According to the british government under Tony Blair, a RFID-chip on British ID cards should include informations about the owners facial identity as well as his fingerprints. The goal they want to achieve is a better way to oppose terrorism.
One major aspect opponents of the project always base themselves on is the lack of security that necessarily comes with such informations stored on ID cards. This argument always gets rejected by the government, though. There aren’t any security issues with such a card, they say.
Continue Reading »

Wordpress version 2.8 alias “Baker” was released yesterday.
I just updated zoryfl.wmw.cc to the newest version including all of the plugins so this blog is up to date to all the new versions!
For a list of updates and fixes check the wordpress.org blog entry.

Heute, am 1. Mai, fand in Ulm und Neu-Ulm eine Demonstration der JN (Junge Nationaldemokraten), also im Prinzip der NPD, statt.
Bereits im Voraus wurde von der Stadt und anderen Institutionen viel Werbung für verschiedenste Gegendemonstrationen gemacht.
Erwartet wurden ungefähr 500 Nazi-Demonstranten, gezählt wurden im Endeffekt anscheinend ~1200! Zahlen über Gegendemonstranten liegen mir bis jetzt keine zuverlässigen vor.
Continue Reading »

As I noticed that many people around here do use the car2go service (see here) but do not know about a very lightweight site where you can check for the nearest available Smart, I will just introduce it here. As that page was formally introduced in a car2go-Newsletter you might say this page is kind of ‘official’, though it is not directly by car2go.

Anyway, just check it out (most useful using a mobile phone!): http://d9t.de/nearest

As Ulm was the very first city to get started with the car2go project in the world, I decided to just register online and get myself the needed sticker on my driver licence later that day.

The car2go project is described as follows:

Stuttgart / Ulm – Gute Gründe für die Neuentdeckung des Autofahrens im Stadtverkehr finden sich in Ulm jetzt buchstäblich an jeder Ecke: Dafür sorgt die Daimler AG mit car2go, ihrem neuen Mobilitätskonzept, das Autofahren so einfach wie mobiles Telefonieren macht. Nach erfolgreichem Abschluss der internen Pilotphase steht car2go mit einer Flotte von 200 smart fortwo cdi ab sofort allen registrierten Bürgern und Besuchern der Stadt Ulm zur Verfügung – jeden Tag, rund um die Uhr und zu günstigen Tarifen. Von Ulm geht es dann gleich weiter auf internationales Parkett in die USA: Bereits im Herbst will Daimler mit car2go auch in Austin, Texas, starten.

free translation by me:

Stuttgart / Ulm – Good reasons to reinvent driving in the city now literally can be found at every edge: Thanks to the Daimler AG with its new mobility-concept – car2go – which makes driving as easy as mobile phoning. After a successful internal pilot batch, 200 smart fortwo cdi are now accessible for all registered citizens and visitors – every day, 24h a day for just a small charge. [...]

For me, living a bit outside of Ulm, this is a really great alternative to the very expensive taxis as the latest bus always goes 11:30 pm. The charge for driving one of these smarts is only 0.19€ / min !

I will report in after having driven one of these smart cars =)

David Savage, a ‘behavioural economist’ from Queenland University of Technology, now claims that many Britons died on the Titanic just because they were more polite and queued for lifeboats, not as e.g. the Americans which he calls “individualists” !
His thesis is based on testimonies from after the event which say that husbands put their wives and children on the lifeboats and then got back on the boat to “have a cigar“.

via BBC News, thanks.
Picture via BBC News, thanks.