Today Golem.de informed about an interesting campaign initiated by a Bavarian professional journal about computer games. The magazine asks all gamers to write to their local delegates of the CSU (the governing party in Bavaria) that they won’t support their anti-computer games policy and therefore won’t vote for them in the upcoming elections. Politicians of the CSU have continued to ask for further restrictions concerning protection of minors.

I think the political discussion about “Killer games” is very unreasonable. Many of the people discussing never actually played those games. Germany already has the strongest laws for the protection of minors in Europe; I really wouldn’t want to see any more restrictions. So all you Bavarians out there, got to this page, participate, and show our local politicians, what you think!

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Media at 13:00 | Comment (1) | Trackback (1)

This video is a must for everyone every having dealt with IT support *g*

Click to play

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Lost and Found at 21:10 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Today I stumbled up on a video documentary on globalization by the Swedish journalist and writer Johan Norberg, who takes up a position against the condemnation of globalisation. He shows examples how government protectionism influences the development of economy and wealth.

I titled this post an “approach”, because of course you can address the issue of globalization from many directions, and of course there are always scenarios where workers are exploited, and the only gainers are the multinational concerns, who are then protecting their economy etc… But I think like the Sunday Telegraph commented on that documentary:

“This is timely and thought-provoking stuff, and should be compulsory viewing for anyone who ever boycotted a brand."

Thx to the courtesy of Channel 4, the video is available on google-video. Watch it online, or download it for your Ipod!

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Things to know at 20:16 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

As mentioned before the Nine Inch Nails were booked headlining for the Frequency festival. But they had a very hard stand. The organizers gave them the next to last slot at the main stage on the 2nd day (starting 10:30pm). Generally this is not a bad slot– prime time at the evening, main stage with room for a lot of crowd, not too late – so the crowd shouldn’t be completely exhausted. But due to some unfortunate circumstances it ended in a scandal.

The slot was between the two German bands “Beatsteaks” and “Die Ärzte”, those two bands share a lot of fans. One reason for the Beatsteaks success was advertising of “Die Ärzte”, who referred to the Beatstakes in on of their songs. Also both German bands play German punk rock, where NIN’s style is American industrial rock from that point of view, they would have been far more compatible with Interpol (they are doing American indie rock). But Interpol was put into a similar slot trapped between two other German bands (“Jan Delay” and “Freundeskreis”) at the second stage.

Plenty of people attended the Beatsteaks’ concert, who afterwards stayed in the front rows waiting for Die Ärzte, without any interest in the performance of NIN. Even worse, a lot of them was not open minded enough to take the NIN performance and started chants demanding Die Ärzte on stage (“Wir wollen die Ärzte sehen! Wir wollen die Ärzte sehen!”. So the atmosphere got really screwed. NIN lead Trent Reznor commented the show

“the worst performance and certainly the worst crowd of the whole tour by far.”

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Event at 17:54 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

No, I'm not Anti-American, no need to head homeland security.. I think that song and flash is funny, though The song has been performed by Denis Leary, the flash has been added by DoktorBorn.

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Lost and Found at 23:24 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Seems like i don't have too much luck with bicycles in Bamberg. Two of my bikes got already stolen - now, two weeks ago the bike I borrowed from Katrin was dumped into a excavation pit, while I was visiting the Stilbruch pub downtown Bamberg. Luckily only the front fender was bent. But I wonder why people do such things. Were they just bored? Or unlucky, that the bike was locked?

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Daily Life, LS Bamberg at 18:33 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0)

I took the time today to write a small article about students and their self-projections through pictures on the student-community StudiVZ. Unluckily the language on BENF is German.. To not discriminate my English reader I've at least a small summary here.

Somehow it seems to be en vogue to use "cool" pictures on user profiles or in picture galleries on the student community StudiVZ. In my opinion some of those pictures are really misplaced there. So I'm commenting on the six worst examples hoping, that I might shake someone awake.

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in LS Bamberg at 20:15 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)

Last weekend I was visiting Bianca for her Birthday Party in Switzerland. Unluckily I don't have time to get you a complete writeup of the last weekend - which was really great - but I don't want to keep a video from you I shot searching for an open downhill slope. It was taken at the train station in Davos Platz, where a few protesters against the World Economic Forum had gathered.

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Daily Life at 13:40 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)