#protolol

8. June, 2011

#protolol jokes.

They are better if you dig Internet. Some of my favorites:

  • @toastido: The best thing about UDP jokes is that I don’t care if you get them or not. #protolol
  • ? The worst thing about Perl jokes is that next morning you can.t understand why they seemed so funny.
  • @mikepuchol Who wants serial killers when you can have much faster parallel killers? With Centronics ports! #protolol
  • @yoshicool PPP jokes are always between two people #protolol
  • @ADoug OSI model jokes work on so many levels. #protolol
  • @peter_tonoli “Chuck Norris has only one OSI level – Physical”
  • @RichGibson: bittorrent jokes are only funny if you get the whole thing.

Access WordPress Like a File System

7. June, 2011

With FUSE, it’s pretty simple to access something like a file system.

Joseph Scott wrote a driver for WordPress: pressfs.


Das Märchen von der Vollbeschäftigung

6. June, 2011

Mal wieder ein Post auf Deutsch. Sorry for my English reads 🙂

Alle Welt redet von Vollbeschäftigung, sicherer Rente und stabilen sozialen Netzen. Oder besser: Die Politiker (links bis rechts) erzählen Märchen, während dem Rest der Bevölkerung langsam dämmert: Da stimmt irgendwas nicht.

Firmen wollen jedes Jahr um 7% “wachsen.” Was heisst dieses “wachsen”? Naja, da gibt es verschiedene Möglichkeiten:

  1. 7% weniger Kosten. Also z.B. den Angestellten den Lohn um 10% kürzen (die Firma hat ja noch andere Kosten als nur Löhne). Geht aber nicht, da rebellieren die Angestellten. Also wirft man eben 10% raus. Das hat den gleichen Effekt und sorgt gleich noch für (angespannte) Ruhe bei denen, die hoffen “mich trifft es nicht.”
  2. Man macht die Produktion 7% effizienter. Das geht durch neue Maschinen (für die man weniger Leute braucht) oder indem man die Produktion gleich ins billigere Ausland auslagert. Da ist zwar die Qualität schlechter, aber dafür ist es 30% billiger und so kann man das wieder hinbiegen.
  3. Eine Mischung aus beidem.

Am Ende ist es halt so, dass die (verbleibenden) Angestellten weniger in der Tasche haben. Natürlich kränkelt dann die Konjunktur: Wenn wenn man weniger Geld hat, kann man auch nicht so viel konsumieren. Aber das ist nicht das Problem der Unternehmen, da soll sich schön der Staat drum kümmern.

Man sieht: Das klappt irgendwie nicht.

Gebhard Borck hat sich hingesetzt und alle Gründe und Faktoren gesammelt, wo es in der modernen Arbeitswelt kneift und hakt. Stück für Stück werden sie jetzt in seinem Blog veröffentlicht: “Affenmärchen – Arbeit frei von Lack & Leder.” Hier geht’s los.

Ein paar Zitate (hier):

Die industrielle Epoche hat die Maschine vor den Menschen gestellt, Effizienz vor Effektivität, Stückzahl vor den Sinn des Produktes und Fehlerfreiheit vor Qualität – ja, Sie lesen richtig, mehr dazu erfahren Sie später, versprochen.

“Stückzahl vor Sinn.” Sehr schön. Milchsee, Butterberg. Wo hatten wir das noch? Ach ja, in der DDR. Oder hier:

Ein Marketingleiter eines Industriebetriebes, nehmen wir einmal einen Schokoladenhersteller, verdient zwischen fünfzigtausend und mehreren hunderttausend britischen Pfund. Er reizt Menschen dazu an, unvernünftig viel Schokolade zu kaufen und zu konsumieren. Er erzeugt Stress, wenn man die gewünschte Schokolade nicht bekommt, spielt die negativen gesundheitlichen Auswirkungen herunter und überhöht die empfundenen Glücksgefühle. […] die gesundheitlichen Auswirkungen finden sich in den bereits erwähnten externen Effekten, für die seine Firma nicht verantwortlich gemacht wird. Die Studie „a bit rich“ hat diese externen volkswirtschaftlichen Effekte […] untersucht. Das Ergebnis: Für ihr Einkommen von fünfzigtausend bis zu mehreren hunderttausend Pfund zerstören sie elf Pfund für jedes Pfund, das sie als Wert generieren.

(meine Betonung) Profit ist wichtiger als der Schaden, den ein Unternehmen an der Gesellschaft anrichtet.

Hacking for Humanity

6. June, 2011

Random Hacks of Kindness is an event where hackers (the good guys; what you read in the papers are crackers but journalists usually don’t care) present software that saves lives. Examples include:

  • Android software to mobilize disaster response teams “with possibly unstable network conditions”
  • HelpMe – a guided first aid emergency and calling app” which collects vital information like time, number of injured people, type on injuries. It also gives first aid tips to those at the site.
  • Or how about wheelmap, a site which finds you restaurants or stores that are accessible with a wheelchair.

More Eclipse Projects Moving to Git

6. June, 2011

With Indigo, more Eclipse projects will move to Git.

Kudos go to the Git Task Force.

I’m especially happy that BIRT and the Eclipse platform is on the list.


Googling Stack Traces

4. June, 2011

How often did you run into a problem, googled for it and eventually found a solution because someone else had had the same problem?

In this process, the key issue is to find a good query for Google.

Wouldn’t it be nice if your computer would support you here?

It wouldn’t even be hard to implement: When an error happens, programming languages have context, say, a stack trace. Some programs like the H2 database and Maven already use something like that: Every error message contains a URL where you can find additional information.

So what we would need is a wiki for stack traces.

And a plug-in for our favorite IDE to find similar stack traces in this wiki.

Kudos go to Marcel Bruch for the idea.


LED Globe

3. June, 2011

Fun with LEDs: “TSUNAGARI” Project.


OpenOffice Dead, Too

2. June, 2011

After the huge success with Hudson, Oracle boldly continues in its way to k…er…save OSS projects by dum…donating OpenOffice at Apache.

Remember: Jenkins strives, Hudson is caught in the gears of a long and tedious legal process called “IP due diligence.” Something OSS developers couldn’t care less. So Jenkins pumps release after release every week. Hudson … well, we’ll see. Sometime. Maybe. When all the dubious “IP” has been replaced, removed or at least moved to plugins.

Since this worked so well, Apache gets the OpenOffice project after all important committers left to join LibreOffice.

We have to see this through the corporate lens: Oracle, a multi-billion dollar company is used to make tough decisions and see them through. Just use their database and you will instinctively feel their priorities: The product is powerful yet clumsy. A lot of things could be solved in a much more simple way. But if they did that, it would cost Oracle money. As it is, it just costs those who use it. Note that these are not the people who made the decision to buy Oracle. They just follow the orders from people who see the world through shiny leaflets.

So LibreOffice committed the most horrible crime possible: They ignored Oracle. They came, saw and left without ever looking back. Outrageous! If you make $26 billion revenue, you can’t be wrong. Impossible!

Still … I’d be surprised if there will ever be a release of OpenOffice that anyone will care about.

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Nintendo’s “Paedophile” Game “Dead or Alive Dimensions”

1. June, 2011

If you asked me a week ago, I’d say that “Nintendo” and “Paedophile” are opposites. Nintendo makes family games: Colorful, loud, funny.

Then came two things that also seem unrelated: Sweden and “Dead or Alive: Dimensions

Sweden recently tightened its laws again child abuse. Good.

Nintendo released the 3DS handheld game console. Good.

Nintendo released the game “Dead or Alive: Dimensions” for the 3DS. So what?

Well, the main characters of the game are (according to the manual) 16 and 17 years old. No problem so far.

If you switch to the free camera mode, you can look under their (short) skirts. And suddenly, the game might classify as child pornography.

Something similar happened to a poor professor for Art, who is a renown expert for Manga translation. In a long trial, he was found guilty of possessing child pornography by a Swedish court. Translation: He had some Japanese Mangas on his PC.

The publisher he was working for has kicked the man out after the court sentence but it didn’t kick out the comics. Understandable. It’s immoral to work with a pedophile. It’s not immoral to make money from his work …

Well, to avoid getting bad press, Nintendo’s published decided to fly low and withdrew the game.

My comment: If you’ve followed my blog, you know that I have a sound opinion on child abuse and rape. But my opinion isn’t based on FUD. Instead, it’s based on knowledge and facts.

So I find this troubling. Is a story about child abuse the same as actual bruises? Is a painting about rape the same as real rape? If so, please turn yourself in because I’m sure you have some high quality printings of ancient “adult” artwork, or maybe something printed in the 1960s which contains explicit adverts.

Where to draw the line? If there is no reliable criteria, then there is no way to use such a rule in court. It would always be unjust.

So the problem isn’t Nintendo but the unjust new laws in Sweden.

Unfortunately, there is little to be gained to fight such stupid laws. Parents will object for no good reason but their own insecurities. And it’s laws like this which make the problem worse for everyone. Pedophiles are afraid to seek professional help before something happens. They put more pressure on their victims to keep quiet after the rape. Victims fear even greater humiliation.

Related posts:


Don’t Use Class.forName()

1. June, 2011

If you use Class.forName(), then you should read this: What You Should Know about Class Loaders