This is a gem! Very reduced and poignant illustration of the gruesomeness of war.
What Photoshop can do if you have skills...
Video von einem 2006er No Jazz Konzert in Hannover. Dieses Jahr kommen sie anscheinend wieder in den Jazz Club Hannover. Juchee! Karte ist hiermit sicher gekauft :D
Recently I got more and more unsolicited phone calls from companies that wanted me and my girlfriend to participate in surveys or wanted to sell some "much better & cheaper" phone/internet/whatever service. The worst category though are automated answering machines that play back their "You won a free travel to XY. Now call our very expensive number to get ripped off" shit from tape. These are the most annoying since you somewhat expect a friend or something important when the phone rings... but not spam shit. Especially automated spam shit!
Well, I fixed the unsolicited phone spam problem this weekend. I just programmed my DSL phone router to forward every call with a unknown/suppressed caller id to a VOIP based number with a mailbox behind. The record says something like: "Hello unknown caller. You have activated caller id suppression. Because of this you were automatically forwarded to this mailbox. Unsolicited phone advertisement is illegal in Germany. If you don't happen to advertise something to us unsolicited please leave your message".
Phone SPAM fixed :D
Interesting how the pro-Bono (pun intended) movement wants to fix Africa and how the African intellectual elite wants to fix their country. The article linked is about the recent meeting of TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) in Arusha, Tanzania. The bottom line is that it's not good to drown the African countries in aid like the first world did for decades. Article
When the XBox360 came out in November 2005 I waited in line with others in front of a mall at launch day. I bought a XBox360, 3 games, a controller and some wireless adapter. Until June 2007 my XBox360 was a reliable, powerful gadget and I was the happy... until it broke. I've heard and read things about red rings of death and other problems with the XBox360, especially the launch series. I have always thought these bloggers / commenters are just plain Sony fanboys that want to spill poo over the competing console... or even worse they were paid flashmob PR ninjas in my opinion. Whatever... Mine lived for nearly 1 and a half years which isn't that bad.
They odyssey began when I contacted Microsoft though:
I contacted Microsoft XBox360 support on June 3, 2007. Within 10 minutes I had a incident number and was told that UPS was about to get the XBox360 from me within the next days. At June 5, 2007 UPS took the box from me.
Now it gets hilarious: On June 22, 2007 I get a automated email from Microsoft that my Box was just delivered to the Microsoft repair facility about 150 kilometers away from where UPS picked it up. That's 17 days! And I think it's save to say that this is bogus. UPS doesn't need 17 days to move a box 150 kilometers within Germany. The mail told me that Microsft was about to start the repair process now. That means the 4-6 weeks repair time was now just starting on their clock. I was a bit pissed and tried to contact XBox360 support by phone. In the next two days I tried three separate calls to them. In sum I was 32 minutes in the wait line... and didn't succeed in getting any support member on the phone!
I thought: Well, if they don't act correct at the XBox division, maybe they'll help me at the central Microsoft ombudsman. I filled a web form, send it and got a automated email that they'll get in touch with me within 3 working days... I have never heard anything again from them!
At July 2, 2007 I decided it's time to try again to get any information what's up with my XBox360. I send a email to the XBox360 support. Basically I asked them:
- When will my XBox be repaired?
- Will I get reimbursed for the time I had to pay XBox live but couldn't use it?
- Why wasn't it possible to get phone support within 2 days of calling?
Now the funny part:
Within 20 minutes I got a message from them stating that they have a huge queue of broken XBoxes and that it takes them 25 business days to fix them right now. They hope to get that down to 15 days (nice to know if my XBox breaks again!!!). And that telephone support is probably blocked because of angry customers asking where their XBox is... The best part: They can't tell me the status of my XBox because of data protection law. Yeah, sure... No word about the XBox Live issues either...
So basically: Fuck you Microsoft!
Sony just announced that their PAL SKUs won't feature the PS2 silicon like US and JAP units do. Seems like Sony is dropping hardware based backward compatibility in favor of 'software emulation'. Generally this wouldn't be so bad if not only a small percentage of PS2 games would work on european launch. With only a few PS3 games available for launch this sucks... and further makes it hard for me to want to buy the Dorkstation 3 in the foreseeable future.
The Silicon has been dropped to reduce manufacturing costs. Of course they still have to force their Betamax erm Minidisk erm I mean Bluray standard on you instead of using HD-DVD or poor standard DVD like the direct competitor XBox360.
Is there anything good about the PS3 except the brand?
There have been many news about the high teen suicide rate in Japan.
Most of those articles suggest it's because of the strict society
rules, school bullying and other serious stuff. With beverages like the
one shown below one can only wonder if those are the real reasons
though :D
Poor duck...
Recent Comments
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spidergoat said:
supposedly the launch series for xbox has a 30% failure rate.i have an atari 5200 that still works though :) read more
on XBox 360 customer support in Germany -
einbischen said:
This post goes to show that here are more ways than just alcohol to snub out reality. ;) read more
on Still clean! -
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on Bye bye phone SPAM