60,000 Dollar fine for DNS query - even in the USA there are judges who have no idea about the Internet. "used Unix systems" - very bad thing, that. However, we should not be too sure - with our current paranoia levels in Berlin, the use of direct DNS queries can quickly become a terrorist offense ...
"America's best housewife" baffles German digital lifestyle conference - maybe the whole lifestyle blowhards will realize how ridiculous their entire nonsense actually is, when it culminates in the awarding of the ultimate conformism from the USA.
CDU Hessen may have used internal school office data for election advertising - well, of course, the lists of explicit interested parties "all parents' and school parents' representatives, teachers, school staff councils, school principals, students, and student representatives" in this completeness are naturally freely available on the Internet. Of course, Mr. Boddenberg, we believe all of this. But if that is the case, then either an authority in Hesse has a massive hole, or someone else has a massive misunderstanding of data protection. Or they are simply just a liar? Wasn't an accusation, just a question ... (just "owled" because this negligence with internal databases is also how the party of the currently ruling - illegally - works, not the first time this happens. Every burglar covers their tracks better.)
The Carlos Hoax - well done. Of course, it won't change the minds of the esoteric spinners, but at least you can have a good laugh at their expense (and that of the all too willing press).
Three constitutional judges argue over jurisdiction for data retention - for some reason (probably overly optimistic) I hope they are arguing about this because they all want to beat up the prolethikers in Berlin, as attacks have come from that direction more often.
Elephants Evolve Smaller Tusks Due to Poaching - "The largest male African elephants have the largest tusks. These tusks are extremely important in elephant behavior, with the largest tusks usually resulting in more successful intimidation of smaller males or winning fights for female elephants. But when the largest animals are killed, it changes the breeding patterns of the animals. In short, without the largest males for competition, the smaller males with their smaller tusks will breed more successfully, and their offspring will have smaller tusks." (ja, die Galapagos Finken waren wohl eher, aber Elefanten sind auffälliger ... )
Kapitalspritze fĂĽr WestLB - Bankers are already more of a problem than a solution. But when you let a pack of bankers be meddled with by incompetent politicians, you get state banks. And that is more of a billion-dollar hole than a bank operation. It's funny how the federal states resemble each other in this regard.
Mac OS X and DTrace - the great dtrace (and some other debugging techniques) are explicitly prevented by Apple for e.g. iTunes. Probably to avoid getting to unencrypted DRM content. Nevertheless - how pathetic is that? Explicitly crippling system diagnostic tools?
SPD debates measures against Clement - it's nice to see again how the Social Democrats tear each other apart. And that the Union finds the best election helpers in the ranks of the SPD is nothing new. Now, do all those Social Democrats who, during Clement's departure to RWE, said "he is so honest, there is no conflict of interest" reconsider their nonsense from back then? Sorry, okay, I won't put "consider" and "politicians" into an inappropriate context again ...
The Tintypes - interesting portraits with interesting, old-fashioned technique. I like that kind of thing.
The Unburdened Mind - "The majority of these individuals are not violent criminals; indeed, those that turn to crime are generally considered “unsuccessful psychopaths” due to their failure to blend into society. Those who do succeed can do so spectacularly. For instance, while it may sound like a cynical joke, it’s a fact that psychopaths have a clear advantage in fields such as law, business, and politics." - der Psychopath als evolutionäre Entwicklungsnische in der Zivilisation.
Schäuble sharply criticizes constitutional judge Papier - Schäuble, who is planning a new aviation security law, told the newspaper Die Welt that constitutional judges are "not democratically legitimized" for "advice" on the design of such laws. Unlike the Federal Constitutional Court, the interior minister opined, without excluding human dignity: "All constitutionally protected areas end somewhere." In his opinion, where these limits lie is "a matter for the legislature." - Well, if you have such interior ministers, you don't need terrorists anymore. Can someone explain the Basic Law to Mr. Schäuble? And could the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution finally put Mr. Schäuble under observation? After all, he is the number one enemy of the constitution in Germany.
German Bundestag advocates for regional top-level domains - yes, no, of course. Because something.bayern is so much easier than something.bayern.de - which has been possible for a long time but hasn't been done because all the states basically dropped the ball and some of the idiots sold their domain to some shops. Sorry, but all the whining about "we just want our own pathetic and completely useless top-level domain" is really getting on my nerves. The people from the very last row in the Bundestag can finally act like big politicians because there's nothing more important than the fox tail for the DSL modem ...
Interior Ministry blocks release of Buback files - and of course, one immediately wonders what is in the files that they should not be given to their own federal prosecution service ... the refusal means that these files "would cause disadvantages to the well-being of the Federation or a German state". Hmm. Very interesting.
SPD: Decision for online search has been made - "I do, however, have the hope that the Constitutional Court will re-interpret the significance of the right to informational self-determination in the age of the internet. This is relevant for all security authorities." - I, on the other hand, have the hope that the Constitutional Court will verbally kick the proletharians in Berlin's ass.
EU-Abgeordneter: Provider sollen bei Urheberrechtsverstößen die Leitung kappen - even more prolethicians, who open their mouths without a spark of understanding and know-how. All this shouting for filtering solutions on the Internet, and then they arrogantly complain about the evil Chinese firewall and get upset about censorship in Islamic states - meanwhile, they themselves are busily working on the European Internet wall and the establishment of massive censorship apparatuses in Europe.
FireGPG - use GPG easily in Firefox ! - I don't know if I already had this, but still linking it here as a reminder for myself.
Macworld: Carl Zeiss presents video glasses for iPods - hmm, if someone now writes a hack for support in e.g. the Second Life client ...
Navy Wins Exemption From Bush to Continue Sonar Exercises in Calif. - "The White House has exempted the Navy from two major environmental laws in an effort to free the service from a federal court's decision limiting the Navy's use of sonar in training exercises." - die US-Regierung hält von ihren obersten Gerichten und deren Entscheidungen halt genausowenig wie unsere Regierung von unseren obersten Gerichten ...
Schäuble's new plans outrage the opposition - "The plan by Federal Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble to further expand his already heavily controversial draft for an amendment to the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) law and to finally abolish the eavesdropping protection for so-called professional confidentiality holders has led to outraged reactions from the Left and the Greens." - of course, outrage is cheap in the opposition. But does anyone believe that in the event of a possible change of government, the current opposition - if it were to participate in a new government - would strongly advocate for the repeal of any laws? The Union also liked to express outrage during its time in opposition, just like the SPD. Simple outrage is indeed very cheap, politically ... (especially when you are insignificant)
DreamHost Blog "Um, Whoops." - locked and fluffy blog posts don't come across so well when the "whoops" consists of accidentally charging 7.5 million US$ via credit cards and some of the customers are probably now struggling with overdrafts and the resulting problems ... Blöd 2.0?
Railway announces job cuts after agreement with GDL - of course, Mehdorn, the (in relation to the total number of employees at the railway) small number of train drivers who now possibly have a normal working week (yes, more than 40 hours a week is not normal, Henry Ford knew that) and adequate remuneration, they of course pose a great threat to the competitiveness of the state monopoly railway (whose competitors are mostly also financed by municipalities or regions, as hardly any purely private investors can be found in this area). I'm currently trying very hard to figure out where the hell the railway in Germany (and it does run there, and thanks to the tracks it's not necessarily all that far away from it) is under such great competitive pressure that it has to pay so much attention to its competitiveness, so as not to be threatened by the evil train drivers, but certainly this master strategist Mehdorn will be able to explain this to me in a coherent manner. Or he's just talking bullshit. I believe the latter.
USA want to establish international biometric database with allies - Echelon 2.0, particularly nice the hint also on suspects of minor offenses (hey, parking offenders and the suspicious wrong waste sorting - you are meant!) and particularly nice the unidentified fingerprints.
Airfoil 3 Spreads Music Streaming Beyond AirPort Express - I guess I should finally take a look at it. Saving cables sounds pretty good ...
Dryad - build digital trees based on parameter sets and visually navigate in "forests" of tree alternatives. And it's also available for OS X!
Struck refuses to apologize to Koch - the Union's whining about the verbal beating Koch received is cute. Most of the insults from the Union camp towards other politicians are much harsher. It's always the same, those who can dish it out the most can take it the least. It's a shame that Struck, like any good Social Democrat, will surely cave in sooner or later - because the hate preacher from Hesse really doesn't deserve an apology ...
Ver.di sacks official, NPD is pleased - anyone who wants to know what's wrong in our society should read this. Because a union that wants to fire an engaged anti-fascist - how does that go together with the idea of a union? Our society has such a hatred for the left and flirts so much with the right that you can actually feel sick. And this is not just the case in the new federal states ...
Why Crunch Mode Doesn't Work - also the reference to the 40-hour week and Henry Ford. But of course, our proletarians know everything better and therefore advocate the 42-hour week ...
Wilber loves Apple - since Photoshop Elements keeps crashing on me (and of course, I have no idea what the nonsense is supposed to mean), I've once again dealt with Gimp and Mac. Wilber loves Apple is a very well-made collection of Gimp for Mac, ready for drag-and-drop installation and, in my opinion, much better than the more well-known Gimp.App (for example, Wilber loves Apple finally shows all filters and scripts even when the German interface is set, which Gimp.App does not do).
Ruffles for "Existential Threatening" Warning File of the Insurance Industry - and another pot in which data is diligently collected so that some companies can steal themselves from the performance expected of them. And customers are diligently driven into the maw of potential customers with the privatization of parts of old-age provision and health insurance ...
Valued Lessons: Monads in Python (with nice syntax!) - interesting approach using Python 2.5 bidirectional generators.
At a Loss for Words - fascinating. Microsoft just removes support for old file formats from Office 2003 - with a service pack. Great idea. Have fun those who have archived their documents in Word or Excel format ... there are hardly better reasons to switch to open programs like OpenOffice, or?
Backscatterer.org, another antisocial and technically stupid blocklist - idiots at work. Once again, an antisocial and stupid wannabe expert tries to redefine the Internet according to his opinion. This time it's against sender callouts - a technique that helps quite well against spam because addresses can be checked for validity with it. And all with minimal effort for the mail servers - a small sequence of HELO, MAIL FROM and RCPT TO (which would come later in any case with every bounce) and then directly a QUIT - so no mail in the queue, but only a check based on SMTP. The argument that he has to deal with the verifiers in addition to the bounces is nonsense - because if the verify does not come, the bounces come from these failed mails, because not only the senders are in a much larger part garbage, also the recipients (of the mail traffic that we push, only the smallest part is actually valid in terms of emails). Turning off the verification only leads to a greater occurrence of bounces - and they are expensive, because they go into the mail queue, while the verifies do not go there. The argument about loops is also stupid - correct callbacks happen with an empty envelope-from, so the other server knows immediately that it does not need to perform verification (in principle, a bounce delivery is simulated, and loops are also prevented by the empty envelope-from). The purpose of the verification is to answer the question of whether you could send a bounce to the technical sender in case of doubt. If you can't do that, you can't accept a mail if you can't directly guarantee to check all the factors up front. This is a completely legitimate procedure and absolutely conformant with the RFCs. The operators of this list are only surpassed in stupidity by the mail administrators who enter such a list into their server as a blocklist. How stupid do you have to be for that? I know how stupid, because since today I know the first server that does this ...
Dean Edwards: IE7.js version 2.0 (beta) - new version of the brilliant JavaScript library that turns IE into a somewhat compliant browser.
Child pornography: Companies to evaluate hard drives - "In their investigations against child pornography in connection with the nationwide operation 'Heaven,' the Berlin police want to use internet specialists from external companies." - as if it were such a good idea to hand over private data (and every hard drive contains such data) to companies instead of having it examined by officials. What nonsense is this? Of course, the volume of data may overwhelm the officials - but one could have realized that beforehand. Now, however, to ultimately devalue all potential evidence by handing it over to entities outside the investigating authorities is quite a strange action.
Mars collision becomes more likely - just make sure it doesn't fall on top of Spirit or Opportunity!
Scratch Home imagine, program, share - a fun project to introduce children to programming in a graphical way. For my taste, it's too much based on the old Structogram technique, but still quite nice to look at. Additionally, it's nice that a Mac version is also available.
Adobe products communicate via dubious web address - Adobe is just a pigsty. This already started with the forced registration of the Creative Suite.
BGH: Raids against globalization critics were unlawful - it's becoming normal that the state doesn't care about its own laws ...
Django on Jython: Minding the Gap - wow. It's getting closer. And as a side effect, Jython will get closer to current Python. Cool!
HD Monitor Causes DRM Issues with Netflix - Netflix checks the output hardware and if it's too good, it prohibits playing files. And the kicker: if you follow the suggested troubleshooting path, rights for other files seem to be revoked (in the case of the OP then the rights for the movies purchased at Amazon). Great. DRM is garbage - and especially the one so often praised by the film industry, Microsoft's blob.
iCab is back - and uses WebKit. What I always found interesting about iCab were the very powerful filtering options. And of course it's nice that it's a real OS X program (unlike Firefox, which is still too bulky under OS X).
Is Australia building a Great Firewall? - "Youth protection sounds good. But what is presented as youth protection resembles the Great Firewall of China, which is widely criticized in the Western world."
GrabFS: The Screenshot File System - brilliant idea, simply a virtual file system for running applications and a file that represents the current window content. Copy the file and you have a snapshot. Ideal for scripted webcasts, for example.
OLPC Chief Technologist Starts Own Business - "She is starting her own company at the time when the XO will be delivered in large quantities," writes Jepsen on her website. "However, she will continue to provide OLPC with her products at cost price." Jepsen's first OLPC patent application was published on December 13, 2007 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. - yes, that's what the typical American charity scam looks like. She could have given the patents to the OLPC project so that it could generate support for the project from potential marketing (or simply use the patents as a guarantee of its own continued existence). But today, only personal profit counts. The fact that many opportunities are only possible through collaboration in a non-profit project, and that she has benefited from this, is certainly easy to ignore ...
Gmail Filesystem - since FUSE now also works with OSX, I should take a look at this again. 6 Gigabytes of external storage might not be such a bad idea after all.
Psychology Today: Dreams: Night School - interesting article about dreams and why we dream at all. The idea is that dreams are a training ground for the brain, where threats are recapitulated and the correct reactions to them are practiced. Dreams as a VR training ground for the real world.