When people ask me about my political opinion did I not have an answer for them, because what I believe is hard to describe. I did not know that there does actually exist a term for it. Here in the U.S. people ask me, if I am Republican, Democrat or a Green. I am neither of them. In Germany people asked me, if I am Conservative Christian Democrat, Social Democrat, Liberal, Green, Socialist or a Communist. I am neither of them. So what am I?I just found that out a few days ago when I watched the episode titled “Activism, Anarchism, and Power” of the educational series “Conversations with History” by the Institute of International Studies of the University of California at Berkley.The host Harry Kreisler had a 1 hour conversation with Noam Chomsky, linguist and political activist on March 22, 2002. I watched the video recording of it, which I downloaded from Google Video. Here is a link to the complete one hour episode.I learned that I am a Libertarian Anarchist. This has nothing to-do with liberals in the United States, who are completely different from who call themselves “Liberals” in Germany, which is different from what the word actually means. The anarchist part of it does also not refer to chaos or lack of organization of the society. I am sure most people get it wrong when they hear it for the first time and probably think that I am a Lenin citing and Molotov Cocktail throwing radical[…]
I was just browsing around a little bit at YouTube.com and found a video, which I remembered well from a couple of years ago. Its a video from the British band “The Prodigy”. They have a tendency to create controversy with their music and their videos, some might even say “crazy”, but what means crazy in this day and age? I like a number of songs from The Prodigy, among my favorites are “Firestarter“, “Narayan“, “No Good“, “Out of Space” and “Breathe” … and this one…Be warned, this video was even “too much” for the much more open European TV stations. MTV Europe had to take it off the air because of massive numbers of complaints by concerned parents and organizations. I think that taking it off the air was not a good decision. The video was not glorifying abuse and violence. I would say that it did exactly the opposite. I don’t think that anybody with a single functional brain cell left would be encouraged to mimic the behavior shown in the video. It is not an unrealistic depiction of things as it is often done in Hollywood movies. People that behave like this do exist and the video shows very realistically all the “fun” and “ugly” aspects of this.Full Length, Uncut Version of the Music Video by “The Prodigy” titled “Smack My Bitch Up“Warning! Viewers Desecration Advised!Not Suitable for Children. – Extreme Explicit Content– Foul Language– Drug Abuse– Alcohol Abuse– Nudity– Depiction of Unsafe Sex– Uncivil Behavior– ViolenceI[…]
This week issue of Information Week, which I had in the mail today, had a little news article titled: ???Of Green Cards & YouTube???, which caught my attention. The law firm Cohen & Grigsby published a video on YouTube.com from its May conference discussing immigration laws with employers. The speaker describes a practice that sounds not so nice if taken out of context. The video was pulled from the site after the firm got a letter from the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL). The Programmers Guild was able save a copy of the video before it was removed. They re-edited it and added text messages and comments to it and then re-published it at YouTube.com again. The video is available below. The video has been viewed over 160,000 times while I was writing this and over 1,400 comments were made. The comments were mostly garbage that mix-up this case with illegal immigration and industry migration to low labor cost countries.The video speaks about the PERM (PDF), also known as Labor Certification, which is the first step of the Green Card process for foreign workers who already live and work in the United States and have a valid work authorization via a work visa, such as H-1B or L1. The first step of the PERM requires employers to post a Job Ad in three places to find an U.S. citizen who would qualify for the job. If no qualified U.S. workers respond, an employer can immediately apply for certification.The lawyer in[…]
I was still in Germany when Blizzard Entertainment released Star Craft and in Switzerland when they released the first and only Star Craft add-on titled Brood Wars.I am in the United States since 2000. That is over seven years. It has been 9 years since I left Germany. This is an eternity in the realms of computer and video games. Star Craft was for Windows 95, Windows 98 was not even released yet. Do you remember Windows 98? Yeah, it is the Windows Version that was replaced by Windows XP, which was replaced this year by Windows Vista, that long. While some spin off games were released for the Nintendo 64 (which was replaced by the GameCube and then by the Wii) did nothing happened on the PC. Warcraft 3 was released and the World of Warcraft, the huge online mass multi player success, which is played by millions of fans for years.Star Craft fans started to believe that Blizzard would never release a sequel to the game, due to the overwhelming success of their Warcraft property.Well, we were wrong. This weekend did not only rumors about a Star Craft sequel spread around the internet, but also videos that proved it. Actually Blizzard Entertainment themselves announced officially the long awaited sequel to Star Craft.Here is the official announcement trailer for Star Craft 2 by Blizzard EntertainmentAll THREE VIDEOS USED IN THIS POST WERE REMOVED BY YOUTUBE BECAUSE OF TERMS OF SERVICE VIOLATIONS. SUCKERS! MOVIE 1Here is a not-so-official video of[…]
I traveled a couple days a go back in time to the year 1994 to an internet marketing and advertising conference. Wait a moment. Did I say 1994? Yes I did and I am not trying to trick you. See here the video recording of one of the first, if not the first internet marketing and advertising conference, which was held on November 4th,1994 in San Francisco, California. What happened?Ken McCarthy is the first speaker and talks about opportunities. He was very forward thinking and you might think that what he says is obvious and logical. They were not in 1994. The second speaker is Marc Andreessen, co-Founder of Netscape, which was founded just a bit earlier in 1994 as well after the overwhelming success and popularity of their software called “web browser”, the original “Mosaic” and the creation of the World Wide Web as we know it today.The Web is just existed for a year or so when the conference was held.link to videoIt was a nice trip back in time. It also brought some memories back and a chuckle when I heard Ken talk about the role of BBS systems in the growth of the internet.I have to say that he was a bit off when it comes to the role of Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) would play in getting people online by becoming something like a mini-ISP. True, a lot of BBS software development companies were jumping on the bandwagon and worked on internet integration into their[…]
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