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August 31, 2005
Hurricane Katrina and the comments from Germany
OK, now I don't know with whome I should be angry:
Germany's Environmental Minister, Jürgen Trittin (Green Party) for telling President Bush that the desaster in New Orleans is all his fault, because he didn't sign the Kyoto agreement (news article) or
the Americans that wrote letters about how all Germans are cold-hearted and are not thankful for what the US did for Germany in WWII (news article).
I do think that the US should do more about global warming, but this is not the time to rub that in. This is the time for help and sympathy. On the other hand I really don't like to like to hear about the debts we Germans still carry from WWII. That can't be the only response to any criticism from Germany.
And just because one Minister says something doesn't mean that the German people thinks that way. I know enough Americans that don't support a word their president is saying... you should know the concept.
Posted by marco at 2:51 PM | Comments (0)
August 24, 2005
Google Talk Beta 1.0.0.64
Hurray! Yet another chat/IM/telephony client - but this times it's from everyones favourite company google.com!
Google Talk
I already invited everybody I know that has a Gmail-address - because that's what you need ;)
By the way, did anybody find out yet, what the little grey text in the about box means?
play 23 21 13 16 21 19 . 7 1 13 5
Is it an easter egg? Debug output? Illuminati Greeting?
Update: It turns out this was after all a little easter egg, hinting to a chat bot bot hidden at wumpus.game@gmail.com . Unfortunately it seems no longer active. See google_im Newsgroup for more information.
Posted by marco at 1:20 PM | Comments (0)
August 19, 2005
Your Online Videorecorder
Let me start off by asking all native English and American speakers if they consider this slogan as stupid as I do: "Your Online Videorecorder"....
This really sends a shudder along my spine...allthough this slogan belongs to a product I truely love: shift.tv
As you might have guessed a Videorecorder is not a special kind of multimedia flute, but an internet-based VCR. The best about that for us: It only records German Television :)
So finally we can record the (few) programs we actually do miss here in the States. And shift.tv let's you download those and they are easily converted to DVDs. Hurra! Finally we get Harald Schmidt even here in seattle, WA!
Posted by marco at 7:54 PM | Comments (3)
Shorts for the summer
OK, I'm not talking about any kind of garment here, but about Amazon's new Short Stories category. For 49 ct you get a short story, like this one here:
It was pretty funny, although also very American ;)
So it looks like the Trend is going towards shorter texts, away from the books (some people haven't even read one spicy little book).
Posted by marco at 4:10 PM | Comments (0)
August 14, 2005
The new deck
Since we are not getting our long German summer holiday this year, we made ourselves comfortable on our deck. Click the small picture below for the new innovative features with annotations!
Posted by marco at 8:36 PM | Comments (2)
Itsy Bitsy Spider
The itsy, bitsy spider, climbed up the water spout.
Down came the rain and washed the spider out.
Out came the sun and dried up all the rain,
So the itsy, bitsy spider went up the spout again.
This is one of the few nursery rhymes, I had at least heard the title before... This is really an area, that you don't learn as a grownup German in the States, but for self-evident reasons, I'd like to ;)
Please note, that in the UK the spider is not itsy bitsy, but incy wincy. Neither makes much sence to me, but I don't think that's what nursery rhymes are for.
What I definitely don't like is for spiders of that size to crawl around in our bedroom!
Posted by marco at 8:22 PM | Comments (0)
August 10, 2005
If they say it's legal
I complaint with my email provider gmx about an advertising they have in the webmail area:
It's for a company called UseNeXT, that offers usenet access. Basically they let you download all the illegal software, music and videos other people have posted in the newsgroups. Gmx hat accompanied the ad by a big feature text endorsing the company. So far I've only seen ads for this on torrent-sites, but now on the gmx site, owned by the big German United Internet and they claimed that the downloads via UseNeXT are totally legal.
Now they even took the time to write back to my complaint and really tried to justify the validity of their claims. Unfortunately the text and link stating again how great and legal UseNeXT is, was from shortnews a German news community, known for their obscure user contributed news. But it wasn't even posted by one of their users:
The link they sent me was in turn a feature article from shortnews just there to make more people sign up for UseNeXT.
It looks like they have a pretty profitable affiliate-program (65 EUR/lead)... But it's still not legal in my eyes, just because nobody went after the usenet for copyright-infringement, yet.
Posted by marco at 9:11 AM | Comments (0)
August 8, 2005
Translation Wars
This is hilarious! Star Wars, Episode III - Revenge of the Sith with English subtitles directly translated from Chinese....
Should say "Obi Wan, may the Force be with you!"
Posted by marco at 12:56 PM | Comments (0)