it is AAAAAALL irelands fault! bad island!

sometimes, when humanity peaks its stupidity to extensive amounts, it even gets me over the guilt i feel for not writing here in such a long time.
the eu is in crisis. ireland has voted against the lissabon-treaty, and thus against the european union. such a backstabber. and how dare it question the mighty bruxsxeszlsian government.

i mean, this is as if george lucas would bring a new movie into theatres, and the trailer would say nothing more than "George Lucas new movie, it is super good, its a lot better then episode 1, don't miss it!" - would ANYone watch this movie? i rest my case.

maybe people would be easier to convince in things concerning the european union, if someone "up there" took the liberty and hour of EXPLAINING them what the vote actually is about. but that would require that you actually think of your citizens as mature and responsible people. if you treat them as stupid, but rely on them as voters, this is what you will get.
of course, the mighty bruxsxeszlsian government is not responsible for people understanding what the eu is about, what the lissabon-treaty is about, what the eu-constitution is about.
but as long as no one actually knows what they are voting about, and the national governments are too busy jacking off at the sight of their own voting-campaign, someone will have to explain things.

for example, if a country was so absolutely against the EU, it actually should have voted FOR the treaty. why? because, the treaty will introduce a new right to membercountries: leaving the eu.
this is just another proof that no one knew what this was all about, and who can blaim them, since it isn't as if anyone cared if they understood.

so, baad ireland, baaaad evil ireland. go melk your cows and don't destroy our beautiful eu-project.

Microsoft doesn't comply with standards and never has to.

Yesterday the ECMA declared the Microsoft Office Open XML file format an ISO standard, which was, as i believe, a fatal mistake. Not only this gives an incomplete file format a push to strengthen Microsofts monopoly, but it also shows that if a company is big enough, it doesn't need to comply with rules.
The OpenDocument file format (ODF) is standard for the ISO since 2006, and even though it has it's glitches, it is based on the GPL, thus Open Source, thus not commercially usable, and guess what: Microsoft never deemed it necessary to support the ISO-Standard.
If you look at the market share, this means that 80-94% of the worlds computers, thanks to Microsoft, are incompatible with the ISO standard. Well, this is not very surprising, if you consider that Microsofts file formats are not even compatibel with all MS Office releases.

So what could this mean for personal computing? Actually not much. Since MS Office 2007 the OOXML format is used, and its standardization was cancelled earlier this year. I do not use this program, but as i heard, OOXML files are not compatibel with earlier releases of MS Office, meaning all issues until the latest, which is Office 2004 for Macs and '03 for Windows PCs.
Microsoft changed a lot for the standardization process, so that i believe it is fair to speak of the ISO standard as OOXML 1.1 - while the program still saves with 1.0, and time will tell when the time will come that the MS Office produces 1.1 files. Until then, even their own suite doesn't comply with the standard.

But what does all of this mean for social computing, which is believed to be far more important in the future? Will you be able to open a file a friend sends you to check, or will you have to rely on older de facto standards like .rtf or even .txt? (Of course, .txt still leaves the option of ASCII against Unicode, so chances are that you still won't see the same on two different machines.) You always have to option to rely on Adobe's PDF, but this still is read only. So you would have to convert and send as a PDF, copy-paste (or retype, depending on the conversion method) into a format of your choice, save, convert to PDF, send, yadda yadda. This is truly the dawn a new age of redundancy.

What alternative is there?
Well, for one you could convince your coworkers, colleagues, fellow students, ... to use the same format you do (or let them convince you to do so.) This could be in a way mentioned above, or by introducing a third party server, like Google Docs or Thinkfree or other. The decision of a file format is then taken by the online office and thereby obsolete - if you should need an .doc or .pdf or .odt or .html file, you can one-clickingly (i like that word) get whatever you need. And you also get the advantage of easy collaboration without the need of pages of documentation and filenames like xxx_2008march17_secondreview-andrew_check_final.odt.

But, and that is what many fear, you have to entrust a third party with your personal data. Some just don't want that, others just can't because of legal issues.

At the moment, using the OpenOffice Suite and ODF you can be somewhat sure that in five years you still will be able to read and edit all your files as on day one. I believe that this is something that Microsoft will never truly achieve. I seriously doubt that the OOXML ...standard... will be used forever by Microsoft. In less then a decade they will bring a new format, or have the format changed so far that compatability is not possible anymore. My guess is that files made with MS Office 2018 for Office 2007 will again be at best read only, if readable at all.

Of course, only time can tell. But I believe making a second standard while another one isn't even fully implemented by the market leader was a big mistake. MS now will never have a reason to comply to ODF rules, and we see that file formats, as history, are written by those in power.

My recommendation is to rely on free software rather than restrictive formats, but it is of course each ones decision. Here some links if you should be interested:


OpenOffice exists for Unix, Linux and Windows, and can be used on Mac by emulation (using X11) or with its sister NeoOffice, which is basically just a 1:1 Aqua port. OpenOffice 3, due this fall, is supposed to run natively on Mac too though. It, suprise, supports ODF, but also OOXML, .doc, and many others.
Bummer is the bulkiness of the 100 MB download (you can not download/install the Spreadsheet-, Presentation-, Texteditor individually, but only the whole suite), but gives you nearly everything MS Office will ever get you. Unless you are used to working with MS Office 2007, it will also look familiar.
It's bigger brother, StarOffice, is available for free for educational use

Abiword is a lightweight open source text editor for Unix, Mac, Linux, Windows, (gee, it does it all!)
and is compatible with ODF as well as MS .doc - but has it's own format too, which is called .abw
It isn't as versatile as bigger Office Suites, but for everyday use I believe it to be sufficient.

If you are using Linux or Unix there is also KOffice, the KDE Office suite, which supports Microsoft formats and ODF. It can also be emulated on Mac, but I never got that to work. Though being as powerful as the OpenOffice suite, it is significantly lighter in use.

Open Mic at 1bm

On thursday, April 3rd, I will once again, after the long intermission, read at the open mic in the vienna alternative club Einbaumoebel.
Sorry for the short notice, but please feel invited to come. There will be several people reading, some say that parkwächter harlekin might even appear. You should never miss an opportunity to see parkwächter harlekin live. Seriously.

getting desperate...

well, a lot has happened in distopia, and even though there was a big break i want to continue where i stopped so long ago.

of course, i don't remember everything that happened, so to continue in mid-december is not only unreal but useless. well. long story short, now a short list of things pissing me off in this filthy pile of town.

i am sorry that this post concerns austrian politics. but what is happening these days makes me wish we either had a better censorship in the media so i wouldn't have to know this stuff, or, the better option, some boondock saints getting rid of all these freaking idiots causing what feels to me like pain in my head. sometimes, when sitting alone, "i feel like bashing my head against the wall, over and over again, until the pain stops", as wiglaf droste put it.

so, if you neither care about what pisses me off, nor care about austrian politics, just skip this article. but i need to let my desolation steam out, before the valves and pipes of my consciousness finally break apart.

all this populism, lies, smashed hopes and treating people like ammunition for long lost causes is somewhere between making the hairs in my neck stand up and really making me wish to ditch this dump for good. yes, it is slowly becoming truth... the distopian disciple giving up on his dusty distopia.

there are 4 forces in austria, the goodwilling but mostly embarrassing "green" party,
the racist and dumb "liberalist" or "freedom" party (FPOE), with it's scion the "confederation future austria",(BZOE) which is mostly differentiated by one saying that the other is sooooo much more racist, and therefor people should vote for the other - but they both push bullshit far enough to once in every while having members getting in trouble with the austrian law, by which certain opinions about ww2 are not allowed to be publically stated,
then there are the two big ones, the "peoples" party (OEVP), which i once felt would at least be honest with what they do, but which have shown very convincingly that they are as corruptable and stupid as the others are, and, finally, my favorites in bullshit bingo,
the socialist party (SPOE): whose leader, alfred gusenbauer, so desperatly lusting for power, made a deal with the devil, the people's party, just so that he would be chancelor for the next years: and thus all the ministers which the oevp allowed the spoe to put in power are such incompetent idiots, that even the most socialistic newspapers by now had to write at least something bad about them. there is this german proverb: to make the buck the gardener. for example, the minister of inner defence, leader of the great austrian eliteforce army, was not only never a part of that army, he was a conscientious objector. so the guy responsible for giving the order to shoot at those evil Lombards, if they should ever try to invade our country, was someone who swore that he wouldn't ever touch a gun, hurt a person, or kill a cow. he is the same minister who sent austrian troops to assist, of course only in civilian form, the senseless killing in darfur. he even, seriously, said, that he takes the full responsibility for those soldiers safety. great. they better write that on their helmets so no one shoots them by accident.
i mean, i myself was a conscientious objector, everyone who doesn't believe in stupid hierarchy is, but that sounds rather cheap coming from someone leading the whole of this hierarchy - only excelled by the president of austria. dont get me started on him. so - long story short: this is not the only thing fucked up in this government. you get the picture. and not only are those ministers misplaced who the SPOE had to bargain for, also the decisions the OEVP made are a better joke. the minister of health, andrea kdolsky, studied and worked in fields of hospital economics, doesn't only look like loving pork chops, she officially stated that in one of her first interviews, and is a heavy smoker. she is the one responsible for austria still not to be a smoke-free facility. her idea to solve the sorrow problem of smoking in cafés, bars and restaurants: let the owner decide whether he wants to invest thousands of euros to make his customers breathe healthier, or whether he wants to solve the problem the "austrian way": doing nothing. it is not hard to guess, that most owners chose the latter: not to give a fuck.

i believe you get the picture for now. this cabinet is a joke. and not one of those people use to laugh about.

and even though that is nothing new, all these parties do is wasting tax payer money to make sure that the others won't be voted next time. populism hooray!
there is nothing these guys wouldn't be capable of. apart from the only thing they could do to earn my respect.


it is enough for now, the blood haze has lifted. but this is not over yet, i will write about this again. and again. and again. until my hands fall off or justice is real in the glorious home of the original nazi. and this country dares being scathed by sasha cohens depiction.
hipocrites.

i hope this article wasn't to biased, because all of the mentioned parties earned my full disrespect in their own way.

AIM in Gmail

As of today, Gmail also allows you to connect to your AIM-account within the gmail talk application, and thereby also enables logging of aim-sessions.
you certainly have heard that icq is part of aim, so that means that the google chat now also supports icq.
maybe not a big blow against meebo, but for the first time a reason less to use meebo.
oh, of course contrary to the jabber-based google chat, aim/icq doesn't allow you to log in via multiple apps at the same time. so logging in via gmail is going to kick your account in pidgin or similar offline.

out of the dark: a lightroom _not_ review for mac.

some months ago "lightroom", adobes answer to iphoto and picasa, was introduced. there is a free 30-day trial for free to download at adobe.com, and that download is only 50 mb in size. iphoto '08 (aka iphoto7) on my macbook is half a gig of space (without a single photograph, of which i got about 10000 in different sizes). and now my iphoto collection was to get into lightroom, for testing, maybe even switching to this new program. so i exported my thousands of photographs. at least, that was the plan.

i have to explain some things before a lot of this makes sense.
for years i have been a windows user, for some times maybe even a fanboy, and switched in summer 06 completely to ubuntu linux, since i decided one day that longhorn/vista would never be allowed on my hd, for several reasons beyond the scope now.
well, i still like and use ubuntu, but for university i had to get a laptop, long story short, after a lot of consideration it became a macbook, which nearly completly made my desktop ubuntu system obsolete, so that my everyday use computer now not only is a macbook, but a macbook with os x tiger, and a macbook with ilife, the laymans everyday creativity suite by apple.
itunes is a software i never really liked, neither on pc nor on mac, and since i don't have an ipod i never needed itunes anyway. garageband i never even started yet, imovie i used a lot, idvd is fun, iweb is easy to use, and iphoto just rocked the way i look at photographs. everything is easy to use, simple, and logical.
and now, for the first time in nearly a year, i was interested in not even dumping iphoto, but trying something else.
in iphoto, your photographs are sorted usually by date, and furthermore by "events", which means albums, which means folders, so eventname = foldername. so if you have two events in iphoto, e.g. "summer in croatia" from august 07 and "ice cream with the kids" from sept 07, the chronology is kept inside of iphoto, but not in the folder names.
in explorer, or finder, or nautilus, you would see a folder 2007 and the folders 2007/ice ceam with the kids and 2007/summer in croatia, obviously in alphabetical order.
additionally, iphoto has the acutally cool feature to keep the original version of a photograph once you rotate, crop, edit it. in iphoto, only the modified version is shown, but with 2 clicks you can return to your original.
this works by having the described filestructure twofoldly. so, in your iphoto library, there is a folder "originals" and "modified", the former containing ALL your photos, the way you imported them from your camera back in september 07, the other one containing all those edited versions of your images. so if you have a total of 10 photographs in an event, and 5 of which are cropped, rotated, saturated..., then the folder Originals/2007/summer in croata contains 10 pictures, while Modified/2007/summer in croatia contains 5 pictures.
so far so good. of course, all these pictures have tags, some have a 1 to 5 star rating, some are 640x480 shot with the isight-cam or my cellphone, others are 3000x2400 shot with my brothers d70.
now the fun starts.
of course i had no interest in re-editing all my photographs (i am sure to have wasted hours with just tagging pictures and cropping and rotating them), so just copying the "originals" folder wouldnt work. but obviously i also wanted to keep those original files, so just copying the originals folder and overwriting it with the modified folder wouldn't work either. so, i used the export option in iphoto.

within the library, a event name would be a folder name, and that made sense, so i wanted to rename my cimg0134.jpg's and dsc_2355.jpg's to euphonies like "summer in croatia 01.jpg" so i selected the option "use album". when exporting an event/album, now the files should be renamed as described.
the fun began.
when selecting more than one event at the time to export, which is only possible in either "photos" or "events" view, iphoto renames the files to... well. see for yourself:



so the first thing i found out was that the "export to file" feature disregards the folderstructure iphoto created itself when importing (and copying) my photos into the iphoto library, and which it keeps updated whenever a eventname is changed.

aparently, the only way to export photos from iphoto but keeping this information would be to either manually
1) copy your "modified" and "originals" folder to another location.
2) create a folder with the name of each album.
3) export every single $%§& event manually to the newly created folder.
4) find out which of the originals have been edited, copy them to the right folders.
5) if you didn't do so far, get drunk.

OR
1) copy your "original" and modified folder
2) rename all folders to include a date so that they would be sorted correctly
3) get a batchrenaming tool
4) batchrename all *.jpg files within "modified" to *_edit.jpg or similar
5) move the *_edit.jpg files to the corresponding folders in the "originals" structure.

so far i haven't decided which action to choose, but one thing now is for sure:
as happy as i am with my macbook and the ilife system, it most "§$%& definitely got me to "think different".

2 questions remain: why is there no picasa for mac?
if i ever get to acutally try lightroom (in the next 30 days of my evaluation period), and it should suck, what programm will i use to organize my photographs?
i sure know which one it wont be...

es muss sich ändern, damit ich weiß ob es besser wird.

so, jetzt ist mal wieder zuviel zeit vergangen seit dem post, und noch mehr seit dem letzten inhalt: etwas muss sich ändern.
schließlich wollen wir alle ja nicht noch am dusty dusk hier sitzen.
was sich im moment so tut:
diesen donnerstag darf ich ein referat über wolfgang detels text "forschungen über hirn und geist" aus der zweiten diskussionsreihe von hans-peter krügers "hirn als subjekt?" halten. "wie steht der geist zur neurobiologischen realität?" fragt sich detel, und ich mich auch. und auch wenn ich die meisten wörter verstehe, so habe ich daran noch die eine oder andere nuss zu knacken.

der auftritt im 19. bezirk anfang des monats verlief super, was ich nicht nur deswegen sage, weil ich mich darüber freue, sonder weil ich mich entschuldigen möchte, dass es keine vorankündigung gab, und, wie es scheint, auch keine aufzeichnungen gibt...
was es jedoch aufgezeichnet gibt ist: druckwerk!
nach langen jahren hab ich es endlich zur druckerei geschafft, und 15 exemplare "ein schatten blickt zurück" sowie 15 exemplare "gedanken mit und ohne schleife" zu drucken, asymmetrisch zu tackern, und gegen freie spende zum verkauf anzubieten.
hierzu wird in den nächsten tagen ein neuer punkt auf meiner homepage zu finden sein: sorry wegen der werbebanner und möglichen pop-ups, mehr ist noch nicht drin zur zeit.

was hat sich sonst so getan?
(falls hoffe das wird nicht zu polarisierend, obwohl, über eine diskussion im rahmen der kommentare würd ich mich sehr freuen!)
die "nationale volkspartei österreichs" hat sich gegründet, www.nvp.at (ja, das ist absichtlich kein link), und scheint dem n in nvp alle ehre machen zu wollen. angelsächsische unreinheiten der deutschen sprache ("verweis" statt "links", etc) werden da ebensowenig geduldet wie einwanderer, es wird von den österreichischen politikern, die unter europäischer knute gegen den willen des volkes agieren gekämpft, es gibt mitleidsbekundungen für wiederbetätigungs-täter (gibts da eigentlich ein besseres wort?), kurz: alles, was "österreich" und "krone" in ihrer vereinfachung der dinge an rassistischer falschinterpretation zulassen, wird aufs schärfste ausgenutzt und hochgepriesen. "Wie lange dauert es noch, bis die Bevölkerung dieses Unheil erkennt und dagegen aufsteht?", ist ein gängiger spruch auf der seite, und ich frage mich das selbe. wie lange noch, bis solche idioten dorthin kommen, wo sie hinwollen: zu den weißen flecken auf der landkarte, wo der sprichwörtliche pfeffer wächst.

im sudan wurde eine britische lehrerin zu 15 tagen haft verurteilt, weil sie einen teddybären "mohammed" nannte, was die eltern der schüler der britischen privatschule als beleidigung empfanden und klagten. heute dann stand im "standard", dass "tausende Demonstranten die Hinrichtung" der dame gefordert haben. nun braucht ja ansich gerade ein österreicher nicht viel reden von missverstandenen menschenmassen, die eigentlich nur wegen der gratis-t-shirts da waren, aber was ich mich hier frage ist: wo bleiben die liberalen muslime? wo sind die aufschreie zehntausender, die diese demonstrationen im namen einer glaubensrichtung verurteilen? sind sie unterdrückt- wieso hilft man ihnen dann nicht? sind sie erfunden? oder sind sie stumm? in letzterem fall, den ich befürchte, werden sie dadurch ja wohl zu mittätern, oder? ich schweife ein bisschen vom thema ab, aber fällt das nur mir auf, dass egal wo etwas böses von muslimen im namen ihres gottes getan wird, nie hört man eine "zweite meinung" der bevölkerung. fast nie eine distanzierung. solange sich "die liberalen" von einer minderheit von agressiven radikalen dirigieren lässt, solange darf man sich über ein pauschales verurteilen vom rest der welt nicht wundern, so sehr ich das bedaure.

zur aktuellen diskussion über datenspeicherung auf vorrat und überwachung möchte ich im moment noch nichts sagen, das wird dann ein eigener artikel. bis dahin möchte ich aber auf diesen gewohnt großartigen artikel im agitpopblog verweisen, da steht eigentlich alles drin was man sagen könnte.

ich widme mich wieder meinem referat, und hoffe auf eine bessere welt.

wenigstens ehrlich...

soweit ich mich erinnern kann ging es in den letzten jahren bei frauenmode und -düften doch meistens darum, dass die dame sich wohlfühlen soll in ihrer haut, dass sie schön ist wie sie ist, und dass die 2 pfund zuviel kein problem sind. DKNY denkt anders.



ich warte schon auf zukünftige werbeslogans wie "willst doch auch einen abkriegen, oder nicht, bitch?"

verschüttete milch

irgendwas muss ich da doch falsch verstanden haben:
während die bauern in österreich ächzen, weil sie zu geringe löhne bekämen, und die preise zusätzlich erhöht werden wegen der steigenden nachfrage nach europäischen milchprodukten bei außereuropäischer konsumenten, da lese ich in der "presse" von einer strafzahlung der bauern wegen zu hoher milchproduktion?
kann mir das jemand erklären?

bluetooth technologie ist tot.

"bluetooth technologie ist tot!
lang lebe bluetooth technology!"

sagt das neue sony-ericsson w960i auf der seite von sony-ericsson.



ich bin kein feind von anglizismen, im gegenteil, aber jungs: man kanns echt übertreiben.