Example Macros for PyDS

The Python Desktop Server can be extended with macros that, for example, can repair broken RSS feeds. This is a feature that was added in version 0.2.6. An example is the repair of the Dotcomtod feed at http://dotcomtod.de/backend.php - it has quite a number of bugs. The macro for this is here: "DotComTod is pretty broken when it comes to RSS".

The main problems with the feed lie in incorrect encoding of umlauts and special characters, which causes most XML parsers to either refuse to cooperate or, like the Python Desktop Server, simply produce strange results.

Another application is simpler: many feeds have no GUID, but use the link tag on the item for the same purpose. For example, Tagesschau and Telepolis. Now many of these feeds have the problem that articles are edited later - then there are problems because the articles keep reappearing in the aggregator. The following macro fixes this: "the link of an item is entered as a guid". This transfers the link to the GUID and the Python Desktop Server then uses this to identify articles that have already been seen.

The original article is here.

Lightning also produces X-rays

I always knew it – lightning is nothing more than part of the great programmer's security concept. Heavenly flight safety?

You can find the original article at Spiegel Online: Science.

Significant reduction in unemployment benefits and job requirement for young people

Has Clement been digging too much in old East German documents? Job obligation? Are we now turning this around so that young people are themselves to blame if they don't have a job? Because if that's not the case, then there's no need for a job obligation, but simply and plainly just jobs for young people. And you simply can't ordain those by law.

How about instead of a job obligation for young people, a training obligation for employers? Combined with drastic penalties if training doesn't happen, which would then go to the employment offices for support measures? But that would probably have been too logical to get to the root of the problem ...

When I look at how few training positions large companies have set up here in Münster, I do sometimes wonder what absurd ideas are in the heads of managers about where trained skilled workers are supposed to come from. And then I run into some of them again and listen to them talk and then I know where from.

Certainly not from the brain, those ideas ...

At tagesschau on the internet there's the original article.

License to Bleed

Exactly that. It's all about a lobby wanting to secure the opportunity to skim money without any real performance of their own. Anyone who thinks that all these copyright and digital rights management debates are about the rights holders hasn't been paying attention.

The steps that the music industry and publishers have been taking recently to secure or expand their perks without having to adapt to reality or even respond to customer demands with their prices are truly unacceptable.

Or has no one noticed that, for example, with technical books the prices since the introduction of the euro correspond almost 1:1 to the old DM prices? That can hardly be normal price increases due to rising costs.

Combined with the problems that arise when trying to self-publish works (especially the difficulties that self-published works have in reaching normal retail channels), the behavior of the major publishers is really no longer acceptable.

And as a customer you have almost no way to do anything about it, since all the book and music publishers are nicely showing solidarity.

I found the original article at Telepolis News at this link.

Music Industry Rips Off Kindergartens

What? Are you serious? Can it get any more ridiculous? Demanding copyright fees for nursery rhymes squawked by toddlers? They're completely insane.

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

PyObjC @ OReilly

Ok, I'll really dive deeper into this now and see what works with it. Because with Python 2.2 on OS X and Objective-C bindings, I could create an XML/RPC-based client for the Python Desktop Server that doesn't always require a web browser for all activities. It could certainly be faster, and the editor for posts and texts could get more features. Hmm.

I found the original article at bbums rants, code & references.

Blix contradicts Bush

Well. Will Bush now also dismiss Blix as "old Europe" (after all, Blix is Swedish)?

At tagesschau im Internet you can find the original article.

Germans serve as guinea pigs

It is indeed remarkable that our pharmaceutical industry constantly complains about how cumbersome it is to get new methods and medications approved in Germany, when apparently it's much easier for foreign companies here. And it's quite outrageous, the whole thing.

But it's been a long time since it was about the patient in such matters, as shown by the increasingly exposed fraud schemes in recent times (Chinese dentures, inferior heart valves, ...)

So who ultimately pays the damage? We do. And then we're told that the healthcare system is unprofitable and we have to accept further service cuts while simultaneous premium increases.

I found the original article at Spiegel Online: Wissenschaft.

First Case of e-Thrombosis

Ok folks, pay attention to break times, occasionally get up and walk around! Don't spend hours surfing the Internet, otherwise you'll collapse on me...

At Telepolis News I found the original article.

Language-Mumps-1.07

Translated Content:

Hey, quite an interesting revival for Mumps - I could have come up with the idea of transforming it to Perl too, you could probably use tied hashes well for that. Might be quite fun to take a look at it sometime.

At search.cpan.org there's the original article.

Obelix Defeats MobiliX

And once again Munich. After the regional court showed first signs of properly handling silly trademark lawsuits (at least they immediately recognized mobil and also granted the average citizen the ability to recognize the same thing), the appellate court has now decided exactly against that. So according to the opinion of the appellate court, we are not capable of distinguishing between Mobilix and Obelix.

Of course, something mobile and transportable is exactly the same as a fat Gaul who lugs menhirs around.

At heise online news you can find the original article.

Physicists Teleport Quantum Bits Over Long Distance

Somehow quantum cryptography is progressing quite rapidly. When will the first practically deployable solutions arrive? And whether they - given the current hysteria - will even be permitted to be used?

I found the original article at National Geographic News: Science & Technology.

Radio Userland-Clone

Just because I've read it in other places too: nice that you mention the Python Desktop Server, but it's not planned for Linux, it's already been available for Linux for a long time. And Mac OS X. And BSD. Honestly.

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

Interesting Interviews with Guido van Rossum

A couple of links to interviews with Guido about Python, its origins, etc. Very interesting. The interviews are to be continued on further topics.

At Kevin Altis Radio Weblog you'll find the original article.

Munich Bans 'Body Worlds'

Well, Munich is just ultra-conservative and completely out of it ... (why was I there anyway? Oh right, I was forced to ...)

At tagesschau im Internet you can find the original article.

Opera Mac development likely to cease

Hmm. There were times when I would have found that a pity. But to be honest: with Omniweb, iCab and Chimera there are already three very good browsers and Safari is also developing accordingly. For a rather half-hearted port like Mac Opera, there probably really isn't room anymore ...

At The Macintosh News Network there's the original article.

Team Telekom: Six Newcomers

Hmm. Together with Coast's restructuring around Ullrich, the next Tour will really be exciting. Not necessarily because I expect serious attacks on Armstrong, but the two teams against each other and compared to the others - some of which have also undergone major restructuring - will be very interesting.

And yes, I'm back from Munich. Conclusion? The weather there is just as foggy as here ...

At tagesschau im Internet you can find the original article.

Post without title

So, until Wednesday there's a broadcast break. I'm in Munich and remote blogging isn't implemented in PyDS yet

Researchers search for the meaning of sex

I'm sorry, but I had to laugh out loud at that title

At Spiegel Online: Wissenschaft I found the original article.

Gabriel attacks red-green

So, what will the reaction be? Insults? Ruin the election campaign? That would be fitting with the government's current strategy if the most stupid conceivable reaction came about. But maybe it will get one or another person thinking. Oh come on, they're politicians anyway, sorry. What am I saying. At tagesschau im Internet you can find the original article.

HTML Sucks Completely 0.928

Well, that's a typical frustration name for an HTML macro compiler that only a programmer could come up with after editing ugly HTML code for long enough

At freshmeat.net you can find the original article.

Internet down for hours

Hmm. If the effects of SQLSlammer were like Code Red, the Internet definitely wouldn't have been paralyzed for several hours. Besides that, what important Internet functions run on Microsoft SQL Servers? Sounds like a lot of hype again. The effects of transferring domain control of .org from NSI to PIR have had much more severe impacts (constantly having problems with nameserver resolution for domains).

At tagesschau im Internet there's the original article.

A word about ourselves

There is now a 0.2 Beta version of the Python Desktop Server. If you want to take a look at it, now is a good opportunity, since I certainly won't be making any more changes before Wednesday evening, as I'll be hanging around near Munich starting Monday. And the features are - when it comes to comparison with Radio - pretty well rounded.

Here you can find the original article.

NASA's Visible Earth

And another link to collected satellite images. Interesting stuff in there!

At NASA's Earth Observatory I found the original article.

PyPI now has a browsing feature

Hmm. Sounds quite interesting, especially the pointer to the search functions could be quite useful for the Python Desktop Server - I definitely want to build a search engine in there, because eventually you won't find anything there anymore.

At Richard's stuff : /python there's the original article.

Python/XML 0.8.2

Hmm. I should check whether I want to switch to this version for the Python Desktop Server. However, I haven't had any serious problems with version 0.81.

The original article is available at freshmeat.net here.

Satellite images of the bushfires in Southeast Australia

At NASA Earth Observatory, there are satellite images of Australia with the fires marked on them.

Here is the original article.

SPD leadership: Nobody is waiting for Lafontaine

Yes, you can only agree with that. Really nobody is waiting for him.

At tagesschau im Internet there is the original article.

StepTalk 0.7.0pre1

Hmm. I should definitely check that out, especially if there's a chance it will support Cocoa.

At freshmeat.net you can find the original article.

TINC hopelessly borken?

At least they can't resolve any .org any more. There nameservers where a bit fucked up already for some weeks, but now it's really silly. Sorry, guys, but your network of root nameservers once was a proposal to do it right, but currently it's just a show of how to do it wrong ...

Switching to PyDS

Jutta is the first real user of the Python Desktop Server. And right away I had to make two more betas with bugfixes.

In Photography I found the original article.

U.S. prepares for possible use of nukes

Great class. Let's just kick off a nuclear war right away ...

At owrede_log I found the original article.

Visual Works Smalltalk for Mac OS X!

Cincom has released its complete Smalltalk environment for private non-commercial use. This includes above all the complete VisualWorks Smalltalk system! A truly comprehensive programming environment for Smalltalk development, which now also runs natively on Mac OS X in a beta version. Of course, the GUI doesn't exactly look like Aqua, but that's more due to the cross-platform nature of VisualWorks - it looks equally poor everywhere. Why is this interesting? In my opinion, Smalltalk is one of the most beautiful object-oriented programming languages. And good Smalltalk systems are far more of a home for programmers than many other systems, simply because you can adapt virtually every aspect of the system - if necessary, you just reprogram the compiler or the GUI.

And VisualWorks Smalltalk has a large stack of finished parcels (packages with ready-made solutions) for the most diverse purposes, including a complete SOAP server and client environment. Ideal for interactively hacking around with web services.

Of course, you can do a lot of this with Python as well, but in the GUI area Python is simply very sparse - and the development environments for Python don't come close to what Smalltalk systems have to offer.

To be fair, it should be mentioned that Squeak is of course also an option, especially since it's truly free software and also contains a large stack of extensions. VisualWorks Smalltalk is for me much more integrated into the system and potentially also more performant (the virtual machine of VisualWorks Smalltalk is one of the most interesting ones, many features that Java is only just discovering and implementing now were already implemented there many years ago).

So folks, get up and talk some Smalltalk again! It's worth it.

Here's the original article.

Brainfuck Debugger 0.2

Uh - Brainfuck. Debugger. IDE. Wait a minute. Did someone actually take Brainfuck seriously by accident?

You can find the original article on freshmeat.net.

SBCL Ascendent

Yep! That would be another Common Lisp environment for OS X. And there are already quite a few libraries available for it, since it's based on CMUCL, a rather old and mature implementation.

At lemonodor you can find the original article.

Schmidt urges TÜV for doctors

Yes. It's quite absurd that as a patient you basically can't see where you stand right now when you're searching for information. Everything possible in Germany gets checked, certified, stamped, and slapped with fancy seals, but when it comes to health, you're supposed to just trust blindly.

At tagesschau on the internet there's the original article.

keys broken

The 9 is gone. My condolences. And to help out, here's a whole bunch of fresh 9s from my keyboard, for your copy-and-paste pleasure:

999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999

At .::: [unsinnfälliges] you can find the original article.

Oracle v SQL Server, Part 7

Who still wants to work with Oracle and Stored Procedures, please step forward

At Andrew Channels Dexter Pinion you'll find the original article.

PyObjC news (and Unit Tests Rock!)

Hmm. Somehow that sounds like I really want to take a closer look at this now. But probably it only works properly with 10.2, not with my 10.1.5 ...

At bbums rants, code & references I found the original article.

Network Solutions sends out tens of thousands of customer addresses

Oh man - this overcapable company really seems to be stepping into every technical pitfall there is

At heise online news you can find the original article.

Star lawyer to examine SCO Unix copyright claims

What? That can't be true. License fees to use "Unix libraries" in Linux? Are the people at Caldera/SCO completely crazy now? I'm curious to see how they're going to get away with this. Another chapter from the book of the most audacious patent licensing attempts.

The original article is available at heise online news at this link.

US court bans companies from sending spam

So what does that bring? I still don't believe it ...

At heise online news you can find the original article.

15 Years Nigeria Connection

Well, that's something for the Schockwellenreiter and his documentation of the Nigeria Connection!

I found the original article at Telepolis News.

AOhell for (almost) everyone - and completely free!

Yikes, that's really rather embarrassing

I found the original article at Dotcomtod.

Doctors make

On this one I can actually agree with the health ministry. I think it's irresponsible too. This isn't about a strike by nurses or similar—I could understand that, they're employees like anyone else. But here doctors are deliberately exploiting their defined monopoly position to make a political point.

Of course, the demand makes sense: the patient should pay for everything, since none of the other parties involved is willing to give up even a fraction of their profit.

There's the original article at tagesschau im Internet and on their site.

Installation of PopFile under OS X

Who, like me, doesn't yet have OS X 10.2 (and therefore doesn't have the new Mail.app either), or who generally wants to play around with PopFile under OS X, and who finds the Unix installation process for PopFile a bit suspicious, can read the linked text. It explains how to set it up, including automatic start/stop at system startup/shutdown.

Here's the original article.

Möllemann Interrogation Without Results

What do they believe - that Jürgen will put himself in front of the party and quickly spill the beans? Sometimes politicians are really rarely stupid...

I found the tagesschau online and the original article.

OpenMCL 0.13.3

A new version of OpenMCL with a whole stack of bugfixes. I'll have to upgrade again in the near future.

I found the original article at lemonodor.

PythonCard 0.7

Sometime I wanted to take a look at that too. With xmlrpc that could work well as a GUI for the Python Desktop Server. Hmm.

At Andrew Channels Dexter Pinion there's the original article.

SimpleTAL

Possibly of interest for the Python Desktop Server? TAL does have the advantage of being well-compatible with GUI designers. Hmm. We'll see. Actually, I'm quite happy with Cheetah and StructuredText.

At Vaults of Parnassus there's the original article.