Content-type: matter-transport/sentient-life-form

Routes for Python

Very interesting: Ben Bangert has ported Routes to Python. Routes is the core of the mapping of URLs to functions and back that is used in Ruby on Rails. So a general mechanism with which a Python object can be determined from a URL and a URL can be determined from a Python object - flexibly configurable.

Could also be interesting as an element in Django, as an alternative to the current URL pattern system. The current system elegantly provides the function to be called from a URL - but unfortunately there is not the same way back from the object or the function back to the URL.

In addition, Routes could also be interesting within WSGI projects - it elegantly solves a small sub-area and in such an abstract way that it should harmonize well with things like Python Paste(Ian Bickings Meta-Framework for WSGI applications).

Why I Have My Doubts About Rails

It could become clear if you read through the article here: Choose a single layer of cleverness (Loud Thinking) - yes, exactly, his opinion is, out with referential integrity, stored procedures, and triggers from the database, because he wants to keep them all in his code. How about "throwing out the baby with the bathwater"?

It's so embarrassing that I almost don't know whether I should laugh about it - but one thing I certainly won't do: put my money on such a horse ...

Casual approaches with simple, clever solutions that sometimes go against conventions are okay (and important - otherwise we would all end up with Java and J2EE ...) - but if programming consists only of patching together half-baked solutions, then I'd rather stay out of it. I might as well use PHP then ...

PocketMod - Mini Paper Organizer

The PocketMod Mini Organizer is not only fascinating as an idea - as a web application, it is too. A Java-Script application that generates a page layout for a simple foldable mini organizer from an A4 page. Not only a funny idea, the whole thing is even really practical.

Correction from the comments: not Java-Script, but Flash.

Drowsy Question Game Activated

Because spammers are bombarding my server again and I don't feel like seeing a ton of spam in the moderation queue, I've activated wp-questionnaire. For now, there's a more or less silly question that needs to be answered for a comment to appear on the pages. Sorry, it's unfortunately necessary at the moment - it's about 30-40 spam comments per day. Yes, they only end up in moderation, but it's still simply annoying.

Once the situation with the spammers has calmed down, I'll probably turn it off again. If anyone notices anything strange regarding the comment function, just let me know (but better via the feedback page and not via the comments).

TC Trustcenter insolvent

The TC Trustcenter has filed for insolvency - ouch. There was nothing in the media to suggest this - suddenly gone. Quite annoying, because in .de there aren't many places where you can get server certificates that are also accepted in browsers with standard delivery ...

Further Spam Fallout - No More Trackback and Pingback for Me

As a further action due to the ongoing spam wave, I have disabled trackbacks and pingbacks on my site. I never really liked trackbacks anyway - the technical concept is ridiculous. Pingbacks are technically better implemented - due to the stronger focus on backlinking - but they are visually just awful: the technically generated excerpts just look like shit.

If someone wants to comment, they can comment - and a comment can also contain a backlink. And for everything else, there are the usual curiosity tools - and their link search works quite well (although I have also found mountains of link spam there - some stupid spammer pseudo-blog had a bunch of links to me for a while and ended up in my Technorati evaluations).

Since I am consistent, I will also no longer send out trackbacks and pingbacks if I don't accept them myself. Sorry, but my time is too precious to manually clean up garbage from a technically unfinished protocol ...

InformixDB

I was looking for it for a company project: InformixDB is a Python-DBAPI1 client for Informix databases. It also works with Informix SE.

Cowardice or Laziness?

Joschka makes the Oscar:

Particularly reprehensible: His patronizing remark that if there were a ministerial position to be filled, one could just call him. You can't disqualify yourself more clearly than that.

Yeah, Turnschuh-Joschka's nonsense was really more than out of place. Minister - he'll do that. But opposition work? Oh no thanks, I'll just exercise my mandate and let the others do the opposition work.

embarrassing mirror

It's really ridiculous how Der Spiegel can't hide its political tendencies time and again. Especially ridiculous because Der Spiegel was once considered a magazine with leftist tendencies. That's what quality journalism is like - completely unbiased, well-researched - and shamelessly brazen.

Poor, Misunderstood Media

You have to feel sorry for the media, given the massive criticism they're facing. And Nowotny - as the top media official of the public broadcaster - was embarrassed by Schröder:

Nowottny: I watched the show, and I must say that I was embarrassed by it. How the former media chancellor turned into a media critic was quite unique. My compliments go to the two moderators of the show, who did not let that accusation stand.

Well, he could have also taken a look at the media's programming beforehand - massive talk of change and transition, I have no idea how often during the day one was supposed to be brainwashed with the inevitable change. Actually, I am rather embarrassed by the amateurishness of the media in dealing with the only interesting detail of this election: the highly praised and supposedly infallible pollsters collectively messed up.

Therefore, the personification of embarrassment are people like Nowotny, who get worked up about the only sensible statement by Schröder - what was embarrassing about Schröder was his "I am chancellor" attitude, but not the media criticism. But that's how the divas of professional journalism are - how dare the citizens pee in their pool, one becomes thin-skinned...

But the entertainment program in the news is really great, one has to give the election result that

Election Results or Poor Results?

Somehow quite stupid - neither here nor there. And Stoiber even threatens to go to Berlin - who wants that? Well, at least the negotiations about possible coalitions could become amusing:

• Stoiber is unwanted, but the Union insists
• Schröder wants to remain Chancellor, no matter what - but he doesn't have the strongest faction
• The Greens want to hold on to power, but will they with the Black party?
• Traffic light coalition with and without a broken red light the FDP does not want - but only in a traffic light coalition does the FDP have a chance of participation
• Red-Red-Green would be the logical consequence, but Schröder and Lafontaine - that won't work. And SPD+PDS - that won't work either.

Actually, all politicians have expressed so many exclusions about what wouldn't work that we can't get a government - snap elections would be a solution

Since there were only election winners, one could also summarize: "we are chancellor"

Microsoft's Covert Advertising on NDR

About the covert advertising (well, you can't really talk about sneaking anymore) for Microsoft in election coverage, there has already been written about. But it's quite shocking is the NDR's justification for why Microsoft had to be mentioned:

According to a statement by the Linux Association, the NDR argued in court that Infratest Dimap uses copyrighted databases and graphics from Microsoft for the projections.

Well, then they should just switch to free software, because I really can't imagine what copyrighted databases or graphics should be involved in election coverage - after all, only banal pie charts and bar charts are shown. And I certainly hope that the election itself is not sponsored by Microsoft - and that they therefore have some naming rights there. The whole thing is once again absolutely bananas, what the public broadcaster allows itself.

What does Trusted Computing have to do with Trust?

Sure, everyone knows this and it has gone through all the blogs, but the film is so nicely made that you have to link to it more often: A movie about Trusted Computing. Because the film names exactly the central point: if the industry has decided that they do not trust the user - why should the users trust the industry?

wxWindows Book

There is a book about wxWindows/wxWidgets: Cross-Platform GUI Programming with wxWidgets - although it focuses on wxWidgets and is primarily for C++ programmers, the wxPython bindings are left out. Nevertheless, it is certainly interesting if you use wxWindows in any form, as the bindings for other languages are always based on the original library.

Media Literacy à la CSU

Söder: 300,000 Emails Are Not Spam - and knowing how to deal with criticism:

However, the CSU seems to be at least unsettled by the criticism on their own election campaign site. More than 100 partly very critical comments about the email action had been posted in the official party blog «blog4berlin.de». In response, the CSU initially deleted some of the comments on Tuesday afternoon. On Thursday, the comment function, which is essential for blogs, was completely turned off.

Oh yes. First, they want to spam people - and sorry, but this excuse that they had signed up is quite absurd in view of the further plans to have these people provide more numbers - and then deal with the criticism in Bavarian style and simply turn it off. Great.

Supply for Astronomy Enthusiasts

This time it's a Japanese space probe that will hopefully provide many interesting images and data with its landing on an asteroid. Cool. And far more interesting than silly repair tours of the space shuttles ...

Even more media incompetence - this time CDU

Even the CDU is sending out spam:

Approximately 300,000 to 400,000 Germans are receiving an email from the contest provider "Play and Win" these days. They are advertising to vote for the CDU in the upcoming Bundestag election on Sunday. However, this is not entirely accurate: upon closer reading, it is simply election advertising by the Union.

Upon closer reading of the spammer's comment, it is simply spam. Scum.

Is Peter Lustig quitting?

Peter Lustig goes into retirement:

Löwenzahn, the series that sweetens a Sunday visit to friends with children - or your own children - is ending! Peter Lustig is retiring to well-deserved rest (probably he will open an inventor's workshop instead).

Really a shame. Somehow, this remnant of the hippies and eco-freaks was always cute to watch - and so beautifully cozy. Even if it was of course uninteresting for me back then, as I was naturally an iron-clad mouse fan. But I've had the one or other encounter with Peter Lustig through my nephews in the form of games and books - and I quite liked it. I can't imagine that something like this could be revived - the TV makers are too stupid to give such a rather strange concept a chance. A shame actually - it was always better than the silly American concepts and Americanized children's shows that you see today while channel surfing on vacation.

RFID in the passport is not a security feature

Tobias Straub on RFID in passports:

Straub, who as an employee of the company FlexSecure was involved in developing the signature architecture for the new passport, assessed the security properties of Basic Access Control with 56-bit keys and a passport lifespan of 10 years as insecure and the concept of a non-secure radio interface in general as unsuitable. Only the Extended Access Control, which should come with the introduction of fingerprints by the end of 2007 at the latest, would make a cryptographically secure system possible. Referring to BSI tests in which passports could be read bit-exactly from a distance of 2 meters, with error correction and additional antennas from 10 meters, Straub explained: "If I use RFID, I already have a threat with it". Compared to a contact-based SmartCard, RFID is not a security feature but an insecurity feature, said Straub, who now works at the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology in Darmstadt.

But we are sold the nonsense of Otto Orwell as a great security facility.

They're doing the same shit as in the USA

Here the state also provides backing to a voting machine manufacturer and keeps the inspection reports under lock and key due to alleged protection of know-how:

That the BMI keeps the inspection reports under lock and key weighs heavily, especially in light of a waiver of an additional vote recording independent of the electronics, criticizes Wiesner: "Neither the voter nor the election committee in the polling station can determine which software is actually used in the polling station and how secure the devices used are against manipulation." Consequently, the form for the election record does not even provide for the alleged program version to be recorded.

For me, this is just as dubious as the same nonsense in the USA. Voting computers must - if they are to be trustworthy - withstand public discussion. The alleged know-how protection of the manufacturer must not be valued higher than the citizen's right to information on how the vote counting is conducted. It is simply absurd what the BMI is doing here - but what else can one expect from the authority of Otto Orwell?

And suddenly you feel young again

Here's the translated Markdown body:

Here's the translated Markdown body:

Kate Bush plans a comeback. Okay, there probably won't be a second "Babooshka," but still.

Yep, it works.

And onwards:

Only then did I realize: I couldn't care less. It's been a while now - I couldn't care less what Patalong or the other idiots write there: I know how the game works with them, I've experienced how they steal, influence, and trick, I've overheard that they don't have the guts, I've followed it long enough and written about it for a year. It doesn't matter anymore. SPOn doesn't matter anymore, at least not to me.

SPOn has been out of my feed reader for a long time, only appearing indirectly through other blogs and sometimes through Google News searches. Current information about the day's events is provided by Tagesschau and Netzzeitung. And all the many blogs that I read and that give me the necessary pointers on where I should read next ...

DjangoScgi - Django Projects - Trac

Django with Apache and SCGI and Django with Apache and FCGI are two reworked documentations on how to get Django running with both FCGI and SCGI under Apache. I use the same parts as with my previous howtos, only that now SCGI is supported, too.

My gallery is currently running the Apache+SCGI setup, it's quite nice. The configuration in Apache is much nicer and cleaner than with the FCGI setup.

Since 2007 the links in this page didn't work any more, so I removed them.

Gas price calculations must be disclosed

E.ON must make gas prices transparent:

The gas supplier E.ON Hanse must, according to a preliminary assessment by the Hamburg Regional Court, disclose its price calculation. The company must prove that the three price increases since last October, totaling 25 percent, were justified, the court stated. The simple reference to the linkage of the gas price to the increased oil price is not sufficient.

Ok, no reason to cheer yet, but maybe it helps to control the rather strange gas price development.

Security by complete Stupidity

Now it's clear, how to get Paris Hilton's phone number:

The hackers called a T-Mobile store and pretended to be employees of the company headquarters. They said there were network problems and had the non-public internet address of the T-Mobile customer database given to them as well as the necessary login and password information.

Ouch. Ouch. Ouch.

Google Blog Search

Google now also has a Google Blog Search - but why does someone who enters the race last have to be so stupid (arrogant?) to deliver this blog search only as HTML and not also alternatively as its own RSS, so that you can do something with the search results? I mean, a performant alternative to Technorati or Feedster would be quite nice, they are simply down too often. But what's the point if I have to do all the searches myself and manually?

Correction: there are XML links for the search results.

Does twice stupid hold better?

As if Kirchhoff alone weren't threatening enough, now he also wants to ride tandem with Merz - the only thing that comes to mind is the Mad Hatter and the March Hare...

Lügen-Linssen and the Finances

Well, this is how Linssen envisions the austerity measures - with a bunch of new positions, including speechwriters. Because we certainly need those urgently in NRW, so that the black-yellow embarrassment can be talked away.

Because it's not about the election promises at all - it's only about gaining power and holding onto it, and then embezzling as much as possible as quickly as possible.

Brain Fart

Bayern's Brainfart Producer No. 1 (yes, he even beats Scatman Eddy) demands internet filters for bomb-making instructions:

Bayern's Interior Minister Günther Beckstein (CSU) has urged the business community to find solutions for what he considers a very serious security problem: bomb-making instructions on the internet.

The much bigger security problem: crazy and incompetent interior ministers. Unfortunately, you can't just filter them out of existence. Ok, you can't do that with bomb-making instructions either - they're in books after all, which you'd then have to burn as well. A solution that might also be suitable for politician ejection ...

The Dreamers of the BfA

From my pension information:

You can assume that the calculated old-age pension of X.XXX,XX EUR will actually be higher due to future pension adjustments. However, we cannot predict the development either. Therefore, we have calculated two possible variants for you without taking inflation into account. If the annual adjustment rate is 1.5 percent, this would result in a monthly pension of Y.YYY EUR from the age of 65. With an annual adjustment rate of 2.5 percent, this would result in a monthly pension of approximately Z.ZZZ EUR.

Ehm. Sorry, but if you really dream of a 1.5 percent or 2.5 percent pension adjustment per year, then you really cannot predict the development at all ...

Funny: The iTunes 5 Announcement From the Perspective of an Anthropomorphized Brushed Metal User Interface Theme

Common Scheme

Common Scheme is an implementation of a common module standard for various Scheme implementations, including a package installer that can fetch its stuff from the net. This comes with a number of initial modules that are distributed via it. Could become something like CPAN for Scheme.

Similar approaches have been made before, but unfortunately only for individual Schemes (e.g. MZScheme has something like that). A Scheme-wide solution could make things a lot easier in the long run - and get Scheme out of the academic corner. The language deserves it.

And the best part: Gambit-C and Chicken are among the supported Schemes

Unfortunately, MZScheme is missing from the list of supported Schemes - it would be pretty cool to develop your programs with DrScheme and then simply run them through Chicken to get them quickly ...

I want one!

First signs of life from Open Genera on PowerMac - that would be really something if Open Genera didn't just run on weird OpenVMS boxes, but also on a PowerMac - I'd actually buy a desktop computer for that

Beware the Monster Chick!

That dinosaurs were feathered - they were only tarred during the asteroid impact (ok, sorry, bad joke) - has been under discussion for a long time, especially since there are appropriate findings. But this was new to me:

“The way these creatures are depicted can no longer be considered scientifically accurate,” he said. “All the evidence is that they looked more like birds than reptiles. Tyrannosaurs might have resembled giant chicks.”

Chicks? More like chickens, right? Unless the chicks in the writer's hometown are overly impressed by feathers.

Quality Journalism

It was still correct in the WDR morning magazine, but the Tagesschau is not too stupid to repeat the silly joke again:

We should thank the Strasbourg deputies, we have escaped again on this sunny September day: The EU directive "for protection against optical radiation at the workplace" has been overturned and thus remains, hopefully forever, disappeared in the darkness of the archive cabinets.

Dear journalists: the regulation was primarily about artificial optical stress, not about the sun. It was in no way about covering anyone who carries beer mugs - it was about employers being obliged to actively point out to employees the strain caused by UV radiation and to inform them about it. The hint here: >Bare upper bodies on the construction site, deep décolletés in the beer garden, lifeguards without covering.

is therefore complete nonsense.

One may wonder if such a regulation makes sense - but this silly fuss about something that was not the aim of the regulation is actually only embarrassing and ridiculous. More embarrassing and ridiculous than any EU regulation could ever be ...

First Fallout from Black-Yellow

Black-Yellow on the ideological crusade against wind energy:

The Federal Ministry for the Environment sees the initiative of the state government as a "frontal challenge" to wind energy. "This means that no more wind turbines may be built in NRW," a ministry spokesman told wdr.de on Tuesday. If the example of North Rhine-Westphalia were to be followed, Germany's climate protection targets would no longer be achievable. The CDU and FDP are fighting "for ideological reasons" against wind energy.

Well, of course, the Union has to diligently crawl up the energy monopolists' asses, so the fluttering of the wind rotors is a nuisance ...

All Just Stolen

CDU admits: Merkel copied from Reagan:

Yes, the closing statement by Angela Merkel, the Union's candidate for chancellor, in the TV duel with Chancellor Gerhard Schröder was based on a speech by former US President Ronald Reagan.

Well, well, she can't even come up with her own praise and boasting. Should someone like that become chancellor?

Django Gallery Status

Again news from my gallery project - it's making good progress, even if some of my latest stuff isn't directly visible. I did a lot of reworking in the code and a lot of admin interface changes. Things in the source that might be interesting for other djangonistas:

• I still have a fully filesystem based gallery - but I added a database stored cache. So now when contents is pulled from the filesystem, the code directly checks with it's database cache and updates that accordingly. This led to a heavy rework of the code so that now actually all stuff is driven by model objects - the cache entries are just part of the django model. Makes code much easier and allows the next two changes.
• I added an automatic sitemap for galleries. First versions traversed the filesystem, but now it just uses the database cache to draw a folder hierarchy with thumbnails.
• I added RSS support. The main gallery selection references a RSS feed over all galleries and the folder and image views within a gallery reference a RSS feed only for images within that gallery. This makes use of the RSS framework of Django.
• the view that showed gallery folders and images was reworked to make much more use of django-like stuff: instead of lazy closures that are passed in to the template, I now use custom templates that help to reduce the code of the view drastically (ok, the code is moved to the taglib, but that's much better decoupling than before).

The result: the gallery is much faster, I have RSS up and running and I have automatic sitemaps. The code itself is much easier as it is more model-driven - the former clash between picturefolder model stuff on the one side and FSObject instances on the other side ist gone - and cache maintenance is automatic. And the XMLRPC integration is much faster, too. All in all some very useful internal changes.

Other changes are in the management interface where you now not only have the AJAX-stuff to change object names and hidden state, but can do that from a filemanager, too. That filemanager will be extended for simple management functions like moving, deleting etc., too. It already is able to create new folders.

Sometimes the Debianistas Spin

From the response to a bug report by me about a completely wrong version of mod_perl 2:

I'm afraid you will be out of luck here, if I understand the issues correctly. The official release of mod_perl 2.0 never made it to Sarge, the 1.999.21-1 packages in Sarge is a pre-release. The problem was that shortly before mod perl2 went stable, the upstream developers decided to rename lots of things in the API, and Sarge shipped the old API. Thus, mod perl 2.0 as shipped with Sarge won't run in the rest of the world, and vice-versa. Also, the documentation will be confusing. [...] So, well, this isn't a good situation, but it is something we have to live with.

What? They must have lost their minds. Once again, for clarity: the mod_perl 2 version in Debian Sarge—the current stable Debian—is not compatible with the old mod_perl 1 version or the real mod_perl 2 version because it is a 1.99something with a quite different API. Applications based on it are not portable from the old version and not portable to the new version. Anyone who wants to work with Debian Sarge, Apache2, and mod_perl must first get a backport because the version included is simply completely wrong.

This is absurd. Sure, mod_perl 2 wasn't ready for release on time, but the version currently in Sarge is simply garbage. Instead of removing it, an intermediate version is included, making life difficult for anyone who wants to port mod_perl applications to Apache 2—and doubly so, because with the next release, they'll have to port again.

And then the knockout punch last night:

The only valid complaint in this bug report is the fact that we don't include pre-2.0 API docs in sarge. Debian makes absolutely no guarantees that the version of a package shipped in a stable release will match whatever the current API is on its upstream website.

Summary: we don't understand anything and insist on behaving like complete idiots. Instead of at least removing the junk release—which is also classified as "don't use" by upstream—the missing documentation is now listed as a wishlist bug.

Night of Museums in Münster

As every year, the long night of museums in Münster took place again. However, something must have happened compared to last year. Last year, the interest was indeed great, but it could still be described as quite bearable. In the museums, one could move through the rooms - albeit with more visitors than usual. Only the Picasso Museum was already overcrowded last year and was only allowed to enter in groups.

This time, that was unthinkable - the State Museum of Art and Culture is not exactly small. Nevertheless, one could no longer get into some rooms because of the sheer number of people - who then, with guided tours, turned into real visitor traffic jams, making entire parts of the museum inaccessible.

Absolutely crazy the whole thing. Real hordes of people moved through the city and blew the collective attack on the museums. Somehow slightly surreal the whole thing

Parser for Python-like configuration files

Philip J. Eby hacks again. This time, a parser for configuration languages whose syntax is based on Python. Particularly interesting: with the parser, you can beautifully build abstract languages that use Python for code in parts - you can convert Python blocks contained in it from the token form back into cleanly formatted and indented Python code. The parser, of course, knows all the edge cases of source formatting in Python and can handle them as well.

This is interesting because with Python, unfortunately, you don't have a macro language and therefore cannot directly map your own syntax extensions and languages with domain-specific syntax and semantics to Python - but you can build a translator for such DSLs via this parser and then convert them back into Python. Add a bit of import magic and you would have something like poor-mans-macros for Python ...

Priorities

I actually wanted to refrain from commenting on New Orleans - after all, one doesn't know what determines thinking more, the grief over the unnecessary victims or the anger at the bungling activities of the government there, but when I read something like Rogers Cadenhead: Go to the Back of the Bus Line I really feel sick. Because this is no longer just bungling, this is pure racism (and before I'm accused of anti-Americanism and other things again: look at the skin color of the majority of those who, for some reason, could not be evacuated from New Orleans).

It's simply disgusting. And now the religious right is coming along and blaming gays and abortion clinics for the hurricane.

And the President? He makes a detour to Biloxi and has the relief workers clear the exact spot he visits beforehand - and after the visit the relief workers disappear again. By the way, it was in the Tagesschau - the reporter herself could not quite believe what was going on ...

ID is utter nonsense

Intelligent Design is not science:

It stems from laziness and arrogance: "I'm a smart guy, and I can't understand how all this could have evolved. Therefore, it couldn't have evolved through evolution."

A very good (because honestly annoyed) article in Die Zeit about the nonsense of creationists who always want to force their brain farts into schools. A topic that should have been filed away since Darwin - and unfortunately is still stirred up by religious nutjobs.

It would be about time for the big churches to take a clear stance on the issue and declare the nutjobs for what they are - but they can't bring themselves to do that. After all, you can make a lot of money with simple answers to complex problems. And who cares about reality ...

MochiKit Tutorial Part 1

The first part of the MochiKit Tutorial is online. Very interesting reading - some of the points are quite thought-provoking. And MochiKit has already proven itself to me in real-world use - and yes, I almost exclusively use JSON in the process.

And they still run

Our little friends on Mars are still on their way. Spirit has now climbed a mountain and is enjoying the view of the landscape.

Alongside Cassini-Huygens, the Mars story with the Mars Explorer and the two sympathetic remote-controlled rovers is one of the most exciting space projects for me. Much more exciting than sending outdated Space Shuttles on boring routine missions with extended repair work ...

I would like a few more of the Mars kind.

Campaign contribution?

Achne, the exhibition is Schmarotzer in Bonn - and the Bundestag is now in Berlin ...

geocaching Status

4 caches found, 2 located but not retrieved due to muggles, 1 not found (but at least a tick). Not bad for a start ...

GPS Receiver Information, Software, and Hardware Reviews of Garmin, Lowrance, Magellan and other GPS Receivers

GPS Receiver Information, Software, and Hardware Reviews of Garmin, Lowrance, Magellan and other GPS Receivers - exactly what it says: tons of information and links about GPS.

Working with Garmin Receivers - A User Manual

Working with Garmin Receivers - A User Manual - exactly what the title says. A rather interesting book about various Garmin receivers and topics around Garmin GPS devices.

GEMA and the Internet

Again, it's a privately run site that has been caught this time for uploading game trailers and now has to pay GEMA fees for the background music.

And what about GEMA and the music industry? They continue to do their job and in doing so, they also trample over virtual corpses. Doesn't matter, it's just the internet. It's just virtually already convicted and indebted youth before entering professional life. And anyway, where would we end up if everyone just uploaded random videos online for fun...

But it's not just that - in my opinion, it goes far beyond that. Not only are people criminalized for trivial matters on absurd grounds, but ultimately, GEMA and the music industry (and don't even get me started on the artists - they're at the very end of the sausage-making process and the 5 euros they would get for the game trailer site could really make a difference) are making double and triple profits from exploitation rights - even if they are only marginally affected, as in the case of game trailers (for whose background music, by the way, the game manufacturer has usually already paid - if it is original game music).

Where is the right to quote within reasonable limits? There is such a right for written works - why doesn't something like this exist for music?