Last weekend Janine and I went to visit Rebekka in Cambridge. We had a great time and when we returned on monday we were pretty exhausted from all the shopping and walking. Yes – walking. I cannot express how many miles we actually walked in these few days, but I'd guess: plenty.
I'll be posting a few pictures once I sifted through them, here's a preview. :)
This picture was takend sunday. We were sitting at the Cam watching the punts and enjoying the sun.
Today's night was a mix of frustration, concert and luck. Frustration because the German team sucked and almost lost against Turkey in today's Euro 2008 football championship's semi finals. Concert, because I went to see Last play at the Magnet Club, together with Kaliber, Scavenger, Balcony Scene and Consin. The Magnet consists of a concert floor and a lounge. For the first two hours of the night most guests gathered in the lounge to watch the match, only few went to hear the bands. Balcony Scene and Consin were unfortunate to play while the socker match was on. Luck. Germany won the match against Turkey, and one must admit: that outcome was not well deserved.
So that was a great night and I was glad I went to the concert. :-)
To carry out the idea, the band set up their equipment in 80 different locations around Manchester - outside shops, near manmade lakes and canals, (all the different locations the video shows were shot in quick succession), on the streets and even on the bus - in short all the locations where CCTV cameras are found.
With an estimated 13 million CCTV cameras in Britain, there was as the video shows, no lack of suitable locations.
After their shoot, the band wrote to the companies involved and asked for the relevant portions under the Freedom of Information Act.
Today a former customer of mine called with a strange problem. A program I once wrote was popping up error messages, reporting:
duplicate entry '17631' for key 1
I checked all database tables for duplicate IDs but there were none. Strange. One table contained an ID-value of 17631, though, and I thought maybe the table index is broken. I tried to rebuild the index using mysql's REPAIR TABLE .. QUICK function. That didn't help. I did a backup and deleted the value in question. Didn't help either.
Being on the phone with the customer all the time, he tells me the server had been unstable lately. I decided to repair all tables' indices.
Some of you may have noticed the sudden lack of posts to this journal. In fact I haven't posted since may 19th, which surprisingly also is the day I started my new job. I am working for DSPECIALISTS now, doing software development on embedded systems. I like the new job, but it also keeps me busy and I have to get used to working again. :-D
Trivia: All workstations at DSPECIALISTS have band names. Mine is called »ellisnyard«. ;-)
Dabei wollte doch erst keiner was von dem Peilsender gewusst haben:
Das LKA forderte die Herausgabe von "Überwachungstechnik des Landeskriminalamtes Schleswig Holstein". Schenk habe sich das "GPS Ortungsgerät Nr. 20" im März 2007 "bösgläubig" angeeignet. "Der Beklagte behandelt den Peilsender wie eine Fundsache", empört sich das Kieler LKA. Der Sender sei jedoch "nicht verloren gegangen", sondern sei "unter der Stoßstange des Wagens der Beklagten versteckt" worden.
On our way looking for a place to stay we passed the ruins of an old castle and checked them out. We found lots of grass, flowers, old structures and a beautiful view down on the sea.
We woke up at the Lago d'Iseo and the sky was again covered by dark clouds so we decided to move south, finally. As we had originally planned to stay in the North we had no specific target to head for. It seemed a good idea though, to cruise along the Riviera coast towards Monaco. So that's what we did and we spend the first night camping right at the sea in Savona.
At the Lago di Garda we went on to see Limone sul Garda which was supposed to be real nice. We found it was in fact a cute little village, but also rainy, still. As the weather still sucked we decided to go shopping at the Franciacorta Outlet Village, where I found an unexpected amount of cool clothes. The weather improved, the sky cleared up and we decided to sleep at the nearby Lago d'Iseo. From our tent we enjoyed a beautiful view across the lake.
Janine and I did a short trip to Italy last week. I'll be posting a few pictures as I stumble across them. We spend our first night camping at Lago di Ledro, right next to Lago di Garda (Lake Garda). The night was rainy and the clouds were touching the Lago di Garda the next morning. It was rather cold outside and we decided not to stay there but move on South.
Customers who have purchased music from Microsoft's now-defunct MSN Music store are now facing a decision they never anticipated making: commit to which computers (and OS) they want to authorize forever, or give up access to the music they paid for. Why? Because Microsoft has decided that it's done supporting the service and will be turning off the MSN Music license servers by the end of this summer.
Admit, you just got to love it! Would you ever have imagined that a business model in which you buy music and when the shop goes down you're stuck to the one computer you have to listen to it, would actually work out for the industry? A future dialog:
Alice:
Hey dude, you got that ancient song 'Won't Get Fooled Again' by The Who? I'm looking for it everywhere!
Bob:
Yeah man, bought it online years ago.
Alice:
Great, can we listen to it?
Bob:
Uhm.. there's a problem.. my old computer is not working anymore, broke down 5 years ago.
Alice:
?!§$?
Bob:
The online store closed down and I wasn't allowed to copy the music I downloaded anywhere after that.
Alice:
-LOL-
Bob:
You know what's ironic about it?
Alice:
?
Bob:
They called their copy protection system PlayForSure.
G-8-Gipfel, EU-Präsidentschaft, Asem-Gipfel: Für die deutsche Politik war 2007 ein Jahr der Großereignisse. Für die Kriminalitätsstatistik war es ein Jahr mit einem massiven Anstieg politisch motivierter Gewalt. Höhere Zahlen gab es vor allem im linken Spektrum. Aber auch die Ausländerkriminalität nahm zu.
Und dazu diese Grafik:
Da kann man der Welt nur zustimmen. Angesichts solcher Zahlen hätte ich den Schwerpunkt meines Artikels auch der Links- und der Ausländerkriminalität gewidmet. Interessant auch die Schlussfolgerung "Für die Kriminalitätsstatistik war es ein Jahr mit einem massiven Anstieg politisch motivierter Gewalt."; man beachte den krassen Anstieg der politischen Kriminalität von 29050 in 2006 auf 28538 in 2007 – äh, moment..
Let me just phrase this naive thought of mine: "I thought it was the first duty of our government to hold up and protect the constitution and all rights granted to the people in there."
How is it even possible that the German constitutional court has to constantly deal with the latest trash our law makers are producing? Of course it's good to know that there's still one instance holding up the values of our constitution, but what about the others? Our parliament is openly discussing as how far they can go to close the even smallest hole of civil rights that our constitution is not explicitly protecting. What do you think?
Online access to people's computers,
video surveillance in appartments/houses,
video surveillance of public spaces,
license plate scanners,
internet and phone connection data logging,
...
OK you may think, that's to catch criminals and terrorists. Some even want to use it to detect minor misdemeanors. But surveillance also covers friends of criminals and terrorists. And also people who just happen to be arround criminals and terrorists. And actually those are no criminals and terrorists, they are suspects. And since most terrorists don't appear publicly until they've done something, a whole lot of people are considered suspects; just to prevent anything bad from ever happening. And their friends and whoever is around them is being watched. Closely. There is no more privacy for them.
There's probably a lot we can learn from history, but one of the most obvious realizations is: There is no such thing as absolute and guaranteed safety. Never has been and never will be! We've had dictators who really cared to not let anything happen, but their dictatorship went down and was replaced eventually.
What we are to protect most is not our lives but our rights and freedom that make up our lives. I know this is old. So what? Our government—in fact many governments in the world—is working hard to free us of our civil rights, trying to gain total control of anything that happens in this country. And apparently the constitutional court is the last instance that hasn't fallen. But who knows for how long. And who knows if our constition is even good enough to protect us from that kind of governmental violence we're facing nowadays.
