René Rebe

Recently Amazon started to spam my email account regarding their http://de.buyvip.com rebranding / “microsite”. I really wonder about Amazon’s benefits in this case, why not simply run this from their main site, … Lure those people back who are not satisfied with the Amazon experience by using another brand? Or some special mass promotion sales contracts?

In 2015 wurde das Meldeverfahren für Kapitalerträge für Kirchensteuern geändert, und dabei neue, komplizierte, und nicht oft publizierte Religionsschlüssel eingeführt. Schulder müssen sich jetzt theoretisch beim Bundeszentralamt für Steuern für die Abfrage dieser Schlüssel schriftlich anmelden, und dann jährlich den Religionsschlüssel elektronisch abfragen (WTF?). Da man diese im Internet nicht oft findet hier eine kurze Textaufstellung. Da nicht von mir erdacht und nur von Staatsquellen übernommen keine Gewähr auf Richtigkeit oder Vollständigkeit:

010600 Evangelische Landeskirche Anhalts
010100 Evangelische Landeskirche in Baden
010200 Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern
010300 Evangelische Kirche Berlin-Brandenburg-schlesische Oberlausitz
010400 Evangelisch-lutherische Landeskirche in Braunschweig
010500 Bremische Evangelische Kirche
010800 Evangelisch-lutherische Landeskirche Hannovers
010900 Evangelische Kirche in Hessen und Nassau
011000 Evangelische Kirche von Kurhessen-Waldeck
011100 Lippische Landeskirche
012400 Evangelische Kirche in Mitteldeutschland
011200 Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Norddeutschland
011300 Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Oldenburg
011600 Evangelische Kirche der Pfalz
011400 Evangelisch-reformierte Kirche
011500 Evangelische Kirche im Rheinland
012300 Evangelisch-Lutherische Landeskirche Sachsens
011700 Evangelisch-Lutherische Landeskirche Schaumburg-Lippe
011900 Evangelische Kirche von Westfalen
012000 Evangelische Landeskirche in Württemberg
025100 Bistum Aachen
025200 Bistum Augsburg
025300 Erzbistum Bamberg
025400 Erzbistum Berlin
025500 Bistum Dresden-Meißen
025600 Bistum Eichstätt
025700 Bistum Erfurt
025800 Bistum Essen
025900 Erzbistum Freiburg
026000 Bistum Fulda
026100 Bistum Görlitz
027400 Erzbistum Hamburg
026200 Bistum Hildesheim
026300 Erzbistum Köln.
026400 Bistum Limburg
026500 Bistum Magdeburg
026600 Bistum Mainz
026700 Erzbistum München und Freising
026800 Bistum Münster (Nordrhein-westfälischer Teil)
026900 Bistum Osnabrück
027000 Erzbistum Paderborn
027100 Bistum Passau
027200 Bistum Regensburg
027300 Bistum Rottenburg-Stuttgart
027500 Bistum Speyer
027600 Bistum Trier
027700 Bistum Würzburg
027800 Offizialatsbezirk Oldenburg (Bistum Münster)
033200 Katholisches Bistum der Alt-Katholiken in Deutschland
044000 Israelitische Religionsgemeinschaft Baden
044100 Israelitische Religionsgemeinschaft Württembergs
044200 Landesverband der Israelitischen Kultusgemeinden in Bayern
044300 Jüdische Gemeinde in Hamburg
044400 Jüdische Gemeinde Frankfurt am Main
044500 Kultussteuerberechtigte jüdische Gemeinden im Landesverband Hessen
044600 Landesverband der Jüdischen Gemeinden von Nordrhein, Landesverband der Jüdischen Gemeinden von Westfalen- Lippe und Synagogen-Gemeinde Köln
044700 Jüdische Kultusgemeinde Bad Kreuznach
044800 Jüdische Kultusgemeinde Koblenz
044900 Synagogengemeinde Saar
058200 Freireligiöse Landesgemeinde Baden
058300 Freireligiöse Gemeinde Offenbach
058400 Freireligiöse Landesgemeinde Pfalz
058500 Freireligiöse Gemeinde Mainz
058600 Freie Religionsgemeinschaft Alzey

So Apple does not publish nice Windows driver downloads, you need the BootCamp.app for that, sigh. You need to download hundreds of megabytes even if you only need a driver, or two, sigh.

And where does it store it? /Library/Application\ Support/BootCamp/

I never quite liked that new Macs do not come with any installation media anymore. In former times you got pretty optical discs. But since the DVD-less Mac’s and the App Store one get’s “nothing” anymore :-/

The trouble comes after some time, when you want to reinstall your OS. Case in point: I wanted to install the latest OS compatible with the black, polycarbonat (awesome, stylish [did I say black?] machines, btw. - except the breaking plastic border, unfortunately). Turns out the App Store does not allow to download my “purchased” 10.7 with errors such as: “Item temporary not available” (or so).

With billions on the bank account: Why does Apple need to be so unsupportive and impolite to good old customers - when they already do not support recent, security updated OS versions on the slightly older machines, ..?

So not only can I not (without hacking and tweaking) install 10.8 or 10.9 on this still nice Macs form just some years ago. I can not even download the last supported Mac OS (10.7) to at least get some latest (and not so greatest) security updates.

This state of this former computer company is really sad.

Thankfully I often burn some backup discs, especially for installation on more than one Mac, and thus found a self-burned Mac OS 10.7 Lion disc in my archive stack and could install it on this Mac in point after all.

And this is not only about the base OS - with the current App Store implementation we will often find ourselves with purchased software, that we can no longer download for older OS and hardware in the future.

Like today being able to install vintage (and often still pretty useful) versions of an OS, and applications. Often even expensive ones: Photoshop, InDesign, Acrobat Professional, … and games. How much fun is it to boot up some vintage game from the Amiga, or old PC and play thru it again, with your kids, or friends?

What dim, brave new world, … :-/

The wonders of the WinDOwS DOS legacy. Not only does the the command line (cmd.exe) totally suck, one even needs to resort to the new, and not much less sucking powershell for some halfway decent command time scripting:

Measure-Command { cmd /wait /c our.exe args }

Alien, “fun” :-/

I was just surprised that the “Install OS X Yosemite.app” actually comes with a “createinstallmedia” helper, how nice of them:

$ sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Yosemite.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia –volume /Volumes/Install –applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Yosemite.app –nointeraction
Erasing Disk: 0%… 10%… 20%… 30%…100%…
Copying installer files to disk…
Copy complete.
Making disk bootable…
Copying boot files…
Copy complete.
Done.

For some days I had a Surface Pro 3 for some testing. In general the new, bigger 3:2 12″ display is much nicer to work (code) on. I personally find the “silver”ish magnesium looking a bit cheap. The black option of the Surface Pro 1 & 2 looked a bit more Pro. However, the unpainted version should be less sensitive to scratches.

The new flexible kickstand is of course a big plus, though it is still not very comfortable to use it on the lap, e.g. an armchair, or on an airplane tray.

A real showstopper, however, came this morning. Powering the Surface Pro 3 up resulted in an unexpected and automatic firmware update (I guess left over from the last shutdown) which never finished and thus bricked the device. And being in Germany I would not even get an in-store replacement for a self-destructed, 5 day old Surface, and now sit without anything waiting weeks for (a hopefully repaired) device in return. Sigh.

Definitely not a good start for a new companion. I guess a sign that I should have quickly installed Linux, and not let Windows 8 take over the self-destruct sequence, … :-/ !!1!

PS: One more thing: Dear companies - if you want no bad press here, then please sell products that a) work and b) do not self destruct due nightly updates. You’re welcome.

For all too long I was wondering why the middle (center, third) mouse button would not work in a Linux VM on VMware Fusion on a Mac. You know, for copy and paste, … in terminals, … all that text ;-)

I actually googled another rainy day, month or winter, but only found more questions than answers (like mouse.vusb.useBasicMouse = “FALSE” and whatsoever).

Today –clicking around in the Mac’s System Preferences– I came arose the setting for the center button that I would normally not use for Mac apps. Turns out setting this to “Button 3″ is just what is needed for VMware to actually get it and pass it down to the Linux VM.

Sometimes solutions can be so simple, sigh!

Update: Hm, only still a problems with the mighty MagicMouse - as it does not allow to configure a “Button 3″ in Apple’s SystemPreferences … Third party hacks apparently floating in the interweb for this :-/

for virtualization and such, on Linux, BSD, Mac OSX (Darwin), Unix:

dd if=/dev/zero of=some-qemu-vm.img bs=64G count=0 seek=1

Update: and resize / growing:

dd if=/dev/zero of=some-qemu-vm.img bs=1G count=0 seek=200

Yesterday I booked a hotel for family coming to visit us in Berlin I got this nice java exception backtrace at the end of the hotel reservation:

HTTP Status 500 -

type Exception report

message

description The server encountered an internal error () that prevented it from fulfilling this request.

exception

javax.servlet.ServletException: BeanUtils.populate
org.apache.struts.util.RequestUtils.populate(RequestUtils.java:467)
org.apache.struts.action.RequestProcessor.processPopulate(RequestProcessor.java:798)
org.apache.struts.action.RequestProcessor.process(RequestProcessor.java:205)
org.apache.struts.action.ActionServlet.process(ActionServlet.java:1164)
org.apache.struts.action.ActionServlet.doPost(ActionServlet.java:415)
javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:641)
javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:722)
de.hrs.web3.web.filter.PasswordChangeFilter.doFilter(PasswordChangeFilter.java:174)
de.hrs.web3.web.trackingswitch.PostViewFilter.doFilter(PostViewFilter.java:69)
de.hrs.web3.web.trackingswitch.sme.PostClickFilterSME.doFilter(PostClickFilterSME.java:67)
de.hrs.web3.web.trackingswitch.PostClickFilter.doFilter(PostClickFilter.java:66)
de.hrs.web3.web.filter.SessionFilter.doFilter(SessionFilter.java:512)
de.hrs.web3.web.filter.CiClientFilter.doFilter(CiClientFilter.java:133)
de.hrs.web3.web.filter.EncodingFilter.doFilter(EncodingFilter.java:80)
de.hrs.web3.web.util.etm.EtmRequestIDFilter.doFilter(EtmRequestIDFilter.java:63)
de.hrs.web3.web.filter.RedirectFilter.performAction(RedirectFilter.java:258)
de.hrs.web3.web.filter.RedirectFilter.doFilter(RedirectFilter.java:236)
de.hrs.web.filter.ExpiresFilter.doFilter(ExpiresFilter.java:225)
de.hrs.web3.web.filter.StaticContentFilter.doFilter(StaticContentFilter.java:105)
org.springframework.web.filter.RequestContextFilter.doFilterInternal(RequestContextFilter.java:83)
org.springframework.web.filter.OncePerRequestFilter.doFilter(OncePerRequestFilter.java:76)
de.hrs.web3.web.filter.CiClientSAMLFilter.doFilter(CiClientSAMLFilter.java:86)
org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy$VirtualFilterChain.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:330)
org.springframework.security.web.access.intercept.FilterSecurityInterceptor.invoke(FilterSecurityInterceptor.java:118)
org.springframework.security.web.access.intercept.FilterSecurityInterceptor.doFilter(FilterSecurityInterceptor.java:84)
org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy$VirtualFilterChain.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:342)
org.springframework.security.web.access.ExceptionTranslationFilter.doFilter(ExceptionTranslationFilter.java:113)
org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy$VirtualFilterChain.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:342)
org.springframework.security.web.session.SessionManagementFilter.doFilter(SessionManagementFilter.java:103)
org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy$VirtualFilterChain.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:342)
org.springframework.security.web.authentication.AnonymousAuthenticationFilter.doFilter(AnonymousAuthenticationFilter.java:113)
org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy$VirtualFilterChain.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:342)
org.springframework.security.web.servletapi.SecurityContextHolderAwareRequestFilter.doFilter(SecurityContextHolderAwareRequestFilter.java:54)
org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy$VirtualFilterChain.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:342)
org.springframework.security.web.savedrequest.RequestCacheAwareFilter.doFilter(RequestCacheAwareFilter.java:45)
org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy$VirtualFilterChain.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:342)
org.springframework.security.web.authentication.AbstractAuthenticationProcessingFilter.doFilter(AbstractAuthenticationProcessingFilter.java:183)
org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy$VirtualFilterChain.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:342)
org.springframework.security.saml.metadata.MetadataGeneratorFilter.doFilter(MetadataGeneratorFilter.java:86)
org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy$VirtualFilterChain.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:342)
org.springframework.security.saml.SAMLEntryPoint.doFilter(SAMLEntryPoint.java:102)
org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy$VirtualFilterChain.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:342)
org.springframework.security.saml.SAMLLogoutFilter.processLogout(SAMLLogoutFilter.java:157)
org.springframework.security.saml.SAMLLogoutFilter.doFilter(SAMLLogoutFilter.java:103)
org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy$VirtualFilterChain.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:342)
org.springframework.security.saml.SAMLLogoutProcessingFilter.processLogout(SAMLLogoutProcessingFilter.java:169)
org.springframework.security.saml.SAMLLogoutProcessingFilter.doFilter(SAMLLogoutProcessingFilter.java:93)
org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy$VirtualFilterChain.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:342)
org.springframework.security.web.context.SecurityContextPersistenceFilter.doFilter(SecurityContextPersistenceFilter.java:87)
org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy$VirtualFilterChain.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:342)
org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy.doFilterInternal(FilterChainProxy.java:192)
org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:160)
org.springframework.web.filter.DelegatingFilterProxy.invokeDelegate(DelegatingFilterProxy.java:346)
org.springframework.web.filter.DelegatingFilterProxy.doFilter(DelegatingFilterProxy.java:259)
root cause

java.lang.IndexOutOfBoundsException: Index: 0, Size: 0
java.util.ArrayList.RangeCheck(ArrayList.java:547)
java.util.ArrayList.get(ArrayList.java:322)
org.apache.commons.beanutils.PropertyUtilsBean.getIndexedProperty(PropertyUtilsBean.java:513)
org.apache.commons.beanutils.PropertyUtilsBean.getIndexedProperty(PropertyUtilsBean.java:410)
org.apache.commons.beanutils.PropertyUtilsBean.getNestedProperty(PropertyUtilsBean.java:768)
org.apache.commons.beanutils.PropertyUtilsBean.getProperty(PropertyUtilsBean.java:846)
org.apache.commons.beanutils.BeanUtilsBean.setProperty(BeanUtilsBean.java:903)
org.apache.commons.beanutils.BeanUtilsBean.populate(BeanUtilsBean.java:830)
org.apache.commons.beanutils.BeanUtils.populate(BeanUtils.java:433)
org.apache.struts.util.RequestUtils.populate(RequestUtils.java:465)
org.apache.struts.action.RequestProcessor.processPopulate(RequestProcessor.java:798)
org.apache.struts.action.RequestProcessor.process(RequestProcessor.java:205)
org.apache.struts.action.ActionServlet.process(ActionServlet.java:1164)
org.apache.struts.action.ActionServlet.doPost(ActionServlet.java:415)
javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:641)
javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:722)
de.hrs.web3.web.filter.PasswordChangeFilter.doFilter(PasswordChangeFilter.java:174)
de.hrs.web3.web.trackingswitch.PostViewFilter.doFilter(PostViewFilter.java:69)
de.hrs.web3.web.trackingswitch.sme.PostClickFilterSME.doFilter(PostClickFilterSME.java:67)
de.hrs.web3.web.trackingswitch.PostClickFilter.doFilter(PostClickFilter.java:66)
de.hrs.web3.web.filter.SessionFilter.doFilter(SessionFilter.java:512)
de.hrs.web3.web.filter.CiClientFilter.doFilter(CiClientFilter.java:133)
de.hrs.web3.web.filter.EncodingFilter.doFilter(EncodingFilter.java:80)
de.hrs.web3.web.util.etm.EtmRequestIDFilter.doFilter(EtmRequestIDFilter.java:63)
de.hrs.web3.web.filter.RedirectFilter.performAction(RedirectFilter.java:258)
de.hrs.web3.web.filter.RedirectFilter.doFilter(RedirectFilter.java:236)
de.hrs.web.filter.ExpiresFilter.doFilter(ExpiresFilter.java:225)
de.hrs.web3.web.filter.StaticContentFilter.doFilter(StaticContentFilter.java:105)
org.springframework.web.filter.RequestContextFilter.doFilterInternal(RequestContextFilter.java:83)
org.springframework.web.filter.OncePerRequestFilter.doFilter(OncePerRequestFilter.java:76)
de.hrs.web3.web.filter.CiClientSAMLFilter.doFilter(CiClientSAMLFilter.java:86)
org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy$VirtualFilterChain.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:330)
org.springframework.security.web.access.intercept.FilterSecurityInterceptor.invoke(FilterSecurityInterceptor.java:118)
org.springframework.security.web.access.intercept.FilterSecurityInterceptor.doFilter(FilterSecurityInterceptor.java:84)
org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy$VirtualFilterChain.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:342)
org.springframework.security.web.access.ExceptionTranslationFilter.doFilter(ExceptionTranslationFilter.java:113)
org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy$VirtualFilterChain.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:342)
org.springframework.security.web.session.SessionManagementFilter.doFilter(SessionManagementFilter.java:103)
org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy$VirtualFilterChain.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:342)
org.springframework.security.web.authentication.AnonymousAuthenticationFilter.doFilter(AnonymousAuthenticationFilter.java:113)
org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy$VirtualFilterChain.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:342)
org.springframework.security.web.servletapi.SecurityContextHolderAwareRequestFilter.doFilter(SecurityContextHolderAwareRequestFilter.java:54)
org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy$VirtualFilterChain.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:342)
org.springframework.security.web.savedrequest.RequestCacheAwareFilter.doFilter(RequestCacheAwareFilter.java:45)
org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy$VirtualFilterChain.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:342)
org.springframework.security.web.authentication.AbstractAuthenticationProcessingFilter.doFilter(AbstractAuthenticationProcessingFilter.java:183)
org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy$VirtualFilterChain.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:342)
org.springframework.security.saml.metadata.MetadataGeneratorFilter.doFilter(MetadataGeneratorFilter.java:86)
org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy$VirtualFilterChain.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:342)
org.springframework.security.saml.SAMLEntryPoint.doFilter(SAMLEntryPoint.java:102)
org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy$VirtualFilterChain.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:342)
org.springframework.security.saml.SAMLLogoutFilter.processLogout(SAMLLogoutFilter.java:157)
org.springframework.security.saml.SAMLLogoutFilter.doFilter(SAMLLogoutFilter.java:103)
org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy$VirtualFilterChain.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:342)
org.springframework.security.saml.SAMLLogoutProcessingFilter.processLogout(SAMLLogoutProcessingFilter.java:169)
org.springframework.security.saml.SAMLLogoutProcessingFilter.doFilter(SAMLLogoutProcessingFilter.java:93)
org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy$VirtualFilterChain.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:342)
org.springframework.security.web.context.SecurityContextPersistenceFilter.doFilter(SecurityContextPersistenceFilter.java:87)
org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy$VirtualFilterChain.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:342)
org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy.doFilterInternal(FilterChainProxy.java:192)
org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:160)
org.springframework.web.filter.DelegatingFilterProxy.invokeDelegate(DelegatingFilterProxy.java:346)
org.springframework.web.filter.DelegatingFilterProxy.doFilter(DelegatingFilterProxy.java:259)
note The full stack trace of the root cause is available in the Apache Tomcat/7.0.25 logs.

Apache Tomcat/7.0.25 on p-web-www-424.hrs.de/10.250.151.24

First of all nice to reveal their software stack to potential attackers, right? Second, you noticed:

java.lang.IndexOutOfBoundsException: Index: 0, Size: 0
java.util.ArrayList.RangeCheck(ArrayList.java:547)
java.util.ArrayList.get(ArrayList.java:322)

“OutOfBoundsException” thank you very much - happy customers to see this matrix gibberish instead of their booking. It are moments like this where I believe a dynamically typed language with “nil” for a non-existing array, and potentially either printing “nil” or just an “” (an empty string) somewhere on some box, or ad, or whatever, nobody probably looks at anyway is a much more elegant way to handle this, …