Posts by Tilman Ahr 37 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Aug 2008
You /really/ think NSA, or the department of state ^W homeland security, upon seeing a piece of first class mail, say: fudge it all! It's first class mail! We can't Mess with that! '? If so, I'd like some of what you're smoking. To put annoying customers to rest, that is.
Berlin has a scheme where most U- and S-bahn Stations have nfc tags, for when they don't, you can clock in based on location info from your phone. It even chooses the cheapest combination of individual fares for you. Per day. Fuck week- of even month-long time based tickets. Which is where it gets affordable. And the web site to sign up for it crashed before I could complete the process every time I tried. Not very confidence-inspiring, really. There's a world of possibilities here, but the way it sits right now, it's just bollocks.
Yeah. Basically since forever. I keep it around as there are some pdf files that won't work properly with anything else. Alas these are mainly forms from some big organisations - often government and large banks.
Come to think of it though: I haven't seen one of those for a while...
Apart from that: yes, it's ridiculously bloated and not very nice to use, to say the least. Heaps of better alternatives for everyday use.
Well, you know... First time I downvoted a post. Telling someone off for posting anonymously as A.C. explains what is wrong with this world on SO many levels...
Oh, just for the record: I use some of what google offers, and I believe the way they exploit my data is at least fairly upfront. Which can't be said of many others.
And, on the other hand, they might just be normal people with actual lives, families and friends, to whom having their private lives dragged all through the international press isn't a dream come true but something from a veritable nightmare...
But I might very well be overrating some commenters' connection with reality here...
Yeah, well.
But I believe we can all agree that anyone accused of a crime can rightly be expected, and - if necessary - coerced to face a trial under due process of law. That that law doesn't necessarily have to be US or UK law might come as a surprise to some here, but is simply a fact of life.
Swedish law outlaws behaviour that isn't a criminal offence in the UK or US? If you have a problem with that you might not want to travel to Sweden...
He was in Sweden at the time of his alleged offences, so Swedish law is the relevant one.
Nothing new here.
The whole 'contempt of court/jumping bail thing is another can of worms.
I have no idea whether the original accusations against him have any merit, but there's only one way to find out. The charges the UK is bringing forward have rather a bit of merit, no matter what.
Holy shit.
You _are_ that completely bonkers televangelist I used to get on Tv when I fell asleep over a star-trek rerun in my exchange-student year in the US back in '94 - the one who'd always wax on about how the EU was the biblical "beast". Or an AI channeling it's persona
Well. My being German-born and not quite right-wing (by a long shot) Probably won't help with your mental issues...
no idea how you judge relevancy, but if you truly believe ole brucie (who I, punk/skin I am at heart still quite like) is the pinnacle of political lyrics coming out of the USA within the last -whatever- years: My heart weeps for you.
Even the 'merkin charts have had more on offer, let alone stuff that doesn't hit mtv or clear channel...
NP: Agnostic Front - Something's Gotta Give
strike commander from the eighties? No. Definitely not. Early-to-Mid nineties sounds more reasonable. Wikipedia sez 1993, and that sounds about right.
Never played ultima pagan.
Syndicate ran just fine on my well-built 386DX-40, though. Maybe you had an svga-card with a crappy vesa-BIOS? Not enough RAM?
Those really were the days, IMHO.
IIIRC, the original release was on the Apple II, somewhat before the PC et al.-versions came out. Not sure about the timeframe, exactly, but I remember being fascinated by a website detailing the development of PoP (storyboards, interviews and diaries of the developer (yes, games tended to be developed by individuals or very small teams back then) about 1.5 years ago. Should be easy to find via Google.
I'm always quite fascinated by how much in terms of gameplay and ... convincing, for a lack of better words, graphics could be fitted into memory smaller than the compressed splash-screen of a modern game, using CPUs slower than your average TV-remote sports nowadays...
Icon because that's what my keyboard used to look like after a proper gaming session (usually around 0630h, when I was rudely reminded it was time to get ready for school)
"Berliner" is used to refer to that jelly-donut-like confection in most of Germany - except for Berlin.
In full, it's "Berliner Pfannkuchen" (something like "Berlin-style-pancake"), which got shortened to "Berliner" in the rest of Germany, while actual Berliners just kept calling them Pfannkuchen. Kind of like the situation with"Döner", "Wiener", "Frankfurter" etc.
And before anyone asks: yes, they were traditionally baked (fried, really) in pans, and what the rest of the world calls "pfannkuchen" (or pancakes) is known as "Eierkuchen" in Berlin.
Yes, it actually makes some kind of sense; No, it probably doesn't seem to do that to anyone from another country.
Or significant parts of this one, as it stands. Oh, well...
Icon, cause it kinda looks like ie...
I know it doesn't do anything for the debate at hand, but could all you "anglos" trying to use German-sounding quotes please at least try to run that shit through a spell-checker?
This wasn't an overly bad example, and I'm by no means a fan of language-purists, but it does grate on my nerves that people who'll happily pounce on every little typo or grammatical quirk in English-language comments absolutely murder even short quotes in other languages.
If you're so fucking sophisticated that you MUST put in quotes in languages you don't understand, at least check your references.
No, English is not my native language. Still I am fairly confident my written English is somewhat decent. Wouldn't dream of putting in French quotes without checking at least a phrasebook. My French is definitely not up to par (essentially non-existent would be more realistic).
What is it about somewhat educated Englishmen/Americans and faux-german quotes?
Might help for a couple of years, but THEY(tm) are up to the same kind of bovine excrement over here. Not yet as far gone, because there's still a healthy number of people objecting, but it appears they're getting there...
We've even had our first creationists interfering with the equivalent of school boards. Laughed out of the room this time, but it's telling they were heard at all IMHO.
Surely you mean "in a run-down ill-managed motel/hostel in a very unpleasant part of town"?
Any hotel even remotely deserving of the name has a reception desk more than happy to give you a wake-up call at any time...
Never mind that pretty much all TVs in hotel/motel-rooms have some form of alarm built in.
Live and let die, i believe it is...
Not believing in some white-bearded fucker-fairy in the sky dictating ones every move is actually quite liberating. You might want to try it some day. Or probably not.
You do what you like - I'll keep causing neccessary offense to pretty much every religious type i meet. Just by not believing in their particular brand of what the world should look like if it weren't like it is...
Nuke them from orbit. With the religious types it's the only way to be sure.
Greetings from Berlin,
Til(agnostic)man
Well. IMHO most newer Apple kit simply looks tacky - the kind of design where 50yrs later there will be not the least bit of doubt from what (semi)decade it came from. But that Probably means I just have no taste. Well,I also didn't have any taste ~95 when I refused to wear low-slung baggy-pants.
Back on topic: I got my HTC desire very much because its UI is not very much like the iPhone's. Maybe I'm just not hip enough, maybe I didn't drink enough kool-aid - but Apple's UIs have always driven me up the wall. Even more so than MSes. And that means something.
Sure, HTCs phones aren't able to compete with d&g jewellery-boxes on the "oh, shyiny"-factor, but they look simple and unobtrusive enough, and work pretty well.
And I don't have to hold 'em in any specific way to make a call.
Well. It's hard to admit, but I most likely don't have the taste to be a web-designer or work for an advertising company.
Oh - wait. No it isn't. I'm actually fucking glad that is so. While I-phone-wielders might be proud of drinking crappy^w high-priced, big-brand chianti instead of good beer, I mostly stick with the latter, because I have an Idea or two about good wine and know I can't afford to buy the good big-name wines and lack the time to track down the cheap, good stuff for the locales I frequent.
Oh, never mid, I'll get my coat. It's the white one with 12 black buttons, a couple of biros stuck on the lapels and the nice sprinkling of jus, thank you very much.
Yes, yes. Obviously. You see, there are even _two_ ways to explain why the Dolchstoßlegende and such were. For one: the Party was named (in translation) "national SOCIALIST WORKERS party of Germany" - if that isn't leftwing enough for you, you're definitely a treehugging pinko commernest.
And secondly: They were EVIL!!1ELFELEVEN. Which obviously means they had to be leftwing...
Oh - you're not a died-in-the-wool republican/Tory/Christian-democrat? Sorry to have bothered you.
Mine's the black utility vest with the "Antifaschistische Aktion"- badge on and the balaclava and pepperspray in, thank you.
"The concept of a touchscreen-only, grid of icons OS did not exist in any meaningful way before Apple created it. Android ripped it off wholesale in 2008, and Samsung skinned it into a blatant ripoff."
I'm not saying Samsung's UI wasn't a ripoff, but Palm's PDAs were mostly touchscreen only (apart from some hardware buttons), and guess how the icons were arranged...
As someone else already stated: there aren't exactly many ways to arrange icons on a touch-sensitive, fairly small screen that make any kind of sense.
But I'm probably not going to convince you that basically all elements of the iPhone's UI were implemented by some other device before it - the only innovation was in the combination of them in one package.
Which is impressive enough imo, but they might want to be a little more humble in their claims of innovation, what with shoulders of giants and all...
Probably not. AFAIR they were not actually implemented in most versions, just rumours to add atmosphere. I'd have to look up if any version actually had them, though.
Those were the days, weren't they? I still find elite, prince of Persia or oxyd (for example) a lot more fascinating than most modern games... And I don't even work in a profession even remotely concerned with computing.
Mine's the starched white one with twelve removable buttons, thank you.
"No, because if you are a celebrity (other than Assagne) you _will_ get away almost anything in Sweden. Accusations thrown against A wouldn't cause even nom
inal investigations against anyone else, celebrity or not and definitely not a local celebrity."
Well, I don't have any first-hand knowledge about the way Swedish law-enforcement works (or doesn't), so I can't rule this out. The core of my argument still stands, though.
"Thus influence of USA is very clear and that's all is needed."
I'd like to see some kind of proof (or even at least somewhat clear evidence) of that before I'll buy it hook, line and sinker. I spent quite a bit of time actively in the "autonomous left" scene to rule out that whole rape thing might just have been a personal grudge getting out of hand due to peer pressure. Or, for all I know, it might also be quite real. IMHO that scene isn't the most healthy environment for sexual relationships.
And the want for a thorough investigation is easily explained by the motives laid out in my first post.
Mind you: I wouldn't rule out US agents (of any shape or persuasion) to be behind (or at least contributing to) some kind of smear campaign against Mr. Assange, but as far as getting him to the US is concerned, I'm quite sure that dealing with UK or AU authorities directly would have been rather a bit more straightforward (and easier to boot).
Always remember: Just because they're out to get you doesn't mean you're _not_ paranoid...
Am I the only one inclined to not take people who consistently and on purpose spell someone's name wrong to make it sound ridiculous as
A) biased, and
B) not to be taken seriously?
For the record: I don't have an opinion on the case due to lack of information, but from what I've read about and by him, do believe that Mr. Assange is Quite a Character(tm).
The one that's not quite warm enough, thank you. Door's over back there, right?
One of my first thoughts about this ran along similar lines:
'Would John. F. Allegeged-rapist, maybe' have gotten 'them' to spend that much effort? Experience sez no. But: there may well be a mistake about cause and effect. Swedish authorities might well (just as most others, alas) have written the case off, if the suspect was Joe random public.
After the allegations became a matter of international front-page news, though, their only possible course of action was to investigate to the fullest extent possible, including things like extradition from a foreign country.
Had they held back anything, the consensus would have been: 'They let him off 'cause he's a celebrity'. To the Swedish authorities (if they are even remotely competent) THAT would be the worst case. Their concern isn't (and can't rightly be expected to be) not to piss off international PFYdom, but rather upholding the faith of their constituents in a thorough and unbiased legal system that has some teeth, if needs be.
Just my 2 small-denomination-currency-units, your mileage may vary wildly, ianal and in no way responsible for anything. Mine's the one still not quite warm enough for the weather and I know the way out, tyvm
Over here in germany, I get very decent service and a rather ok "helpdesk" experience when there are problems or open questions. Might be to do with having been on D2 (the German network gods (mhm. That was typed "voda" at first on my D2-branded HTC. Makes one wonder) acquired around 2000) since 1995, though. None of that "360"-bullshit ever came my way as well, they were marketing some of the crappier "smartphones" under that brand a while ago, though.
Every time I hear about vodafone's exploits in Britain, I wonder if it's actually the same company. Although I also get that feeling when I talk to friends or colleagues on prepaid or resold contracts. Whatever.
I'm off shift, in the pub, with a beer and tomorrow's my day off.
Clash playing and the landlord throwing a round of decent vodka, as well. Life's good, sometimes.
Although, somewhere else, a post like this might actually be a very clever, underfunded (I love the way Android's spellchecker works. Typed as "underhanded", naturally) , troll, bringing on a huge flamefest, but on here, I'd rather put money on "never seen a proper troll, and now that they're near extinct irl, probably never will. And couldn't recognize one if lettered in 72pt and jumping screaming in your face...".
Ah, there's my coat, thanks.
Why, for the love of whatever higher being there might or might not be, would you *DO* such a thing? The thought that such a thing might actually lurk out there on them interwebs is going to make me think thrice about ever downloading anything large enough to be video ever again. Thank you very much.
Hmm... Thinking about it: What's that thumping soun;%*CARRIER LOST
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