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Because my city is in the process of outright banning AirBNB and all its metastases, for driving apartment prices so high, people can barely afford them anymore.
And many cities already have.

Actually, in a process of true sovereignty of the people over their state/city (aka an actual democracy), Berlin is now planning to expropriate a big housing company! Which should make the current climate for such projects VERY clear.
(They bought up public/council housing [Unsure about the translation. German: "Sozialwohnungen"], and used several nasty tactics, to throw all the people out and make them too expensive to be affordable. So now a large amount of people are in constant threat of becoming homeless. Especially ill people, poor elderly, and low income households. The city is forced to give them homes anyway, since we're not monsters. Which means the city has to pay the huge markups. All for the profit of a company that would let people freeze on the streets, without actually providing value for those markups, That's just plain unacceptable.
Since I might remember some details wrong... : If you speak German, here's a rather good comedy show episode that goes into details, and offers sources: Die Anstalt vom 23. Oktober 2018)

Oh really? What are you doing here then?
https://www.welt.de/vermischte... Mentions that children talk about smart phones, not that their parents are distracted.
http://www.faz.net/aktuell/ges... writes the same thing.
https://www.zeit.de/news/2018-... the same thing.
https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/schleswig-holstein/Sommer-Wasser-und-viele-Nichtschwimmer,schwimmunterricht126.html no mention at all.
https://www.zdf.de/verbraucher... no mention at all.
Then you have garbage mainstream media:
https://www.rtl.de/cms/immer-m... in reference to "Neuen Osnabrücker Zeitung" who writes that smartphones are the cause. So let's see what that paper writes, because I found the article.
(probably not garbage media) https://www.noz.de/deutschland...
See. Not a lot about smartphones at all and certainly not in the head lines.

+1 for that. In your own country with the real physical hardware at your own site. Expect and understand every in/out packet will be split at a regional site in your/any country and shared with a growing number of other nations every day, all day.
ie Collect it all.
Encrypt and fully understand any default or suggested settings with any hardware of software.
When buying any new international hardware under your own brand or company expect it to arrive with extra code, tame/junk encryption settings and hardware trap doors.
German TV had a video in German "Gemeinsam spionieren Deutsch-amerikanische Geheimdienstfreunde" (31.03.2015) http://www.zdf.de/frontal-21/w... video.
An animation at 2:22 has packet path options for regional splitting.

FWIW, I'm also learning German. It's the fifth language I'm learning as an adult and it's definitely the toughest. I've never found any good software or edu-websites, I just use the old methods. I watch a lot of German telly:

* http://mediathek.daserste.de/s...
* http://www.zdf.de/Sendungen-vo...

Series are the easiest because you can get to know the characters and then they're kinda predictable so you can't get completely lost. The News is easy enough because there's lots of pictures and you'll know the context of most stories, but it doesn't teach you conversational German. Comedy can be the toughest. On Das Erste, there's a crime drama most Friday and Sunday nights called Tatort which is good because there's also a version for blind people ("hÃrfassung" - o-umlaut between h and r, if that doesn't display right), which has everything of the normal version plus one extra voice describing the visuals, so you hear a lot more words.

I also read German translations of books I've already read. And when I'm cooking I leave on WDR5 talk radio in the background, all to help develop a feel for how the language sounds when used correctly:

* http://www.listenlive.eu/germa...

And I do tandems with a native German:

* http://conversationexchange.co...

Oh, and of course I'm working my way through a book with grammar and exercises.

Yeh, German's a tough nut to crack alright. Unlike Spanish, you have to do a lot of grammar before you can really start building sentences (the declensions are what frustrate me most) but I think it's a language where your effort won't show at first, but then there's the breakthrough later.

If the BBC gets overloaded, you could proxy to Germany and watch the feeds from zdf.de. Although the commentary is in German, and it focuses on the German athletes...

KDQ (Kaddafy Ghadafi Qadafee) makes #2 on the list of all time badass African Dictators (Africanews.com http://www.africanews.com/site/Africas_top_10_dictators_of_all_time/list_messages/39642 ). Trying to control how oil rich African dictators spend their money has never been a solution. Ultimately, the Revolution 2.0 or "Arab Spring" is a sign that young people in these emerging markets/nations have caught on to the idea of "blaming colonialists" for the acts if dictator assholes. Trying to blame "multinationals" for their problems probably isn't going to fly any better.

By the way, most of these regimes are now seizing containerloads of working computers as "e-waste", blaming all the technology companies for "polluting" their landfills with internet cafes, err, "toxic computers". They'll be warning their people of contagious computer viruses next. So far, German media Bauerfiend is the only major media to catch on to the "ewaste" excuse for hardware censorship disguised as "stewardship". This program documents how I had 3 containerloads of Pentium 4s seized by Mubarak's "EPA" enforcement... http://www.zdf.de/ZDFmediathek/beitrag/video/1352178/E-Waste I think it's too late for these dictators to put the genie back in the bottle. The African "Geeks of Color" will triumph, and in 30 years I hope we'll be talking about "African Tiger" tech economies, and these dictators will be join General Custer, Stalin, and Hitler in the history books. You never saw stories like this in African magazines in the 1980s, they would have been seized and burned.

solid rock?
Not true at all. see and here: translated wikipedia page

Some of us Americans don't either... though we seemed to be in a minority.

I recently watched a German news report on Apple and it's business model entitled "Steve Jobs - the Digital Dictator?". See here (Sorry it's in German and without subtitles). They interviewed a number of people and most of them mentioned that developing/publishing for the Apple platforms (iPod/iPhone/iPad) is a strange experience for Europeans because you have to conform to the "puritanical attitudes" some Americans have to things like nudity and such. One of the people interviewed commented that there is a running joke among developers that if you want to develop or publish for the Apple "i" devices you better go for an "Iranian version" of your product. If it will pass muster with the Iranian Morality Police you stand a chance of making it through the AppStore approval process.

At least I know of the Linux4Africa project from a very positive news report on a fairly popular computer show on TV here in Germany. The project has already shipped several containers of fully functional donated computers to schools and institutions in Africa. http://www.linux4afrika.de/ I can't help with any international footage. Those who do speak German can check out the rather old video online: http://www.zdf.de/ZDFmediathek/content/Linux_fuer_Afrika/219376 Or anyone dare to run this site through an online translator: http://www.3sat.de/neues/sendungen/magazin/112048/index.html I think one of the main reasons why there is such a ruckus about sending free computers to Africa is that the major nations are afraid of even more dirt cheap labor. Right now China and India are sucking huge amounts of resources into their boom and we can hardly keep up with our tiny countries. If someone started that Genesis device of economy in Africa with a kick of free technology this global system would surely collapse. At least what we know of it's power distribution right now.

http://www.zdf.de/ZDFmediathek/content/511382

It's an episode from the german(-language) "Abenteuer Wissen" pop-sci show. The whole episode is about LHC.

For example, German ZDF [1] uses flash only for its front page (due to ill-advised web design) and utilizes windows media player, quicktime or vlc browser plugins for video content. so much for actual solution (one guy of the streaming company even said they would probably also offer theora the moment software patents are legal in europe).

[1] http://mediathek.zdf.de/

German ZDF [1] uses flash only for its front page due to ill-advised web design and utilizes windows media player, quicktime or vlc browser plugins for video content. so much for actual consumer friendly solutions.

[1] http://mediathek.zdf.de/

why don't they invest those billions in new drivetrain, suspension, and rail technology.

The answer is easy. The current Bavarian prime minister (Mr. Edmund Stoiber) is leaving office in a couple of weeks. He has been fighting for the technology demo (and hey, it's not more than that because the train is not nearly going to reach is max speed enroute!) for some years. He finally managed to get this memorial risen for him. He always wanted to be as great as Franz-Josef Strauß after whom the airport is named, and who is said to have fathered the Airbus project. This maglev is likely to be named after him, one way or another.

The suggested project price is likely to be exceeded big time. The figure (1.85 bn Euros) is from 2004, and the current contract says final fixed prices will be presented in early 2008. Nobody appears to seriously expect the $2.6bn to be met.

Bavaria has become^Wbeen a banana republic, although it is nice to be living here. I just hope I won't hear the train from where I live (about 2-3 kms away from the planned track, across the autobahn). The departing plane traffic is bad enough.

Methinks this is an utter waste of (taxpayers') money, largely. There are two suburban lines from Munich railway mainstation to the airport. The trains take about 40 minutes per direction, either line (S1 / S8), halting at every second apple tree. The maglev is supposed to need only 10 minutes. The price will be hefty (in the 30-40 Euro ballpark), and the maglev will never, ever ROI. Even not in terms of the tech demo for selling the train abroad mainly because the Shanghai folks already copied the entire construction. The project is a dead horse, IMHO.

Munich's mayor Mr. Christian Ude seems to be the only person who can stop the nonsense. His alternative approach is an express suburban line that could reach the airport in far less than 40 minutes, making a 10-minute connection obsolete, for all practical purposes.

German readers may want to read on here, here, and here.

"As soccer fever continues the 10th RoboCup also got to a start."

It got to a start four days ago and finished at about the same time as this story was posted!

Anyway, I was quite impressed - watched lots of it through an internet live stream. The humanoids still have a way to go, but in a few years, it will look much better.

There are lots of videos on http://www.robocup.zdf.de/ (in German).

SmilingBoy.

That's right. One of theses plants belonged to "Norsk Hydro" and was involved in some secret WW2-project. The Nazis tried to produce tons of deuterium-oxide ("heavy water") there for their nuclear scientists. Just have a look here. When Werner Heisenberg in 1942 replied to Nazi ministry of war that a "nuke" would be up to 5 years away, funds were pulled out of this project to further von Brauns rocketry. (For those who can read German, surf here.

>Nasa does a lot more

absolutely.

well, while not very extensive, most missions do get mentioned here in, er, germany, one way or another.
we still got joachim "the joe" bublath. :)

GEZ is "Gebuehren-Einzugs-Zentrale" (Fee collection agency)

The fee is a tax on receivers, to finance state television and radio broadcasters, which offer extensive internet content (ARD, ZDF, WDR, EinsLive, BR and many more)

The main counterargument is that the state broadcasters are paid to provide "Grundversorgung mit Information" (primary information service). It is argued that their internet presence is beyond that mandate, so it should not be paid for by the public. There's also the problem that every internet _capable_ PC is subject to the fee, not just those PCs which are used to access the internet, let alone the public broadcasters' websites.

I've seen it on German tv - the title was "Leben nach Microsoft". When googling for the title I found this, implying that the english title is Microslaves by Douglas Coupland.

Before 1990, the weather maps on German TV would not show any national boundaries at all (just cities and rivers for orientation) because they couldn't figure out Germany's correct borders.

There were still people around claiming the territories lost after WWII should still be part of the country. Since it was state TV, some of these people had seats on the board...

Now everything is settled, and the only fun in the weather map is to see which places wrestled its way into the map. Ever heard about Frankfurt, the place with the airport and the stock exchange? Not on the map...

German state-controlled television "ARD" & "ZDF" which are also like the BBC with compulsory tv-fees spent USD 1.6 BILLION (!!!). If it's available on their servers ARD or ZDF be my guest, after all I had to pay for this shit and I don't even watch.

Next time you watch some Sunday-morning-cartoon, think a moment of those poor people in NK.

Rainer

...if they revived 'The Tripods'. I never liked 'Doctor Who' anyway and 'The Tripods' (although short and never finished) was one of the best series in the eighties. Lately, lots of people have been trying to get the BBC (or the other stations that aired the series back then, like germany's ZDF ) to re-air it but they won't due to some legal conflict. God, I hate lawyers =P At least Season 1 got released on DVD. Season two seems to be stuck because of another legal issue...one will has to ask the Donkey. Still, there's a petition (in german) to get it back on the screen. I doubt it'll help much but if you liked the series GO SIGN IT.

Americas:
http://www.zdnet.com/ - Ziff-Davis, North America
http://download.cnet.com/ - CNET/Download.com, California
ftp://.beoscentral.com/pub/ - BeOS CentralJohnson City, TN
http://freebe.nerdygirls.com/ - Oak Ridge, TN
ftp://www.beforever.com/pub/beforever /freebe/ - BeForever, Omaha, NE
ftp://mirrors.rochester.rr.com/pub/be/ - RoadRunner.Com, Rochester, NY
ftp://ftp.be.com/pub/beos/ - Be, Inc. San Jose, CA

Europe/Australia:
ftp://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/beos/ - AARNet, Brisbane, Australia
ftp://ftp.beeurope.com/pub/ - BeEurope, Paris, France
ftp://ftp.worldonline.fr/ - World Online, Paris, France
ftp://ftp.gigabell.net/pub/beos/ - Gigabell.Net, Frankfurt, Germany
ftp://ftp.ph-freiburg.de/pub/m irrors/ftp.be.com/beos - P.H. Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany
http://www.computerchannel.de/download /beos/ - ComputerChannel, Hamburg, Germany
ftp://ftp.xtdnet.com/pub/ - XTDNet, Karlsruhe, Germany
ftp://ftp.zdf.de/pub/ - Neues-3Sat Online, Mainz, Germany
http://pcteor1.mi.infn.it/beos/ - Univ. of Milan, Milan, Italy
ftp://dl.xs4all.nl/pub/ - XS4All, Amsterdam, Netherlands
ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/os/BeOS/ - SUNET, Uppsala, Sweden