Archive 24. January 2005

Asymptomatic » New "Secret" Project - something like a peer-to-peer network built on standard technologies like HTTP and DNS. DynDNS for mutual discovery, HTTP for file transfer, and RSS and HTML for file lists. Actually a nice idea.

DNA debate: Müntefering stands behind Schily

DNA debate: Müntefering backs Schily and only incompetence personified (some call her the Federal Minister of Justice, yes, the very one who took away our right to private copying and wants to impose stupid software patents on us) stands against it. That's really alarming...

First Winter Images

First Winter Pictures - 1

Erste Winterbilder - 1

Not particularly impressive what winter has managed so far this year, but this morning there was actually some white powder snow on the ground.

First Winter Pictures - 2

Erste Winterbilder - 2

First Winter Images - 2

First Winter Pictures - 2

First Winter Pictures - 2

First Winter Images - 1

First Winter Pictures - 1

First Winter Pictures - 1

IT&W Reconstructs Mac Video

IT&W reconstructs Mac video - I would link directly, but their server got hammered...

RSS 1.1 and Postal's Law

The RSS 1.1: RDF Site Summary (DRAFT) contains a passage that I only noticed today ( through this posting). This fits well with the topic of developer arrogance. Because here again a developer has easily strayed from the path of reason. Of course, it's important that a standard is cleanly defined and that producers of formats adhere to these standards. It's also okay to require that a consumer of this format checks it and provides messages when deviations occur (though few users can make sense of their aggregator's messages anyway). But it's completely unrealistic to believe that aggregator users are satisfied when their aggregator just spits out an error message and no content. That's just as stupid as the same approach with XHTML - where some browsers actually implement it and don't go into Quirks Mode for broken XHTML, but simply deliver the XML parser error. Sorry, but that's complete nonsense. Every communication protocol has two ends - the producer and the consumer. And Postal's Law - be conservative in what you produce and liberal in what you accept - is simply the most sensible way to approach such communication protocols that transport content intended for humans. Requiring that consumer applications not display existing content due to format errors is simply unrealistic.

Public Prosecutor will not investigate NPD

State prosecutors will not investigate the NPD.

What the NPD wants is not parliamentary democracy, but an ethnic-oriented leadership state with clear parallels to the Nazi regime of the 'Third Reich'.

Rainer Stock, Saxon Constitutional Protection President, from: "Leipziger Volkszeitung"

Thinking Forth

Thinking Forth is now available online. My first Forth book - it really fascinated me with the language back then. Especially because it was much more suitable for the computers that were accessible to me at the time than most other programming languages.