General

Today, I got my last birthday present for this year: finally, my aunt managed to come to Linz and celebrate my birthday. As always, I expect to get a very original birthday present from her. And this time, it was definitely one of the best presents that I ever got before: Schott's Original Miscellany (actually, I got the German translation, "Schotts Sammelsurium"). This is nothing but a book containing more or less useful knowledge, collected by Ben Schott, and englishman who seems to have way too much time.

What is so special about this book is first of all how it looks: a very nice binding, with wonderful fonts, and also wonderful fonts inside. Then the content itself: it contains a lot of interesting and funny stuff, like how to adjust one's bow tie, which ice thicknesses are able to wear which weights, the different types of sushi and what kind of food is used for them, the nine mortal sins, the correct way through the labyrinth of Hampton Court, the free masons' grades, or the mysterious deaths of some Burmesian kings, and many, many more things.

Especially the last thing is really funny: Nandabayin for example laughed to death, when an Italian merchant told him that Venice was a free state without a king, in the year 1599. Hilarious.

I just got two spam mails, both only containing a link to this page. When you have a look at it, you will be astonished what "die neue Bewegung" (the new movement) is: a pro-Islamic website. Wow. Is now [[Al Qaida]] recruiting holy warriors over the internet in western countries?

You've probably heard about O.B. Laden's latest message to the world. The quintessence of his speech is that he's angry at the US because of their foreign policy in the middle east. Interestingly, that pretty much matches the reasons for bin Laden's ideology in the book Against all Enemies by Richard A. Clarke. Dick Clarke describes in his book that he got toally fed up with the United Status, when they used Saudi Arabia to station their troops for the second Gulf war (freeing Kuwait, that was). In general, I would recommend buying and reading this book, as it gives a lot of insight into how the United States government and their secret services and law enforcement agencies work. It also clearly shows that Bill Clinton was not a fool, and that all these assertions about attacking other countries to draw off attention from the Lewinsky affair are simply not true (only a few months later, law enforcement agencies uncovered several terroristic cells in New York and Montreal how have been in operation for several years).

Christian Schöller pointed out a small political quiz in his weblog. I did that quiz, too, and that's my result:

Actually, I would characterize myself as green socialdemocrat (the green part of me being a "realo"), I strongly believe in the need of a good social system, I also believe that one a country's duties is to satisfy the basic needs for all citizens, be it water, electricity, heating, reasonably priced shelters, a guaranteed low price for staple foods, etc. So, I definitely don't want to be moved into the "libertarian" corner, as they believe in almost the exact opposite (and sometimes, weird stuff like private gun possession). All in all, I don't feel quite represented by this quiz, but that's possibly because it's US-centric, and neither socialdemocrats nor greens have any significance over there. So definitely not a country where I would want to live.

Today's TV tip: 20:40, Arte: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Definitely one of the best Stanley Kubrick movies around, a great black comedy, and well known for scenes like "shoot at the vending machine!", the ride-on-the-nuke scene or Vera Lynn's song "We'll meet again" in the final scene.

Has anybody ever experienced an audit of the BSA in a company? If so, I would like to know about it, because I thought about such cases a bit and came to an interesting idea:

The BSA's members are all big software companies, some of them facing charges due to anti-competitive measures. So, these companies generally want to raise their product portfolio and general influence on the software market. And what do you do if you don't have the time to write software by yourself? You buy other companies that already did your work (plus their portfolio, of course). Or you simply take it from other companies. And what do need to do in order to take other companies' software? You have to go to there and take it. And what does the BSA do? Right, they go to other companies and "audit" them.

Of course, this sounds like a bad conspiracy theory, but think about it: law enforcement agencies are overly enthusiastic in cooperating with such organizations, and eager to seize computer equipment and hand it over to organizations such as the BSA for analyzing the contents. And no, law enforcement agencies don't seize single harddisks, they usually seize everything. When all of the storage media is handed over to the BSA, it's very easy for them to not only check for possible illegal copies of their members' software, but also possible to check for the audited company's trade secrets, source code, design plans, etc.

My conclusion is that a number of big companies could easily form an organization similar to the BSA (or have already formed an organization similar to the BSA, or the formed organization is the BSA itself) that aims for a legitimate goal, but could also do industrial espionage on a grand scale. The precondition seem to be right to achieve such a goal, but currently, no organization has been proven to do just that (on a side note: the US were totally unaware of actual al-Qaida terrorists on their territory until they uncovered several terroristic cells a few days before New Year's Eve 1999/2000, but about the possibility was speculated before).

First, I couldn't believe what I heard in the radio, namely that about 68000 people from Georgia, North Carolina and Florida have registered for voting in two of these states. That is illegal of course, but in the US, you have no obligation to register, and the election officials hardly ever check whether the voters are registered in other states. This seems also to have happened in 2000, as this article in Orlando Sentinel shows (if you are asked for a password, use bugmenot.com).

People, buy the latest and greatest Linux User: it contains a wonderful article about TPP, written by Patricia Jung. We'll see how many more people will subscribe to the mailing list, and whether we get more publicity... but seeing an article about software that I wrote in a magazine that is read by a lot of people in the german-speaking parts of Europe makes me very proud.

Can you deny crimes because they were the "lesser evil"? IMHO no. But interestingly, no-racism.net, does exactly that in this article. The article criticizes the movie "Der Untergang", by simply pulling a complete generation through the dirt (my generation grandparents, that is) and calling them murderers. My grandmother's elder brother was killed in Norway during the way, and my grandfather's elder brother was killed in Russia during the war. Both of them were drafted, none of them really wanted to go to war, but they were forced to. And both of them came from families with socialist background.

The world is not just black and white, and soldiers generally weren't considered war criminals (unless proven otherwise!), so you always have to differentiate. no-racism.net critcizes the movie for picturing Wehrmacht soldiers as victims. Well, I do consider them to be victims in some ways, they were victims of the regime, which forced them to go to war. And how the Soviets entered Germany and Austria at the end of WW II, wasn't the nicest way, either.

The thing that I have a big problem with is that no-racism.net is denying the Soviet crimes in the 10 years after the end of the war. Taking away food and all kind of other goods "just because" cannot be denied. My grandmother told me that when they Soviets arrived at their house, the only thing that saved her family from them was one coincidence: her father helped digging tunnels in the 1920s, and there were guest workers from East Europe, including Russia. She told me that one of the first Soviet soldiers who arrived came to her father and told him, "I know you", and this very soldier told the other Soviets to leave their house alone. Of course, many other families didn't have that much luck. According to my grandmother, the Soviets didn't stay long, the French followed them, until the Brits came to stay for the next few years.

I'm really sad how no-racism.net is agitating against a whole generation, in a very primitive and undifferentiating way. But to be honest, this is what I see from the extreme leftist scene all the time. But this example is extreme, because no-racism.net is denying crimes of the Soviet, because they were the "lesser evil" because they freed us.

This is my response to Martin's article: the picture on the left shows [[Mars_(planet)|Mars]] in a quite detailled picture. I'm just impressed by most pictures from space, be it planets, nebulas or galaxies: they all look fantastic and always make me think about who we are and what space is actually about, and how huge it actually is. That's why I have pictures from outer space on my desktops most of the time.

BTW: you can find a number of really nice space pictures on hubblesite.org, with an own section dedicated to wallpapers.

Haha, today, my third wisdom tooth was removed. Absolutely pain-free, so far, just wonderful. I wonder whether I will even need any pain killers. Now, according to my dentist, all wisdom tooth issues have been eliminated, and I'm done with it. He was also quite happy about how nice the places of my other ex-wisdom teeth healed.

Did you enjoy reading the alt.suicide.holidays FAQ? Do you like the lemmings of nichtlustig.de? Well, then Return of the bunny suicides is something for you!

After work, I quickly went to Amadeus bookstore, and rushed to the english-language comic books. Actually, I was thinking of buying a new Garfield comic, but right over the Garfield comics, there was this book, "Return of the bunny suicides". I had a quick look into the book, and saw that it was about nothing but bunnies trying to commit suicide in many different and really funny ways! It was so hilarious, and I immediately knew that I had to buy it (which I did).

I can only recommend this book. There's also a predecessor of it, "The book of bunny suicides". I never had a look at it, but I think that it will most likely be as funny as the other book.

"symbian schlecht dokumentiert zu bezeichen ist eine beleidigung für projekte die schelcht dokumentiert sind"

Sprache wird von denen geformt, die sie verwenden. Sprache kann und soll nicht kuenstlich beeinflusst werden, da sie sich dadurch dem natuerlichen Gebrauch derer, die sie auch tatsaechlich verwenden, immer weiter entfernt. Sprache wird beeinflusst, von kulturellen Veraenderungen, von anderen Sprachen, von einer sich veraendernden Art und Weise der Menschen zu denken. Man kann mit ihr spielen, sie formen, sie gebrauchen, sie missbrauchen, mit ihr ausdruecken.

Die deutsche Sprache war immer schon von anderen Sprachen gepraegt, und wurde von denen gepraegt, die sie auch verwendet haben. Sie hat viele Jahrhunderte ueberstanden, mit etlichen Veraenderungen, Dialektbildungen, immer wieder sich wandelndem Vokabular.

Gerade das Spiel mit ihr fasziniert, auf immer neue, kreative Art und Weise, neue Facetten der deutschen Sprache zu entdecken. Den Dialekten und Mundarten zu lauschen, sie versuchen zu erkennen, zu verstehen, zu imitieren, das ist es, was die deutsche Sprache so spannend macht. Ueber die zahlreich vorhanden Redundanzen nachdenken, die reiche Anzahl an Synonymen, die es so interessant machen, die deutsche Sprache zu verwenden, kleinste Unterschiede auszudruecken, die in anderen Sprachen nur muehselig beschreibbar sind.

Bin ich der einzige, der diese Begeisterung fuer seine Muttersprache zeigt? Warum gibt es soviele, die Reinheit fordern? Eine Reinheit, die nie gegeben war, da immer andere Einfluesse vorhanden waren. Eine kuenstliche Reinheit, die etwas Vorhandenes, langwierig in einem evolutionsartigen Prozess Geschaffenes und Geformtes, versucht zu entfremden, und dabei selbst entfremdet von denen, die sie eigentlich verwenden. Warum soll kein Wort, so praktisch, kurz, praegnant und allgemeinverstaendlich es auch heute sein mag, ein deutsches Wort werden, wenn es einer anderen Sprache entstammt? Ist der Wunsch, die Sprache so zu halten, wie sie vorher war, einfach nur Konservatismus, oder ist es Xenophobie, Angst vor dem Fremden, das immer mehr Einfluss
auf uns nimmt? Zeigt diese Angst nicht nur eine Angst vor einer sich veraendernden Sprache, sondern auch eine Angst vor einem Bildungssystem, das sich veraendert hat, weltoffener geworden, Weltoffenheit unterrichtet, und dessen Schueler mit der Idee einer grossen, verbundenen Welt infiziert wurden, in der jeder Punkt der Erde leicht zu erreichen ist, und an dem man sich meist ohne grosse Probleme verstaendigen kann, weil diese Internationalisierung nicht nur ein lokales Phaenomen geblieben ist, sondern auch wirklich international geworden ist?

Ich bin nicht imstande, diese Frage zu beantworten. Ich weiss nur soviel: Sprache wird von denen geformt, die sie verwenden, und nicht von denen, die sie studieren, oder gar am lautesten schreien.

As you can see, synflood.at is online again! Downtimes are a bad thing...