Posted by Tim
Filed under: Blog
Joystick revival
Life is good. Sitting in my room, wrote some code for the robots and sorting photos and music now. And listening to good music. I found some old MODs with music of Chaos Engine and Moonstone which I played in the good old times on my Amiga 500. So while chatting with Tob I decided to bring my Amiga with me to Aachen next time when I get here and try to get some old Amiga games back to work. I think the fun of these old times is really worth it. Anyone got some old (but still working) Amiga joysticks for me?
Posted by Tim
Filed under: Blog
Now we have got a 16-byte dog
Went to the vet with Ando today. cron.yearly triggered immunisation. But this year we have something special. The city council sent us a letter requesting that we implant a chip into our dog. Yes, right, dogs in Germany now need a kind of an RFID tag. This is law. And if we want to travel to other (European) countries like the Netherlands we need this chip and a special pet passport stating his immunisation information and a lot personal information about the owner of the dog. The already existing immunisation passport is not enough anymore. So if you ever see a dog walking besides the cash desk which causes the number 276 09 72002 78041 to appear please let me know ;-) So 15 chars + zero termination make 16 byte, they could squeeze it, but my experience says that they will just use a plain string...
And I passed my linear algebra exam - finally.
Posted by Tim
Filed under: Blog
Good guy and bad guy
Last friday Anne and I went to the Museum Ludwig that celebrated the come back from their Picasso collection from Munich. It started with a play that tried to show some of the characters from Picasso\'s pictures. In the beginning I didn\'t like it but it convinced me to like it while watching it :-) It was a surrealistic mix of characters and stories. Then I got to see some of Picasso\'s pictures. I liked the \"Harlekin\", but most of the rest was nothing I would like in my appartment. I guess Picasso is not my artist of choice.
On saturday we went to the cinema to watch \"Der Untergang\". It was quite impressive. After the movie finished nobody talked in the cinema. It was just quiet. Nothing you usually experience after you have just seen a movie in a cinema. I guess (since this is what made me being quiet) nobody understood the riots and civil commotion - besides the military confusion...
Posted by Tim
Filed under: Blog
Yahooooo!
Finally I had my last exam today. I think I passed it, will see in a couple of days. Now listening to the Hackers soundtrack (really loud, of course) and will do some of the stuff that got forgotten over the past two weeks. Did I create all that chaos in my room here!? Oh my... And tommorrow I will have some time again to play with the robots again :-)
Posted by Tim
Filed under: Blog
Parallels
I saw a film about the "rise of the evil" before second WW describing the happenings that caused H. to gain the power in Germany at that time. It was not a documentation but a film showing the development leading to the war. As the title suggests it describes the time from the first putsch to the merging of the two duties RK and RP when H. had the absolute power.
It's frightening to see some similarities between that time and today. I guess they changed the wording to make the film match better for today. So they explicitly talked about "terrorists" after the RT fire and that it needed special steps to be taken to prevent that from happening again. They used this to have a law giving all execute and legislative rights into one hand and taking away the most basic civil rights from the people. You probably know all that but I have to tell this to myself again and again to understand why it is not good to have things like the total information awareness of any government in the world or a general data storage for all communication facilities. We are creating so many surveillance techniques and using them more and more widespread - all in the name of more security. Or at least this is what we are being told by the ones that benefit to gain more power or keep and strengthen the power they already have.
In the 1920s the economy was down. It was a lot worse than today, of course. But we already see what may be coming if the economy does not get up. Especially we in Germany needed to reform the social system that pays unemployed people. This was not popular (of course) since some people will get less money. And what do we see in the first two elections after this reform in two states last week? extremists from the right spectrum gain power - again! I already understood that there will always be some stupid people, but enough to get 9 percent in an election!?
The other effect that I mentioned are the laws that governments are installing in the democracies around the world. In Germany they are talking about extending the privileges to eavesdrop on potential criminals. Note that potential. In the EU they are discussing to enforce longer time to keep communication protocols of telecommunication customers like phone bills (who calls whom, when, how long) and maybe in the future even who surfed which website - think of it as proxy logs for all customers. And they do not just want to have that data for potential criminals but for all people - every single person - and they want the companies to save that for years!
Another example is the need for people going to the USA to give the government biometric data just when entering the country! Everybody is a potential terrorist. At least this is what I would think if I got treated like that. The last time when I was in the USA in 2000 I arrived at the Newark Airport. Of course the first thing I tried was to see the statue of liberty. This is what America stands for, right? Liberty! Not any more as it seems. Back then I felt like a guest. Of course the person controlling my passport asked some questions where I was going to and what my plans were. But after explaining she said "Hello and welcome" and I felt like a guest. I guess I will feel differently when I visit the USA next time.
All that makes me think that the time we are living in is not as good as it seems. I was lucky to grow up in peace in a really nice environment far away from all that basic problems that about 3/4 of the world have. But even in this generally good environment we manage to implement mechanisms that allow a small group of people to have power of the masses. Some people are perverting the democratic system - all in the name of even this system. That reminds me about a guy I once saw a film about...
