I'm twenty. I'll start philosophy as a major and political science/literature as minors in a month. This will give me exactly no enhanced chances in the IT. However I still feel like doing it. Hoorray for unemployment.
I'm still having lots of fun with my Xbox and will purchase a PS2 soon. Early adopters get to deal with high prices, few games, lots of bugs, crappy DRM and other cool things. I'll buy a PS2, mod it, hook it onto my Scart Plug and play on my low tech non-HD television set. Saves me the money for some quality beer and inviting some friends for pizza and games.
So it's like: Have fun while burning your money, I'll go have fun instead.
>The advantage of a book is that most books are quite cheap (well, unless you are looking for a specific one in a narrow area, say something by Springer Verlag or something).
Please note that most Germans apart from those in science would immediately associate "Springer Verlag" with the utterly evil "Axel Springer Verlag". The first one being a somewhat popular group for scietific journals is alright to me, however the latter mentioned redefines evil. Their main income is made through the "BILD-Zeitung", a highly populistic and mostly incorrect daily newspaper, pretty cheap and right winged conservative. There is even a blog about the erroneous articles in the newspaper(http://bildblog.de/) and Heinrich Böll - one of the better German authors, while we're on the topic - wrote a pretty decent book about one of the affairs they were in. It was called "Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum". Read it, nice work on media corruption and the power of mislead masses.
Concerning TFA: Books rule. No batteries, no wires, no incompatibilities, no repair fees, no DRM, low costs, a lot to chose. I like spending hours and hours in the bookstore, I like giving away books with personal notes of dedication as gifts to close friends, I like writing, hell I even think women look a lot more attractive while reading books. Now for the movies... I love movies, but the only DVDs I remotely consider to buy are Art House flicks, old Italian surrealism, Ingmar Bergmann flix and some indie films. Lars von Trier gets his chance too. Other movies might get the chance to get watched by me in the cinema, but I'd never consider buying crap like "The Punisher", not even for two bucks.
I'd like to add some things. The first being correcting the translation of the Spiegel article. I could not find anything about the *playing* of FPS being considered for a ban. It only says the creation, reproduction, sale and purchase is considered for it. However it is still highly frightening.
As most of you know, there has been a Columbine-like incident at a school in Germany. I'm on work, so I don't have enough time to really illustrate it for you, but here are some points that the German media currently fails to discuss in whole:
- The guy had about half a dozen of homemade bombs. Everybody with eight grade chemistry knowledge can buy the ingredients in drugstores, here.
- He used pretty ancient pistols (don't know the term in English, they are called "Steinschlosspistolen" in German). They are *free* to get by the age of 18. The only thing you need to have a license for is gunpowder.
- The chemicals needed to make gunpowder are extremely easy to get here.
Additionally: This guy slipped through the social net. He was being outcast, not accepted, hated school for a reason. You get the point. This whole debate is cheap, cheap populism to feed the masses in order to not have them realise some hard to accept truths.
And it's ashaming. This country has learned next to nothing. There's something bad going on? Oh, let's just blame a minority. I'm aware this is standard human behaviour, but still it's making me sad. I don't even play FPS by the way.
I saw dug addicts, I saw people spending nearly hundred percent of their waking time with WoW. What's the difference? Both groups lose interest in themselves, in success, in going outside, socializing. A few months ago I was visiting a friend I hadn't seen for about three years. Yeah, running off dinner because "there's a raid going on" just isn't normal.
- There already are much stronger painkillers than Morphine. Ranging from let's say Oxycodone (opioid potency of 3.5) up to the Fentanyl group with a potency of 40 to 25.000 times the strength of Morphine. This is if you want painkillers comparable to Morphine.
- If you want painkillers to cure a headache up to a migraine, there are many known alternatives from Aspirine to Ergotamines or even LSD (yes, one of the most efficient migraine killers). That is where the described tests also lack fundamental understanding of how painkillers work. Needles in rat feet? Yeah, I bet Aspirine would beat Morphine at this. Ever tried Oxycotin for a headache? Didn't work? Aspirine is ten times stronger! 35 times stronger than Morphine!
- Getting high is a WANTED side effect in opioid analgetics. People that get Morphine or stronger opioids have cancer, autoimmune diseases and things like that. They suffer, are usually depressed and find themselves having a hard time sleeping. No caring, sane physician will prescribe a painkiller without mind-numbing effects to a terminally ill patient. Ever.
- The article contains almost no relevant data. I understand not releasing the whole synthesis, but... Some facts? Intrinsic potency, receptors agonised/antagonised, toxicity?
- One gram of morphine per kilogram? Are they kidding? Even half that dosage would lead every human being to die from respiratory arrest.
It was not made clear in the article, why this was fought out up to the supreme court. Initially, this whole process was started by a posting in Telepolis, the political webzine of heise.de
heise.de is somewhat comparable to slashdot. It's the biggest IT news site in German language. Trolling is even worse.
After all, this is an achievment, yes. However there's an http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/77185EU law (pdf) being considered that not only allows but forces ISPs to save logs starting 2009. Oh, and did I mention that some politicians are actually trying to incriminate so called "hacker tools", here? Oh, surely they will think of Nessus and Wireshark as needed security tools. They are politicians, they know that.
Yes, we here in Germany weren't all that good when it came to banning Nazi stuff, before all that stuff with Hitler dying and us losing the war happened:/
Convertiong from lossy to lossless and then again to lossy means a decrease in quality. May be ok for non-audiophiles, but it would certainly piss me off. Recording from the PC directly might be an option, but really not the thing I'd want.
I'm using amarok anyways, but I think many people will think of this as useful. And in the end: It's not the nerdiest solution that wins, it's the one requiring the least work with the compared best results. At least when it comes to non-geeky, private software use.
I am currently paying 300 for an appartment about 55m in size, two rooms. On the outskirts of a city with 300,000 in population. I often heard US rents were cheaper, how are HK rents?
I'm starting to study Philosophy/Political Science in Vienna next spring, and have been considering moving to Hong Kong for a year or two during my studies, attending a local, english speaking college. I do not really plan on learning Cantonese, but I think I'll get to do it there if possible.
I like my cities big - who wouldn't, growing up in suburban Germany? -, so I guess HK would fit. I've been to Singapore and was overwhelmed.
Now to some real questions: On how much would you estimate the monthly expenses in HK for let's say a 2-3 room appartment fitting regular standards, riding the subways etc., having dinner from time to time and do some partying on the weekends (ok, does anyone actually think of Cantopop as something even closely related to the thing we happen to call music?), at a decent not to yuppie-ish level? The kind of life one leads while attending college, in western standards. I think my written English is ok so far, getting a job in a firm with English/German as their main languages shouldn't be that hard. But this is a question I always thought to be best answered by people actually "living there".
Europe also sucks when you are young and unemployed. Even the wealthiest european nations are suffering from the growing numbers of socially fully disintegrated layers of population.
As for taxes: 50% isn't the top, take a look at Sweden. In Germany it is somewhat lower, but bound to your social status. I get to pay a LOT of money for having no children and not being married. Despite that being nonsene bacause women do not particulary like the broke'n'dirty kind for marriage concerns and reproduction issues, it is common here.
Gas IS pricy, yes. I do not have the latest prices in mind, but it wasn't below 1.00/litre in Germany for a while now or anywhere in Europe. Don't know much about the metric system, but it isn't cheap compared to America I think. However: Every city has public transportation systems, often consisting of trams, subways and busses at the same time. There are monthly tickets and you get them for low money. There are national railways, cheap airlines for national travelling and you get to drive as fast as you want on the Autobahn. Most people use public services in the city and go by car outside. It is convenient. I don't even have a driver's license;)
With 1.75 million dollars, you could create some good nerd pornography. Imagine some big mainframe (1.000.000 dollars), a decent hosting environment (500.000 dollars), some specialists setting it up (200.000 dollars), fast food for weeks (40.000 dollars) and some street hookers serving the eyegalls wearing identification models in front of terminals (I'd write "priceless", if it weren't for all the asking I'd get about locations).
Writing a script for that shouldn't be all to hard, recursively searching through Slashdot and adding some random porn vocabulary to it could in fact be sufficient. I smell geekbuster.
This was more of a joke. I wouldn't say Bush is a brilliant politician, I'd say there have been some wrongdoings in your external policitcs. But: I do NOT hate the US in any way. We are a free country because of US decisions in the past, living in southern Germany I am used to this freedom since birth. This is something I do not want to miss and want others to experience.
A liberal administration would be nice for you, I guess. This is a damn complicated subject. I really do not want to discuss WWII, neither Vietnam nor anything like this. I personally think invading Iraq was done wrong, advertised with the wrong reasons and has been a failure overall. However I think it was necessary, believing in the question of a greater evil arising every now and then, not being naive enough to agree with arguments like "90 percent were living peacful, there". Ninety percent were, here. You all know what happened (and it is btw still a problem, in some regions).
Do not hate your country, do not move away. That is plain wrong. Use the means of democracy to change something. It is a lot harder, sure. It may seem impossible. But that's the way to achieving all the good things in life. I do not mean to sound pathetic and whiney, but I think some of the american citizens have long forgotten what their country stands for in some or most parts of the world. Especially in Europe.
Slashdot Mirror
News: "Somebody cured cancer!" Slashdot: "Lol, N00b. Evidence or gtfo!"
Porn? It's the interwebs, dude!
I'm twenty. I'll start philosophy as a major and political science/literature as minors in a month. This will give me exactly no enhanced chances in the IT. However I still feel like doing it. Hoorray for unemployment.
So it's like: Have fun while burning your money, I'll go have fun instead.
Larry Seite: Was passiert?
Sergej Brin: Jemand setzte uns hoch die Patentrechte!
Erich Schmidt: Wir kriegen Klage.
Larry Seite: Was!
Erich Schmidt: Hauptanwalt dreh an.
Larry Seite: Es bist du!!
Deutschnaziuberbösewicht: Wie seid ihr,
Guugel? Deutschnaziuberbösewicht: All eure DENIC Einträge sind gehören zu uns.
Deutschnaziuberbösewicht: Ihr seid auf dem Weg zu Patentklage.
Larry Seite: Was du sagst !!!
Deutschnaziuberbösewicht: Ihr habt keine Chance zu überleben macht eure Zeit.
Deutschnaziuberbösewicht: LACH LACH LACH LACH
scnr
Please note that most Germans apart from those in science would immediately associate "Springer Verlag" with the utterly evil "Axel Springer Verlag". The first one being a somewhat popular group for scietific journals is alright to me, however the latter mentioned redefines evil. Their main income is made through the "BILD-Zeitung", a highly populistic and mostly incorrect daily newspaper, pretty cheap and right winged conservative. There is even a blog about the erroneous articles in the newspaper(http://bildblog.de/) and Heinrich Böll - one of the better German authors, while we're on the topic - wrote a pretty decent book about one of the affairs they were in. It was called "Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum". Read it, nice work on media corruption and the power of mislead masses.
Concerning TFA: Books rule. No batteries, no wires, no incompatibilities, no repair fees, no DRM, low costs, a lot to chose. I like spending hours and hours in the bookstore, I like giving away books with personal notes of dedication as gifts to close friends, I like writing, hell I even think women look a lot more attractive while reading books. Now for the movies... I love movies, but the only DVDs I remotely consider to buy are Art House flicks, old Italian surrealism, Ingmar Bergmann flix and some indie films. Lars von Trier gets his chance too. Other movies might get the chance to get watched by me in the cinema, but I'd never consider buying crap like "The Punisher", not even for two bucks.
As most of you know, there has been a Columbine-like incident at a school in Germany. I'm on work, so I don't have enough time to really illustrate it for you, but here are some points that the German media currently fails to discuss in whole:
- The guy had about half a dozen of homemade bombs. Everybody with eight grade chemistry knowledge can buy the ingredients in drugstores, here.
- He used pretty ancient pistols (don't know the term in English, they are called "Steinschlosspistolen" in German). They are *free* to get by the age of 18. The only thing you need to have a license for is gunpowder.
- The chemicals needed to make gunpowder are extremely easy to get here.
Additionally: This guy slipped through the social net. He was being outcast, not accepted, hated school for a reason. You get the point. This whole debate is cheap, cheap populism to feed the masses in order to not have them realise some hard to accept truths.
And it's ashaming. This country has learned next to nothing. There's something bad going on? Oh, let's just blame a minority. I'm aware this is standard human behaviour, but still it's making me sad. I don't even play FPS by the way.
I saw dug addicts, I saw people spending nearly hundred percent of their waking time with WoW. What's the difference? Both groups lose interest in themselves, in success, in going outside, socializing. A few months ago I was visiting a friend I hadn't seen for about three years. Yeah, running off dinner because "there's a raid going on" just isn't normal.
GROOOAR!
- There already are much stronger painkillers than Morphine. Ranging from let's say Oxycodone (opioid potency of 3.5) up to the Fentanyl group with a potency of 40 to 25.000 times the strength of Morphine. This is if you want painkillers comparable to Morphine.
- If you want painkillers to cure a headache up to a migraine, there are many known alternatives from Aspirine to Ergotamines or even LSD (yes, one of the most efficient migraine killers). That is where the described tests also lack fundamental understanding of how painkillers work. Needles in rat feet? Yeah, I bet Aspirine would beat Morphine at this. Ever tried Oxycotin for a headache? Didn't work? Aspirine is ten times stronger! 35 times stronger than Morphine!
- Getting high is a WANTED side effect in opioid analgetics. People that get Morphine or stronger opioids have cancer, autoimmune diseases and things like that. They suffer, are usually depressed and find themselves having a hard time sleeping. No caring, sane physician will prescribe a painkiller without mind-numbing effects to a terminally ill patient. Ever.
- The article contains almost no relevant data. I understand not releasing the whole synthesis, but... Some facts? Intrinsic potency, receptors agonised/antagonised, toxicity?
- One gram of morphine per kilogram? Are they kidding? Even half that dosage would lead every human being to die from respiratory arrest.
heise.de is somewhat comparable to slashdot. It's the biggest IT news site in German language. Trolling is even worse.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holger_VossWikipedia article on the incident
After all, this is an achievment, yes. However there's an http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/77185EU law (pdf) being considered that not only allows but forces ISPs to save logs starting 2009. Oh, and did I mention that some politicians are actually trying to incriminate so called "hacker tools", here? Oh, surely they will think of Nessus and Wireshark as needed security tools. They are politicians, they know that.
Posting news about sexually transmitted diseases on slashdot is like writing news on poisoned beef steak in an African newspaper, isn't it?
"Quick, Heinz! Delete ze data before ze Allierten kan find it! Zere muzt not be äny evidence!"
Yes, we here in Germany weren't all that good when it came to banning Nazi stuff, before all that stuff with Hitler dying and us losing the war happened :/
Now that would surely make the world a better place.
Would it alter the tides? I fear so. All of humanity may be doomed. Insert Terminator 2 theme here.
The judge was just mad at him, getting banned for not keeping the ratio like this.
Ninjas only need one blade to shave. Ever.
I'm using amarok anyways, but I think many people will think of this as useful. And in the end: It's not the nerdiest solution that wins, it's the one requiring the least work with the compared best results. At least when it comes to non-geeky, private software use.
I am currently paying 300 for an appartment about 55m in size, two rooms. On the outskirts of a city with 300,000 in population. I often heard US rents were cheaper, how are HK rents?
I'm starting to study Philosophy/Political Science in Vienna next spring, and have been considering moving to Hong Kong for a year or two during my studies, attending a local, english speaking college. I do not really plan on learning Cantonese, but I think I'll get to do it there if possible.
I like my cities big - who wouldn't, growing up in suburban Germany? -, so I guess HK would fit. I've been to Singapore and was overwhelmed.
Now to some real questions: On how much would you estimate the monthly expenses in HK for let's say a 2-3 room appartment fitting regular standards, riding the subways etc., having dinner from time to time and do some partying on the weekends (ok, does anyone actually think of Cantopop as something even closely related to the thing we happen to call music?), at a decent not to yuppie-ish level? The kind of life one leads while attending college, in western standards. I think my written English is ok so far, getting a job in a firm with English/German as their main languages shouldn't be that hard. But this is a question I always thought to be best answered by people actually "living there".
Thanks in advance.
As for taxes: 50% isn't the top, take a look at Sweden. In Germany it is somewhat lower, but bound to your social status. I get to pay a LOT of money for having no children and not being married. Despite that being nonsene bacause women do not particulary like the broke'n'dirty kind for marriage concerns and reproduction issues, it is common here.
Gas IS pricy, yes. I do not have the latest prices in mind, but it wasn't below 1.00/litre in Germany for a while now or anywhere in Europe. Don't know much about the metric system, but it isn't cheap compared to America I think. However: Every city has public transportation systems, often consisting of trams, subways and busses at the same time. There are monthly tickets and you get them for low money. There are national railways, cheap airlines for national travelling and you get to drive as fast as you want on the Autobahn. Most people use public services in the city and go by car outside. It is convenient. I don't even have a driver's license ;)
Writing a script for that shouldn't be all to hard, recursively searching through Slashdot and adding some random porn vocabulary to it could in fact be sufficient. I smell geekbuster.
A liberal administration would be nice for you, I guess. This is a damn complicated subject. I really do not want to discuss WWII, neither Vietnam nor anything like this. I personally think invading Iraq was done wrong, advertised with the wrong reasons and has been a failure overall. However I think it was necessary, believing in the question of a greater evil arising every now and then, not being naive enough to agree with arguments like "90 percent were living peacful, there". Ninety percent were, here. You all know what happened (and it is btw still a problem, in some regions).
Do not hate your country, do not move away. That is plain wrong. Use the means of democracy to change something. It is a lot harder, sure. It may seem impossible. But that's the way to achieving all the good things in life. I do not mean to sound pathetic and whiney, but I think some of the american citizens have long forgotten what their country stands for in some or most parts of the world. Especially in Europe.
It's been sixty years since we stopped invading foreign countries. Professional help needed.