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Hardware Reuse Contest Entries Revealed
teqo writes "The outstanding German computer magazine c't had a contest in which they challenged readers to submit their coolest recycling projects for obsolete hardware, and the entries have been revealed to the public now. There is an artsy and a practical category, and although it is in German, the pics make lots of submissions intuitively grokkable." (On the right hand side of the page, click the links beneath "Kunst" -- artistic -- and "Funktion" -- functional.) My favorite is the laptop with a solar-powered backlight.
Click here for a machine translation of the site for you English readers.
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Would be easier if the site was actually readable to someone in the United States.
Not to the intended readership, no. Much easier to read German than English if you are German, you know.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Do they have a precise definition of what constitutes "obsolete hardware?" If they're talking about functional obsolescence, then a calculator may not be obsolete for decades. A CD-R becomes obsolete the moment that someone copies an AOL CD. A Pentium 4 becomes obsolete the moment that it belongs to my grandmother.
I know quite a few Germans myself, and they don't agree with your German friends at all.
So don't think your German friends represent a clear majority opinion, in Germany.
I know quite a few Germans as well... which is because I'm German ;-) I can tell you the vast majority of Germans nowadays really do hate Nazis and racism.
Yes, there are still some idiots that didn't learn a thing, but luckily those are mostly dumb people that don't even know that Hitler was an Austrian and are generally very uninformed about history. And yes, in East Germany some right-winged parties have managed to get a noticable amount of votes. But that doesn't make those people the majority.
It seems you didn't notice the anti-Nazi demonstrations that every demonstration of right-winged parties (NPD, DSU) face. And you didn't notice what happened a few weeks ago when some right-winged politicians from the NPD boycotted a minute's silence for the holocaust victims and later on said stupid things the we Germans were the real victims in the war instead of the Jews. These caused an outrage in Germany and re-started a discussion to forbid the NPD for being anticonstitutional.
There are laws in Germany which make it risky to express your true feelings in public, and so many people would not admit that the Germans still feel quite some pride when they think about the days of the Third Reich.
As for those laws : you can't legislate the true sentiments of a people.
I have no idea where you've got that from, but it's just plain wrong. There are laws that forbid to lie about Nazi crimes, e.g. it's forbidden to say "The Nazis never killed any Jews", but it's not forbidden to say the truth or what you feel.
And yes, we are proud of some things we managed to do during WWII, namely building V2 rockets and developing jet planes as well as parachutes and other technological advances. But we know all too well that many thousands of innocent people lost their lifes to develop these things, and nobody is proud about that.
In conclusion, I really think you either know very twisted Germans and mistake them for being the majority or should listen more carefully what they say.