P.K.K. - Purzel-Kollektiv Kübelreiter - I find purzeln cute.
Archive 25.2.2006 - 9.3.2006
Shit hits Fan with Debian?
When Joey throws in the towel - and does so publicly - then the story must really be hitting the fan. Because normally he just quietly fades away ...
Waterfall 2006 - International Conference on Sequential Development - the Waterfall development model is back!
Mac OS X Security Challenge
The Mac OS X Security Challenge by the University of Wisconsin is a much more realistic variant of the rather dubious "30-minute hack" that is currently haunting the press and blogs. Because on the box hacked in 30 minutes, the attackers had a user account - it was therefore a simple privilege escalation, not a remote hack. The latter is quite different to set up, as you first have to get access to the machine.
Nevertheless, Apple should of course also take privilege escalations seriously - because, for example, on publicly accessible computers there are already some attack scenarios that are quite problematic - especially with alleged security features. For example, the encrypted home directory becomes a farce if multiple users can be logged in at the same time on the computer - the home directory is opened and mounted when the first user logs in, the second user can then simply look in. Apple should already improve at such points, of course also at the points where an unprivileged user can get root rights - because these are attack vectors for viruses and Trojans.
Hey, I don't feel like having similar nonsense like under Windows in the long run, so make sure you close the holes at Apple!
Aries - Environmental Products, The Specialists in Biological Pest Control - some information about biological warfare against moths.
MP3 Python Module - simple lib for accessing MP3 information.
OPUS - Zivilrechtliche Ansprüche gegen unerwünschte Mitbenutzer von privaten Funknetzen - even with unprotected networks, there are claims for the operator against unwanted users.
aspectes.tigris.org - Aspect Oriented Programming for JavaScript.
CPU/MEM with swap on/off - the load plugin for the Nokia 770 to display memory and CPU load in a version that can enable/disable swap (provided you have set it up accordingly).
Hmm.
Would you please not shoot at the thermonuclear weapons?
Lebowski Fest West
There is a Lebowski Festival. Unbelievable. I'll have to drink a White Russian for that. And don't pee on the carpet!
MANaOS 0.1.2 is out - MiniMo for Nokia 770 is slowly coming along. Ok, the installation is still a bit awkward (as root rights are required), but as a preview already quite nice.
Net Neutrality and Reality
Good points from Doc Searls in "[Net Neutrality vs. Net Neutering[0]":
The carriers' plan from the beginning has been to convert the Net into a paid content delivery system--of some kind. That's all they were ever able to imagine. That's why they've screwed Net Neutrality from the beginning, offering crippled asymmetrical service to customers whom they expected only would consume, never producing much more than clicks that brought down more to consume. Most of us have never known anything but an asymmetrical relationship with the Net, which is why so many of us barely can imagine what it means to be a producer as well as a consumer in the Net's end-to-end world. A couple of days ago, a woman I know--middle class, white collar--told me she doesn't like the Net because "I don't like mass media in general".
ADSL, modems with limited upstream, dynamic IPs for dial-up users without even attempting to reassign the same IP, forced disconnects with IP changes on DSL flat rates - net neutrality does not exist for many users. Sure, you can get a free blog somewhere - but you always remain a second-class network user. The simplest thing - running your own site on your home computer - is hardly available to any network user.
The flip side of the coin: would we (we = sysadmins) want all those people at home to run servers who are not even able to protect their Windows rudimentarily against attacks? What would a network look like in which every user is also a producer and runs the necessary software - would the attacks and break-ins be enough incentive for manufacturers to make the software user-friendly so that the security level would be higher, or would the chaos be even greater, with a few million more zombie computers?
Is it an alternative to encourage people to rent root servers or to pool with friends and rent one together - knowing full well that most of them have no idea about administration and, given the current state of server software, are more likely to catch additional holes than plug them and thus unwittingly participate in spam distribution, DOS and other network nasties? Would server hosts take better care of and secure the systems if they rented more of them to clueless users?
Or would this just be another September that never ends?
Does eBay taste good?
Are they really that enthusiastic about the decision of the OLG Cologne regarding identity verification in online auctions? After all, this is quite a heavy blow against online auctions - for sellers, a whole new problem arises:
According to the judges of the OLG, no valid purchase contract was concluded by submitting the offer using the defendant's account. In principle, the person who invokes a validly concluded purchase contract must prove that the other party to the contract has actually become a contracting party. The burden of proof thus lies with the plaintiff, who, however, did not refute the statements of the defendant during the hearing.
Given the rather sloppy security mechanisms on eBay and other auction platforms, this is, in my opinion, only right. Because as long as eBay still allows JavaScript in descriptions, the system remains manipulable and the security that someone has actually placed a bid is simply not given.
Principia Discordia the book of Chaos, Discord and Confusion Fnord! - Hail Eris, All Hail Discordia!
SharedAppVNC - interesting VNC variant that only replicates application windows, not the entire desktop. Also with special OS X support.
UFRaw - a free raw converter based on DCRaw and LittleCMS. Sounds quite interesting.
Back to the Concentration Camp Chickens
Several federal states want to overturn the ban on laying hen batteries:
In several federal states, there are efforts to overturn the ban on laying hen batteries. Spokespeople for the ministries of agriculture in Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia confirmed a report by the news magazine "Der Spiegel" that there is broad support for the reintroduction of small cages for laying hens. According to the report, the initiative is also supported by Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
Great. What a fantastic idea. Let's just turn back the clock. What, there were once reasons to move away from battery cages? Doesn't matter, who cares. Great, the cages meet the EU requirements - but your intelligence is below the minimum requirements for humanity. So that animal cruelty becomes standard again - no matter how undignified it is for a supposedly intelligent and sentient being as the perpetrator. The main thing is that the money flows. Everything else doesn't interest anyone.
Land of the Stupid and Unfree
Remember this for the next discussion with the America lovers who always tell you how free and great life is there. Because the Americans have just thrown away not entirely unimportant parts of their constitution.
Larry's Distorted Reality
I sometimes really wonder what kind of herb Larry Ellison smokes to come up with such nonsense:
"Open source becomes successful when major industrial corporations invest heavily in that open source project," Ellison said at a Tokyo news conference. "Every open source product that has become tremendously successful became successful because of huge dollar investments from commercial IT operations like IBM and Intel and Oracle and others," he said.
Yes, financial support from companies has indeed benefited one or another open source project. But to conclude that without this financing the projects would not be successful is completely crazy. On the contrary: many companies only invest in projects that have already become successful without external help. Smaller projects with less visibility have no chance of getting money from large IT companies - these are sometimes supported by companies, but then usually by companies that have directly started this project or market direct products based on it.
But of course, with the successes that a number of open source database systems have, he naturally has to rattle loudly and talk nonsense so that no one notices how pathetic Oracle really is by today's standards.
Data greed is awesome?
One can almost see the drool dripping from the corners of the mouths of the police officials and the minister when reading the article about the Federal Constitutional Court ruling on the seizure of computers and emails. Funny, how the politicians only mention in passing that the seizure itself was absolutely not in order - instead, they immediately start screaming for legal extensions so that even more can be collected.
The restriction of the Federal Constitutional Court - that seizures must be proportional and appropriate - can certainly be forgotten, because no one will take that into account. And with the constant change in communication structures towards electronic means, one can then safely consider the secrecy of telecommunications as a done deal.
Why I Don't Like PHP Software
Wordpress is indeed one of the better systems written in PHP. And what happens? There are several sloppy programming practices found within it. Yes, I know, this happens in other languages too. The point is: the Wordpress programmers are relatively well qualified and relatively careful in their work - and yet such problems occur. Among other things, because in PHP the sources lie within the server root, meaning files that are actually only used internally are accessible via HTTP. And because PHP solutions do not inherently perform input validation and proper text quoting. No, sorry, but I simply do not like such a mess.
Sacrificing Jobs on the Altar of Stock Prices
The Deutsche Telekom presents record figures - but because the stock price is poorly valued, 32,000 jobs have to be cut. How, companies also have a responsibility? Nonsense, ownership only obliges to want more ownership. Stock prices don't buy telephones, order DSL, and download music from silly second-rate online offers.
Make a gardener out of it
And then with Monopolgarantie. Extremely clever decision, will definitely give a huge show. Which ultimately proves that ICANN does not care about the interests of the user on the Internet, nor the interests of the alternative registries.
Censorship by Lawyer
The expected abuse of the - not yet final and legally specialized - judgment against Heise for use as a censorship hammer. And no, not even the judge himself meant that his judgment could be generally applied to forums, but what do lawyers care. Somehow, threatening, intimidating, and extorting money from people used to be considered a sign of the mafia ...
Blue Ball Machine - giant ball machine on a website. Beware, it has background music.
BranchBasedDevelopment - interesting list of points on how to work with branches in Subversion in a meaningful way.
Divmod - a whole series of very interesting Python projects. Of course, also its own web framework and its own ORM, but also a few smaller, interesting things like, for example, a Bayesian Classifier.
MacMini with Core-Duo
Sir Steve announces the MacMini Intel Core Duo - and I think I want one. After all, it's definitely nice to have two processors on your work computer. Especially if the chipset also steps up a bit - the one in the MacMini PPC is not exactly the fastest.
However, my dream setup (Core Duo, 2 GB Ram, 120 GB hard drive, Apple Care) would easily cost me 1500 euros. Ouch.
More Pictures from the DMC-L1
More pictures of the Panasonic Lumix DMC-L1 - the one with the Leica 4/3 lens. This will definitely be one of the things I'll get my hands on at Photokina. Fortunately, it's still a long time until Photokina, so I can put all photo purchases on ice for now. Maybe I'll forget about it by then ... (yeah, and pigs can fly ...)
NASA World Wind - Software like Google Earth, but with NASA satellite images. Unfortunately only for Windows.
Screencast about Web Applications
Steve from JPL has provided a comparison of various web frameworks as a video. Quite nice, even if he of course simplifies some things quite a bit. Warning: the video is very large (300 MB) and J2EE comes off badly.
Regarding the Django comments (after all, I am a Django contributor): I18N has been in the standard for a long time, but since Django moves very quickly, you can't expect it to take everything into account. And with the templates, he is not dependent on the Django template language, he can also use ZPT (the same ones as in Plone).
But the central point comes across well: forget J2EE, learn something else. And in this case, the decision between Plone, Rails, TurboGears, or Django is probably completely irrelevant - the main thing is that you learn something that you also enjoy programming with.
SonyStyle USA - PRS-500
The Sony eReader PRS-500 - the one with the electronic paper as display - is now out in the USA. 350 US$. But the software for the transfer seems to be only for the PC and somehow I don't read anywhere that you can just normally copy files onto it to read them. I hope they will provide more details that the device can also be used with OS X or other systems - on the other hand, Sony is one of the main proponents of DRM and similar nonsense, so it wouldn't surprise me if the platform remains a closed platform. Then it's probably waiting for the competition ...
Tail Call Optimization in Python
At the beginning of the month, I was still annoyed that GvR doesn't want tail-call optimization in Python - because he thinks that this is a feature that cannot have a simple interface. On [Lambda the Ultimate] there is also a comment on this - because logically, this statement by GvR has led to some amusement in the Lisp community. Especially cute about this: there is a solution to optimize tail calls via decorator - where Python simply fiddles around in the stack (thanks to stack introspection, this works quite well). So much for the topic of Rube Goldberg Device - the decorator is extremely compact, there is really not much complexity contained. Of course, the optimization is not really optimal - it avoids stack overflow, but uses exception handling to avoid function calls, which then affects performance a bit. But for the simple transfer of recursive algorithms, this can still be quite useful.
And why is something like this not built directly into Python as a better, more efficient solution? Python 2.5 gets conditional expressions inherited from Perl (value if condition else othervalue), but not something like a simple decorator to optimize certain function calls?
What Company Founders Imagine
No sooner do SAP employees want to establish a works council, than the SAP founder questions the company's headquarters in Walldorf:
Two days before a works meeting is held at SAP on Thursday with the aim of electing a works council, company founder Dietmar Hopp intensifies his warnings: The installation of a works council is a "backdoor for IG Metall", said Hopp, who rejects the rigid ideas of the union officials regarding working hours: "If someone has to ask the union whether I can call California at eleven o'clock tonight, then good night beautiful SAP", Hopp illustrated his concerns to Handelsblatt.com – "in the worst case" Walldorf as the location of the corporate headquarters is in danger, said the longtime chairman of the supervisory board, who withdrew from the committee altogether almost a year ago.
Exactly. Companies with a works council are not allowed to call abroad. With such pitiful babbling from company bosses and managers, I really wonder what makes these flatheads so special that they have to rake in so much money? Competence - whether professional (because labor law belongs to the professional field of a manager for me) or human, the founder of SAP has quite simply dropped his pants here, and what comes to light is simply just an ass.
Also shocking is the incitement against the unions from the alleged employee representatives - if you read through their outpourings, you are not surprised that the employees at SAP now want a works council. At least they have a real chance that someone is sitting there who actually represents the employees and not just his supervisory board position ...
Addendum: how well FUD works can be seen in the result. And how the alleged business papers slap their thighs with joy. Too bad for the employees of SAP - because sooner or later they will probably learn the hard way how stupid the idea is to waive their co-determination rights. But the polemic that a works council would only be controlled by the union (which is ridiculous, because it still depends on the elected works council members what they do) and that a works council allegedly does not fit the corporate culture has probably worked better than common sense. It is, however, typical daydreaming of employees in the IT industry, it was the same 20 years ago in the computer center. They had to learn it later too ...
Disk Inventory X - also provides overviews of where disk space is lost, but with a very clever graphical display.
ID-Design, Inc. | WhatSize - provides a good overview of where disk space is consumed.
Monolingual - removes language versions of OS X that you never use. Brings back a lot of disk space.
Digi-Wonder-Chip by TI?
A lot of marketing hype and loud noise, but if only a small part of TI's announcement of a new camera chip is true, that would be very interesting. In principle - at least that's how I read the announcement - it's a DSP specifically for photographic applications. TI is quite ahead in the field of DSPs and custom chips, so there might really be something to it. Let's see what remains of the promises when the first cameras with the part come out.
Instant Community Building
Here's what happens when the availability of "On Lisp" as a download is announced on Lemonodor. Apparently, not a single one of the commentators ever clicked the link or took a look at the site before commenting. This also happens with other postings on Lemonodor from time to time, but not as massively as with this posting.
Leica and Panasonic with Digi-SLR Combo
It was clear to me that after Zeiss entered the market with the ZF lenses and Nikon with the D200, I considered switching to Nikon. And now Leica is also in the mix, announcing the Leica D 14-50 mm F2.8-F3.5 for the four-thirds system. This not only brings the newly announced Panasonic Digi-SLR into play (which is likely based on the Olympus E330), but also the entire Olympus system. So another possible choice when switching? Especially since there are quite usable adapters for Contax-Yashica for the Four-Thirds system, so that I can probably continue to use all Zeiss lenses - unlike with Canon. Interesting is then also the image stabilizer and - probably inherited from the Olympus system - the ultrasonic chip cleaner in the body.
Textpander - a very nice tool that automatically converts abbreviations into long texts. It works in all programs via the UI Scripting interface (so activate Assistive Devices in OS X Accessibility Preferences).
Hetima:SafariStand - yet another monster plugin for Safari that includes everything possible, filtering, colored source, thumbnail previews on tabs, page modification ...
London 2.0 RC 4 - Monday 3rd April
At least they get it right this time and announce early: London 2.0 RC 4 - Monday 3rd April. Hey, if adrian_h is dropping in, that would definitely be an incentive for me to hop over to London (it's just something like 7-9 hours by train from my hometown) and join in
Now I only have to check wether I can do hotel booking and ordering up front for reasonable rates around here, but what I did see is that the cheapest tickets are 49 EUR for the full drive, so there is plenty space for the hotel costs.
Pimp My Safari - Plugins and tools around Safari.
stripsquad.se - very weird, very loud, very mean - I love it.
SurfRabbit - and another Greasemonkey-like tool for Safari (I don't know if the Rabbits are written in JavaScript, but the effects are similar).