Category Archives: Hi-tech

Evil Internet Giant Now Within City Limits

October 26, 2011 By in Habitudes, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Higher Education, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Google Inc., that highly mistrusted and ruthlessly vilified corporate world dominator and spy on all things German (I got two words for you here: Street View), has just done an end-run around sleeping data privacy officers stationed at Berlin’s city gates and bought its way into Humboldt University itself by funding a new so-called Institute for Internet and Society, supposedly “based on a philosophy of openness and open access” which will “explore the impact of the digital age.”

Yeah, right. We all know what they’re really up to (or at least you do, I assume). Just don’t come crying to me later and say that I didn’t warn you. The next thing you now Googlezilla will be “approaching the power plant.”

Google Inc. has committed €4.5 million ($6.26 million) to the institute for the first three years as part of its recent push to invest in Germany, which has often been critical of the Internet giant’s practices.

ROSAT Soon To Become ROASTSAT

October 21, 2011 By in Habitudes, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Higher Education, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

The defunct and smashingly successful 2.7-ton German ROSAT satellite will finally be making its fiery, uncontrolled and less than successful re-entry into our planet’s atmosphere sometime within the next 48 hours.

Important questions to answer here are (there is actually only one): What are the odds that a piece of ROASTSAT debris will hit someone?

Unless you are a German, the likelihood of getting injured as a result of ROASTSAT’s re-entry is extremely low. The probability of a non-German speaker somewhere on Earth getting hit is about 1 in 2,000. Those odds are for any one of the nearly 7 billion people (minus 80 million Germans) on the planet.

The odds that debris will hit you in particular — or your dog, say, unless he or she is a German Shepherd — are still just one in several trillion.

Experten warnen: Teleskop-Spiegel wird zur Bombe.

Legalistic Republic Deutschland

October 13, 2011 By in Habeas Corpus, Habitudes, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Outraged Germans everywhere are demanding to know why the German state of Bavaria is admittedly using spyware in at least five investigations (all judicially approved) to gather evidence on suspected drug dealers, dopers, Internet criminals and fencing suspects.

“This is completely unacceptable,” one enraged civil liberties activist said. “What will this lead to next? The next thing you know they’ll be using programs like these to gather evidence on suspected rapists, child molesters, murderers and terrorists.”

Bei den Verfahren in München, Landshut, Nürnberg und Augsburg ging es um Doping, Drogen, Hehlerei und eine Bande von Internet-Betrügern, die geschätzt 80.000 bis 120.000 Menschen um eine Summe von insgesamt 10 bis 30 Millionen Euro geprellt haben soll.

Wake Me When The Revolution Is over

October 11, 2011 By in Habitudes, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hi-tech Tags: , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Der Spiegel itself is asking these days: Are we having a successful green energy plan yet?

Uh, let me think. Nope.

Why is it that whenever Germany’s Environment Minster “explains to foreign politicians that his highly industrialized country aims to decommission all of its nuclear power plants by 2022 and obtain at least 80 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2050, he is only rarely met with utter denial — at least not among his fellow environment ministers?”

I’ll tell you why. It is either because a) they are in denial themselves or b) they are too polite to laugh in his face.

A Bad Beginning – Broken Promises – Unanswered Questions

Japanese Typhoon May Shut Down More German Nuclear Power Plants If They Can Still Find Any In Operation

September 22, 2011 By in Habitudes, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

It’s all over. All over again already, I mean. German press reports have confirmed that typhoon Roke has reached Fukushima ITSELF.

Worse still, the dreadful storm has wreaked havoc there, having damaged one of the facility’s surveillence cameras. It may have even knocked it down. German citizens in or around Japan would be asked to leave the area immediately if there were any there to be asked to do so but there aren’t, so they won’t be. German citizens at home are asked to remain there, at home, until further notice.

It goes without saying that Germany’s nuclear energy policy will certainly be reviewed again although there’s not all that much more nuclear energy left here to policy anymore.

Außer einer durch den Sturm beschädigten Überwachungskamera gab es keine weiteren Schadensmeldungen aus dem bei einem Erdbeben sowie einem Tsunami im März havarierten Atomkraftwerk Fukushima-Daiichi.

We will tax them in the brothels, we will tax them on the street, we shall never surrender!

August 30, 2011 By in Habeas Corpus, Habitudes, Heconomy, Hi-tech Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

This is yet another example of German Steuergerechtigkeit (tax justice) in action.

The city of Bonn has introduced a parking meter for prostitutes working on the street. They are now required to pay 6 euros in tax per night to carry out their trade. And they must show their tickets to tax inspectors sent to check (and some of these guys will check again and again and again). This is only fair or something as the girls in the brothels already have to pay.

Hmmm. Is this a progressive tax or a regressive tax? Is it a corporate tax or more like property tax? It’s not a pole tax, is it? An incum tax?

Es drohen Bußgelder bis zu 100 Euro.

“Egalitarians create the most dangerous inequality of all – inequality of power. Allowing politicians to determine what all other human beings will be allowed to earn is one of the most reckless gambles imaginable. Like the income tax, it may start off being applied only to the rich but it will inevitably reach us all.”

RWE Jobs Next

August 9, 2011 By in Helplessness, Hi-tech, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

German utility RWE AG (RWE.XE) Tuesday said it swung to a net loss in the second quarter of 2011, driven mainly by additional costs related to Germany’s decision to exit nuclear energy by 2022 and a tax on nuclear fuel.

The early closure of reactors also resulted in an earnings shortfall, because RWE sold forward the electricity that should have been produced in its two shuttered reactors. To meet its supply obligations the company now has to produce that electricity in more expensive plants or buy power on the market, both of which hurts generation margins.

Time To Say Goodbye

August 2, 2011 By in Helplessness, Hi-tech, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

To all those jobs in the German nuclear power industry, I mean. It’s phase-out time in more ways than one over here.

It’s coming out that E.ON, Germany’s largest energy provider, is now to go on an extreme austerity diet and is about to “restructure,” as they like to say, know what I’m saying? They’re even talking about closing down the big new headquarters they just moved into a year ago.

But hey, it’s all worth it. No pain no gain or something. And don’t worry, there are no other hidden fallout issues here, either.

Of 17 German nuclear power plants, half are now turned off; all of them will be shut by 2022. That’s a loss of 22 billion euros in profits.