Archive 4. December 2007

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.

JLine - something like readline, but for Java.

Dinosaur turns out to be a muscle package

VoIP-Signatur Patent für 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 ...