Knowing the Enemy

I always knew it, since the beginning of learning French in 1997: French means evil. And that thought came to me even BEFORE I had a major nerd attribute on me (that is, gaming, and of course, being aware of it). Which brings me to the following theorem: The French is, by any means, be they natural or even supernatural/mystical, the true contradiction and opposition of all that is Geek and Nerd! As I learned today, this idea is backed by recent events in French politics.
On second thought, being a Nerd myself, and knowing enough of Cyberpunk to be able to predict the middle-far future, I know that the Technocracy always wins; and Nerds as myself, being heavily addictive and depending on the powers of Science and Technology, ARE winners in the long run (as worldwide economy shows), while France is definitely NOT, as a quick Google poll shows. Be sure to also check the 'Did you mean' service of the site to gain more knowledge and insight on French warfare and losership.

Rindvieh strikes Cebit 2005

Yay... Cheap Cebit tickets rock... would have actually cried had I spent more money on the ticket... Cebit 2005 was kind of disappointing, nothing really out of the frame anymore. Well, a few nice things were around like a personal computer museum showing devices that caused bad marks dating back till 1970. Further a few attempts at making 3D monitors using special screens to fake 3D effects like you know from these little "holo" cards you can find in your cereals from time to time. Played Counterstrike on one of them and I have to say, it gave me a headache:P Not really the egg of columbus. Well, the most interesting obtainment I made was at the exhibition of our favourite evil software empire: Microsoft.

Among showing their Windows XP Media Center version, Windows version aimed at people who are even too dumb to get used to XP itself (or so it seems:P).
Well, at their place, they gave away fascinating little balls with funky diodes inside.
Pictures [1][2][3] and a [video] of it in action.

The quite fascinating question that got to my head when getting it was: What does this little ball have to do with Microsoft?
And then, it actually struck me: This little ball represents the main qualities of Microsoft Software:

1. It takes away space
2. Serves no real purpose
3. Has a funky look but nothing behind it
4. Is a poor ripoff of an idea that's already been realized ages ago while leaving out the good and useful features:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/5da2/images/

Will you love your children in the future?

The people working at microsoft seem to like Orwell's 1984. First they advise parents to monitor their childs computerusage (which Bummratte mentioned before), next thing they invent is a plush toy watching over kids (or coworkers or anyone else) in real-life. If I were a child and some of my plushtoys sitting on my bed or shelf would turn its head to follow me I would basically freak out! It's not clear yet if MS will market this toy, as it was just presented at a not so public annually tech event at Microsoft. Luckily some journalist of abcnews was there to report about MS's evil plans for world domination.