Saturday, December 17, 2005 7:16:24 PM
DRM, Nickelback
Well I just got my newest shipment from amazon: whole Dune series written by Frank Herbert (extremely recommended) and Nickelback - All the Right Reasons CD. The problem started when I saw the CD (or rather CD like thing), ie. the thing is copy protected (of course the rip is already done with lame at highest settings). So the stupid person (me) that actually bought the CD gets treated as a criminal and I can't use the CD as it should be used while someone who just downloaded it can do whatever they like. I might be stupid but this does sound to me as punishing the customer who actually decided to pay for the music (and no CD wasn't very cheap).
Well I love the CD (not sure if "The State" or "All the Right Reasons" is better) but this is just plain stupid. No way I will buy next Nickelback CD (I do have all released to date). It's great music but if I pay for something than I want to use it like I want to and not how some idiotic CEO wants. Music industry is here for us customers and not the other way around (even if politicians and so called creative (creative theft only) industry).
Best way to find out if a Audio CD is DRM damaged (as this one was) is to look for Compact Disc logo. The logo and rights belong to Philips who refuse to let anyone use it if the CD is not compliant with the standard definition. As DRM is definitely not in the definition every DRM damaged CD doesn't have that logo (and of course the other way around). So support the companies that don't treat you like a criminal and boycott the DRM damaged crap.
Wednesday, December 14, 2005 3:28:47 PM
Data retention, EU
Well the
data retention law just passed through the EU Parliament. I guess all manner of power crazy politicians and similar companies are having a field day. From the law that was going to be used only against terrorists (strangely non existing not to mention the fact that it's probably better to go at the root of the problem) to the law that is going to be used by media industry to force crap down the consumers throat. Now it's just a question of time when even more companies and government agencies will have full access to the data stored (at our expense of course).
What is most upsetting (besides the point that we are behaving like idiotic sheep) is the rhetoric. Rhetoric that actually mostly reminds me of US during the Cold War (scaring people with 9 legged evil communists) and Nazi Germany (do I really have to explain this one?), and people are falling for it?!?! Makes me wonder if the history's been cancelled in school or just rewritten since my school days (perhaps I just had some terrorist schoolteacher that didn't teach out the "right" version). Strange how people don't realize that fight against terrorism is fight against our own government (the one that is now day bombing the shit out of Afghani and Iraqi civilia.., upps I mean terrorists and drug smugglers of course.
Still we got what we asked for. If people don't care that we are rapidly moving to wards the society that old Stasi from Eastern Germany only could dream about than we deserve the whole lot. Perhaps people will wake up one day (sadly history teaches us that it usually results in a lot of violence
).
Well I've got go to the lab and prepare some structures for testing of amorphous SiC so I'll just congratulate the media lobby and politicians on work well done and to the people of EU:
SUCKERS!
Thursday, October 13, 2005 9:07:38 PM
Well we managed to finally find an apartment. It's 20 minutes from work and about the same to central Munich which is, shortly put, perfect. The surroundings look a bit shabby but the apartment in it self looks great. Two separate (sadly fairly big size difference) rooms and best of all a fully furnished kitchen and even a washing machine. All this for 750€ per month. It's not cheap but an average rent, still the location fits very well and after seeing some other apartments this one was god sent.
Now the only problem is to find acceptable network connection (probably DSL or similar as the high speed link age hasn't arrived yet in Germany.
Friday, October 7, 2005 11:03:02 PM
Oh yea. A new Nickelback (just a best band there is) is out and I must say it's great. Perhaps not as good as my favourite (the State) but that could be to much longer history
Hope the CD will arrive in stores soon and will not be copy protected. (I hate giving upp my rights even for their CD).
I can realy recommend it to all who love Rock and it is downloadable on the net so it shouldn't be hard to get. Just remeber to buy it if you realy like it. Even if most of the money goes to stupid companies that should go bancrupt if there was any right in this world but still. The band deserves money for doing another excellent CD (it isn't very often I like the whole CD, but the ones I do like are worth the extreme price).
Monday, September 26, 2005 2:15:12 PM
As usual the Murphy (the guy from Murphys law) is back with us.
For our experiments we bought two heating plates with magnetic stirrer and external temperature probe. The fun began the day after the plates arrived. It seems that they can't be plugged in (no on/off switch on the plates) for more than few hours without the stirring control starting to behave strangly. First signs of trouble start with the stirring unit spinning up to 1600 rpm (it is supposed to go upp to 1200) regardless of speed setting. Few hours later it even stops to respond to off setting (so once you turn it on the only way to shut it down is to disconnect the electricity).
Ofcourse the Fisher Scientific said that they had never heared about this problem, but (there is always a but) our suplier did hear about it (basicly the whole series has the same problem). This is a bit dissapointing as you expect the equpiment that costs almost 1200 € should work as advertised.
Wednesday, September 21, 2005 12:16:05 PM
Finally there is once more a nice space project at NASA (to bad it's mostly political crap so cooperation with ESA, Russia and with China is out of the question). As a person who doesn't like all the insects on this planet I am really fond of a permanent base on the moon (finally no wasps
). This looks like a fairly flexible plan and one that could survive change of president and problems in Congress that you hear so much about.
Honestly it's a bit funny that NASA is basically ripping of the Russia (but that has always been the case in space technology). Still this is a lot better than nothing and who knows perhaps with some help from others there can be an international moon base soon (as a seti@home freak I would also like a nice (big, fat) radio telescope on the moons backside).
Another home for humanity should have a pretty high priority (at least much higher than "war for peace" or whatever the Bushy and company want to call it). Especially as funding for NEO search and prevention of meteorite impact is extremely underfunded. We all know that sooner or later something big is going to come our way and we should be prepared and possibly have a backup.
Thursday, September 15, 2005 8:06:22 PM
Well strikes are mostly annoying (even if they are usually necessary) but todays strike att MVV (local transportation thingie) resulted in day off. With no subway it was basicly imposiblle to get to the work in Garching. There should have been some kind of a way with the buses but figuring that out manually isn't that easy. So I ended upp with a long and perfectly boring day. But managed to do some realy hard (and needed) sleeping so it amounted to a lot of rest that I realy needed.
A bit worse thing is that the money I sent to www.bilderjoker.de hasn't arrived yet so I can't order my new digital camera from this other place I found. A bit irritating considering that it has been almost a whole month since I sent them the money. Oh well, hopefully they will fix it this week.
Friday, September 9, 2005 7:02:08 PM
Well it seems that UN has produced the
final report about Chernobyl. 4000 dead expected as a result of the catastrophe. To much but still if we put it into perspective it's very small number. Especially if one compares to other electricity sources. The saddest part is that psychological impact on the health was larger than actual physical. But I guess that all the scare talk about nuclear weapons during the cold war added to the problem quite a lot.
Anyway nuclear power remains the cleanest and safest energy source available to humanity and perhaps it's time we started acting using our brains and not our (well developed) stupidity.
Thursday, September 8, 2005 12:55:30 AM
Well basically it's a pain in the ass to keep your notes sorted so this is a small experiment with on line notes (unfortunately not available to everyone due to sensitive research topic).
My Opera
