Category Archives: Hi-tech

The ‘Merican Mini-Me Machine Mystery

March 6, 2011 By in Habitudes, Hi-tech, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

While certain experts fear that Washington’s Geheimniskrämerei (secret-mongering) concerning the second launch of the X-37B “Mini-Me Shuttle” might make countries like China and Russia nervous, Germans have once again taken the initiative and become nervous first.

“The Air Force did confirm that this robotic space plane is designed to stay in orbit for 270 days,” one hand-wringing German official said. “But it hasn’t said anything about the mysterious and EVIL new technolgies that are to be tested with it. This kind of stuff bekanntlich (as you know) makes us nervous.”

Indeed, the only information the Air Force handed out to journalists at all was a short list of some of the Mini-Me Shuttle’s “favorite things:”

Mini-Mr. Bigglesworth
Humping the giant laser
Terrorizing Scott
Biting and
Being evil

Experten fürchten, dass Washingtons Geheimniskrämerei China und Russland nervös macht.

Germans Won’t Buy The Right Gasoline

March 1, 2011 By in Hi-tech, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Actually, it’s the left gasoline, but still.

Strange, isn’t it? On the one hand, you probably won’t be able to find a nation more vocal when it comes to saving the environment and/or planet than Germany. On the other hand, it would be hard to imagine a nation of car freaks more freakish about their big German cars than Germans are (the dirtiest in Europe – the cars not the drivers).

Anyways, car freaks everywhere in Germany have united and are absolutely positively refusing to buy the latest thing that is good for them, an “organic” fuel called E10 that contains 10 percent ethanol. The reason? Rumor has it that this stuff can cause motor damage on some car models. Everybody’s buying super instead and now there’s a super shortage, which is anything but super.

I guess you have to ask yourself one question, punks: Your planet or your car? You know, kind of like that old Jack Benny gag where the armed thief asks “Your money or your life?” and Jack Benny won’t answer at first and finally replies “I’m thinking.”

Bisher sind die Autofahrer überwiegend nicht bereit, den neuen Bio-Kraftstoff E10 mit zehn Prozent Ethanol zu tanken.

Smashingly Successful Satellite Soon To Smash Into Earth

February 27, 2011 By in Hi-tech Tags: , , , , , , , 1 Comment

A great scientific success or something, it looks like the 2,400kg German X-ray satellite telescope ROSAT will be less successful when it reenters our planet’s atmosphere later this year.

It is unlikely to burn up entirely due to the large amount of ceramics and glass used for its construction. Parts as heavy as 400kg could crash on the Earth sometime between October and December 2011. And if that wasn’t bad enough, even more frightening are the calculations that show how some of these parts could actually even hit, gulp, Germany. Of all places.

Wissenschaftlich gesehen, daran besteht kein Zweifel, war das fliegende Observatorium ein Erfolg.

3-D Big At The Berlinale This Year

February 17, 2011 By in Hi-tech, History Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

They won’t be showing these, though.

Unlike Hollywood’s 1950s 3-D movies, which used two projectors, the Nazi version used standard 35mm film cut in half into a split-screen. When it was projected, a prism would combine the two images.

Ironically, he first disclosed the find during the Berlinale, the Berlin film festival, this week, where filmmakers worldwide were rolling out 3-D movies.

If I wanted to find a friend I’d buy a dog

January 24, 2011 By in Habeas Corpus, Habitudes, Hi-tech, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Bowing to excessively strict German privacy law pressure, Facebook has grudgingly agreed to allow German users to protect their email contacts from unwanted social network solicitations that could lead to possible “friendships” or other related gross infringements of privacy.

Although there are more than 10 million Facebook users in Germany, none of them appear to be particularly friendly, much less know one another, nor do they “get” the Facebood Friend Finder concept in the first place, nor want to, because we’re not kids anymore damn it and we are all perfectly aware of what these so-called “friendships” are all about and where they eventually lead to and if any one of us wanted a find a friend he or she would go to the local pound and buy a freakin’ dog like God had intended us to.

“We are pleased that we have come to a solution with the Hamburg DPA regarding concerns about Friend Finder and look forward to continue our constructive discussions and dialogue in the future,” although they weren’t particularly friendly.

Secret “German Street View” Plot Revealed

January 3, 2011 By in Hi-tech, Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Hey, what goes around comes around.

A Norwegian daily has just leaked a State Department cable leak leaked by WikiLeaks indicating that Germany is currently working together with the United States on a high-tech secret spy satellite program that would “provide (Germany) an instrument of national power, and politically free it from dependence on foreign sources of imagery.” You know, from sources like Google Street View?

Now that’s what I call transparency.

Germany’s aerospace center vehemently denies such embarassing claims because everybody knows that Germans only build technology that is used for goodness and niceness and so forth blah, blah, blah, but these denials don’t really matter all that much because the head honchos what’s in charge here are actually the good folks over at the German intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst, or so the report, and these guys aren’t talking for some strange reason, transparency freaks or not.

Germans and secret spy projects? Come on. Don’t be ridiculous. Who thinks up weird stuff like this anyway?

“The cables say the project had been causing friction with Germany’s European Union partners, especially France, which was to be strictly excluded from the project.” 

Chaos must be well organized, ja?

December 29, 2010 By in Habeas Corpus, Habitudes, Hi-tech Tags: , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Germans, being born anarchists (and born Germans), are genetically programmed to be aware of how important it is that the chaotic and deteriorating world in which we live continue to degenerate, but to have it do so in an “orderly chaotic” and therefore German manner.

That is why the Chaos Computer Club, holding its 27th annual Chaos Computer Club Congress in Berlin this week, has expressed Chaos Computer Club Congress Concern Concerning the recent hacking attacks against “Mastercard und Co.” in wake of recent WikiLeaks revelations (the leaks themselves were carried out quite orderly, causing complete chaos, so they were OK).
 
It appears that these attacks are in fact against something called Chaos Computer Club “hacker ethics” and the interests of those who genuinely strive for a truly transparent society (albeit a deteriorating and chaotic one) and they kindly request that such disorderly chaotic attacks cease immediately, or something.

I tell ya, it’s a dog-eat-dog-hacker-gegen-hacker world out there.

“As the world becomes more chaotic, we can help.”

Germans Prepare For Next Hi-Tech Threat That Isn’t Quite There Yet But Threatens On The Horizon Already Anyway So-To-Speak

December 27, 2010 By in Hi-tech, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , 4 Comments

Or threatens in front of your bedroom window, or could. Potentially, I mean.

The ghastly Google Street View Scare hardly verdaut (digested), Germans everywhere are now about to be threatened by the threat of threatening private “mini me” drones which will soon be everywhere, omnipresent and ubiquitous, all at the same time, and will threaten German privacy in ways that haven’t even been imagined yet–but just be patient, they’re working on it.

Consumer Minister Ilse Aigner, along with the good folks over at the Left Party (of all people), are concerned that these new-fangled devices will soon be able to break privacy laws that, well, haven’t even been written yet either. But they’re working on that too.

Interestingly, the firm producing these things is located in a place called Kreuztal, in Germany (well I thought it was interesting). These babies are Made in Germany, in other words. So why all the excitement? Germans would never threaten German privacy like American Internet companies would, would they? I don’t know, maybe it’s more like “Be the first Spitzel (informer) on your block to have one!” kind of thing or something.

“Schon mit den kleinen helikopterähnlichen Hobby-Modellen kann man rechtlich schnell an Grenzen stoßen.”

German Technophobia Reaches North Pole

December 19, 2010 By in Habitudes, Hi-tech, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

In yet another shocking new disclosure that may or may not have come from WikiLeaks although it’s hard to say for sure, it has been revealed that neither the German Santa Claus, St. Nikolaus, nor his many thousands of merry German post office helpers reply to children’s wish lists sent in the so-called “e-mail” format, insisting instead that “they learn how to do it properly.”

“Obviously we, as the postal service, want children to write letters,” said St. Nikolaus spokesman Freddie von Scrooge. “And besides, once you give in and start letting stuff like “e-mail” through, the next thing you know they’ll be Street Viewing the freakin’ North Pole.”

Santa Doesn’t Do Digital

Shoot-’em-up German style!

December 13, 2010 By in Hi-tech, History, Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

In case you didn’t already know… Except when it comes to American “shooter” computer games, of course, “computer games as a medium are often quick to be judged without being more closely examined.” So that’s what I’m about to do now.

Sure, there seems to be a little token outrage here and there, but for the most part no one over here seems all too terribly beunruhigt (troubled) now that the German online game 1378(km) (the name refers to the length of the old Cold War German-German border, by the way) finally went online last week. This game is, well, German after all so it must be, I dunno, OK. Right?

The aim of the game? Some players are East German border guards with guns and other players are East German refugees trying to escape to the West. Get the picture? It’s quite a vivid one actually. But don’t worry, it’s politically correct political incorrectness, I’ve been told. More or less. I think.

“1378(km) does not force someone playing the border soldiers to shoot the refugees. Players are left with the freedom of choice. You are only able to win 1378(km) when you do not shoot. The rules of the game are inspired by the situation at the former Inner German Border. Border camps, death strips, and orders to shoot are what make the game brutal.”

Only in Germany, I tell ya.