Dead German poet told to pay his television license

By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

It seems that even being dead for over 200 years still doesn’t escape you from the curse of the German bureaucrats.

One of Germany’s most famous poets and playwrights, Friedrich Schiller, was sent two threatening letters by the GEZ (the television licensing agency).   They told him that he had to pay 17 Euros ($24) a month for the right to watch his television and listen to his radio otherwise they would begin legal action against him!    The letters were sent to the Friedrich Schiller Primary School in East Germany.

The second letter came despite the school’s headteacher sending the agency a letter informing them that “the addressee is no longer in a position to listen to the radio or watch television”.   He also enclosed Schiller’s resume listing his accomplishments such as writing the world famous “Ode To Joy” which was later put to music by Ludwig Van Beethoven.

The bureaucrats replied back saying Schiller would not have to pay if he could personally prove that he was “not in a position to watch television or listen to radio”

They finally got it into their heads that Schiller has been dead since 1805 and issued an apology.    Their excuse for the screw-up?   Yup, you guessed it – a “computer error”.    Amazing how bureaucrats fall back on that classic excuse of blaming everything on the computer!

So I guess that means the payment demands for Mr L Van Beethoven, Mr J S Bach and Mr W A Mozart are now in the post then?

ASK [GAS] : What was your first computer and how did it change your life?

by Casey Lynn
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

I was a child of the eighties, and the first computer that my parents bought was a Tandy CoCo, on which my mom taught me to type when I was seven. That computer also jumpstarted my love of videogames, since hours of playing Maniac Mansion revved me up to beg for a NES the very first time I saw an ad for one on television.

Though my family went through a slew of other computers as I grew up, including the Dell that went off to college with me, the one that I still think of as “my” first is the one that I picked out on my own, after said Dell crashed and burned–an iMac G4, shortly after the line was released. I’d previously been running a dual-partition of Windows and Linux and found the shiny new OSX to be preferable to both. Though I’ve since had to switch to a PC desktop for work, I still have that iMac. It’s sitting on the entertainment center in my living room, and its sole purpose in life is to store MP3s and play iTunes while hooked up to a rockin’ sound system. I’m sure that many computers wish for such dignified last days.

Do you remember your first computer? How did it change your life? Have you ever had one you loved too much to let go?



Church Leaders Draw Up Ten Blogging Commandments

By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

Church leaders are apparently so alarmed at the hate and vitriol coming from religious blogs that they have drawn up a list of ten “Blogging Commandments” to save their bloggers from damnation, sin and everlasting hellfire.

Obviously, when Moses was busy writing out his commandments, he didn’t factor in things like the internet, website trolls, IT people, spammers, right-wing Christian conservatives and George W Bush.  So being the modern technological 21st century, a re-write seems to be in order – “The 10 Comms – The Bloggers Edition”.   Hey, if George Lucas can go back and re-do Star Wars, why can’t we go back and fiddle around with the Ten Commandments?

You might think that being religious, “God Bloggers” are nice quiet calm peaceful folk.   But it seems to be the opposite.   American right-wing bloggers are supposed to be the most extreme in their postings and Christian blogs seem to attract a lot of hateful comments.

So the Evangelical Alliance has put forward the following Blogging Commandments to religious bloggers to get them to change their tune :

  1. You shall not put your blog before your integrity (oh yay)
  2. You shall not make an idol of your blog (amen)
  3. You shall not misuse your screen name by using your anonymity to sin (I’m talking to you Judas!)
  4. Remember the Sabbath day by taking one day off a week from your blog (all that preaching is tiring!)
  5. Honor your fellow-bloggers above yourselves and do not give undue significance to their mistakes (just make sure instead that their mistakes reach number one in the search results)
  6. You shall not murder someone else’s honor, reputation or feelings (you can just kick it around a bit..)
  7. You shall not use the web to commit or permit adultery in your mind (how can you have sex in your head?  Is that a Catholic thing?)
  8. You shall not steal another person’s content (you shall instead use a blog scraper to steal it for you on your behalf)
  9. You shall not give false testimony against your fellow-blogger (that’s what the police is for! dimwit!)
  10. You shall not covet your neighbor’s blog ranking. Be content with your own content (is it a sin to worship Google PageRank?)

Can you think of any more commandments that should be added for bloggers?

Thou shalt not upload – Times Online

Skype May No Longer Be Secure

By PatB
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

MSN, Yahoo IM and AIM all use clear text in the chat discussions, which means anyone along the path of communication can read what it is you are typing,  including your boss if you use chat at work.  Many people, including myself, use Skype as an IM chat client because it has strong encryption built in. A system admin monitoring the network can still tell you are using Skype, but no one can read what you typed into the chat box.  Until now.

Ebay’s Chinese partner, Tom Group, has been distributing a version of Skype, with permission, to its Chinese users.  Tom’s version of Skype has been trojanized by the Chinese communist government to capture certain conversations that contain keywords that the government considers to be subversive.  Those chat sessions, which includes usernames, IP addresses and a record of all phone calls made over Skype, are packaged and sent encrypted to several webservers owned by Tom Group for retrieval by Chicom agents.

Quite simply, this means, if you use Skype and are chatting unknowingly to someone using this Tom-Skype version, and you use a profanity or a banned keyword, the entire chat session gets archived by the Chi-coms, along with the Skype-out phone records of the Tom-Skype user.

With thanks to Steinnon, the details are here at infowar-monitor.net:

The most damaging information concerns the log files that record call information and the content filter logs that contain full text chat messages. The call information logs date from August 2007 and contain a record of the IP addresses and usernames of all those that participated in voice calls as well as the username and/or phone number of the recipient of the call.

The content filter logs dating from August 2008 contain similar identifying information as well as the full content of the logged text messages. These messages contain sensitive information including email addresses, passwords, phone numbers, package tracking numbers and bank card numbers.

As mentioned above, the information is stored encrypted on several webservers at Tom Group.  But the webserver stores the logs in a publicly accessible directory, and politely includes the decryption code on the server so anyone can download the messages and decrypt them.  So not only do the Chicoms know about your chat sessions, lots of hackers and identity thieves probably do too.

Ebay, owner of Skype, should immeditately terminate their partnership with Tom Group for allowing their customers to have their privacy violated and should immediately issue a new version that is incompatible with the Tom Group version of Skype.

Superman Saves House, Sells Books

by Casey Lynn
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

As it has been out for a month and sitting near the top of the NY Times Bestseller List during that time, you may have already heard of Brad Meltzer’s The Book of Lies by now. However, what you might not know is what this book has to do with Superman’s home. No, not Krypton… the other one, the house where writer Jerry Seigel dreamed up the Man of Steel over 70 years ago. But whereas Krypton may have been destroyed, the tiny house in Cleveland is being restored, saved from its deterioration by a group of generous fans.

Meltzer (who also writes for Justice League of America) discovered the poor condition of the house when he was researching The Book of Lies and enlisted some geeks in high places as well as Superman fans to help. An auction with everything from t-shirts and donated artwork to rare memorabilia and a walk-on role in Heroes raised twice as much as Meltzer was anticipating–over $100,000, enough to renovate both the outside and inside of the house. The elderly couple living there now have agreed to eventually sell the house to the Siegel and Schuster Society.

And though I didn’t intend this to be a book review, I’ll add a few words about The Book of Lies since I read it a couple of weeks ago. I quite liked it, and I have a new appreciation for Meltzer’s work. I admit, I kind of wrote him off after reading The Tenth Justice ten years ago (which, despite a great premise, fell flat in execution for me), but I think that his writing has improved dramatically. The question at the heart of it was enough to intrigue me: what do Cain and Abel have to do with Superman? Whereas I don’t think that this will be the next DaVinci Code in either popularity or controversy, it is a good, fun read, and should be of particular interest to Superman geeks, if only for the tour through the Siegels’ (some real, some fictional) history. And as a bonus, here’s a trailer for the book, which includes appearances by Joss Whedon and Brian K. Vaughn.

The Geek Cookbook: Introducing The “Fatty Melt” Hamburger

Even though we typically prefer healthier fair here at [GAS], we’re not immune to the tempting goodness of an occasional poutine or Krispy Kreme cheeseburger. Unfortunately, there’s just something about junk food that makes us, as “normal” human beings, forget all we’ve been told as kids about proper nutrition. Maybe it’s the impeding danger of a potential heart attack? People do so love taking a bit of risk to bring excitement into their lives.

So today, when I stumbled on “The Hamburger Fatty Melt,” I knew you guys would totally fall in love with it. Behold another one of the most unhealthy food creations ever!

Now, since the weekend is at our doorstep and that I know a few of you will want impose share this discovery with their friends and/or family, here’s what you need to make your own “Fatty Melt” Hamburgers.

  • Four very thin slices of white bread (to maintain the proper beef-to-bread ratio)
  • Two slices of American yellow cheese (are we even sure these are actually made out of cheese?)
  • One four-ounce beef patty
  • One slice of juicy, ripe tomato
  • Butter
  • Two slices of bacon (optional)

I don’t really think I need to explain in detail how to cook one of those, so here are some simple instructions. Just start by cooking your beef patty, and don’t forget that it needs to be cooked well, or until the inside isn’t pink anymore. The meat in the previous picture looks to be a little too red for my taste. When you’re almost done, prepare two grilled cheese sandwiches inside another pan. Once everything is ready, put the patty between the grilled cheese sandwiches, insert the slice of tomato and enjoy.

It wouldn’t hurt to make an appointment with your doctor for a cholesterol check when you’re finished.

[Via Serious Eats | Picture source: Robyn Lee]

Nintendo Punch Out 2008!

If there’s a game I remember enjoying as a kid, it was certainly Punch Out! For the time, the game had fantastic graphics, and as far as I’m concerned, it was one of the best titles released for the old NES.

So this morning, when I learned that Nintendo was working on a new version on the game, it almost convinced me to run to my local EB games store and get myself a Wii. Want to know why? Just check out the following video.

It certainly looks amazing doesn’t it? Or maybe it’s only my old self looking to get a temporary nostalgia fix? I guess we’ll only know when the game finally gets released in a few months.

Devoted fans bring lost Doctor Who episodes back to life

By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

One of the programmes that I was extremely fond of as a child was “Doctor Who”.   Every Sunday evening, I would sit and watch the Doctor travel through space and time and do battle with the Daleks, the Cybermen or whatever adversary he happened to come up against that week.

“Doctor Who” is the world’s longest running science-fiction show (having started in 1963) and the current Doctor is David Tennant.  But back in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, some stupid cretin who worked at the BBC made the unbelievable decision to make some storage space by destroying 108 episodes! Luckily for the fans, the audio and photographs still survives but the actual film is gone due to that crass blunder.

But now, some fans are determined to resurrect these lost episodes by bringing out their own versions.   Careful not to get on the wrong side of the BBC legally, they are using things such as computer animation :

Or this fan is using the original photographs and audio and manipulates them :

It’s really amazing to see devoted fans trying to bring these lost episodes back.    A lot of people have dismissed this as silly, stupid and a waste of time. But I guess you need to be a fan and to love the series to understand how important this is to them.

Fans Reconstruct Doctor Who’s Trashed Past – Via Wired

Landline phone use falling in favor of mobile phones

By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

The European Commission has released an interesting report which says that people in Europe are increasingly shunning the use of landline phones in their homes in favor of using only their mobile phones instead.

This is due to the ever-increasing costs of monthly line rentals.   Many phone companies are realizing that the line rental costs are putting people off and this has sparked a price war between the various companies to see who can offer the better deal.    But nevertheless, more and more people are apparently still turning away in favor of their mobiles.

I for one can see the financial advantages, but one downside to shunning a landline is that you won’t be able to take advantage of broadband Internet access in your area.    Where I live, Deutsche Telekom offers your phone landline and the internet broadband together in one package – it can’t be split up.   I imagine it’s the same deal elsewhere in the world, no matter what company you’re signed up with.

What about you?   Have you given up your landline phone in favor of your mobile?   If so, what advantages have you got out of it?   Have you been able to get your Internet access separately?  Do you see yourself going back to a landline phone in the future?

Cell phone popularity growing in Europe – Via Yahoo News