madhatter’s coffee.

The Federal Government seems to plan to use Trojan programs for criminal proceedings. This is interesting since governments worldwide already claimed the right to be the only one’s who are allowed to use massive encryption of files. So, generally the civil service already is allowed to break every onenulls privacy. It seems a little bit like 1984 again.
Our secretary of state even thinks, that passports using bio-metrical data to identify the owner are supporting our privacy. For we all of course fear the terrifying idea that someone could steal our identity. Maybe we should skip the whole identity-card-thing. Like it used to be in the United Kingdom. If no one knows who you are, he cannot pretend to be you, eh?
For all those idealists who still vote for your chancellor I suggest a visit on Dirk’s homepage.

Yesterday I went to some event where our mayor presented what he decided to do for the next few years. And he called it: Generationenvertrag.
It’s a word so originally German that one simply can’t translate it in common English. It’s something like kindergarden or rucksack. It has to be imported. Please import it, in the US, in the UK to Australia, India, South Africa, wherever. It’s the holy grail of modern German politics. It means as much as: “contract between generations” and describes the ‘German dream’. No more conflicts between the young and the old. No second 1968. No RAF. No new ideas. No further demands of the young, no critique of the old.

But that wasn’t his point. He went a little bit away from that topic and instead stated, that he’d like to work us, the audience with him at the great master-plan how to rescue our city from financial collapse and exodus of the young. Which was quite funny because about five sixth of the audience where over thirty. The little difference between him and us was that he would earn money and we would get a guaranteed place in heaven. But no financial reward.
Which pretty sure leads to the conclusion that this city once again has the brand-new idea to leave all social problems to the people and deal with the big ideas. Like building a new ultra modern train station. A new skyscraper, dildo of the city. A science center (this ain’t even translated). A new airport.
He wasn’t even trying to understand that you can’t expect honorary work to run a city government. You can’t simply replace ordinary jobs with honorary posts and say to the people: sorry but we can’t afford it any more so help yourself. A city isn’t a do-it-yourself-workshop. You can”t just go around and explain that the school can’t afford teachers anymore and the parents should teach their and thirty other children if they want them educated. Even if they would accept this idea: they are just amateurs. Nothing against honorary work. But I won’t let my children taught by some fucked up guy without something to do. If I had children [grin.] I mean, there are professionals out there. I know it. You just have to pay them decently.
Oh. By the way, the most charming sentence of Mr Mayor was:

To thank someone is the most effective way to beg him doing it.

On HistoryShots you can get an amazing new look on … well, guess what? History.

They’re drawing of developments from their beginning to the actual state of art. Or, what you could call so. But you can spend hours looking for the points where different branches split or in case of the history of the U.S. Democrats and the Republicans, remerged.

(via Popnutten)

OK. I found my alter ego. I am doubled by Brent Sienna. And I hail to his great Steevness. The iPhone has come upon us. A revelation.
When I followed the big Masters Keynote on Engaget and MacRumors I simply freaked out. I overdid it in such a way, that every single person in the room quit and left me alone. But hey. The iPhone is simply kool. No, it ain’t just kool. It’s the thing I’ve been waiting for years. I didn’t know, that I am a Switcher, but nonetheless: if it hadn’t been Apple introducing this THING, I would have hailed anyone. Now I am hailing Steeve.
He said one simple sentence during his keynote.

It’s the internet in your pocket for the first time ever.

And it is. David Pogue says. It must be. Say what you want. I confess to geekdom. And I’m going to save my money till iPhone-Day. Which is in approximately nine months. A lot of time. An awful lot of money. It’s worth it.

Did I ever mention by accident that I call myself a communist? If I don’t I did it now. Well, it doesn’t matter anyway, unless you don’t want to lead a really excessive discussion about Marxist theory, prejudices and organized provocation.
However, there are still some remains of the USSR left. For example in Unterzögersdorf. Which is somewhere in Austria as GoogleMaps told me.
It’s an adventure which as I thought died out in 1998, when with Grim Fandango the last game for PC Lucas Arts produced disappeared from stage. This one depictures the authentic atmosphere of post-sovjet era combined with the ethusiam of you as the main figure.
Originally the game was planed as piece of performance art but in 2005 became realized as a fully playable adventure. But I don’t want to talk: look and enjoy the charming nostalgia of communism and its lost ideals. (at least to some)

Something I came across when I was doing some research for an Article about the inventors of the Napshell. Sueddeutsche.de seems to have some crude interpretations concerning my search terms…
The list of search results for nxvqil9w proved to be interesting, too, by the way.