Posts by Gamrith

Brexit: UK will be disconnected from EU databases after 2020

Re: Tory Unity

It worked as well as most things do that the Tories put what passes for their minds to. It underscores the old truism:

"One should never listen to the Tories, unless one enjoys buggery!"

Facebook smartmobe app's pre-ticked privacy settings violate German data protection law

German Overbearance again

And again the dupliciticious Germans are putting up blocks to nongerman companies and disguise it as dataprotection or some such guff! They are just trying to hurt commerce and further their goals of making the EU a ghetto!

German court says 'Nein' on Facebook profile access request

Wrong law, wrong discussion

The Berliner Kammergericht didn't use the the data protection laws. It applied the socalled Fernmeldegeheimnis (telecommunications secrecy) to the Facebook-communications, which forbids the unauthorised interception, suppression, exploitation or defacing of telecommunications messages, which include telefone, wireless communications, telegraphy, telex and similar communcations. Under another law, emails also fall under the telecommunications secrecy. The Kammergericht just chose to view Facebook-Postings as Emails.

Turing notes found warming Bletchley Park's leaky ceilings

What do you mean, "Branbury sheets"? Do your reseach!

Its "Banbury Sheets" or rather banburies, after the town of Banbury, where the sheets were printed, which were used in the decryption method Banburismus.

Language-mangling Germans fling open Handygate to selfie-snapping whistleblowers

Re: "Handy" - WTF

It's Suabian. When the first mobes appeard in Southern Germany in the vicinity of Heidelberg or Stuttgart, people were always asking "Hen die denn koi Koabel dra'???", which of course got contracted to Hendie. However, that didn't sit well with the rest of Germany which assumed by dint of pronunciation that ist was an expression of the US Soldiers that were stationed in that area at that time.

The rest is history.

Georg

Euro Parliament votes to end data sharing with US – the NSA swiped the bytes anyway

It'll hurt Britain more than it will hurt the continent...

It ist quite obvious that the US and the UK Governments and secret services do not understand deep down just how badly they managed to screw up.

When Merkel, the various ministers of her government an spokespeople of the German secret services state that one does not spy on friends, it means just that. I am quite convinced that the German secret services do not spy on their partners and the the German politicians would consider that to be dishonorable, because you don't do that to friends. Naive? Quite possibly. But that's how the German government is wired. Until now...

Any such program on the side of the German security Services, if it came to light, would have resulted in a domestic political meltdown. Until now...

What will infuriate the Germans, and quite possibly the rest of Europe, even more is the blatant sanctimoniousness meretriciousness of the official comments in both the US and the UK, running, as they do, along the lines of "Well, everybody does it, so there!". The Germans don't see it that way.

The backlash will hurt UK industry. Think about public contracts in Germany and the rest of the EU and bidders like Computacenter and British Telecom, who as British companies, and thus being subject to the wims and vagaries of GCHQ and whatnot, are now a priori untrustworthy. This will hurt the UK as a service provider.

And both the US and UK services will find doors slamming in their faces if they don't come clean real soon now.

Amazon faces its third strike in Germany

Re: Close down the distribution site and move the jobs elsewhere.

>I've had to deal with some larger German businesses, and it's a miracle they actually manage

>to make a profit there. I'm all for worker's rights, but some of the stuff they have implemented is

>not terribly well thought out.

Well, given that co-determination (Mitbestimmung) is codified since 1976, yout'd think they'd ditched it if it were that badly thought out. However, it is actually seen as one of the factors that helped to build and strengthen the loyality that German employees typically have towards their employer and the willingness to support uncomfortable measures to keep a company up and running. For the employers, the model of tarriff-partnership implies a negotiation partner that will engage in negotiations not on a company level, but on the level of a commercial sector and acheive binding tarriff agreements with defined durations and levels that no single entity can legally flout. Over the last 15 years, this model served to keep wage increases down to improve competiveness, however, quite a few feel that this has gone far enough.

Amazon is not within such agreements, so it is within the rights of the Unions to force Amazon to the table with legal methods.

As for making profits, well, in the beginning of VW paid a premium of €7.200 for the fiscal year 2012 to all their employees working under these tarriff contracts, without strings attached and without any contractual need to do so. Porsche and Mercedes Benz did similar things. Something on the order of "we had a really good year, and we'd like you to profit from it." Think about the employer-employee-loyality that engenders.

Another little point: In Germany, typically the resignation period is three months. The employees are expected to fulfill their contractual work duties for their old employer until the actual date of severance and keep faith with the company. And they do. That actually holds true, too, if you are being let go for anything but cause, though there other agreements are often negociated.

> It appears employees can form a sort of own board in a large company which is able

> to influence company decisions, but without the matching responsibility for the

> consequences, and Ive seen some real howlers, like demanding reinstatement of

> someone caught stealing, in exactly the same position. Weird.

They are call Betriebsrat (Workers Council) within the private sector and Personalrat (Personell Council) within government service. The BR is represented in the supervisory board or board of directors in large companies. Yes, sometimes they go overboard. But they do serve to

HOWEVER...

www.iwkoeln.de/_storage/asset/58118/storage/master/file/518967/download/trends01_09_7.pdf‎, a study about strikes in OECD countries (sorry, German, but table 1 ist easily understandable) shows that in Germany between 2000 and 2007 the loss of workdays per year per 1000 employees due to strikes was 5 workdays lost.

The comparable numbers are:

France 103

USA 32

UK 30

You were saying?

Georg

Re: Close down the distribution site and move the jobs elsewhere.

@GotThumbs

>I'm very doubtful that these shipping clerks are making minimum wage. I'd like to see

>Amazon simply close shop and move its distribution outside of Germany.

Which would raise the whole hairy issue of taxes across borders, i.e. arbitraging VATs, export- and import- duties, and redistribution and logistics for carriers inside Germany. And you should realise that Amazon does have quite a few competitors, so pulling up root and getting out would be somewhat deletorious for their image.

I think that it is about time that Amazon adhered to the common workplace standards. And it it does not make profit under these circumstances, there are quite a few who do.

Georg

Sam Sung found in Apple Store SHOCKER

Except that Samsung isn't properly pronounced Samsung

It's pronounced Samseong Geurup (Samsung Group)in proper revised transliteration of the Hangeul 삼성그룹.

Nitpickly annyeonghi

Georg

Design guru: Windows 8 is 'a monster' and 'a tortured soul'

Re: OMG!!

@Mlc: How did anyone discover Ctrl+V, Ctrl+C, Window+P, Alt+Tab?

Welllll, Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V, like Ctrl-Q and Ctrl-S were around in VMS, Apollo Aegis, Ultrix, so I was happy that they were around in Windows/DOS, too.

As to Window+P: Don't know, dont care.

...and Alt+Tab: Fluff

There. All clear now?

Georg