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30.01.2013: evil UEFI
just one more reason not to mess with UEFI, shims, bootloaders, sigantures and all that crap. just switch it off in the bios. UEFI is a total anti-feature anyway...

23.01.2013: david cameron's EU speech
today mr cameron talked about the european union and britain's future in it. early in his speech, mr cameron says:

But today the main, over-riding purpose of the European Union is different: not to win peace, but to secure prosperity.

mr cameron, you are greatly mistaken and i believe this mistake explains a lot of other things you say! the EU's original and primary goal and reason of existence is exactly to secure peace in europe. the common market is a tool towards that goal, prosperity may be windfall profit.

10.11.2012: best raspberry pi case ever

all over people are struggling to find the perfect raspberry pi enclosure. the ones that can annoyingly laser-cut theirs out of alloy sheets. some are slightly less blessed and need to make do with water-jet cut acrylic. of course the nerds just 3d-print one. the steampunks wittle them out of rosewood. but they got it all wrong! if you pay attention, you will notice that it actually comes with a perfect case!

15.05.2012: uk finally behin basel iii
took a while, but the uk is finally not blocking basel iii anymore, so with some luck we will have the first effects within a year! excuse my cautious optimism, but that *is* good news...

13.05.2012: eu comission on the financial transaction tax
in this the eu comission takes an even more positive stance on the financial transaction tax than in the past. if only people would listen!

09.04.2012: the madness of XML
XML is one of these *big* standards where you initially think this has all been thought through really well. then you start to look at the details. just found another marvel in how you declare namespaces, an example right from the spec:

<book xmlns='urn:loc.gov:books'
      xmlns:isbn='urn:ISBN:0-395-36341-6'>
    <title>Cheaper by the Dozen</title>
    <isbn:number>1568491379</isbn:number>
</book>

looks good initially, but these namespace declarations are just normal attributes with QNames. so "xmlns:isbn" means local_name "isbn" in the namespace that the prefix "xmlns" resolves to ("http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/"). the other declaration however means local_name "xmlns" in the namespace of this element, which happens to be the one declared by this very declaration ("urn:loc.gov:books"). so any QName from the "xmlns" namespace can act as a namespace declaration, as well as an attribute with local_name "xmlns" from *any other* namespace. is that what namespaces are for? that declaring a specific fact (the domain of the namespace) is done *both* within that namespace *and* in *every other* one?

06.03.2012: working place ergonomics
best monitor stand *ever*:

05.12.2011: yesss!
yes please, I want one of these. And while you're at it, do some sabretooth tigers as well!

05.09.2011: arghhh
you got to be kidding!

21.07.2011: last flight of the atlantis
ok, so this is it for the space shuttles. not that the shuttle is the most brilliant space program possible, but still worrying: will the shift to private sector space industry work? it might, but perhaps virgin and other will just find out that it is not worth the effort. perhaps the result is that space tech will have to take a back seat, then gets stepped down another notch with the odd global financial crisis, the eternal war on terror or peak oil being in the way. by the time that gets sorted out, the ISS might have dropped out of orbit and another incentive is gone. gloomy vision: in 25 years mankind's capabilities are reduced to replacing telecom and spy satelites in low orbit as they burn up, nothing more.

07.03.2011: when will they learn?
if it wasn't so damn sad then it would be damn funny: US politicians push to arm Libya's rebels.

20.02.2011: hope at last
after decades of bickering, kicking and whining my .vimrc now ends with a bold

set tabstop=4
set shiftwidth=4
set expandtab
set shiftround

if that much change is possible, might there be hope for world peace yet?

04.12.2010: wikileaks mirror
some people seem to be so terrbly unhappy about the latest wikileaks publications that they DOS it as well as lean on the cloud and DNS providers to take the servers offline. idiotic really. fortunately there are private mirrors, e.g. http://wikileaks.spreitzer.name/

01.09.2010: munmap(0, 0) harmfull on armel, ugly everywhere else
i have seen this in many other places and done it myself quit often: init a pointer to NULL, eventually mmap() it (or not), then just munmap() with that pointer later. This works because munmap is safe if there is no actual mapping in the memory range specified. i thought. as it turns out you of course can't really rely on there not being a mapping at address 0, which e.g. is the case on armel! lazyness just doesn't pay, this took *hours* to debug!

22.06.2010: missed opportunity: financial transaction tax
with this decision the german parliament missed a very, very rare opportunity (the "financial crisis") to introduce something like the tobin tax. what a shame! of course i understand some of the problems implementing it, and i am of course aware of the discussions and disagreements over the effects. but i don't think it could possibly have a very bad effect, more likely it's not gonna change much at all (a little less volatility due to reduced day trading, offset by a little more volatility due to less money in the market). but think about it as an experiment, what we could have learned about economy!

11.05.2010: aliens now under threat of extinction
cool stuff! watch out you pitifull aliens, we will soon have an elevator out of that gravity well that kept us confined for so long... muhahhahahah

25.11.2009: dicelab 0.7
after quite a while i finally managed to get a new release of dicelab out. v0.7 sports a really cool optimizer framework and first optimizations, a proper manual and loads of bug fixes.

22.11.2009: show you care!

beware the fucked up javascript and flash crap on that page though...

04.09.2009: wahl-o-mat 2.0
es steht wahl an, was fuer ein leid! hab langeweilehalber mal auf http://www.wahl-o-mat.de herumgeklickt. immer noch langeweile, ist ja auch kein wunder. aber siehe da, haben die doch glatt eine liste mit den antworten aller parteien, das muss man sich doch gleich mal genauer anschauen, nud schon ist die langeweile weg:
zunaechst einmal die kategorie "ob sonne oder regen, ich bin dagegen": die meisten "stimme nicht zu" haben cdu/csu (22) gefolgt von adm (20) und fdp sowie rentnern (je 19). die groessten jasager sind bueso (23) gefolgt von dvu und zentrum (22) und linken sozie dkp (21). gar nicht entscheiden koennen sich vor allem die freien waehler (23) und die familien (9).
lustiger ist da schon der unterschied zwischen den parteien. dazu hab ich mal "dagegen" als 0, "dafuer" als 1 und "weiss nicht" als .5 gewertet und die differenzen aufsummiert. besonders aehnlich sind sich mlp und psg (4.5, eh klar), dann folgt dkp zu tierschuetzern und rentnern (5 und 6). das koennte auch daran liegen das in der dkp nur rentner sind. aber das geht so weiter, jetzt folgt naemlich ein ganzer cluster aus diversen linken und rentnern. interessantes im unteren mitteldfeld pbc und dvu (9), spd-linke (11), spd-dkp (12). interesasnt im oberen mittelfeld union-familie (20), das ist genausoweit weg wie zur spd. die obersten plaetze werden saemtlich von der unuion eingenommen, am wenigsten moegen sie die linke (30).
das spiegelt sich auch ganz gut wieder wenn man sich ausschaut wer am weitesten von allen anderen parteien weg ist: natuerlich die union (467), gefolgt von fdp (424) und zentrum (393). das wahre zentrum deutschland sind naemlich die rentner (305) und die dkp (325)!
alles natuerlich nur bloedsinn, schon alleine die fragestellungen des wahl-o-maten sind albern...

24.08.2009: I love it when a plan comes together

http://www.sueddeutsche.de/service/187/305157/text/?limit=0#goldennews (leider muss man manchmal "328" ind das feld da eingeben, die ajax-deppen haben es mal wieder nicht geschafft einen stabilen link hinzubekommen)
Ich kann nur eins sagen: