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after the unfolding Dark Ages in the U.S.

Thanks for the best laught I've had all day. If the US is growing dark, here is where the light is going.

Right. And the next thing you know, Der Spiegel will be asking, "Could George W. Bush Be Right?" That will be the day.

The "founding fathers&mothers" did not install the Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Schriften. Neither did they install the Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle Multimedia-Diensteanbieter. Instead, they wrote a constitution which in article 5 plainly says "(1) Everybody has the right to [...] unhindered access to information from commonly available sources [...] Censorship does not happen". These are the actual words of the German constitution (modulo my rough translation)

Much like in the USA (where there are numerous Supreme Court decisions on the subject), the government may restrict this right under very specific circumstances. Again, article 5: "(2) These rights are limited by the general legislation, the laws for protection of the youth and the right of personal honor."

The personal honor provision allows the government to outlaw libel, the youth protection clause allows it to restrict access to adult material. Note that there is no Nazi speech clause there (as would be expected if your statements were true). In fact, i doubt that the ominous "general legislation" clause in paragraph (2) covers the banning of swastikas and such, but since no Nazi has ever tried to challenge this at Germany's Bundesverfassungsgericht, we have yet to find out.

The disturbing trend behind the recent attempts to declare unwanted information illegal is that we seem to think that bad things will go away if we don't talk about them. They won't.

And the Weimar Republic did not die because Nazis were allowed to speak. It died because there weren't enough Democrats around to answer them.

Should my bank analyse every transaction made on my account, and have free reign to investigate any of them?

Last year, some phishers succesfully got some PIN/TAN combinations from customers of the German Postbank. They tried to transfer high sums to accounts at some eastern European bank, but the Postbank software scans for "unusual" transfers, so the customers were contacted by Postbank employees and asked wether they really wanted to transfer 10,000 Euros to Elbonia.

According to an interview with the bank's CEO last month, no harm was done and the authorities in the respective countries were informed.

Recommended reading to illustrate this, his latest interview with Spiegel

Has got a funny name and funny clothes : http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/0,1518,339109,00.ht ml

If you have a country you like, go looking for one of their big newspapers and then see if they have it in translation. You can learn a lot about their culture that way, plus your own as you see how they view you.

For example, Der Spiegel (The Mirror) is a German newsmagazine, but they have an English website and daily email service. Note that I didn't link to their main page, but to what I found to be some interesting commentary...

Indymedia is another source for underreported and off-beat items.

Personally, I'm gay and I don't think homosexuality is genetic.

German online news magazine Spiegel Online had an article recently about homosexuality and genetics (google translation). The gist is: Homosexuality partly seems to have a genetic reasons, and the relevant genes are inherited from the mother. The same genetic factors that are related to homosexuality seem to cause a higher fertility in females.
So the same genetic factors that give gay men a evolutionary disadvantage (statistically fewer children) give their mothers and sisters an advantage (statistically more children).

Personally, I'm gay and I don't think homosexuality is genetic.

German online news magazine Spiegel Online had an article recently about homosexuality and genetics (google translation). The gist is: Homosexuality partly seems to have a genetic reasons, and the relevant genes are inherited from the mother. The same genetic factors that are related to homosexuality seem to cause a higher fertility in females.
So the same genetic factors that give gay men a evolutionary disadvantage (statistically fewer children) give their mothers and sisters an advantage (statistically more children).

Wow. You manage to find something negative in everything. Why not be a bit more positive and optimistic about it?

FYI, this is the ad that ran in the German well-known newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ). This image is taken from an article in another well-respected German magazine called DER SPIEGEL. They've been reporting quite a lot about Firefox... and about this campaign. The ad text says:

FIRE! Together, hundreds of programmers develop a revolutionary Internet browser. The volunteer their time for it and then present it as a free gift to the whole world. Thereupon, 2403 people and companies finance this advertisement to tell you: Firefox 1.0 is out. Free download at http://www.mozilla-europe.org/de/.

Well... I think these ads are a fantastic idea. And to get back to your point, I think that is utter nonsense. Look at the image I've linked to. Sure, there are a lot of names. But you won't get confused by them! But the large list symbolizes the power behind this open-source browser movement very well. And with the FIRE! at the top and the clear message, it manages to catch your eye and give you its information extremely well, I think.

It's OK to not be overly optimistic about anything, but please don't be so overly pessimistic either.

Wow. You manage to find something negative in everything. Why not be a bit more positive and optimistic about it?

FYI, this is the ad that ran in the German well-known newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ). This image is taken from an article in another well-respected German magazine called DER SPIEGEL. They've been reporting quite a lot about Firefox... and about this campaign. The ad text says:

FIRE! Together, hundreds of programmers develop a revolutionary Internet browser. The volunteer their time for it and then present it as a free gift to the whole world. Thereupon, 2403 people and companies finance this advertisement to tell you: Firefox 1.0 is out. Free download at http://www.mozilla-europe.org/de/.

Well... I think these ads are a fantastic idea. And to get back to your point, I think that is utter nonsense. Look at the image I've linked to. Sure, there are a lot of names. But you won't get confused by them! But the large list symbolizes the power behind this open-source browser movement very well. And with the FIRE! at the top and the clear message, it manages to catch your eye and give you its information extremely well, I think.

It's OK to not be overly optimistic about anything, but please don't be so overly pessimistic either.

it was Mercedes and Swatch. You can find the smart history here.
In germany even the police use them :-)

shows polls and updates as the votes get tallied

Weakly backed observations and uninformed comments? You mean like these:

[Kerry]He simply makes bold faced lies to the jury, and even though they are objected... the jury still has to hear it.

He has turned the economy around, and that is irrefutible. If you argue with that you are a fool.

[Healthcare, Kerry's plan] It is too outlandish, and I really hope it never is passed. President Bush's plan is more realistic and addresses the root cause of the issue

President Bush is certainly not a perfect man

(Oh. You should tell him that sometime. He himself still thinks he's directly implementing God's will on earth.)

but he has held his position with integrity.

(so has Pol Pot. But I digress...)

Regardless of what Kerry says, I can tell you with the utmost confidence that John Kerry would have invaded Iraq if he were president during this past term, even without 9/11.

What? What twisted planet are you from?

In regards to terrorism, Bush did what was necessary, the public demanded it, as well as his moral conviction demanded it.

Taha Yassin Ramadan, then-vice president of Iraq, shortly before the invasion:

Why is it that the Americans must destroy the only secular regime in the Middle East, besides Syria? If Saddam Hussein falls, there will be chaos here, and these crazy Islamists and terrorist will triumph in the end.

Sounds prophetic, doesn't it? Bush is the best thing that has happened to islamic terrorism in a long time. His crusades are probably doing a better job a recruiting junior terrorists than Al-Quaida alone ever could. I'm sure Bin Laden is endorsing Bush's re-election all he can...

(more "observations")

This is just all ridiculous. The Democrats are total liars, and anyone who follows them is a complete fool.

Democrats tend to be selfish, or lazy, or have no one who relies on them.

The Democrats support every single issue that is questionable. They support gay/lesbain marriage (only positive for gay/lesbian community), they support stem cell research from embryos and abortion(only positive for feminists, and do not get me started on that).

On a certain meta-level I tend to agree with the person who modded you "Interesting". It is "interesting" indeed to watch one of those gung-ho Bush believers dismantle himself.

The director of the London Science Museum has a solution for this: "poo power".

What the visitors leave in the toilets is collected and used to generate energy.

The German translation is really funny:
"Poo Power", sagte Tucker - zu Deutsch etwa: "Kraft aus Kacke"

Link in German (sorry to the English speaking readers ...)

Here're the 3 pictures I found in the article:
Some guy standing on the door under the cockpit
Some guy in the dusty cockpit
Front of the Buran

Here're the 3 pictures I found in the article:
Some guy standing on the door under the cockpit
Some guy in the dusty cockpit
Front of the Buran

Here're the 3 pictures I found in the article:
Some guy standing on the door under the cockpit
Some guy in the dusty cockpit
Front of the Buran

A German Museum has bought it and is waiting to ship it to Germany. The Museum has bought many things like this in the past (Tupolew TU-144, a Concord...)

Or is this how they got to the hatch?

This article (in german) reports that the Technik Museum Sinsheim has bought the shuttle for an undisclosed six figure sum.

The Technik Museum Sinsheim already has a Concorde, the Tupolev TU144 (soviet counterpart of the Concorde), and a Porsche 959, "The blue Flame" and a lot of others tech stuff.

The shuttle will be kept in good company :-)

Also at the Spiegel, the shuttle in question appears to have been bought by a German Museum and the reason why it's in Bahrain is because it was supposed to be shown at an exhibition in 2002. However that never happened and a legal struggle resulted, which is apparently still going on and left the shuttle stranded in Bahrain, the exact location being kept secret.

I already posted this one here two days ago, but it got rejected, no wonder that things have happened. The shuttle already got sold to the German Sinsheimer Museum (for cars and technik). More info here. Sorry it is in german and my company doesn't allow translations.

Funny, yet sadly true.

However, both Bush and Kerry emphasize that they want to make it easier again to attract smart foreign students, at least according to this SPIEGEL article (in German). In the time since 9/11 it has become extremely hard to get into the country, and not only for students that match certain profiles. Even if you're a white female Christian from Northern Europe there were quite a few obstacles.

Shocking Results: (remember, this is a POLL, not a logfile analysis).

Here are the most current results:

Link

Calling the inventor of the lameness filter, please step forward for painful execution, thank you...

...a few days ago.
It's in german though.

Actually, there have been such articles. Check out this one in the German magazine Spiegel Online (Google's translation here).

It states, for instance, that recently the US Homeland Security office issued a recommendation to switch to another browser, and also that many popular magazines have recently had articles regarding the switch away from IE.

Actually, there have been such articles. Check out this one in the German magazine Spiegel Online (Google's translation here).

It states, for instance, that recently the US Homeland Security office issued a recommendation to switch to another browser, and also that many popular magazines have recently had articles regarding the switch away from IE.

I'm sorry... I took a moment to finish laughing at your "wasting gazillion of Terrabytes" comment.

Well it seems you have problems with metaphors. Let me put it this way: Spiegel.de is a news site like many others. Their current index pages is about 100 Kbyte, which is a normal size. Most of it is either formatting or scripts - but hardly content (which is not even 10K). Even compressed - as you so vividly explained - this is a terrible ratio.

I still think that web browser still suck in terms of application building and formatting your content. Plus every new 'standard' makes it worse and harder to develop.

I don't get it.

All this bruhaha, yet still all they would have to do is using their existing laws and take down Ralsky, Richter and the rest of the well known spammers whose track record of criminal past and present has been thoroughly documented over several years now on Spamhaus and other sites.

Ralsky, Richter and the other gang of professional spammers know what they do, most of them openly admit what they do and many of them have boasted about it on several occasions in newspaper and TV reports about the spam trade (e.g. this recent German article and a slur of others articles).

So what are these agencies doing all this time? They keep saying "watch out, spammers, we're really going to get you big time, very soon now, now please don't move while we concentrate our efforts, but yes, we are going to get you!" - and they still don't actually go after them. Or am I missing something?

And while it seems to non-Americans that the new homeland security policity can quite likely send you to Guantanamo for a traffic light violation if you happen to look like the wrong ethnic group, these guys still get away with it.

I really really don't get it.

the magazines i read regulary in austria (schwarzenegger) are c't, iX and the online-mag telepolis. on telepolis there're english articles too and an interessting column named WTC Conspiracy, with the first article about 9/11 posted on 9/13! other good literature is: linux magazine, freeX and of course SPIEGEL. on the web good places are golem, ORF, n-tv. unfortunately are the english magazines quite expensive (wired or hustler, both over EUR 10|-!). grtngs

like siss? Ah dunno....

From spiegel.de:
spiegel.de

The picture shows the baby's legs at the age of nine months.

Surfen auf Trümmern (in German).

Is it right for a discredited man to have his pHD removed? Is it right that popular opinion can determine how qualified someone is to make a statement in their field?

The university he got his degree from was the University of Konstanz in Germany. Here's a German article (babelfished) on the whole thing. The educational laws of the German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg state that a PhD title can be removed if "through his behavior at a later point in in his career, the owner has proven unworthy of the title."

From Bell Labs' summary, we can find more about what he was charged with:

• Substitution of data (substitution of whole figures, single curves and partial curves in different or the same paper to represent different materials, devices or conditions)
• Unrealistic precision of data (precision beyond that expected in a real experiment or requiring unreasonable statistical probability)
• Results that contradict known physics (behavior inconsistent with stated device parameters and prevailing physical understanding, so as to suggest possible misrepresentation of data)

[...]

The Committee's main findings and conclusions can be summarized as follows.

By all accounts, Hendrik Schön is a hard working and productive scientist. If valid, the work he and his coauthors report would represent a remarkable number of major breakthroughs in condensed-matter physics and solid-state devices.

Except for the provision of starting materials by others, all device fabrication, physical measurement and data processing in the work in question were carried out (with minor exceptions) by Hendrik Schön alone, with no participation by any coauthor or other colleague. None of the most significant physical results was witnessed by any coauthor or other colleague.

Proper laboratory records were not systematically maintained by Hendrik Schön in the course of the work in question. In addition, virtually all primary (raw) electronic data files were deleted by Hendrik Schön, reportedly because the old computer available to him lacked sufficient memory. No working devices with which one might confirm claimed results are presently available, having been damaged in measurement, damaged in transit or simply discarded. Finally, key processing equipment no longer produces the unparalleled results that enabled many of the key experiments. Hence, it is not possible to confirm or refute directly the validity of the claims in the work in question.

The most serious allegations regarding the work in question relate to possible manipulation and misrepresentation of data. These allegations speak directly to the question of scientific misconduct. The Committee carefully investigated each of these allegations and came to a specific conclusion in each case.

The evidence that manipulation and misrepresentation of data occurred is compelling. In its mildest form, whole data sets were substituted to represent different materials or devices. Hendrik Schön acknowledges that the data are incorrect in many of these instances. He states that these substitutions could have occurred by honest mistake. The recurrent nature of such mistakes suggests a deeper problem. At a minimum, Hendrik Schön showed reckless disregard for the sanctity of data in the value system of science. His failure to retain primary data files compounds the problem.

More troublesome are the substitutions of single curves or even parts of single curves, in multiple figures representing different materials or devices, and the use of mathematical functions to represen

But what you forgot to mention was that the entire porn industry stopped production for a month, so that every single actor and actress could be tested and re-tested to make sure that the "outbreak" was contained.

Not according to this article (in German).

Es ist der siebte Tag der Quarantäne. Morgen, am achten, ist Luissa Rosso für eine Analszene gebucht. Die erste seit dem Aids-Ausbruch.

Translation: It's the seventh day of the quarantine. Tomorrow, on the eighth, L.R. is booked for an anal scene. The first since the AIDS outbreak.

And:

Sie haben eine 60-tägige Drehpause empfohlen, aber dort unten im Tal wird weitergedreht, als wäre nichts passiert.

Translation: They had recommended a 60 day production stop, but down there in the valley they continue shooting as if nothing had happened.

Der Spiegel (article in German) does not agree with you. Maybe they also listened to Heise but it does not look like it.

The article also referred to Der Spiegel
As reported in Der Spiegel

One of the biggest German political magazines, the Spiegel, has a story about this topic in German. Here is the automatic translation into something similar to English.

Personally I do know at least one person that won't be allowed to study in the US anymore. She is listed in one of those mysterious lists and as a consequence isn't allowed to study in the US anymore. She can't figure out how and for what reason she came into that list. Perhaps she knows the wrong people like some of my friends and ... ohhh, I should ask too, I guess.

One of the biggest German political magazines, the Spiegel, has a story about this topic in German. Here is the automatic translation into something similar to English.

Personally I do know at least one person that won't be allowed to study in the US anymore. She is listed in one of those mysterious lists and as a consequence isn't allowed to study in the US anymore. She can't figure out how and for what reason she came into that list. Perhaps she knows the wrong people like some of my friends and ... ohhh, I should ask too, I guess.

If it is the same KKR as in this article in "Der Spiegel" this might not bode well.

It seems all KKR is known for is in gutting companies and selling the rest for a profit.

If it is the same KKR as in this article in "Der Spiegel" this might not bode well.

It seems all KKR is known for is in gutting companies and selling the rest for a profit.

According to an article in a German newspaper (sorry, it's in German) the money will go to the EU budget, reducing the money the EU member states would have to contribute by the same amount. For Germany that would mean 100 million Euros less to pay to the EU in that year.

Just watch, LOTR, the musical, will be released in Germany under the title 'Das Rheingold'. I think most of the adaptation work has been done on the German version by some guy named Wagner.

They found proof of rivers.

From the article (quick translation): They did some chemical analyses and now the expectation of Mr. Squyres turned out to be true.

Even if you don't understand the article, the pictures are nice.

Der Spiegel has already leaked the story.

• original article
• bad fish translation

German newsmag "Der Spiegel" has the story: They found a certain kind of iron sulfate compound, which forms only in bodys of standing water. Discoveries were made using the MIMOS-II Moessbauer spectrometer and the APXS x-ray spectrometer. Images are available in the article.

At the moment, the system is completely voluntarily. If I read the press release correctly, it should ease identity control for travelers.

Anyway, Focus is rubbish, Der Spiegel is the only german weekly worth reading.

It's not that the competition looks that much better...