions in revenue in Second Life, the online hours, the growing virtual building area - which is also paid for by people, not just set up) is really not what comes to mind spontaneously. It's quite amusing how the press only understands either hype or anti-hype. There's a lot of room between hype and anti-hype for simply functioning. This doesn't mean that SL doesn't have problems - there are plenty. But "struggling" is certainly not one of them. Lively is now being hyped - but it's just a buggy beta from Google Labs, and not a competitor to SL, but rather, due to its structure, much more of a competitor to IMVU or Twinity or Whirled. Competitors to SL should probably be seen more in something like Multiverse or Vastpark, but they are not from Google. But to address all of this, the journalist would have had to be knowledgeable. (And that teleporting in SL was rather boring - also technically boring - I already wrote a link about that before)
VMware replaces CEO - and why didn't they just virtualize their CEO?
Apple just gave out my Apple ID password because someone asked - ouch. Very poor show, Apple.
Protocol Buffers: Google's Data Interchange Format - not entirely uninteresting.
PostgreSQL Gets Religion About Replication - looks like replication is the next big thing for PostgreSQL. Would be great, as this is still a rather shaky corner in my favorite database.
Court Ruling Will Expose Viewing Habits of YouTube Users - if anyone thinks that only in this country courts make strange decisions regarding the disclosure of private data, take a look at this. Have you watched videos on YouTube? If so, Viacom will now have to be freshly served this information by Google, unless Google finds a way to convince the court of the absurdity of it. Great, isn't it? Just like that, all access data on YouTube handed over to a company in the music industry that is by no means acting selflessly and is, of course, extremely interested in this data.
Drobo - doesn't sound uncool, that thing. Data redundancy at array level when using heterogeneous disk configurations, that's already nice. Classic arrays often have the problem that only equal disk sizes are used (larger disks then have unused free space), which is why increasing the capacity forces you to replace all disks. Something like the Drobo is of course much more flexible, and behind the Time Capsule it would also be a quite practical device. And the price is not really shockingly high - considering what you get for it.
Google Talk for the iPhone - great. Now I can finally access my Google Talk from the iPhone. Although this will hopefully be fixed soon via the App Store with Adium for the iPhone - but since T-Mobile prohibits IM, they might get the stupid idea to block the Google Talk ports - but the web access to Google Talk will still remain. I wish Google had included this earlier, I've been missing something like this for a long time ...
German Federal Cartel Office raids coffee producers nationwide - is this now a classic breakfast cartel, or was it rather a coffee-and-cake cartel?
Phone Smart - Cellphone Termination Fees Seem to Be on the Way Out - "These new policies look a lot like a gift to anyone who wants to jump to a new carrier. Before the policy changes at Verizon and T-Mobile, customers who wanted to cancel their contracts faced penalties of $175 for Verizon and $200 for T-Mobile." - only in Germany, you can be slapped with a fine of up to 270 EUR if you want to switch an iPhone contract after 6 months because you want the new iPhone (with a new contract with the same provider!). T-Mobile Germany is therefore even more customer-unfriendly than the same store in the USA. Great performance!
Python Underscore Methods - nice overview of all magic methods on one page.
Steinbrück: Harsh Words Against Child Benefit Increase - the contempt that politicians show for citizens with such statements is shocking.
Watermelon Found to Have a Viagra effect - will there be watermelon spam next?
New law says computer repair guys in Texas must also be licensed private investigators!!! - they're crazy, those Texans. Analysis of damage caused by Trojans or viruses would thus only be allowed for licensed investigators - regardless of whether they know anything about computers. But not for service technicians. This is so stupid, you just have to wait until it's implemented here as well (does anyone remember the approach of only allowing electricians to install computer systems, which the chambers of commerce had at one point?)
T-Mobile Abzocker - it was clear that T-Mobile would charge for something that is even available at AT&T under better conditions. Customer service in Germany is still treated as small and listed on the back of the contract under "excluded services" (and before someone wants to praise Vodafone - the store would behave no better in the same situation). Oh, and for those who don't understand the problem: the old iPhone was not subsidized by T-Mobile, but the revenues had to be shared. T-Mobile is therefore being bought out by customers from Apple for contracts that are unfavorable for T-Mobile ...
Nikon D700 Hands-on Preview - ok, that thing just sounds great. That should directly motivate Canon to re-release the somewhat outdated 5D. It's great that full-frame sensors are finally being used more widely. A bit of competition between Nikon and Canon can only do the prices good (they are still ridiculously high). But I will never understand the ridiculous 95% viewfinder - in the film area, it came from the typical crop of slides and prints - but with digital, it's rather silly ...
Cocoa on the web: 280 North, Objective-J, and Cappuccino - wow, someone has implemented Objective-C as a preprocessor and runtime in JavaScript and then ported Cocoa to JavaScript.
NNDB Mapper: Tracking the entire world - interesting mapping tool that builds a "social network" of people of public interest based on publications, reports, and rumors and displays it graphically. Perfect fodder for conspiracy theorists!
Strange practice at mobile phone contract trading portal - "For example, a bank statement must be provided to prove the liquidity of the new customer." - eh, hello? Bank statements contain much more than just statements about liquidity. What a stupid idea is that? And probably the users will do the nonsense and obediently present their regular bookings to some stranger ...
Study: Smoking ban in England prevents 40,000 deaths - only here the downfall of the West is still predicted by the smoking ban.
Wee Westerns - Tabletop Western Photography. Fun!
WikidBASE - interesting mix of wiki and structured database. Found at Schockwellenreiter.
Data trading with the FBI - and this is how we are sold and traded. And the fact that perhaps one or the other state still has rudimentary data protection regulations that prohibit such trading does not interest anyone either.
ICANN and IANA Defacements - the domains of the domain authority temporarily stolen. Ouch.
Graphite - sounds very interesting, a package for visualizing time series data. Basically what RRDTool would have wanted to become if it were big. Possibly a good alternative to Munin in our monitoring. And it is Python code.
iPhone 3G: T-Mobile promises unlimited VPN usage - T-Mobile's argumentative wavering is simply ridiculous and proves that the company has no clue about a) what customers expect today and b) what the iPhone actually represents and offers. But fortunately, c) also applies - T-Mobile is simply too stupid to effectively prohibit or restrict anything. Nevertheless, with their behavior, they would easily become the laughing stock of the industry if the competitors were not even more stupid and ridiculous.
AVG is a pig of a software - because it makes background accesses to search results during search queries, in order to set its own silly malware scanners on them, before the user even decides whether to visit one of the links. And it blows up the web traffic - and then also disguises these accesses as normal user accesses - fake weblogs, distorted access statistics, web traffic up - and all just for the sale of some digital snake oil ...
Chuck Moore's Wonderful colorForth Programming Language and Operating System - "Rather than a string of 8-bit characters, colorForth interprets pre-parsed words. A word starts with 4 bits that indicate its color and function - text, number, etc. Then 28 bits of left-justified, Huffman-coded characters, averaging 5.2 bits each. Numbers are stored in binary. Each word occupies 1 or more 32-bit memory locations." - ok, und die 2GB Hauptspeicher sitzen da und langweilen sich, weil der Programmierer sich Gedanken über Huffman-codierung von Befehlswörtern gemacht hat, um auch noch das letzte Bit zu sparen. Schon ein ziemlicher Anachronismus - aber ein sympathischer.
Keylogger in JavaScript with IE up to version 8beta - ouch. That hurts. And I wonder again why one has to install such essential functions as NoScript via extension even with Firefox. Such things belong as basic tools directly into every browser. And no, the simple on/off for JavaScript, which is offered, is no alternative - in times of Ajax interfaces you need JavaScript again and again.
"You can't handle nuclear waste like this" - but nuclear power is just so great and disposal is no problem at all, as is often mentioned in the CO2 debate. Will we humans ever learn to learn from our mistakes?
The A-Z of Programming Languages: Forth - "I think it behooves new programmers to sample all the languages available. Forth is the only one that's fun. The satisfaction of finding a neat representation cannot be equaled in Fortran, C or even Lisp. (And mentioning those languages surely dates me). Try it, you'll like it."
Amphibious Robot Snake (Video) - heh. Fun!
It's L-i-n-u-x, that is an Operating System - ouch. You can't make this up, only reality can bring this.
OmniFocus for iPhone and iPod touch - cool. Combining the iPhone OS's Location Services with a GTD application. Obvious idea, but you still have to come up with it first. Additionally, there will be a sync between Mac and iPhone for OmniFocus - that makes the software quite interesting - especially of course if it is based on elements and possibly even can synchronize several OmniFocus instances? The latter probably not, but one can still hope.
One Man, One Long List, No More Web Ads - what surprises me about this discussion on "ad blockers threaten the business model of websites that rely on advertising" is that no one questions this pathetic and dumb business idea. It's quite simple: if you run a business and don't make profits, the business idea is simply useless. Find another one. Ad blockers threaten your income? Well, then it's probably time to return to honest work, isn't it?
Perfect multi-column CSS liquid layouts - iPhone compatible - wow. This looks very promising, especially the point "no browser hacks".