Optional Static Typing -- Stop the Flames!

Well, it does work out. In his third article on optional static type declarations for Python, Guido van Rossum addresses all the comments and presents what I think is a compact and sensible proposal. Interfaces are a useful mechanism for stricter duck-typing - of course optional, so only where you need it. And automatic type adaptation is a good idea - it's about time that PEP 246 gets integrated into Python.

But the most important thing remains: it's optional. Whoever doesn't need it can leave it out.

Here's the original article.

Problems with Firefox and Thunderbird on OS X 10.2

I recently wrote about (P2984) the problems I've been having with Firefox on OS X. It has since turned out what's causing it. It's the Codetek Virtual Desktop Manager. As soon as it's active (I constantly have lots of windows open and otherwise can't find anything in the mess - and no, Expose wouldn't really help either), both Firefox and Thunderbird exhibit various misbehaviors:

• after startup the menu is empty. You first have to click in the background and then back on the application window for the menu to work properly
• the keyboard focus isn't always correct. Then you have to do the same as with the missing menu.
• after switching desktops (or also when normally hiding and showing the application again) the window is completely empty - only resizing it brings the content back.

As I said, this only happens with the desktop manager. Unfortunately I can't use Expose because I don't have 10.3. Besides, it wouldn't solve my problem: I need many parallel workspaces in which I have all the windows open for the respective task. Expose would only handle that very inadequately.

Bummer.

QEMU CPU Emulator

Hey, I didn't know about this yet: an emulator for various CPUs with just-in-time compilation and support for a whole mix of target and host CPUs. For example, emulating an Intel chip on PPC. Or conversely a PPC on Intel. Or ARM on PPC. And Sparc as a target is already in the works.

Particularly interesting for Linux users: it can do user emulation or system emulation. The latter does what Virtual PC does - present a virtual machine. The former simply offers the ability to run binaries for a different CPU on your own computer, even if you have a different CPU. For example, running Intel binaries on a Linux PPC - without major system emulation.

Due to the just-in-time compilation, the whole thing should also be significantly faster than Bochs. For OS X there's a graphical launcher that also handles the installation of qemu right away. Unfortunately only from OS X 10.3 onwards. Here's the original article.

RBL Test Pages for Multiple RBLs at Once

For those like me who don't have time to chase after thousands of RBLs (lists of possible or alleged spam relays) to check whether someone has mistakenly listed their own server there again, these two links offer good services: they check a large set of RBLs all at once. The first link is the faster one:

• Multi RBL check
• RBL Checker

The Implementation of Functional Programming Languages

Great. A classic of computer science literature (ok, a modern classic) is now readable online. The book is interesting because it explains many aspects of implementing a system environment suitable for Haskell or Miranda.

Unfortunately, it's only available online as scans in JPG format, so it's somewhat cumbersome to use - searching obviously doesn't work. But at least the table of contents is linked via an image map.

Here's the original article.

Flying Meat: VoodooPad

I don't normally mention much commercial software here. But in this case I'm making an exception. Yes, I know the software isn't new and there's no newer version available than what's been discussed in weblogs for a long time. But I stumbled upon a feature in VoodooPad (for those who don't know: it's something like a desktop wiki) that was the deciding factor for me: you can run a wiki page directly as a shell script. And more importantly: you can configure which processor you want to use there. I simply entered Python there. And now I can quickly launch small scripts directly from my collection of note scraps and copy the output in the GUI and transfer it to other programs. For someone like me who thinks primarily in programs and not in manual processes, that's simply incredibly practical.

Here's the original article.

Gas prices likely to rise further

Yeah, the lying barons of energy companies continue to rip off the market. And this will keep going on as long as these absurd monopolies and coupled prices aren't broken up by the antitrust authority. It's simply absurd and ridiculous how politicians on one hand constantly talk about privatizing institutions and deregulating markets to drive down prices through competition, and on the other hand sit right in the energy sector—one of the central nerves of our industry—with fat bosses who keep busily squeezing the market. But when you look at how many politicians still have money blown up their asses by energy companies, it's also clear what the reason is—plain and simple corruption.

At tagesschau.de - Die Nachrichten der ARD you can find the original article.

Kayak with Whale

Here you can find the original article.

KODAK EASYSHARE-ONE Zoom Digital Camera

Not uncool: a camera with wireless LAN. And the large display is certainly not impractical either. Something like this could appeal to me for on the go: simply shoot pictures and send them off. However, only via appropriate WLAN hotspots - those are rarely to be found outdoors in nature where I prefer to photograph

If the camera had Bluetooth and could connect via a Bluetooth phone over GPRS, then it would be pretty perfect as a digital notebook.

Here you can find the original article.

NPD functionaries filmed committing violent acts

And please this time rather Constitutional Protection: instead of infiltrating the organization with your own people from all federal states, take a leaf out of Panorama's book: simple evidence gathering. But as I know our legal system, they'll again squeeze past everything because some absurd things come to light again and the prosecution authorities and services stumble over their own big feet. But woe betide anyone who links an online magazine from the left scene - then they're quick as a flash and come down hard.

At tagesschau.de - The news from ARD you can find the original article.

Prosecutor: Dominik died of cancer

Will the charlatan finally be dragged into court and convicted? Not to mention the irresponsible parents who allowed this quack to have his way contrary to the advice of doctors. What nonsense - we're in the third millennium after this silly cross-guy and still chasing after snake oil salesmen

At tagesschau.de - Die Nachrichten der ARD you'll find the original article.

First Animation of the World Found In Burnt City

Cool - a 5000 year old animated film (ok, more like a stone flipbook). Here's the original article.

LXer: RANT_MODE=1: Current generation shells -- Will Microsoft Ever Fill The Needs of the Enter ...

Paul Ferris tears apart Microsoft's announcement of a great shell environment for Longhorn in 2007. And as I see it, he hits the nerve: a shell today (and if possible one that already has a few decades of conceptual experience under its belt) is worth more than empty promises for 2007 ...

Here's the original article.

Modal Web Server Example Part 1

Those interested in learning more about continuation-based web servers and not afraid of a bit of parenthesization can find the linked article (there are 4 parts) addressing the topic from a Scheme perspective. This makes much more sense thanks to first-class continuations in Scheme than my wild hack in Python.

The original article can be found here.

Shutting Down the GPS Network

Ouch. Dubya has ordered that the GPS system be shut down in times of national crisis so that terrorists cannot use it for navigation. What would be the result in such a case? Probably the American troops would shoot up even more of their own people because they no longer know where they're supposed to go. In contrast to the terrorists, who operate in a rather primitive and shirtsleeves manner, the American military is so over-technologized that the soldier can barely function on their own when important technical infrastructure is missing. Well, maybe next time they won't even be able to leave their country in the next war because they no longer know where the country they're supposed to attack actually is and where they themselves are.

At Schneier on Security there is the original article.

Ukraine: Yanukovych Sues Again Over Election Result

Oh yes. First loudly announce before the election that the loser would have to accept the result of this election. Then sue after the election. Lose. Loudly declare that one accepts the result, steps down and doesn't want to participate in the new government (oh - could that become somewhat problematic thanks to the lost election anyway?). And then? Of course. Sue again. The farce never ends.

At tagesschau.de - Die Nachrichten der ARD you can find the original article.

Aquarium - Web framework with MVC approach in Python - comparable to Rails?

Borges Home - Continuation-based web framework for Ruby

BottomFeeder - Cross-platform RSS/Atom News Aggregator - Aggregator in Smalltalk

Continuations with Python

Another article from the series: we make the impossible possible. This time I'm tackling Continuations and implementing a rather primitive variant in Python - and describing how to get a much nicer way of programming web servers with it. Just click on the title link. This time, however, in English. Here's the original article.

Glorp.org - Object-Relational Mapping for Smalltalk

smart stuff

Why Smalltalk Didn't Take Over the World

Here's the original article.

appscript - Use Python as a replacement for AppleScript - full AppleEvent and OSA integration

Corgis let Queen down gently

While a sack of rice fell over in China, the Queen sat on a couple of dogs...

At tagesschau.de - Die Nachrichten der ARD you can find the original article.

Easy-to-Remember PINs

And speaking of stupid: the British are currently introducing smart cards - credit cards with chips. And the credit card companies seem to be publicly recommending changing the PIN for the chip card. That is, changing the randomly generated PIN to a different one - and specifically an easier to remember one. Like nice things such as birthdays or lucky numbers.

I really only have one question about this: how high must be the beef consumption among the people who came up with this stupid campaign?

At Schneier on Security you can find the original article.

Life sentence for terror suspects?

The US government apparently is considering indefinitely detaining terror suspects without sufficient evidence. - words fail me

At tagesschau.de - Die Nachrichten der ARD you can find the original article.

pikabellechu: Yes I am a PikaHolic and Proud of It...

Here's the original article.

Security Risks in 2005

Oh man, so flat and uninteresting and devoid of any information that even Wolfgang from the WDR Computer Club didn't present topics like that...

At WDR.de you can find the original article.

Springer incites (yet again)

Oh man, Wagner really has a screw loose. Actually, he's even too stupid for the Bild newspaper. Well, it's just their online garbage dump anyway.

No, I'm not linking to that rag. You have to draw the line somewhere. And there's the nice Bildblog, where you can find fitting comments on the latest nonsense right away.

At Der Schockwellenreiter I found the original article.

CincomSmalltalkWiki: Seaside Tutorial - Seaside is a continuation-based web framework

Impostor - Continuation-based web applications with Python

Lisa Apps - Apple Lisa Downloads - remember if I ever get my hands on one

Lisa turns Twenty-Two

Happy Birthday!

At Industrial Technology & Witchcraft you can find the original article.

Revision 8033: /user/arigo/greenlet - Minimalistic threads (tasklets as in Stackless Python) as a normal Python C module

VisualWorks: StORE for PostgreSQL Documentation - PostgreSQL as a versioning repository for VisualWorks Smalltalk

PNGCRUSH - Small command-line tool for optimizing the size of PNGs

ASPN : Python Cookbook : A meta-class that provides class behavior like Ruby - Class overloading (definition of new methods) with Python in Ruby style

Gus Mueller's Website - Writing VooDooPad Plugins with Python and PyOBJC

recondite: You don't tug on Superman's cape... - Python zur virtuellen Maschine von VisualWorks Smalltalk compilieren

Ukraine: Yanukovych gives up

He no longer wanted to hold any office in the current state government, Yanukovych said on state television. - I could imagine that this is mutual.

At tagesschau.de - Die Nachrichten der ARD there is the original article.

Who owns the Bundestag?

Well, everything's bought and corrupted. We're living in a banana republic.

At Der Schockwellenreiter you can find the original article.

Hartz IV: Disaster in Unemployment Benefit II Payment [Update]

Botch. Total botch. With such monster projects, you always do a test run with real data in advance - to avoid exactly these kinds of catastrophes. But these federal bunglers have already shown with other major projects that they might know a thing or two, but they have no clue about IT.

The problem at hand is a banal interface issue that shouldn't have come up at this stage of the project - unless the people implementing it are completely incompetent and stupid.

The original article can be found at heise online news as the original article.

Aid measures: Dispute looms between UN and USA

First class, quickly exploit the flood disaster politically. Here opposition politicians are attacking the government because it allegedly isn't being cooperative enough with the relatives of vacationers in the disaster area (as if the government knew more than anyone else - in the disaster area, sometimes those present on site don't even know exactly what's going on) and now the USA is hacking against the UN. As if we didn't have more important things to do

At tagesschau.de - Die Nachrichten der ARD there is the original article.

Earthquakes shifted the Earth's axis

Wow!

At NETZEITUNG.DE Science you can find the original article.

Kyocera Discontinues Some 35mm Film Products

The dismantling is beginning. Kyocera is phasing out the analog line - something that had been expected for quite a while and was already in the works. But now even the bestselling Aria and the RX2, which was launched only relatively recently, are being discontinued. And a whole range of lenses. It's a shame - one of the most fascinating SLR systems is slowly disappearing from the market. And sorry, but the N1 and its lens lineup are nice, but definitely not comparable to the MM System. That one had grown over many years and was therefore nearly perfect in its equipment by the end. It will take quite a while before the N1 reaches that point.

I found the original article on PhotographyBLOG.

Logilab.org - Aspects documentation - AOP for Python

TVO: The Vim Outliner - an outliner in VIM macro language

Alice - functional language and environment

Alice is a very exciting new language from the ML family. It offers many interesting approaches to well-known problems and extends ML with meaningful features such as a functional model for multithreading. What particularly fascinates me is the discussion of lazy evaluation, futures and promises in the Alice tour - that hit exactly the nerve, as I had just finished building my own package for Python (lazypy). I immediately extended it with futures. An OS X version of Alice is also planned - I'm really curious, as the screenshots of the environment suggest quite a lot of promise. Previous ML implementations have tended to be rather austere in their user interface.

Here you can find the original article.

Codewalker for Python - A code walker that can make various modifications to code from lambda expressions (specifically early binding etc.)

dirtSimple.org: More forward-chaining twists

Phillip J. Eby is thinking about how to implement a forward-chaining factbase (a fundamental mechanism of AI systems that enable rule- and fact-based programming) in Python. Very fascinating to read - he actually comes from the OO corner of Python (as one of the PEAK programmers - PEAK is basically the J2EE of the Python world) and here has his first hard encounters with functional programming. The whole thing also has practical implications: in PyProtocols (another project by Phillip), there is now already quite an advanced extension of Python's OO system towards a more CLOS-like environment with generic functions and multi-parameter dispatch for methods. Very interesting, as it opens up completely new possibilities. Here's the original article.