Archive for the ‘English’ Category

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LinuxTag bag

Sunday, June 24th, 2007
Linux-Tag bag

Due to my anger about Flickr’s censorship (which still annoys me), this post comes a bit late. Actually, I wanted to write about the last LinuxTag, which (finally) found its way to Berlin, but I think it’s too late to write a lengthy article about it. So a brief summary this year’s LinuxTag must suffice: the most attractive project for me was OpenStreetMap, whereas FreeBSD had the most attractive people. :-) And enjoy this pic of a LinuxTag bag, which I took inspired by the BoNY photoblog, powered by Jonathan.

Posted in Berlin, CCC, English | 2 Comments »

How grammatically correct are you?

Thursday, March 22nd, 2007

A colleague of mine told me that he prefers to write in English after the German spelling reform. But English isn’t so easy either. If you don’t believe it, have a look at the English grammar quiz: How grammatically correct are you?. Luckily enough, I’m a “Grammar God” according to the test results. :-)

Posted in English, language | 8 Comments »

Second Thoughts on Second Life

Saturday, March 10th, 2007

About a week ago, a friend of mine from the Chaos Computer Club introduced me to the hypy avatar chat community Second Life (SL). It took me some time to get into it, because I had to get used to moving my avatar through the virtual worlds of Second Life, in order to find interesting places, but in the meantime I feel at home in the SL universe and started to read some articles about the phenomenon. Strikingly enough, I found a number of misconceptions even among secondlifers, and the wider public seems to be particularly ill-informed. This may be due to Linden Lab’s sensationalist information policy (understandable with regard to investors) and the less understandable predilection of journalists for magnified and distorted information from cyberspace.

Second Life is not a virtual economy

Randolfe from Capitalism 2.0 has thoroughly analyzed the financial and internal economic implications of Second Life (with predictions on future developments). What is going on within SL is what Randolfe rightly labels “The Linden Dollar Game”. It is just a game with concepts of real-life economy where―as in real life—hazard and fraud play an important role. Such a game may even be funny, as long as one doesn’t expect to get money out of it. Unfortunately, Linden Lab and certain journalists present matters quite differently.

That doesn’t mean that it is impossible to make money with SL, but of course this happens in the real economy: Since SL is a popular platform, people who want to advertise and sell products in the real economy should be present in the virtual world as well. Programmers and skilled virtual designers can create virtual branches, agencies and stores within SL and get paid with real money. But again: this is part of “first life” economy and by no means a separate virtual economy.

Second Life is not a game

In Randolfe’s articles SL is considered a game, and I mentioned the economic game above, but SL as a whole is not a game. Normally, I would define game as a goal-oriented and rule-governed interaction between people (this is a very broad definition, other criteria, such as playfulness, break-off possiblity, conventions etc. may be added). The rules of SL are too general to be considered rules of a game and there is no common goal, nor even a set of common goals, that every participant of SL strives for. The “Linden Dollar Game”—though important—is one game out of many. SL is just a platform where people get into contact and interact, and most of the SLers that I have met (virtually and in real life) take no interest in the “Linden Dollar Game”. I would even go as far as calling SL a fancy-graphic chat room.

Second Life is cybersex

I’m pretty convinced that cybersex is one of the main attractions of Second Life and therefore an important factor for its success. Recently, a German lawyer concluded that engaging in cybersex in Second Life can be punished as making pornography accessible to people under the legal age. For something to qualify as pornographic, it has to be sexually arousing, but the avatars in SL are less arousing than explicit drawings in public toilets. The eroticism of Second Life comes from the conversation between people (and I know what I’m talking about—thanks to Kip, Flori and Enrique, you were great!). I wonder how such conversations can be forbidden. If the telephone had been invented only now, German “youth protection” would certainly try to prohibit phone sex, perhaps even normal phone calls, because they could potentially convey pornographic content to people under the age of 18, who should not be allowed to touch a telephone! And even under the present circumstances, I wouldn’t wonder if it is forbidden to imitate animal sounds while having phone sex.

Don’t underestimate Second Life!

Although I maintain that SL is just a platform for chatting, trading, having (mostly virtual) sex, playing games etc., I am pretty sure that it will be more and more successful: people advertising and selling goods through Second Life will make a lot of money (in real-life economy). In the end, Second Life or future similar platforms may substitute the World Wide Web, or the World Wide Web will at least be similar to a Second-Life derived platform. I wouldn’t be surprised to find a Second-Life client integrated into Apple’s iPhone.

Don’t overestimate Second Life!

From a technical point of view, Second Life is not much more than a multi-media web browser with fancy animations, a built-in chat and instant messaging modules. SL simply is the vanguard of a technical development that will change our habits of using the World Wide Web, but it will neither redistribute wealth nor create a new economy.

Posted in CCC, English, life, the universe & everything | 1 Comment »

2006 favorites

Sunday, January 14th, 2007

Since I bought a PowerBook, which I started to use on January 1st, 2006, I immersed myself into the world of podcasting and multimedia, although I didn’t succeed in producing my own podcast (with one exception thanks to Tim). Interestingly enough, I managed to watch a lot of movies and to read some books too, although 2006 was a fairly busy year. Here is the shortlist of the best I came across:

Posted in English, life, the universe & everything | No Comments »

Rebecca Horn & Month of Photography

Monday, January 8th, 2007

On Saturday, I went to see the Rebecca Horn exhibition at Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin. I was a bit disappointed by what I saw: surprisingly, Rebecca Horn’s art struck me as somewhat outdated. It reminded me of past documenta exhibitions. I couldn’t help feeling that this was art of a past generation which has lost its impact. The feeling was corroborated by the almost total absence of significantly younger people in the exhibitions, which is peculiar in Berlin.

Afterwards, I went to the two photo exhibitions at the same place. They were part of the Month of Photography that took place in Berlin, Bratislava, Luxembourg, Moscow, Paris, Rome, and Vienna (I already wrote about it in November). I was lucky to see these exhibitions, because the closed on Sunday.

The Hamburg art initiative klubfoto showed pictures (and texts) under the title berühmt (‘notorious’). The photos were quite different in (artistic and technical) quality, but most of them were funny. Of course, a group that calls itself “klubfoto” is obviously interested in campy art.

Under the title Mutations I the organizers of the Month of Photography had selected works of young artists from the participating capitals. As far as I understood they had to undergo a double selection process on the local/national and on the international level. The resulting selection was impressive. Especially, the contributions from Berlin, Bratislava, Moscow, and Vienna impressed me very much. Especially, in Eastern Europe young photo artists come up with really new and promising ideas! And the other contributions weren’t bad either – with the exception of Luxembourg, but Luxembourg is simply too small and provincial to have a thriving art scene comparable to that of Moscow, Paris and so on.

It’s a pity that the traditional Long Museum Night won’t take place at the end of January, as it used to be until last year. I hope they will revive the tradition in summer, since that is always a good occasion to take a look at what is going on in the art world.

Posted in Berlin, English | No Comments »

Wilt & IPCRESS

Monday, January 8th, 2007

I started the new year more or less in bed, because I had caught a bad flu. As a good civil servant I was ill precisely during my New Year holidays. Although I had different plans, I spent most of the time in bed which wasn’t too bad, since I could catch up with some reading. Unfortunately, I couldn’t concentrate very much, so I had to stick to light reading. So I finished Tom Sharpe’s novel Wilt which managed to cheer me up quite a bit. The book is very British and quite funny. Sharpe knows how to build a very witty plot, and it’s especially funny for people who work in a teaching profession and like absurd situations. Of course, you have to like the British sense of Humour (spelt in the British way).

There is a (seemingly mediocre) film version of Wilt on the market. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get hold of it. I saw another example of British cinema instead: The IPCRESS file, which ranks among the 50 Films to See Before You Die. The film is funny enough and certainly more intelligent than the average James Bond movie (cf. review), although I wouldn’t rank it that high. One can live and die without having watched it.

All in all, I’m not so sure about the 50 films in the list. Perhaps, I’ll try Breakfast Club, which I don’t know either, or wait for further recommendations…

Posted in English, books, cinema | No Comments »

23rd Chaos Communication Congress

Thursday, January 4th, 2007

As hukl has already stated, there is too much to report about the 23c3. If you haven’t been there, start with the movie Brazil which is at the origin of the Congress motto „Who can you trust?“. You can take a look at the Congress Blog, the Press Review, and the Photo Documentation. Don’t miss the 23c3 pics on flickr. And what is more: the Congress videos will be out very soon (actually, low-quality versions have already leaked through).

Here are some personal impressions:

  • From an organizational point of view the Congress was very smooth. Everything worked well. There were some minor internet problems, esp. on day 2, but on the whole the network did what it was supposed to do and provided high-speed internet access.
  • The program committee did a good job, because the conference program was really good. Since there were four parallel tracks and a Workshop track, there were always something interesting on the Congress schedule. Fortunately, there will be the conference videos to watch the lectures I missed. Actually, I took advantage of the Congress TV, in order to zap between lectures.
  • My personal highlights were:
    • The Konrad Zuse live feature: Again Constanze’s live-feature group presented a very interesting audio-visual feature on a pioneer of computer science.
    • The linguistic fingerprint: Just an overview lecture: It would have been better without the historical approach, and the part about source code fingerprinting, since that is a totally different subject, but I liked the lecture, because it was very stimulating.
    • Honk’s lecture on card data security.
    • Amit Singh’s lecture on TPM, which was biassed (Jake Appelbaum’s question made the point), but interesting nonetheless, since it gave some insight into the internal functioning of Mac OS X.
    • Udo Vetter’s very funny and informative lecture on house searching which was parallel to another interesting lecture on Pr0n by Tina Lorenz. Thanks to the video streaming, I could follow both. :-)
    • The talk on Pod Journalism was another highlight! I still have to watch the full video version which I have just looked into so far.
    • Last but not least, I have to mention my own contribution which was fun, at least for the people on stage and hopefully for the audience too.
  • The main point of the event is of course the overall atmosphere. I spent much time at the speakers’ lounge, because I took part in the speakers’ support team (in German: Konferenzleitung). That is a great place to meet new and interesting people. I had lots of fascinating chats with people from all over the world. It’s always the right place to be, although it has become a bit small for the great number of lectures who need help.

Posted in CCC events, English | No Comments »

Popular Music from Vittula, Donnie Darko

Monday, December 11th, 2006

Last night I watched two very interesting movies: The first one was a Swedish film with the title: Populärmusik frân Vittula. It takes place in the North of Sweden near the Finnish border and is about two boys who grow up there and try to set up a Rock'n'Roll band. The film is very funny, although it is about the horrors of growing up in a remote village.

The second film Donnie Darko is somewhat similar: it has an even more horrible setting: suburbia and a wonderful sound track (albeit of a different style). First of all, I was quite reluctant to watch this film, because the DVD cover reminded me of a horror movie, but I was wrong! Fortunately, hukl talked me into watching the movie and I liked it very much! Jake Gyllenhaal’s acting is superb, and the story is fascinating. It comes as no surprise that the film is among the best 250 films on imdb and has reached cult status even in Germany.

I wasn’t sure whether I liked the ending of the film, but the more I think about it the better it gets, because there is a certain circularity in the whole plot and, as my readers know, I like non-linear plots. The story shares similarities with The Butterfly Effect, because both are about time travel; Donnie Darko, however, leaves more questions unresolved. Fortunately, there is a helpful FAQ on the net, which I recommend after you have watched the film at least twice.

Posted in English, cinema | 1 Comment »

Teaching democracy: my contribution

Friday, December 8th, 2006
Aristotle

Today I received a book from the Center of Civic Education. It’s called We the People: Project Citizen Level 2 and is a high school book that teaches civic participation in public policy.

I got the book, because I contributed to it: For the last section I contributed a picture of Aristotle (a 19th-century statue in Freiburg). Here is what the editors wrote to me:

“Thank you very much for allowing us to use your superb photo. It might be gratifying for you to know that this book, and thus your photo, will be in circulation for about 10 years. We plan to print more than a millian copies, most of which will be distributed to high school students around the United States and in about 70 countries around the world. The book will enable readers to influence local public policy and will encourage civic participation.”

Wow… it feels good to be published in over a million copies and to advance civic participation and democracy!

Posted in English, books | 2 Comments »

Uccidete la democrazia!

Sunday, December 3rd, 2006

In his blog Tim mentioned the Italian film Uccidete la democrazia! which documents a possible fraud during the last elections in Italy. The film is mixture of a documentary and a movie (in German: Doku-Drama). It starts with Clinton Curtis statement before the U.S. House of Representatives. Later in the film Clinton Curtis is interviewed and shows how election results can be manipulated. The film assumes that during the transmission of the results from the Prefectures to the Ministry of the Interior blank votes were changed into votes for the right-wing coalition House of Freedoms. This could have happened in those four regions where the transmission went through a computer-network system set up by the American firm Accenture. Berlusconi's government had signed a contract with Accenture in order to test the treatment and transmission of election results by a computer network.

The following observations endorse this hypothesis:

  1. The network transmission took very long and was interrupted several times.
  2. During the transmission the difference between the two coalitions diminished continuously (always by 0.5%), which seems to be a very peculiar behavior.
  3. The number of blank votes was significantly low.
  4. The difference between exit polls and the actual results was much higher than usual. The exit polls predicted a large victory for the left-wing coalition The Union.
  5. When the votes were being transmitted to Rome, the minister of the Interior Giuseppe Pisanu (whose son worked with Accenture on the project) left his office at least twice to meet Berlusconi.
  6. Berlusconi explained how votes could be manipulated at an internal party meeting before the elections.
  7. Blank votes are not counted, which facilitates their recycling.
  8. Normally, a thorough report on the elections is published by the Ministry of the Interior. This didn’t happen this time.

The question that remains open is why the right-wing coalition didn’t “win” the elections in the end. There are two possible explanations:

  • Only four regions participated in the automated transmission of voting results. Perhaps, that wasn’t enough.
  • There were less blank votes than expected. And more people voted for the left…
  • Giuseppe Pisanu may have realized at a certain point that it was difficult to save the right-wing government and therefore did not carry through the manipulation to the end. Or he was too scrupulous and didn’t turn the screw far enough. Perhaps, information leaked through, or Pisanu played on his own. Perhaps, he himself was outside the plot. On the other hand, he had changed 14 prefects before the elections. And there could be a link to the arrest of a very prominent Mafia leader in Sicily at the same time. Pisanu must have known about it or may even have ordered or permitted the arrest in the case of Berlusconi’s defeat.

I’m not really sure what to think about the film. At least, it is very well made and interesting. I like the references to the history of Italy a lot. The election fraud seems possible, but of course no irrefutable evidence is presented. Still, the mere possibility of such a scenario is a good argument against electronic voting.

Posted in CCC, English | 1 Comment »

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