11.03 - 18:17: Imprint

OK, so that's probably the end of positive court rulings again. Here a judge has once again demonstrated real intelligence.

I found the original article at ab::gebloggt.

A Busy Developers Guide to WSDL 1.1 - Very compact introduction to the minimal WSDL elements

Affrus 1.0

Wow. That's another one that flew past me. A graphical development environment for Perl. Really graphical, with a graphical debugger, editor, source navigation and everything that goes with it. Pretty impressive. Such a shame that I switched from Perl to Python as my primary programming language some time ago...

Oh, and after I took a quick look at the demo: I think just about everything is right there! The interface starts right up with a graphical shell where you can quickly hack Perl scripts and play around. The graphical debugger is right there attached to it too - if you're into debuggers and stepping through code and looking at variables, you'll be thrilled here.

Actually, there's only one thing I'm missing there: a browser for the Perl modules and the Perl module path and especially the Perl documentation in the modules. Ok, it has some support: if you open the context menu on a module name in a use statement, you can view the documentation in the terminal. And you can load the module into the environment. And jump to directly exported names. But the documentation is only displayed in the terminal or alternatively in the browser. Ok, that's significantly better than nothing, but somehow an integrated documentation browser would really make the whole thing perfect.

In any case, a great environment with a lot of convenience for Perl programmers. Did I mention that I wish something like this existed for Python?

Here's the original article.

Eizell-Dogma refuted

Fascinating. I found the original article at NETZEITUNG.DE Science.

Epson R-D1 Digital Rangefinder Camera

Wow!

If Epson manages to bring this to market at the right time and at an acceptable price, then Leica will have a hard time with the Digital-M. All that's missing now is some output from the device to judge the image quality. If they really do use the chip that's also in the Nikons, then the whole thing could be really interesting.

Hopefully sample images and pricing will come soon.

At Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com) you can find the original article.

Eudora Spyware

Eudora apparently sends the IP address of the computer in the URL for Google searches from within the mail program in the latest Windows version. This raises the question of what URL might be included if, for example, Eudora is operated behind a firewall - and suddenly internal information is sent out.

Apart from that: what's the point? The public IP address of the accessing computer is recognizable to the web server anyway. Somehow it all seems a bit strange.

Well, I was never really convinced by Eudora. The user interface is simply poor. And somehow the program always gave the impression of being half-finished. As if someone had started but lost the thread halfway through.

At Disobey Nonsense Network you can find the original article.

Generic SOAP Client - Generic SOAP client with WSDL support for testing

Hookworms against allergies

Just saw on WDR: a scientist trying to find a remedy against hookworms - a widespread parasite - in Africa accidentally infected himself. And suddenly his hay fever was gone. Strange world.

While researching this, I found the linked article from Netzeitung from 2001.

Here's the original article.

lython - lisp for python - Lisp Frontend for Python

Microsoft classifies Outlook vulnerability as critical

8 months to recognize that a hole is critical after receiving a description of the hole and its effects? Respect!

At heise online news you can find the original article.

New Large Donation from Möllemann Emerges

The Misery Never Ends

At WDR.de you can find the original article.

Paul Nevai's PaulComputing (www.paulcomputing.com) - Powerful editor for Palm OS

RUS-CERT warns against Mozilla

No, open source is not necessarily connected with security. And Mozilla is a big pile of source. And in some respects more of a heap of garbage than a heap of gold ...

At heise online news there is the original article.

What tools I use

Just a list of additional tools I've installed on my Mac

Just a list of the additional tools I've installed on my Mac. Of course this isn't complete - I have quite a bit more installed. But each of the following small tools does a very specific job that's important to me. And it does this job efficiently, simply and reliably. Without any fuss or problems. And they look good doing it.

• ASM: the classic application switcher that sits in the menu and allows quick switching between applications. Brilliant for Mac old-timers - and I find it much more pleasant than the Dock for this purpose. It doesn't jitter around
• WindowShade: offers several alternatives to minimizing to the Dock. I think the transparency feature is particularly great - quickly take a look at a window underneath the current window. Or convert the window into a thumbnail that stays on the desktop. The third variant is title minimization.
• LaunchPad: a brilliant combination of graphical and command-line oriented application launcher. I often prefer a simple text interface. LaunchPad is essentially a form of command completion like shells offer, just graphical.
• Brightness Control: a lifesaver for users of calibrated monitors. With those, you really shouldn't fiddle with brightness and contrast, since they're part of the calibration. This tool allows you to adjust brightness independently of the hardware setting. Unfortunately there's a small bug with the screensaver engaging, but otherwise just great.
• Codetek Virtual Desktop: virtual desktops like they're common in the X11 world. I simply got used to it - I put a subject area with windows on each desktop. This allows easier switching between tasks, since the window layout doesn't get changed by newly started programs - on each desktop the window is in front again that was in front last time.
• Geektool: exactly what you'd expect it to be. A tool that delivers everything for the geek heart. Have logfiles written directly to the background. Or display web addresses on the desktop live. I like it when I can see my logfiles - for example, many problems with GUI applications become much more understandable that way.
• MenuMeters: with this you can put small icons in the menu bar that provide information about CPU load or disk access, or memory usage. Ideal for quickly and easily staying informed about the system state.