politik

What I considered worth reading during the week and did not want to link separately, collected here and uncommented.

Netzpolitische Hundstage in der SPD | Lummaland. Reading command. Because the man is right. And the cowards in the SPD should be ashamed. Majority in the Bundesrat but not enough guts to at least get a decent opposition policy, instead resigned cuddle course with Merkel? Ridiculous. And Embarrassing. And definitely not a way for a successful election campaign. And that the entry comes from the NRW SPD, which previously opened its mouth so wide, is ridiculous.

Euro-Crisis: China Offers Help and Wants Concessions. Of course. Money is scarce, so let's ignore human rights and political systems or exploitation of the population and quickly recognize the whole thing as a market economy, after all it's about our prosperity! For that, one must make sacrifices in China!

That's why we need to sell tanks to Saudi Arabia. I heard the appalling interview this morning as well. The lies and nonsense from politicians can ruin your entire day. The moderator is usually not my cup of tea, but during today's interview, he hit the nail on the head with a few things: "Morality is for fools, the smart ones make money out of it" - that's the mindset of Pfeiffer and probably some others in the Union. The fact that we have laws prohibiting the export of weapons to crisis regions doesn't matter in this context. Presumably, he would also break into someone's house and empty it if the neighbors had given their consent beforehand.

Healthcare reform: Dental treatments are set to become expensive. Great idea, to give one of the medical professions with the highest incomes an extra boost. Because, it doesn't matter if you don't have any teeth in your mouth, you can still whistle La Paloma. And soup is much cheaper than solid food anyway.

Bundestube. This is actually something really useful. Search for content and speakers from Bundestag debates and then watch the recordings.

In Albania and Bosnia, visa requirements are waived. And why not for Russia? Would be much more important for me ...

Majority in NRW against new state treaty for youth protection on the internet - Computer. The attempt by the Union to portray this as an embarrassment for Red/Green is quite amusing. I mean, how stupid do these prolethicians in Düsseldorf actually think the voter is? The waffling of Red/Green is indeed embarrassing - especially with the Greens, after their bold statements, one could only have accepted a rejection - but the ridiculousness of the Greens is something the Union can hardly claim as a success, the Greens manage that quite well on their own. Good that this dreadful contract has been postponed for now (whoever believes the topic is now settled for good is also putting on their pants with pliers), but it is hardly a merit of any of the parties. Everyone has made a fool of themselves, even the Left (with their approval in Berlin).

Jugendmedienschutzstaatsvertrag: Grüne wollen zustimmen and Germany will finally leave reality behind regarding the internet with the expected approval of this nonsense. And all the cease-and-desist scammers are rubbing their hands together due to the expected additional revenue. I would like to label my blog with a minimum IQ to ensure that the brainwashed proletarians from Berlin have to stay out. The hypocritical behavior of the Greens is absolutely undignified.

"A bomb on a plane heading to Germany? Admittedly, I'm just a science journalist, deal with physical phenomena, but frankly, I don't believe this news. It all fits too well. Here in my hotel are the interior ministers, and precisely now it is announced that Germany will soon be the target of a terrorist attack. This smells like a staged event."

via With de Maizière at the breakfast table: The terror is here, the muesli is gone - taz.de.

Is the NATO strategy the problem or the solution? An examination of NATO, its composition and position in the world, and an assessment of its position paper and strategy - especially considering the dominance of the USA in this alliance. Surprisingly critical for a contribution from the public broadcasting sector.

With certainty: Calls for stricter laws | tagesschau.de - already absurd that federal ministers from the Union and FDP clearly oppose state ministers and their populist saber-rattling. Even more absurd that even SPD ministers are calling for something that has been rejected by the Federal Constitutional Court. And as the basis for all this, only claims without evidence and without verifiability. With this, the terrorists have already won, and these prole feeders are making themselves into errand boys. Can we please have them monitored by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution now? Their anti-constitutional stance is clearly documented ...

Number magic at retirement age: Trick 67 - taz.de - because the intention behind it is simply to cut pensions. None of the prolethicians in Berlin really believe that workers can last until 67. That was never the goal, not even for Münte and the other liars of the SPD.

Unionsminister: Sitzblockierer sollen Polizei-Einsatz bezahlen | tagesschau.de - which would also help to control the annoying demonstrators, because hey, it's simple: demonstrators in general or even strikers cause costs and then you can get them from them and then people will think twice about whether they go out on the street!

The erosion of democracy has always worked quite well through the wallet.

Questions and Answers about the Health Reform | tagesschau.de - I find it quite astonishing that the politicians in Berlin still have to engage in "hard negotiations" to decide how much the contributors can be fleeced. The fact that the negotiations no longer discuss savings on doctors' fees, hospital costs, and drug prices is, however, not surprising. The pretended saber-rattling by the Federal Health Administrator is just a show for the media.

Links

rfc1437 | Content-type: matter-transport/sentient-life-form - Strong trends towards "throw away with archive and start from scratch" with slight options for "throw away, static archive and maybe shovel a part into the new platform if I find the time". The link shows where I'm currently playing around. Wordpress with a few small plugins and an nginx caching front.

Bitrot

I've been hit by this as well. My old blog software probably won't be able to survive unchanged. Old Python version (2.3), old (very old) Django (0.91), old PsycoPG driver (1.0), old PostgreSQL (7.4) and all of this on an old Debian (a wild mix of various versions with backports and custom programs and several failed upgrade attempts). Argh.

Well, I'm still torn between "rewrite" and "throw away". The latter has the charm that I won't have to carry all that junk around anymore. And honestly, nothing particularly interesting ever happened on my blog anyway. Maybe I can set up a wget mirror beforehand and dump the whole thing somewhere statically, as an archive.

Rewriting naturally has a lot of charm as well, but converting thousands of old entries (over 4000 articles and over 4000 links, plus almost 200 images) from 8 years (first entry on 3.11.2002) of blogging doesn't sound like fun. And presumably, thousands of the links are outdated and obsolete anyway.

No idea what I'll do, maybe I'll try to bring the Metaeule to the new box first, where I only have the problem that PHP4 is no longer in the Ubuntu repository for 10.04 and I therefore have to force the owl onto PHP5 (and that with code based on Wordpress 1.5 - I must really be crazy).

Or I try to install an ancient Debian with the packages used at the time - the box doesn't run in the front anyway, but behind other machines, so the hacking risk is rather low at this point. The Metaeule naturally also has a few thousand posts in the archive (only 8291, which is almost nothing), but if I can keep the old software running (some security patches have been applied over time, so it can actually continue to tinker along), I don't necessarily have to tackle it.

Somehow, the internet was also such a really bad idea ...

Twisted Orchestration Language in Launchpad - and someone has ported the Orc combinators to Python, using Twisted. However, I personally find Twisted rather disgusting to program, but if you like ...

Kilim - stumbled upon this while browsing the Orc documentation, a microthread library for Java.

Orc Language - haven't read anything about it yet, but it looks quite interesting. The core is Cor, a functional language without side effects, and Orc, which is built on top of it, is used for orchestrating services in distributed systems. The whole thing in a quite appealing, compact syntax on the JVM. One could certainly take a look at it as an alternative to Scala and Clojure, Java is integrated as an external service, which makes it quite easy to build distributed systems in which parts are implemented in Java. It reminds me in many points strongly of the ideas of Erlang (generally assume a distributed system, but still keep parts local for performance reasons), but I find the syntax much more pleasant. And with the JVM a much more widespread VM than Erlang's BEAM.

Interactive Fabrication » Beautiful Modeler - wow, that's incredibly cool.

Tornado Web Server Documentation - I really need to take a closer look at Tornado. For a side project, I've built a web service with web.py, which was shockingly simple (and dirty). Tornado is based on a very similar concept, throws Django-like templates into the mix and offers a good asynchronous server and support for asynchronous sockets and http requests right away. Could be a good alternative for web services that need few resources.

Fat Cat Software - iPhoto Library Manager - since I was stupid enough to make a photobook on a different Mac than usual (well, the usual one was always occupied), I'll probably have to take a look at this to see if I can merge my books onto a single machine. It's quite annoying that Apple doesn't offer any merge function in iPhoto. With a notebook and a desktop, you quickly end up with separate libraries. If Lightroom supported book printing, I would have been gone from iPhoto a long time ago. Everything is somehow not quite satisfying.

The V4Z80P – A Z80 Based Laptop @ Retroleum - here someone not only builds his own computer with his own system, it's also a laptop. Or something similar anyway.

Oracle cooks up free and premium JVMs - and Oracle begins to try to cash in on Java. If it works, Java could soon be in a similar situation as .NET: the free implementations lag behind the scope of the commercial ones. What this means for alternative languages on the JVM remains to be seen - but it will certainly cause some problems. However, the JVM world is large enough and equipped with enough alternatives, and Oracle is not Microsoft. Therefore, this could all just be a storm in a teacup and only affect the typical Oracle victims.

Kunsthalle Bielefeld: Der Westfälische Expressionismus - I think I actually have a reason to drive to Bielefeld.

Mediathek für Mac OS X - I need to check this out. After all, archiving is now the viewers' job thanks to stupid private broadcasters (and politicians who have made themselves their errand boys).

Panasonic DMC-GF2 Preview: 1. Introduction: Digital Photography Review - I hate you, Panasonic. Now I want the cute little GF2+14mm kit. Menno. First Apple with the MacBook Air and now Panasonic, everyone just wants my money.

Eventlet Networking Library - I need to take a closer look at this, the monkey-patching of standard libraries to make them trivial to use in an asynchronous environment looks very interesting.

Schwarz-Gelb agrees on longer nuclear power plant operating times - the stupid talk and back-patting of the bought and turned proletarians disgusts me the most.

Copyright reform: Justice Minister fills third basket - Golem.de - um, hello Mrs. Minister, you are a politician and from the FDP. Could you please stick to the prejudices of bloggers and demonstrate complete ignorance of technology? Something like your obvious recognition of the link as a fundamental means of the internet, something like that, I don't want to see again, ok? And anyway, why do you make a few of the opinions of bloggers and creatives your own at the same time? Doesn't that violate copyright? And anyway, how do you come to openly name the weak point of the cultural flat rate right away? Shouldn't that first be determined through 50 committees? Can't you, like other politicians, simply reject the whole thing as communism? Ok, with the strange suggestion that providers should automatically (without analyzing or collecting data) notify users when they do something forbidden, you try to pull it out a bit again, that has something of typical politician thinking. But the impression still doesn't quite disappear that you actually know what you're talking about. But that just doesn't work. That fully violates all the rules of politics.

Köhler resignation: Disbelief and regret - it's typical of him to resign because he is offended by the public reaction to his statements, and not because his public statement was at least grossly misleading or simply off the mark.

AKW-Laufzeiten sollen ohne Bundesrat verlängert werden - wasn't that the Bundesgrüßaugust who was outraged just recently that the Constitutional Court is constantly being called upon? Did he really mean that nonsense seriously?

Family addition: Neanderthals related to humans - that explains a lot. For example, the conservatives.

Bundestag: Arguments or Transparencies? - Members of parliament who protest against military operations by the Bundeswehr are excluded from the debate. A federal foreign minister who disparages Hartz IV recipients can, despite broad protests from all parties in the Bundestag, continue to repeat his nonsense. And we call the whole thing democracy.

Mainz: Brüderle no longer a state party congress delegate - funny, the FDP. Accidentally not electing a federal minister as a state delegate anymore. Oops, and he's gone. I believe something like this can really only happen to the FDP.

CDU also received a donation from the hotel industry - and it's immediately clear why hotels don't even think about passing on the lower taxes to customers, not even in part: all those donations have to be refinanced first!

Criticism of Private Health Insurance Manager's Appointment to Ministry | tagesschau.de - you can only sit there shaking your head and hope not to get whiplash from it ...

Bundestagspräsident missfällt Regierungskurs - hey, CDU politicians usually only become loudly and clearly critical when they no longer play a political role (see Geisler)? What has gotten into Lammert?

Culture Minister criticizes ARD smartphone apps - So, Mr. Naumann thinks that the public broadcaster has the task of supporting the stupid strategy of the Springer publishing house? What a ridiculous idea is that? We pay fees for the public broadcaster and, as fee payers, we certainly have an interest in receiving the broadcaster we finance on devices we use. Whether the Springer nonsense will be a success or not is completely irrelevant to me. But it has always been like this: on the one hand, complaining about subsidies and how terrible everything is, and on the other hand, more or less covertly supporting one's own friends diligently. You probably have to give something back to those who pay you the bribes from time to time? But why a culture minister would throw himself into the breach for something as uncultured as the Springer press ...

Government keeps raising unemployment insurance contributions open - not that I expected anything different, but the new government is damn quick with their election lies. Last time, it took them a few months longer before their election promises were reduced to absurdity.

Takeover of the SPD leadership was a mistake - maybe so, but Münte's other conclusions are bullshit. Be proud of 11 years of government debacle with unprecedented dismantling of the social system? As a Social Democrat? Really? And of course, the blame is once again only on the other (the evil Oskar!), and in no way on the aimlessness and lack of program of an SPD that presents itself as a "better Union". Hey, Münte, understand finally: if the only program of the SPD consists of imitating the CDU, people will certainly rather vote for those who still write social democratic topics on their program - or simply the Union or its offshoots, because they can do corruption better.

Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize - Yes, he can!

Gabriel should become SPD party leader - Gabriel and Nahles would certainly not be the worst choice for the positions. If they are allowed to do their job and not break out again in internal party disputes and tear themselves apart, they might be able to organize something similar to opposition. At least both of them open their mouths and it's not just nonsense that comes out.

Zypries: Web blocks cannot be activated on a contractual basis - political summer theater. As if Zypries had any problems trampling our fundamental rights. The fact that the populism show was started by the Union without any value at all does not suit her.

European elections: Debacle for the SPD - to the SPD's fools: if you ever come up with the innovative idea of actually running a European election campaign for the European elections, you might accidentally get a few votes. But by now, one gets the feeling that you don't even want any votes. Scared of the possible responsibility? Okay, you don't really have much left to lose anyway ...

Coalition to soften plans against data misuse - because, one must continue to support the address freeloaders so that their absurd business model (selling addresses and then flooding mailboxes with trash that nobody needs) continues to work.

Putting Schäuble under surveillance by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution - because quite obviously he is rather opposed to the constitution (and the separation of powers laid down therein).

CDU: Opponents of Internet Blocking Promote Child Pornography - sensationalist polemic instead of arguments. And all just to show absurd activism because elections are coming soon. Does anyone seriously believe that the prolethicians in Berlin care about protecting children?

Op-Ed Contributor - The One-State Solution - by Qaddafi. Yep, that Qaddafi. And yes, it actually makes sense.

Report: Digital police radio reaches only 3 KBit/s - insert roaring laughter - People, even GPRS is faster, and that wouldn't have required expensive new development. What kind of idiots are sitting at the decision-making tables? And which providers are so brazenly stupid to pull off such a stunt with taxpayer money? I mean, it takes two to tango - the dumb politicians and senior officials who let themselves be fooled - but also the company from the "free market" that has no qualms about ripping off the state for money for junk.

Betrayed and sold - how was it again, Mr. Schäuble? Are the data safe with the state?

Hypo Real Estate: Taxpayers step in to fill the gap - sounds all incredibly professional again ...

Landtagswahl in Bayern: CSU loses absolute majority - there are simply news items that you like to read. Again and again. A lot of entertainment value is coming our way!

AK Vorrat publishes secret data exchange agreement - with what our politicians are doing and how they trample the constitution and civil rights, we don't even need terrorists anymore. Soon politicians can justify any nonsense by referring to the nonsense of their predecessors. Recursive dumbing down. And who did it? The crazy wheelchair user and the federal incompetence.

Bund buys back Bundesdruckerei - and why did the complete idiots in Berlin take 8 years to have these security concerns? What was all this nonsense for - apart from pumping huge profits into the coffers of Apax, who got their purchase price back with the refinancing?

Steinbrück: Harsh Words Against Child Benefit Increase - the contempt that politicians show for citizens with such statements is shocking.

Ruins of Babylon irreparably damaged by Iraq War - "But those who visited Babylon after the country's liberation in 2003 report that it is almost impossible to distinguish what are ancient ruins - and what was destroyed by the coalition forces." - the result of the axis of stupidity. What are a few millennia of cultural assets when you can wage a war to distract from domestic political problems and to secure the economic interests of your donors ...

Anne against the political will - "Thus, the scandal surrounding Anne Will's show ultimately proves two political realities: The Left Party is continuing its successful course as a force of a bourgeois left. And the nerves of some representatives of former people's parties are on edge." - and beautifully shows the panic about the left in Germany.

Cold plate by candlelight - "In the report of the Enquête Commission of the NRW state parliament on the effects of long-term sharply rising energy prices, the governing parties CDU and FDP recommend in their majority vote that low-income individuals should forgo heating in the winter: 'In the short term, tenants … can react by lowering the room temperature, by forgoing full heating of individual rooms, etc.' " - this is what our proletarians understand by social legislation.

ARD and ZDF: Back to the Middle Ages? - because it is slowly becoming apparent that the ridiculous business models of private broadcasters do not work, one draws the logical conclusion in Germany and destroys the added value created by fees. Because it is known to be much better when advertising junk and trash television is subsidized (because that's what it is - just banal indirect subsidization). One could of course also take a look at what the BBC does, for example, and orient oneself accordingly, and demand from public broadcasting (and exert pressure through the control bodies) to produce meaningful content from the fees, which might then be published under meaningful licenses (have you heard of CC?) and directly benefit the citizens (for whom the state is actually supposed to be there, not for the ridiculous scammers from the private broadcasting corner). But that would be a sensible approach. And presumably fewer bribes would be paid or something like that ...

Filesharing becomes more dangerous - or not - as usual, botched construction. Because the federal prolethicians just can't do anything really right. Except then go ahead and further erode the rights of citizens - that they can do really well.

Turkey: President and Prime Minister must go to court - cute, how the EU is now supporting the nationalists and religion-close (too close?) AKP people. Probably Erdogan seems controllable and usable for their own power games. People just never learn. State and religion must be strictly separated. But as long as this is not implemented in Germany, we should not be surprised by reactions like the one from the EU ...