Australia to enforce a "rating system" on web, track users - Australia has now completely gone off the deep end. Age verification for 15+ content - so could the Internet be turned into an unsupervised children's playground. I mean, okay, Australia is a continent, but it has some island mentality somewhere. But that's really completely crazy.
David Byrne's Survival Strategies for Emerging Artists — and Megastars - a very interesting article by one of my favorite musicians, the former lead singer of the Talking Heads. Worth reading because he not only lists all the contract models that currently exist, but also names specific musicians and breaks them down with examples and calculations.
More on widgets: When one e-mail is enough to break a system. - JavaScript widgets (e.g. Mac Dashboard, or Google Desktop or Yahoo Widgets) have the same security issues as regular websites. And presumably, people pay even less attention to programming with widgets than with websites. We are probably heading towards a new wave of exploits ...
Samba Team Receives Microsoft Protocol Docs - well, it works.
Surfing for 61.98 euros per hour - ouch. What some people come up with to relieve others of their money is really awful.
A young blonde Icelandic woman's recent experience visiting the US - because Icelandic women are, of course, terribly dangerous terrorists.
Harvey Wasserman on New Ohio Voting Report: "The 2004 Election Was Stolen… Finally We Have Irrefutable Confirmation" - after California, Ohio is now the second state to publish its own investigations into electronic voting machines, describing them as massively problematic. Incidentally, comparable systems were allowed for the state elections in Hesse. Because they are so easy to manipulate?
Creative Commons will bypass EU database protection rights - new versions specifically for Germany and EU law.
The "SĂĽddeutsche Zeitung's" definition of "Good Samaritan" [Indiskretion Ehrensache]
New setback for music industry's cease-and-desist lawyer - "In his judgment, Judge Schulz criticizes the fact that the Rasch law firm did not notice the transposition of numbers in the correspondence with the public prosecutor's office. He also read the riot act to the latter: The transfer of the personal data behind the IP address to the lawyer had been unlawful. The Code of Criminal Procedure would not allow such a transfer of personal information by the prosecutors."
Colds - Alcohol - Medicine and Health - "But drinking 8 to 14 glasses of wine per week, particularly red wine, was linked to as much as a 60 percent reduction in the risk of developing a cold. The scientists suspected this had something to do with the antioxidant properties of wine." - I guess I should start a red wine stockpile ... (currently battling another typical annoying cold)
Run Python Script - Automator Action. Unfortunately only from 10.5, so I have to wait.
SPD interior politician announces approval for online searches - the dishonest Social Democrats don't even bother to set up their dominoes before knocking them over themselves.
TOR-Server threatened with shutdown due to data retention - presumably, in the long run, we will have to rely on TOR servers in democratic and free states to be able to go online without being snooped on. But just as likely, the use of TOR servers will eventually be banned.
129a: Lesereise behind bars - "The Schrader case also raises questions and initially offers two possible interpretations: Either the accusation of political justice is correct or the investigators have botched things in an incredible way. If an alleged guerrilla can travel in and out of the country for years - what does that say about the protection against real terrorists?"
Amazon Web Services: SimpleDB - interesting service by Amazon, databases for structured and unstructured data via REST and SOAP. With the typical Amazon payment model for web services. Also interesting is the rumor that it was implemented with Erlang.
heise online - Extended police surveillance powers demanded - "The SPD interior expert Dieter WiefelspĂĽtz spoke out against the proposal of the CDU politician and warned in the newspaper against 'constantly calling hysterically for new laws'" - what do you want to bet that the Special Democrats, when push comes to shove, will flip again like dominoes? They make a lot of noise, but act? Hypocritical posturing, nothing more.
Shoe-Fitting Fluoroscope - "According to Williams (1949), the machines generally employed a 50 kv x-ray tube operating at 3 to 8 milliamps. When you put your feet in a shoe fitting fluoroscope, you were effectively standing on top of the x-ray tube. The only “shielding” between your feet and the tube was a one mm thick aluminum filter. Some units allowed the operator to select one of three different intensities: the highest intensity for men, the middle one for women and the lowest for children."
Experts confirm link between nuclear power plants and cancer - "The number of cancer cases among children growing up near nuclear power plants is significantly higher than among their peers in the rest of the country. A corresponding study, which the Federal Office for Radiation Protection had commissioned, has now also been confirmed by an independent expert panel." - will the usual "think of the children" screamers now also open their mouths? Or do they limit themselves to wanting to censor the internet? The whole discussion is quite cute - has it ever occurred to any of the "we need to research and discuss this further" representatives that the study is not based on some abstract statistics, but on very concrete diseases and deaths of children?
Nokia: Ogg formats in the HTML standard? Not with us! - OGG is disparaged as a proprietary format and patent concerns are expressed (although there has not been a single patent attack on OGG formats to date). But at the same time, H.264 and AAC are seen as unproblematic, even though these formats are definitely patent-encumbered and far more proprietary than anything Ogg-related. Stupid position from Nokia.
Skype on OS2007HE umm... working... - I still have the 770 and the 800. Hmm. I'm not sure if I want to buy the 810 (already available in the Nokia Shop for Germany), 459 Euros is not exactly cheap ...
The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters - a very nice book that I'm currently reading. Steampunk, mad scientists, adventures, sex, drugs, no rock-and-roll (hey, that didn't exist in the early Victorian era!) and lots of suspense. And the website for the book isn't uncool either. Oh, and linked are also online games related to the book and two of the main characters.
Foren-Haftung: LG Hamburg insists on prior review - every time one is happy about a few positive judgments or comments from Karlsruhe or the BGH, one can be sure that the court least competent regarding the internet (at least among those who feel they must comment on internet issues) will speak up again. How this fits with current case law, in my opinion, the court itself cannot convincingly explain. I don't mind - I am a) not a friend of comments at all (sorry, but if you have something to say, you can run your own blog, which is really simple enough today) and b) in my opinion, all the spammers are reason enough to restrict comments. With forum systems like Heise or similar, this is of course completely different.
Criminalization of parallel imports still controversial - sounds cumbersome. But it means nothing else than that the opinion of the EU Parliament should be ignored again. Parallel imports mean, for example, buying music abroad because it's cheaper there. And that is of course a thorn in the side of the rip-off merchants. Because the free movement of the market in the EU can and may not apply to something as important as music or films. Where would we end up there. After all, we also have to give up our rights to the stuff. There will probably be rain again soon - the arguments of the prolethicians and rip-off merchants are particularly flat at the moment ...
New version of Ready Lisp for Mac OS X available - anyone who wants to test Common Lisp in a typical work environment, this package makes it typically easy on a Mac. Simply download a DMG, put the bundle in the Applications folder and off you go. The package includes AquaMacs, Slime, and SBCL, which is quite decent. Unfortunately, it's only for 10.5 - so not usable for me.
You have the right to remain silent - because they write more and better than I do, go read it there.
Ajatus manifesto - a kind of CMS with a strong focus on decentralized content creation and replication. Built on JavaScript and CouchDB. However, it comes with "Manifesto" which for me is often synonymous with "gaga". But maybe useful software will come out of it after all.
Microsoft and OLPC - "Moreover, it is difficult for employees of commercial companies like Microsoft to gain direct access to the OLPC project, as most of the technology has been developed under open-source licenses." - what a load of bullshit. Typical Microsoft.
Minimum wage dispute: PIN lays off nearly 900 employees - of course has nothing to do with the fact that PIN was not profitable at all, for a long time. And of course has nothing to do with the fact that PIN belongs to the Axel Springer publishing house, which is currently waging a campaign against the minimum wage compromise (which was created between employers and unions!) in the Bild newspaper. Has absolutely nothing to do with it. And whoever believes that, I have a cheap bridge near Brooklyn to sell ...
Moonlight/Silverlight Unfug - "Novell's intention is not to compete with Flash, we only want to support Silverlight with Moonlight so that Linux users do not become 'second-class citizens' if Microsoft's technology is successful," emphasized Icaza. - the blabbermouth should think about the fact that he is doing nothing more than holding the ladder for Microsoft. After all, it is not yet clear whether the MS stuff will even catch on. Wouldn't be the first technology that MS messed up (their PDF alternative has been an absolute blockbuster so far). Why open-source programmers should pant and copy MS stuff before it is even relevant - a real mystery to me. False prestige? Too thin air in Novell's development department?
Programming CouchDB with Javascript - the typical ToDo list. Interesting to see how CouchDB is addressed.
NodeBox - Tool for playing with 2D graphics, based on Python. Reminds me a bit of Processing, but with Python instead of Java.
Solar + Tiny PC + Linux = Sweeeet - Mini-PC with solar power. Cool.
Standpauke vs. Requiem - just wanted to point out the Kolumnistenschwein again. It's just too good.
Clojure - interesting Lisp dialect that compiles directly to Java bytecode and integrates well with Java, but is conceptually more aligned with Erlang's ideas (no object orientation of its own, but a functional model as the basis, strong focus on parallelism) and makes extensive use of concepts from Common Lisp (macros, multimethods). Sounds very interesting.
Getting Started on Natural Language Processing with Python - nothing specific for me in the application, but processing natural language with computers has always fascinated me.
VoIP-Signatur Patent fĂĽr Fraunhofer - once again nonsense from the patent front. On the one hand, signing a sequence of packets is not really so terribly innovative that it needs a patent. Also, the linking of packets via hashes of the predecessor contents is not really groundbreakingly innovative. Sure, the idea may be nice - but is it realistically worth a patent? Especially in a country where there are supposedly no patents on algorithms? Apart from that: if the signing of communication for legal transactions is so essential - why are individual institutions or companies granted patents that de facto represent a monopolization of security means? Are contract forms and receipt pads also patented, so that you can only buy them from one manufacturer? No? Oh ...
Apple iPhone in Germany: Waiting for the Court - not that I want to defend T-Mobile greatly. But that Vodafone of all companies is making such a loud fuss is quite embarrassing. After all, they originally wanted to have the iPhone exclusively themselves, but apparently failed across Europe. And now they are complaining about the evil monopolists? What would they have done themselves if they had gotten the contract? Here, only a thwarted "monopolist" is complaining about another's gain.
BGH declares control of letters in Hamburg to be unlawful - amusing how a SPD politician justifies the excessive action, contrary to the BGH's argumentation. How prolethicians repeatedly place themselves above the judiciary and the law is quite shocking. That the Social Democrats are right at the forefront of this is, of course, not surprising since Schily.
Chromatron, by Silver Spaceship Software - for puzzle lovers. Free as in free beer.
Cory Doctorow on Facebook - worth reading.
IRSeeking trouble... - "If our happy little channel is having this much of a visceral reaction, I can't imagine what some of the other channels and servers are going to do when they find out... and honestly, I wouldn't want to be on the other end of whatever technical shitstorm IRSeek is getting itself into. I mean, pissing off millions of highly technical IRC geeks en-masse? They're nuts."
Warning of "unbearable escalation" of data retention - it was clear that this nonsense would come. With our prolethic leaders in Berlin, terrorism and copyright infringement are the same thing. Will a BGH or a Federal Constitutional Court protect us from this madness?
BGH: "Militant group" not a terrorist organization - Sometimes reason prevails. Maybe now, in light of this ruling, the terrorism card will be played less often - and not every sneeze classified as an attack.
LKA-Director HĂĽttemann has resigned - well, now we know where all the "isolated cases" are going ...