Home → Archives → by month → March 2004
France to stop coal mining next month
According to a story on Charbonnages de France, the last active French pit La Houve in Creutzwald/Lorraine is to close down the end of April, bringing the French coal era to its end. Harald Finster has some La Houve headgear photos on his excellent StahlArt site.
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Dictator Cards
"Dictator-Cards spielt sich wie die bekannten Auto- und Motorradquartette, statt mit Hondas und Ferraris schlägt man sich hier allerdings mit Batistas und Francos" aus allen Erdteilen und Epochen. "Die Reihenfolge der Herrschaftsformen ist wie folgt (stärkste zuerst): Stalinismus, Despotismus, Tyrannei, Faschismus, Kannibalismus, Nazismus, Militärdiktatur, Diktatur, Barbarei, Kommunismus, Fundamentalismus, Kaiserschaft, Kleptokratie, Selbstbedienung." Booster Packs, Extension Packs, Rumble Packs, Banana Packs und All Action Packs sind zusätzlich erhältlich. Via koewi.log.
Dictator Cards auf Deutsch (PDF) >
Dictator Cards in English (PDF, JPG) >
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0179 D-A-T-I-N-G ?
That's how the envelope of my O2 Germany phone bill looks like:
I wonder if they have different envelopes for different target groups. Like, they figure out that I am a single in his mid twenties and then use the 0179 D-A-T-I-N-G envelope while the retired couple gets the 0179 B-L-U-M-E-N (Fleurop flower home delivery) version? Any cellular provider does so much data mining that it would surprise me if they left out the bill's envelope as a targeted marketing channel.
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No Wake
Tulsa Drone's No Wake is Album of the Week at The Morning News and under discussion at Metafilter. Yes, that's the band you've read about and seen here more than a month ago already :-)
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Test driving QwikiWiki
Finally time again to select a wiki engine. Project outline: up to 20 contributors, two that actually generate the product. None of the other participants saw a wiki before. As the contributors will mostly handle text content, I think a wiki is the tool of choice here. Requirements: out-of-the-box application, boiled down feature set, intuitive interface, small codebase, preferably PHP + flat file storage, eye-friendly out-of-the-box stylesheet, image/file attachment and inline image handling. As it is a non-public closed group, access lists are not an issue here.
So what's on the shortlist? TaviWiki cannot handle attachments, TipiWiki looks a bit too simple, and WakkaWiki and its fork WackoWiki are finally out of the game - wasted too much time on them.
Remains QwikiWiki that left me with a very good first impression. Small codebbase, no MySQL required, minimalist style. "Key pages" list, "Recently viewed" breadcrumb trail that actually reflects your trail through the wikipages, file attachments, inline image display, simple access system: world editable/admin editable, responsive interface, eye-friendly default style sheet, German localization project at qwikiwiki.de.vu. Test driving now.
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TypeKey, the right lever?
The TypeKey discussion continues and while Ben answered some of my earlier objections, the key question "Why does the end user need TypeKey" as asked in above comments remains unanswered. I am anxious to hear Ben's answer to that question, though I assume that the announced TypeKey FAQ is more likely to answer the question "How we intend to sell it to the end user" instead.
Much of the current discussion in the community [see Technorati, Feedster] focuses on the question if TypeKey really can improve commenting, and I still think the answer is no. What is more interesting to look at is the fact that SixApart comes up with a full-blown service virtually out of the blue. So far it is very obvious that we are not talking about improving commenting, but about finally finding that commercial lever. As SixApart did not "embrace and extend" most of what the community has come up with it in the comment spam question (it did with many patches and tools from the community before), it basically left technically not so inclined users thirsty for a spam solution - voila, what a lever to introduce centralized registration. A story on that might read like that:
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TypeKey?!
A new major release of Movable Type - big things must lie ahead, given that so far, important new features like the plugin architecture came burried deep in the changelogs of minor releases. Reality might look bleak, though: ATOM API support, a CSS based backend and support for a new SixApart service called TypeKey - that's it.
TypeKey is a centralized single sign on system for comments on MT3 powered weblogs and thus, one of the last things one might need. Anil Dash: "We've built an entire service just so people developing cool things don't have to build login systems". Blogs don't need login systems. It is the same discussion we've had in the German blogosphere a while ago. OBKA, as it was called, is so dead that even the wiki where lots of people contributed their opinion is gone. If there is a need to control who published comments on my website, it is to fight comment spam. To do that, I don't need a login and registration system. I need a simple tool that gives me views like "all comments by that author", "all comments that contain this phrase or link" and "all comments from that IP address" on the mt_comment table. So if I as a user don't need a registration system, who does? SixApart does, of course.
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Holy Moly
In today's hardware section: a monorail. In a backyard. How cool is that. Via Jeffrey Veen.
The Niles Monorail >
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It's the Pagerank, Stupid!
If you wanted to figure out spammer's Holy Cow, Google Pagerank, for a given URL so far, you had to use the Google Toolbar in Internet Explorer. Now, there also is The Google PageRank Value Report (via Anil Dash): you input a single URL or a list of URLs separated by newlines, and it delivers the according Pageranks - much easier than using the Toolbar.
So in today's Trivia Blogging episode, a look at the Pageranks of my blogroll members. How to do it? Extract the URLs from one of the blogroll feeds (RSS, OPML) - the indispensable three lines of PHP in this game -, feed the result into the Pagerank tool website, import the new results into Excel, have it count and sort it (CSV) and reuse the bargraph style sheet to create this marvelous diagram:
Google Pagerank distribution in my blogroll
as of 2004-03-19; 127 items
0 (1 blog, see note)
1%
1 (-)
2 (-)
3 (-)
4 (6 blogs)
5%
5 (20 blogs)
16%
6 (52 blogs)
41%
7 (44 blogs)
35%
8 (4 blogs)
3%
9 (-)
10 (-)
NoteThe single Pagerank 0 entry is http://www.lyssas-lounge.de/. This blog moved just a few days ago. At its old location http://lyssaslounge.diaryland.com/, it held a Pagerank of 5. For detailed results, see the
CSV file
Looks like you can't have a Pagerank below 4 if you operate a weblog and 8 is where it gets a bit tricky. Trivia Blogging! Hooray!
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Freelinks are for Sissies
Bei mir sähen die natürlich wie WikiLinks aus, weil das macht man so - wenn man ein Mann ist. Wikis mit Freelinks sind für Sissies.
Martin Röll über die Formatierung von Wiki-Links, heute in Dortmund
On my site, they would look like WikiLinks, of course, because that's how you do it - if you are a man. Wikis using Freelinks are for sissies.
Martin Röll on how to format WikiLinks during a meeting today
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Girls and Cars and Lound Guitars
A perfect spring morning, a BMW Z4 3.0 at my command, winding backroads ahead, Rock'n'Roll on the radio - after having been knocked out by a severe cold for an entire week and while still standing in the shadows of current events, I can really appreciate the simple things of life. To come: a weekend with the Ladies, in cosy cocktail bars and loud and dark Rock clubs. A quarter of a year messed up is enough.
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VW? Renault!
Seit der Ära Piech arbeiten Systemlieferanten, Entwickler und Zulieferer ja besonders gerne mit dem Volkswagen-Konzern zusammen. Aber auch auf den Umgang mit gemeiner Kundschaft versteht man sich. Ein Erfahrungsbericht von Maximilian Schönherr in der SZ:
Vom ernst gemeinten Versuch, ein Auto zu kaufen >
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PSOE wins general elections
Scott Hanson sums it up better than I could: "The message of the voters is not one of weakness in the face of terror, but rather an insistance that any government deal honestly with its citizens in time of crisis. Voters by definition are always right. Do not lie to them, they do not take deception lightly."
Going Out With a Whimper >
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Election Day
Election day in Spain. Pretty good timing for a carnage. Victor sums it up: "If it was ETA vasque terrorist group, voters will favour PP, because PSOE is ruling in Catalonia along an independentist party, whose leader recently had a secret meeting with ETA in France. Later, ETA announced they won't attack in Catalonia, but denied it was because of the meeting. If it was an islamic terrorist group, voters will favour PSOE, because the goverment supported Bush in Irak war, against the feelings of 90% of the population. PSOE's candidate promised the retrait of spanish troops in Irak if the country is not under UN ruling."
So what do you do if a quarter of the entire population of the country you want to rule as the PP candidate is out on the streets protesting, two millions in Madrid alone? You have those demonstrations that want to question your information strategy declared illegal and name the people's voice "antidemocráticos actos de presión sobre las elecciones". This is the same Mariano Rajoy that tried to play down the Prestige desaster as long as possible - a man of experience.
RESOURCES
Wikipedia: March 11, 2004 Madrid attacks | PubSub feeds: keyword Madrid, postings with images, without images | Blogging in the Wind - Victor R. Ruiz's blog in English | BBC News In Depth: Madrid Train Attacks | Boing Boing: Flashmobs with a purpose: Protests in Madrid organized by SMS, chatrooms | Freytag: Erinnerung an Madrid: Die Attentate sind ein Anschlag auf die spanische Demokratie
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Too much
You know you've got too much if you read "Pita with Mozilla" instead of "Pita with Mozzarella" in the cafeteria.
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Not getting through
Carnage in Madrid. Not getting through to your friends there is worst of all. Deseo que podria estar contigo ahora.
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A Wiki XML-RPC API
Raw note: A question still unanswered on my list is how to gracefully integrate blogs and wikis. Say, you collect links on certain topics and want to integrate them both in a blog and a wiki in just one step. What about a (HTML/XUL/desktop) interface that connects via XML-RPC to both the blog and the wiki? What wikis have their own XML-RPC API? If you use TWiki, UseMod or MoinMoin wiki, it looks like one could retrofit such an interface using Les Orchard's XmlRpcToWiki and, for more twists, XmlRpcFilteringPipes. If you throw in MT, Les also describes how to have MovableType entries link to TWiki pages and TWiki pages to MovableType entries automagically without significantly modifying the program installations.
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Blondes Gift!
Fernsehen hat wieder einen Sinn, Blondes Gift ist zurück. Ab heute jeden Montag, 23:45, Pro 7. Na ja, ab nächste Woche: heute kommt der Gurkenkübl. Via Moe.
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Half a year without smoking
Made it.
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Compatible Minds
Elena from Kiev presents photos of Chernobyl's contaminated inner city. What's she doing there? Beating the hell out of her Kawasaki ZX-11. Her username? Kid of Speed. Let's see how long it will take her to become an internet rock star. Via Boing Boing.
My Chernobyl Rides >
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Beste Wahlwerbung
Kleiner Einschub:
Die beste Werbung für - oder gegen - sich haben Politiker ja immer schon selbst gemacht. Vor allem dann, wenn es um ihre Person und nicht um ihre Funktion geht. Dann, wenn sie sich erheben um zu demonstrieren: "Seht dort, die können es einfach nicht! Seht hier, so würde es laufen, wenn wir es machen könnten!"
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Großer Lauschangriff im Wesentlichen verfassungswidrig
"Der große Lauschangriff verletzt in seiner geltenden Form die Menschenwürde und ist deshalb im Wesentlichen verfassungswidrig. Das hat das Bundesverfassungsgericht am 03.03.2004 entschieden. Danach muss die akustische Überwachung von Wohnungen an deutlich strengere Voraussetzungen geknüpft werden. Dem Gesetzgeber bleibt eine Frist zur Neuregelung bis 30. Juni 2005." [Beck Aktuell]
Aber: "Die Grundgesetzänderung, mit der der früher geltende absolute Schutz der Wohnung 1998 eingeschränkt wurde, ist nach dem Urteil der Mehrheit nicht verfassungswidrig. In diesem Punkt erging das Urteil jedoch mit sechs zu zwei Stimmen. Zwei Verfassungsrichterinnen [Renate Jaeger und Christine Hohmann-Dennhardt] sahen in der Relativierung der Unverletzlichkeit der Wohnung einen Verstoß gegen die Ewigkeitsgarantie des Grundgesetzes. Danach ist die Unantastbarkeit der Menschenwürde als unabänderlich garantiert." [FTD]
Das seinerzeit scharf umstrittene Gesetz wurde von der CDU/FDP-Regierung initiiert, die SPD setzte Ausnahmen für Priester und Journalisten durch. Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger trat am 15. Dezember 1995 wegen der Gesetzesinitiative von ihrem Amt als Justizministerin zurück: Als überzeugte Gegnerin des Großen Lauschangriffs war sie nicht bereit, sich an seiner Einführung zu beteiligen, egal wie viele ihrer Parteikollegen für die Gesetzesänderung waren. (Eine Ministerin, die aus persönlicher Überzeugung zurücktritt. Und das noch in einer Umfaller-Partei. Bummer. Sitzt zusammen mit Robin Cook, Philip Hunt und noch einigen im Few Good Men Kabinett.) Von der Verfassungswidrigkeit des Vorhabens überzeugt, strengte sie zusammen mit Burkhard Hirsch, Gerhart Baum und vier Weiteren das Verfahren an, das zum heutigen Urteil führte.
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How I lost the Big One
Lawrence Lessig in a long piece on how he lost the Eldred vs. Ashcroft case: "It is over a year later as I write these words. It is still astonishingly hard. If you know anything at all about this story, you know that we lost the appeal. And if you know something more than just the minimum, you probably think there was no way this case could have been won. After our defeat, I received literally thousands of missives by well-wishers and supporters, thanking me for my work on behalf of this noble but doomed cause. And none from this pile was more significant to me than the e-mail from my client, Eric Eldred. But my client and these friends were wrong. This case could have been won. It should have been won. And no matter how hard I try to retell this story to myself, I can't help believing that my own mistake lost it." On the difference between right and correct answers:
Lawrence Lessig: How I lost the Big One >
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It's an Attitude
What I realized is that Linux is not a code base. Or a distro. Or a kernel. It's an attitude. And it's not about Open Source. It's about a bunch of people who still think vi is a good config UI.
From the responses to Eric S. Raymond's CUPS UI rant
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Let One Hundred Browsers Bloom
Mozilla Foundation's urge to constantly re-brand its standalone products now gets support by a Mozilla plugin called Firesomething. The tool "chooses a random name for the browser every time you launch it or open a new window." Seen so far: Fireworm, Spacelizard, Moonpanda, Powergoat and more. Via Neil Turner.
Firesomething >
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