Life as an Artificial Lifeform

Wish everone out there a happy new year and a lovely start into 2004.

I will be performing at the Berlin Alexanderplatz Congreshalle right next to the blinkenlights installation. I will be standing in the upper right corner of the building in the windows. If you happen to walk by give me a wave :). My visuals are visible for everyone outside as well. I have three ultra cool beamers at my disposal for tonight one beeing 12.000 lumen :) This is a special show for the company that owns House of the Teachers and CongressHalle but you can get in at 10 pm for (a pretty hefty) 49 euros sushi and drinks inclusive. You might be able to see some glimpse of me performing in the various blinkenlights webstreams.

The webstreams:

rtsp://dss.berlin.ccc.de/blinkenlights.sdp
http://www.cityscope.de/Alex/Bilder/alex.jpg
http://www.berlin.de/webcams/.html/alex.html

Posted by fALk at 14:11 | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

The day they captured Saddam was a victorious day for the Bush administration. But Saddam was just one reason, the other was a secrecy signing of a bill that so many american people opposed before and that got rewritten with "better sounding words". This bill was then magically signed on a saturday - the second time ever Mr. Bush has signed a bill on a holy weekend - the first was to prevent the US government having no money to do anything. The bill under the name Patriot Act II was architechtured under John Ashcrofts supervision and the new bill was redesigned with the same team.
This makes two things very clear. First: there is something they believed that this bill needs to be signed stealthy without public attention. Maybe that is because the FBI gets so much power with that bill that a secret service from former east germany would be pale in comparison. It removes all judicial oversight from the FBI and therefore allows it to act on its own. No matter if there is a crime or not at hand. The FBI can look at american peoples bank records without any notification (yes if you are american you might get a check of all your records right now - did you pay your taxes? Are you a bush supporter? No? hmmm... maybe you get a fine very soon so you can not contribute to some democratic candidate and instead need to pay off the tax debt? - ah just making some cases of abuse the law might have)

The second point is even more filthy. There was big news that the president did not know about the capture of Saddam until Sunday morning. Yes Saddam was eventually found at american time saturday night. Well then there where reports that have never surfaced in the US that the Kurds might have captured Saddam a week earlier and that the US put him under drugs and into the hole. Now connect these two stories and there might be more truth about the second story then some think.

Of course I am conspiracy theorist and all that is not true....

http://www.sacurrent.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=10705756&BRD=2318&PAG=461&dept_id=482778&rfi=6

http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,8233746%255E2,00.html

Posted by fALk at 13:18 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Reading all the iragi blogs the last few days there seems to be an imminent fear that there might be a civil war that could start any day. Some of them talking about the very organized resistance toward the occupation, some are talking about a new source of fear from the anti-resistance resistance and continuing demonstration pro-saddam, anti-saddam and anti-occupation (noteworthy – no word of any pro-occupation demonstration). The fear is that some of the kurdish militias and the armed wing of one of the exile Iraqis that sits in the governmental body that the US placed there - Mr. Shalabi. Word is that those new militas are as bad as some of Saddams secret service just not against the people saddam where after but instead against ALL sunni population. That is the stuff a civil war is made of. Its up to your guess what side the US will take in all this and my feeling tells me that this is getting out of hand very soon.the US attacked from both sides and both sides attacking each other. You know freedom of speech and all... Let the weapons speak seems to be the name of the Iraqi game for 2004. There is word that it was quiter and more peacefull under saddams regime even in its worst days then it is now. I feel with the Iraqis and hope that this might be over for the better. I don´t put my hopes very high so - not unless a person with some peace - strategic knowledge gets into a big white house on the other side of the world.

Posted by fALk at 19:48 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Soldiers from the great free society of the United States of America arresting schoolchildren grade 6 and 7 who where at a demonstration against the forces and pro Saddam. Yeah that is how you teach free speech. Get em into jail and when they get out they will be "liberated". Oh no they will not feel liberated until they have deployed some Dynamite on their body and taken at least some of those who took them into jail with them. They are terrorists you can see it in their eyes already. Its probably better to kill them right away so they won´t harm the army of the one true jesus at a later point. Put them all in the death row the baddys. How dare they speak out what they think, fully unarmed with no way to defend themself. They must have known that they get in "liberation camps" for that..

me shakes head in disbelieve. it gets worse and worse over there.

you can read the full story here:

http://www.wildfirejo.org.uk/feature/display/56/index.php

Posted by fALk at 18:48 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Lumenlab.com is offering a transcript for $19.90 that explains on how to build your own beama. Yes they claim 1800 lumen for the current version that utilizes a 15 inch screen and a lightbulb that costs around $50 and lasts for 20.000 hours (in comparisment a lightbulb for a commercial projector costs between $300 and $600 and lasts for up to 2000 hours). You need to be able to make a little wooden box to hold the projecting gear. The samples on the website are very promising. A upgraded version will be available to paying customers and will feature a 2200 lumen 7" lcd version. Great stuff.

Posted by fALk at 17:55 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

If you are looking for some inspirational commercials you won´t find much on german tv. Other countries have much better commertainment ratio. In front might be Japan with their highgloss colorfull culture. If you want to check out some of their commercials head over to hatsubaichu.com to see some of the current running commercials on Japanese TV.....

Posted by fALk at 15:23 | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

MoveOn.org put up a competition on multiple 30 seconds ads that denounce bush. It asks the puplic to pick the best 15 and then a winner gets choosen by some celebritis (like Michael Moore, Moby (whats he to do with it?)). The winning spot will be aired as advertisment during the State of the Union adress by G.W. in January - if they find a TV station that will air it (which I highly doubt). I do like the activism in this but I have my doubt over the whole procedure this is run in. Anyway we all want the monkey out the oval office over there and anything helps so head over there and cast your votes (there are some very cool, funny, ugly, great, stunning ones over there, great to kill some time if you have to much :/

http://www.bushin30seconds.org/
http://www.moveon.org/
http://julie.meitz.free.fr/home/30sec/

Posted by fALk at 15:16 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Can it be? A MIT student has come up with a solution to project an image into thin air – yes this thing that gots its scifi debut in the first ever star wars movie when the princess asks for help through C3PO. I have read about this a while back and did not believe. Now NYTimes and Arstechnica reporting on it and I want to believe. Not 3d but includes a laser tracking device to make it a touch screen – ehr touch air ähm whatever. See for yourself.

Posted by fALk at 15:10 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

a quote from Lev Manociches essay "Cinema and Digitial Media" that I would like to share:

Starting in 1936 and continuing into the Second World War, Zuse had been building a computer in the living room of his parents' apartment in Berlin. Zuse's computer pioneered some of the basic ideas of computing: binary arithmetic, floating decimal point and program control by punched tape. For the tape, he used discarded 35 mm movie film. One of these surviving pieces of film shows the abstract program codes punched over the original frames of some interior shot. The iconic code of cinema is discarded in favor of the more efficient binary one. In a technological remake of the Oedipal complex, a son murders his father. But the story has a new twist -- a happy one. Zuse's film with its strange superimposition of the binary over iconic anticipates the process which gets underway half a century later: the convergence of all media, including film, to digital code. Cinema and computer -- the Jacquard loom and the Analytical Engine -- merge into one.

Posted by fALk at 18:57 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Its blinking again. The installation comes back to its birthplace at Berlin Alexanderplatz. Beginning next Monday, December 21st until my birthday January 4h 2004 the installtion will feature millions (maybe not millions but a few) loveletters, lovely uncensored funny animation on 144 pixels - now each with adjustable brightness and a clean window. Also you can play the game pong with your mobile phone against a friend. More Information can be found on the official Blinkenlights Website.

you can download the flyer as pdf here.

Turn Up, Tune In, Drop Out

Posted by fALk at 15:59 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yo, I have to put it up. Its hilarious and sad at the same time. A housewife that lives in a small village south of Dallas, Texas was arrested because she sold some SexToys to undercover agents. That is right there are undercover agents in Texas running around trying to find people that sell sextoys. If she is found "guilty" she will face a year in jail and $4.000 fine. Oh prude America wake up to reality.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/12/16/MNGEA3O52I1.DTL

Posted by fALk at 12:42 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

salon.com has an article series about the lost civil liberties in America. The first installment is on the protest against the Free Trade Area of the Americas meeting in Florida. (full reading available only for paid subscription :/ )

Posted by fALk at 12:32 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

jeanpoole has a review of VDMXX 4.0 on his Blog. Check it out.

Posted by fALk at 11:57 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The internet communicates without us doing anything — that is not something new. An articel from the register tries to elaborate how much.

Posted by fALk at 12:14 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The below excerpts I found while reading some comments on the HowardDean weblog :

If you want total security , go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom.
—Dwight D. Eisenhower

The only real security that a man can have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience and ability.
— Henry Ford

We have gone completely overboard on security . Everything has to be secured, jobs, wages, hours- although the ultimate in security is jail, the slave labor camp and the salt mine.
— Cola Parker

In a state-run society the government promises you security. But it's a false promise predicated on the idea that the opposite of security is risk. Nothing could be further from the truth. The opposite of security is insecurity, and the only way to overcome insecurity is to take risks. The gentle government that promises to hold your hand as you cross the street refuses to let go on the other side.
—Theodore Forstmann

Distrust and caution are the parents of security .
— Benjamin Franklin

The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either.
—Benjamin Franklin

Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
— Benjamin Franklin

We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.
— Dwight D. Eisenhower

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all. Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature.
— Helen Keller

Only in growth, reform, and change, paradoxically enough, is true security to be found.
— Anne Morrow Lindbergh

The man who looks for security , even in the mind, is like a man who would chop off his limbs in order to have artificial ones which will give him no pain or trouble.
— Henry V. Miller

Posted by fALk at 10:47 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Via Tims weblog (and he has it from King Size Che) comes the link to an online questionnaire from Quizilla which is rather amusing. I had hoped for it a bit longer and more in-depth but I am quite confident with the outcome - ahh narcism :)

You are Morpheus, from "The Matrix." You have strong faith in yourself and those around you. A true leader, you are relentless in your persuit.

Posted by fALk at 14:11 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I tried the whole day to resist an entry, not wanting to give even more credibility to the true dictator of the world - since even spiegel online is having three dedicated articles about Mr. WMD we Do not have and killed five thousand kurdish people and suppressed my people Saddam Hussein - I can not ignore. Yes he might have been a bad guy and there where regime critics that got killed and the such but since we officially endorse the china regime which does so much damage to multiple ethnical groups (tibet, taiwan and "some" more) that a certain event series in the german past looks pale it is not the uber bad we are talking about here.

So they have him what now?

Certainly some of the governmental bodies of the so far 7000-10.000 Iraqis killing administration (yes I am talking about the US and their "non coalition fatalities") think that now that they have him its all over? They think now the attention of the world goes somewhere else and leaves them alone doing what they can do best - playing coverup and suppressor to their newest 51st oil flowing state. Nah that won´t be so easy and the capture of him could even backfire – me thinks. What if, now that all bad guys are removed from the land, the people still demand true freedom and democracy with voting and all the things that you expect from a free country. What if the guerillas continue to bust the cool guys from da red-blue-star-block. Oh sure there is still a bad guy left you can blame - Mr. O. bin Laden. They themself claim that the terrorist organizations are like hydras - killing a head makes 10 new appear. Its an endless fight and there is no winning, as long as if they do not start to kill them (whole arabic nations) all, or maybe do the little brainwash dance. They apparently have already started with "radio free iraq" (or the such - to lazy to research the american sector radio for the iraqis), now some more american make them some mind dumbing tv shows (hey they can use powerpoint for that) - but wait this is not the 20th century anymore where a one to many communication form is the likely winner, we are already in the 21st centure where the internet has started taking over, maybe someone tells the bushies. Its something that is hardly controlled except by those super cool news that they have a bad guy - a point where all media on this planet seems to be one. Anyway I am getting off track.

My projection for 2004: More GIs get killed - one to five a day. Nothing to be done about it. Civil riots take place on the streets in the country. The US blames it on hardliners and terrorists. Then later the blame it on Iranian (and) Shiites crossing the boarder. Then they start shooting at crowds – situation gets more complicated – then in late summer we move into the hot phase of the US election. They likely capture ObinLaden shortly before the elections (how do I know?) denauncing Dr.Dean as unpatriotic use Dibold paperless electronic voting machines and Mr. Double No Bush is getting another 4 years... what happens after then? MiniNukes – a really mad arabic world, a North Korea gone wild – a China taking sides with NorthKorea and the Arabic World (remember China needs Oil as well and prolly much more then the US really soon) an Israelic State that feels threatened by its neighbors and using Nukes fired from German submarines to hmmmm lets see Iran (? Syria you name it) who is letting bad terrorists and Shiites that want more selfrule into Iraq and in turn apparently threatening the poor little dessert state in the holy land. And not be forgotten the Europeans that are antisemitic by poll numbers - maybe we get a nuke or two as well - just in case before we start to say something. Then Microsoft unveils that there is a backdoor in every windows installation and that all Information on government computers around the world is now the going straight to the pentagon for "terroristic analysis" and while doing so Microsoft is deleting any military infrastructure that does not belong to long time allies becauze of copyright infringement....

Oh of course I am painting black I am a conspiracy theorist - am I? lets see.

:/

Posted by fALk at 23:09 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yes I reedited the capture a little from the others. My favorite information "making looking nicer" Mr. Edward Tufte from who I read three books is all over the news. First NewYorkTimes then Wired then slashdot and for now last but not least heise. So I figured if all of my favorite news outlets are reporting on this I might take a look as well. The start of it all was an essay by tufte in which he states that the part of the Shuttle disaster might be blamed on Microsoft Powerpoint (oh the faces in redmond I want to see them).

What he has to say is nothing new to most of us. Most Powerpoint presentations are ugly. I would say that powerpoint is indeed capable of producing nice informative screens but the casual user is grabbing for the easiest way and that means in terms of power point: chart making wizards, clipsart libaries and the arial font. So Tufte says that the the limited screen resolution makes it impossible to present any meaningfull chart tables with an sufficent amount of data. I want to disagree a little bit with Tufte today as I feel for a little word fight. Yes screen resolution is a limiting factor for nice flashy looking graphics that are pepped up for the bored office guy but even in Tuftes Books there are plenty of images that work with pure pixel data and equality checks are made by pure pixel size. Having mostly beaming resolutions of 800 x 600 pixels I would say there is a sufficient amount of space to present tables - but only if it is used wisely and made with some custom art program because the point where I totally agree with Tufte is that the charts coming out from the powerpoint wizard simplify things that can not be simplified and over-saturates the viewer with blocks, colors and lines that are completely meaningless and have no apparent connection to the visualized problem.
A problem that I have not seen Tufte mention is the boring factor. I would say that the office guy who sees the same look of a chart over and over again might not pay attention anymore. I mean the graphs are totally disconnected from there meaning (you oughta read Tuftes books for more on this) and look about the same again again and again. Subconsciously failing to recognize some important data out of the hundreds of about the same looking graphs is only a human thing. Nice point on this day where the other news was mostly more important to others... Interesting that the NewYorkTimes article mentiones Mr. Powells failed attempt to "proof" that there are Weapons of Multitude Destruction to the UN security council in February with a PowerPoint slide - I almost fell of the chair laughin...

Posted by fALk at 21:56 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Creative Commons - yes the License Creators of the License this very Blog is under - with their spearheading promoter and thoughtfather Lawrence Lessig have created a new copy holder license model. In contrast to the CopyRight law Creative Commons is helping users by offering premade CopyLeft licenses. These have been available mostly for Text but now they will come out with something called a "Sample License". This will allow for broader distribution rights on music made public under this license model. It is not only restricted to music but can also be applied to comics and other artforms. This licens model will allow for other people to resample the work - with proper credit and only if the derived work is also puplished under the same license model. Great stuff. I gotta tell our local HipHoppers "Klartext" about dat. :) Beware that the licenses are not yet available in Germany just yet so, but Mr Lessig wants to change that soon.

heise.de contributed to this article.

Posted by fALk at 0:53 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Since I need to learn some basic Unix commands for a school project and do not want to stress out my knowledgable friends all the time I got on an info hike with Dr. Google and one of the most basic but best helpfull site I came across is this. If you are in the same need for some very basic unix command line understanding this is the site for you. For your geeks out there its not worth visiting.

Posted by fALk at 0:31 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Since my Powerbook has broken down again with very psychadelic screen animation (that I forgot to record - duh it was so "nice") I want to raise the awareness question if such highpowered portable computers are to fragile and if we might hit into more and more problems in the future the more crammed the things get. Seeing the recent white spot problematic in the AIBooks and multiple reports of broken portables (not only from Apple) I have the feeling that unless the makers take greater care or have make better protection the thingies will line up in repair and be a loss product in the not to distant future. I love those IBooks they are almost indestructible and I for one would trade the cool TitaniumAluminiumMagnesiumShells any time for the much thicker IBooks if I get a Portable Computer in return that I can drop in the back without great measurements of care and a layer of prototection between Screen and keys. Granted the newer Aluminium Powerbooks are more robust then the Titanium version that I posses but I still think the owner should take care of them. I recommend the pretty expensive AppleCare service because the thingy will break down at one point and by looking at todays reselling prices for powerbooks this might pay off.

I have no point in this post other then to say "I miss you my lovely Tibook come back soon"... I just needed an excuse... sniff

Posted by fALk at 0:26 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

no comment. its flash so sorry but great "infotainment".

http://www.ericblumrich.com/gta.html

Posted by fALk at 0:47 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I have a favorite country in this world and it is - besides my love for Tibet - Switzerland. It has mountains to go snowboarding, it has lecker cheese, its beautiful and ALL of the people I meet from switzerland are wonderful quiet non self claiming, but all this is not why I am writing this entry. Just a couple of days ago I blogged that a comfortable future of democracy would be en mass voting. Today now I read that switzerland has such a system already in place and they are extending it to give handicapped (the blind) access to this system. It is not yet replacing any government or any decision makers but it has already been used twice in the Kanton Genf for communal voting proceedures and continues to get used for endorsing or rejecting public funding.
This alone would not make it a Switzerland headliner of course and to some this might be old news anyways. The other internet news of today is of course the world summit on the information society and here the Highland went above itself. They - as a country - have proposed some very noteworthy additions to the final declaration of this summit. Here is a little excerpt:

We propose the addition of a new paragraph 1a:

• 24a. Open source software: The open source model for implementation of technical standards and dissemination of software is a valuable model to enable and support more affordable access to ICTs. Increased use of open source software can contribute greatly to increasing access and to enhancing the diversity of choice of software for consumers.


read more in the pdf.

also they have a vision to bring government bodies and non government non ruling groups on the same talking table.

respekt switzerland.

Posted by fALk at 23:58 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

After some failed attempts by others SUN is trying to pull the 3d interface. Nice and shiny 3 dimensional cds and "true 3d icons" on our 2d screens - just what I have been waiting for - more clutter. Is this really what we need for a better computing experience? Is the 3rd dimension the saviour of our screen estate. I look at the picture and I think, great for playing around but can I do work with it better faster and be better organized because I have CD´s in front of me instead of words. Its the whole "an picture says a thousand word but a word can say more then a thousand pictures" discussion that we can talk about until the end of the world. GUI or CLI - 2d or 2.5d - real photos or icons.

In my search for the word hotsauce I came across some old and new friendly website given you some indepth understanding why 3d (2.5d) interface are not the future you want to have and while you are at it you can check out a 3d filesystem interface for OSX.

some more links:
• the one and only nooface.com
• 3D Interfaces to Hypermedia Information Spaces
• "great" slides about designing 3d interfaces
• 3d - a new paradigm for user intefaces? some slides
• 3D Graphical User Interfaces for Web Pages - gosh I wish sometimes they look at the stuff they publish
• and another link to the defunctional apple hotsauce project

Posted by fALk at 0:16 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For those of you who have no clue what is going on in the mighty US right now: The democrats are trying to find an opponent to Mr. Bush for next years election - and its BIG buzz. While our lovely Mr. Doubleyuhhh is trying to brainwash his nation a campaign has formed that can do it all at ones. Bring us peace, bring us love and a revolution right with it. No not so fast. Dr. Dean the guy than noone knew about a year ago has gained such a momentum that noone of his opponents really knows what to do about it. And the cool thing is that it is not him, its his supporters who are passionate about meeting each other and feeling to be in control again (or at least they hope to be in control again by this time next year). Now today Mr. Al Gore - yes they guy that should be president but is not because of some recount in a state where the mighty doubleyuuh has his brother in control - will endorse Dr. Dean. That simply means that Dean has a supporter more but I think that the endorsement by Al Gore will surely make him the winning candidate of the Democratic Party (there are others running against him, like an old general Mr. Clark who has no chance of winning anything, a Mr. Lieberman and a Mr. Gephard who LOVE the current administration going to war (why ever they would think they could win with those statements escapes me - if someone is pro-Iraq war then he would just vote for doubleyuhh... ). Mr. Gore acutally believes Dr. Dean can win when he is elected by the party members and I whole heartily agree - if there are no dubious e-voting machines in the way. This campaign will empower those who are powerless and it starts to spread over here (to me who is on american boycott for the last 3 years and I used to like this country a bit). What I hope Dr. Dean does not forget is the international community. He should endorse the Geneva Accord and present the world with his view on how things should go - hopefully different then what is happening now.

For more information check out the Dr.Dean Blog with all the bells and whistles. I love this campaign from a communication standpoint. It uses all the (positive) technology available to get the message across and get together the people. Any politician of this world could use a little Dean.

I surely hope he is not another lie in da face of da democratic republics politician that all have come to know in the last decades.

Posted by fALk at 15:31 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I am reading the book "Control Revolution" from Andrew L. Shapiro right now and I would like to share a little quote:

" If governments were Hollywood caricatures, the average nation-state might be a cross between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Woody Allen: a neurotic powerhouse worried about its own irrelevance and eager to show otherwise." p. 63

Posted by fALk at 10:47 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today I was reading this NewYorkTimes (free registration yada) article and I thought nothing going on inside Iraq would give me a shock anymore. Once again the greatest nation in the world touting Democracy and Freedom did it again:

In Abu Hishma, encased in a razor-wire fence after repeated attacks on American troops, Iraqi civilians line up to go in and out, filing through an American-guarded checkpoint, each carrying an identification card printed in English only.

"If you have one of these cards, you can come and go," coaxed Lt. Col. Nathan Sassaman, the battalion commander whose men oversee the village, about 50 miles north of Baghdad. "If you don't have one of these cards, you can't."

Now what is going on, do they think this is going to work out? the article goes on by telling the reader that there are talks between the US armydefensedepartmentnavyshit and the Israelies about how to go ahead with the "arab mind" (o-ton Capt. Todd Brown). As if the Israelies have a good stragedy of going forward and as if the stragedy they are using right now is helping anyone.
The american soldiers are going ahead and just pick some "suspected terrorists" out of the 7.000 people living in the city. While they where at it they bulldozed a house "where some ambushes came from". Reads like 1940 or something. The iraqis now have all a card. Without that card they are not allowed behind the barbed wire fence into their village. They are all a number now. How do they feel?

"We are like birds in a cage."
Yasin Mustafa, a 39-year-old primary school teacher from Abu Hishma

How long until we are encircled with barbed wire and for leaving our house we have to show an ID card with a number on them? There is no border of bad anymore, they have all been crossed now.

Posted by fALk at 0:10 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yes all those poor little trees that get chopped down because you print something out that had the wrong typeface or that had this thought that you didn´t like will now get a relief. A LaserPrinterToner that can be deleted. The stuff comes out of Toshibas.labs. It consists of the actual toner (and some ink for you inkwell pen) and a thing that looks like a hybrid of an 1980s copy machine and a suite case. You put the pages into this thing and leave it running for 3 hours. After this the pages are empty again. The technology is called e-blue (well the ink/toner is blue). I think it sucks, what about the power you need for this strange decolorizer to run, this will hurt the environment as well. I WANT MY TRUE E-PAPER as promised 6 years ago.

Posted by fALk at 23:41 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

oh yeah I will jam you too....

now cellphone jamming can be bought for $169. The Jammer looks like an old ericson handy with two antennas and can jam any cellphone signal in an area around 15m. I guess it will be not too hard to extend this range with some proper gear(antenna amplifier) and more power toward 100 meters (just a thought driving in front of a bussiness building and blocking the whole building from cellphone reception) anyway this is from the "cool spyware available to you" department which I now open as a new category :)

http://www.globalgadgetuk.com/Personal.htm

Posted by fALk at 23:30 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I found this today when reading telopolis and I think it say so much on its own that I leave it as this:

The facts are known to all who care to know. The press, foreign and domestic, has presented documentation to refute each falsehood as it appears. But the power of the government's propaganda apparatus is such that the citizen who does not undertake a research project on the subject can hardly hope to confront government pronouncements with fact.

From Chomskys  first political article, published in 1967

Posted by fALk at 12:59 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In my search for a perfect wiki system I came across a lot of them. tikiwakkaphpworldtaviwikiwiki. My quest for to find a small, lightweight, fast, stable, extendible, webstandard, css supporting, php/mysql running wiki with a good development community that was active and believed in wikis. "Well thats a lot of things you want from a wiki" you might think. Yes you may be right. I have almost given up. php wiki seemed to be abandoned. tavi wiki I could not get through to the website and the rest was so so. I tried to settle with wakka wiki but too many functions are missing there and I have never seen a php/mysql coded software before so adding to that was to much of a pain, also the wakka wiki website went down on the day when I needed it most -> installing a data upload plugin (installing means in wakka wiki terms getting into the source code and add to it). Well I almost gave up but then I stumbled across this ultra lovely wakka fork - CoMaWiki. Developed by a guy named CostalMartigner who sits in Switzerland in front of his Linux Box and has taken up the task of designing the perfect wiki. Actually I was able to talk to the guy before installing and he helped me with a little problem during install. I really love this wiki. It has all the stuff you need. Picture/File Upload, PlugIn system with Backup Function (you can even save wiki pages as html files to your local harddrive!). Polls, Tocs, CSS and webstandard compliance. A good CSS scheme to alter the look of the wiki. Its very well documented and its free as long as you do not earn money with it. And its actively in development, something that can not be said about many other wiki systems. If you need a wiki system yourself go check it out. I already wrote two CSS (matching prototypen color scheme) one with right site navigation. You can find those on the CoMaWikiCSS site as well.

Posted by fALk at 12:42 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Computer have gone through the roof in terms of speed. I am happy.

Computer have gone through the roof in terms of powered data storage capacity (ram). I am happy.
Computer have gone through the roof in terms of longer term unpowered data storage capacity (harddrives). I am happy.

Now I can churn out so many data a day its unbelievable. There are no boundaries to my creativity. uh hm but where do I put all this data?... Uhmmm hmm.. Oh yes great those harddrives have fallen in price. Ah no they will loose there data when not used for a 2 years time. hmm.. Oh yes I could back them up to DVD. uh hm wait they hold only 4.4 GB - at times I have an output of 10 - 40 gigs a day. hmmm. They could be compressed. hmmm great I still have this compressed archive from my amiga days sitting on my hd that I will never be able to open again as this was some strange shortlived compression format. hm. A lesson learned that I never will compress any backups ever even so this guy at MIT says so. Oh he tells me I should move my data to a new storage medium every two years. Great, he must live in a timewell or something. Long Term Data Storage is one of the unsolved problems in computer usage today no matter what you tell me. DLT is to expensive, DVD to small, HardDrives to insecure and all other possibilities a longshot (promised to be released to the puplic in 2006, 2008, 2012). Oh you do not have such a big media volume that needs to be backed up. Feel lucky - VERY LUCKY.

Posted by fALk at 11:59 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Lately I noticed that my G5 harddrive got louder and somehow slower (just a feeling - you know one of those). Since I really stress this drive I thought it might just be some bad defragmentation and the system tries to compensate or the such. Then today I stumbled across an article on XLR8yourmac that sucked my attention away from work. Quite a lot of people reporting harddrive failures with their G5s and the most likely cause seems to be a problem with the cooling. The article suggests that moving the heat sensor to a different location should help a lot with this problem. I wonder if the new firmware that is in the rumor press soon to be released for the G5 will get rid of this as well? I will surely do both, Apple is good but they fail as well (mostly in the little things). So its sensor ungluing for me now....
On a site note I was pointed to a great utility to monitor the heat inside your mac (not only g5).

Posted by fALk at 11:46 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

from our nerds feeds comes word that the smart guys from Cornell University are making progress in field of software that understands language semantic. This research is mostly aimed toward better search engines but I can´t stop to think that this could be used by "intelligent" computer system near you to understand what you are talking about.

Posted by fALk at 11:19 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

is democracy online a possibility of the future?

Imagine sitting on your breakfast table in the morning and - besides reading email, your favorite blogs and some news - you are voting for legalization of music sharing, against the war on terrorism or that your country signs the Kyoto protocol. This is something that appears in so many sci-fi books and something people say the internet is "made for". I am not quite sure if in our current society a system like this would work, with the 1 trillion couch potatos getting mindnumb in front of their ultra super widescreen tvs. A website takes the route for US citizens get their voice heard. Lets see if this picks up momentum. Right now they need money for Washington lobbyists. Ah payed democracy is such a good thing :/

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/anw-03.12.03-006/

clickthevote.org

Posted by fALk at 11:06 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Same procedure as every year? - not quite

Every year the glowing phosphor tubes and glittering liquid crystals enter between burning trees and sparkling skies. This year is no exception. Crowds of knowledge hungry h4xors will flock the mighty halls of wisdomchaos. This year the sci temple gets a golden roof and moves into the heart of the berlin city right next to the former blinken building with a great view from inside of the clan world to the mighty statue of one to many communication. For throwing your braincells into the vortex head over to the official information feed.

Posted by fALk at 17:16 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Puh I have now moved all my entries from my former static weblog over here. Quite a lot of work but mostly all works now. I still have to edit the styles in the archive page and there are some missing functions (like going directly to category or adding a category icon and the such) but in general this is my new nethome and I hope you out there enjoy it as much as I do :)

Posted by fALk at 23:40 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Microsoft News Network is writing about a report from four leading scientists of the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) that our current processor technology will hit a limit around 2018 when transistor scale gets down to 16 nanometer. Then the gates will have a dimension of 5 nanometer and tunneling will be unavoidable. Anyone knows how output from such chips will look like? Will the tunnelling be random or are in a pattern? Solutions for speedier computer are near of course: carbonnanowires/buckytubes or making 3d chips (cooling?) or having a larger die.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/999894.asp?cp1=1/

Posted by fALk at 11:07 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here are two very nice sites in case you need that sponsor logo (for hq print)and the sponsor sends you a 100x200 pixel 50% Jpg. I lost those links now for the second time so I think its better to put them here.

logo.nino.ru
www.logotypes.ru

Posted by fALk at 0:30 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I moved away from my static weblog that I made with iBlog because it sucked. The program was buggy and I needed lots of customization - most worked only partly and in the end it was just a bad hack. Also it kind of stripped me from portability (my powerbook broke down and I was cut off from the Blog for over 2 weeks). This Blog is now on moveable type and runs directly from the webserver. Hope I will get along with it better. Expect lots of updates to the layout ones I get going with it.

Posted by fALk at 11:14 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)