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".
Ruins of Babylon irreparably damaged by Iraq War - "But those who visited Babylon after the country's liberation in 2003 report that it is almost impossible to distinguish what are ancient ruins - and what was destroyed by the coalition forces." - the result of the axis of stupidity. What are a few millennia of cultural assets when you can wage a war to distract from domestic political problems and to secure the economic interests of your donors ...
Ströbele leaves BND committee temporarily | tagesschau.de - "However, initially Ströbele followed Hanning's statements from the audience. The current Interior Secretary and former President of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) explained in detail that there was no reason to distrust the USA and its intelligence services." - örks. August can play chess, but otherwise I strongly doubt his competence. There are many reasons to distrust American intelligence services, which should have reached him by now.
The Floating Boxes CSS Layout - by the same author as the previous layouts. Also very interesting.
Surveillance mania in Berlin - "I have nothing to hide" is what many of those who fell into the surveillance mania might have said ... (I can't get 1100 urgent suspects together in Berlin - we don't even have that many members of parliament ...)
Unemployment benefits from 2012 only with chip card - Bureaucracy reduction, everything clear. And we are supposed to believe that? The "advantages" are just so far-fetched ...
Front Range Pythoneering: Flipping the 2.5 Bit for Jython - Jython is now at 2.5 level! And definitely a usable alternative, and a much more pleasant way to try out the many Java libraries.
White House Refused to Open Pollutants E-Mail - as long as such behavior prevails in e.g. the USA, nothing will change. And unfortunately, it's not just in the USA, here too, some people define their freedom by the (lack of) speed limit on highways ...
Political database - Party financing - Party donations - Party financing - very cool.
Symbian to become Open Source - Reaction to Google Android and wider use of Linux in mobile devices?
Amazon EC2 Basics For Python Programmers - Tutorial on using EC2 with Python.
Retail theft - "The main reasons for this dilemma, according to retail, are the fact that with increasingly longer store opening hours and at the same time fewer and fewer staff, effective prevention is becoming increasingly difficult." - eh, hello? Turning retail stores into service deserts with (insufficiently trained) staff shortages was indeed the decision of the retail sector. Yes, if you lay off people, cut jobs and extend store opening hours, you don't exactly get something positive out of it. Welcome to reality ... (of course, the solution is already at hand with surveillance and store detectives - probably soon more store detectives than salespeople, which of course makes great sense ...)
Interview: "Öl-Spekulanten sind keine Preistreiber" - "The term 'speculator' is unfortunate. Financial investors enable us to see future expectations in today's prices. They show us that oil is becoming scarce. This way, we can already change our behavior today. Without such future expectations, we might only act from one day to the next." - sure, and burglars only show you weak points in your front door. And if you get shot, that only shows how toxic lead is. Because if we weren't regularly robbed, we might not even know that there are robbers out there. Or what? Who actually makes such talkers into "experts"? According to this windbag, should we now be grateful to the speculators who artificially inflate prices, or what?
More: Systems Programming with PLT Scheme - nice tutorial on how to build a webserver with PLT Scheme.
Nokia buys Plazes - maybe the Nokia 810 will become interesting after all. But Nokia is evil and I am a MacHead, so it will probably stay with the new iPhone ...
Olympus E-420 Review - hmm. Doesn't sound incredibly exciting. On the other hand, it wouldn't be a replacement for my 10D, but a replacement for a compact camera. And from that perspective, it could be interesting again - especially with the 25mm lens. But is the price still justified? Ok, good compact cameras aren't much cheaper and the image quality of 4/3 is still significantly better than that of compacts (especially with today's megapixel craze).
Olympus Zuiko Digital 25mm 1:2.8 Lens Review - örks. The results read much worse than with the camera. I don't know if a poorly corrected 25mm lens can really excite me. Ok, I would have tested it before buying it anyway.
Python Cookbook, 2nd Edition - available to read online.
Ravelry - a knit and crochet community - yep. Knitting and crocheting. As a community. Don't ask me why I find something like this (although, I can actually knit. But it was more of a reaction against all the knitting girls in school ...)
screamyGuy - Random Acts of Programming - interesting projects with Processing.
Telekom eavesdropped on alleged hackers - "According to the report, electronic surveillance of four telephone numbers in Hennef, Rhineland, began in December 1996 under the codename 'Bunny'. Conversation contents were also recorded. A total of nearly 120 calls were reportedly captured." - another reason why such fundamental infrastructure as telecommunications simply does not belong in private hands, as it can be controlled far too little. However, abuse cannot be ruled out even in state-owned companies or agencies, but at least there are rudimentary controls in place.
Aquamacs: Emacs for Mac OS X - now also supports tabs. Hmm. Maybe I should finally get off my ass and make the necessary adjustments and switch. The flexibility of Emacs is unparalleled and Aquamacs now has a really usable - and Mac-like! - interface. (Update: nah, nah, really not. In the moment I used vi to edit the .emacs file, I knew that all the Mac adjustments would be useless)
Old Google Mail domain banned in Germany - click and laugh to death. Absurdistan, thy name is Germany ...
classic investigation still better than mass tests - "However, it was not the mass test that led to the current arrest, but classic investigative work. As the Dresden Public Prosecutor's Office, the Saxon State Criminal Police Office and members of the Heller Investigative Group announced yesterday, Wednesday, investigators had visited the suspect on May 21, 2008, and asked him for a DNA sample because the man had lived near the crime scenes at the time of the crime and had driven a car with a partially recognized license plate."
The Mundaneum Museum Honors the First Concept of the World Wide Web - steampunk web aus Belgiens 30er Jahre ...
Olympus LS-10 digital recorder - for future reference. Could be interesting (chasing sounds to then edit them and e.g. use them in SL)
Fan Programming Language - sounds quite interesting. And it runs on JVM or CLI. The language makes an interesting impression and a whole range of current concepts are integrated (especially the part about Concurrency sounds interesting).
PLT Scheme Blog - the new version is out now! And one of the nice new features: typed-scheme is integrated.
Squeak on the iPhone! - and Apple seems to agree. Wooot!
Alice.org - I don't know if I already had this, but it is a 3D environment with the goal of learning programming through the creation of interactive 3D objects. Looks quite nice.
AVOX Antares Vocal Toolkit - wow! That's exactly what I've been looking for - live-editing of voices (or batch in audio editing) with various effects. Ideal for my avatar work in SL, to give avatars suitable sounds. Specifically, Mutator and Articulator are interesting (the latter is perfect: it overlays the formative parts of the voice over other sounds and thus lets, for example, the wind speak).
Lunatic Python - bidirectional interface between Lua and Python.
90% of Enviro Skeptic Books Have Think Tank Roots - where do all these reality-denying books come from? Conservative think tanks in the US seem to have a big hand in it. And as the study so nicely puts it: "Thus, the notion that environmental skeptics are unbiased analysts exposing the myths and scare tactics employed by those they label as practitioners of 'junk science' lacks credibility. Similarly, the self-portrayal of skeptics as marginalized 'Davids' battling the powerful 'Goliath' of environmentalists and environmental scientists is a charade, as skeptics are supported by politically powerful CTTs funded by wealthy foundations and corporations."
Algorithmic Botany: Publications - "The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants" as download!
Cog Blog - fascinating blog of a programmer who is building a new Squeak Smalltalk VM, and writes about the problems of the Blue Book architecture and possible solutions - and he comes from VisualWorks VM development, so he should know what he's talking about. Very interesting to read and the result could also be interesting, as he predicts significant performance gains for his new VM.
Factor: a practical stack language: - why I love following Factor development: the programmers have no qualms about radically redesigning the language and making massive changes to semantics, even shying away from redesigning defining words. This of course makes the use of the language for real purposes a bit hairy, but it's simply thrilling to see how language constructs are juggled and the path to an optimal language is sought. And since they adjust the entire included library every time, the transition pains are not quite as great (and the included library is already absolutely impressive and currently has one of the best Unicode implementations I've seen so far)