Customer-Data publicly available? what a surprise!

It's in the news here everywhere atm: The "Verbraucherschutz" (customer protection) in Germany was able to get the data of 4 million customers, including sensible data like bank-account numbers... and all this for 850 Euro.

And now everyone is surprised and outraged and certain officials start demanding higher penalties for companies and call-centers collecting personal information of customers. And while observing this I was just thinking two things:

1. Why is everyone so surprised?

Why is that? Did they all really think that despite the massive amount of data collected everywhere these days, all that data will be safe and secure and only be held by the respective company that qcquired the information in the first place? Were they all really that naive and blind? I mean: OF COURSE those data will get out somehow! There's money to be made, and for money you can get everything.

2. Where are you, Mr. Schäuble?

When there's the slightest indication of a "terrorist threat", our Inner Minister was always the first one to call for action, which usually meant data-mining and restricting our rights, no matter if the effectivity of those suggested measures where highly doubted or not. He was always all too eager to sacrifice the right of everyone to informational self-determination, just to "keep us safe". But where are you now, Mr. Schäuble? There has been a huge violation of the rights of 4 Million citizens. What will you do to protect us from further "attacks" like that? He's been surprisingly quiet the past few days. Well, not such a big surprise, since he might actually have to answer difficult questions, like what kinds of security risks the newly introduced mass data storage of all internet-traffic pose and how he intends to keep the data safe and secure.
In my eyes, it reveals the true intention of our Inner Minister: It's never been about our protection! It's about gaining control and increasing the power of those in charge - policitians, lobbyists and the companies they are involved in. And if this incident does one thing, I hope that it at least makes that truth visible to as many citizens as possible.

This incident shows clearly that the danger specialists and free-speech organisations have warned us about over and over again is true and actually very real: Once you collect data, it's gonna leak out sooner or later and will be publically available. Especially if someone thrives to get certain data, he/she will succeed when enough money and criminal energy is involved. Heck, this recent incident shows that you don't have to try hard at all to succeed.

The only way to ensure data-security is to collect AS LITTLE data as possible. Just as much as neccessary, but no more. That's why mass-data mining and -storage will never help our protection, it will cause alot more problems and injustice. We germans - above everyone else - should know better! There has been an "experiment" called Stasi before and we all know what it meant for the freedom and liberty of the people. And that was way before the digital age, where now data and information can flow much faster, spread alot further, can be stored in huge amounts and searched and scanned with little effort.

Taki rules!

I'm a big fan of Beat'Em Ups. And In almost every game, I end up playing a female, fast character. Not that I actually want to play a female character (though hot chicks surely are a plus), but I simply love fast fighters. And it usually turns out that the fastest ones are often female.

So when the very first Soul Edge / Soul Blade came out, I quickly focused on Taki, the fastest of all the characters available back then - and also the one with the tightest outfit. And even though I also came to like other fighters when more and more sequels were released, Taki always remained my favorite.

Now that Souldcalibur IV is out, I first feared after playing it a while that in order to get achieve missions and grind money, I might have to rely on other chars that are "cheaper" and more effective to play, like Nightmare or Kilik. Those characters have huge range and many moves to throw opponents out of the ring. That combined with high dmg output makes fighting the CPU and finishing the game quickly rather easy. So I stuck to such characters, always alittle sad since I wanted to do that with my favorite character instead.

But when it came to getting the achievement for 100 critical finishes, I started playing with Taki again... and I realized once more just how amazing she is! Well I always knew that and loved her for certain qualities (pun intented) but I found out a few more things that I never thought I could use her for:

one reason: critical finish galore

Her attacks are fast and - given the right equipment and skills - do huge soul gauge damage! Then all I needed was to find good attacks to actually cause the soul crush in order to finish the opponent. And it turned out that Taki has quite alot of moves like 4+B or 6+B that make soul crushes quite easy to do - especially because those can be chained / spammed, at least with slower opponents.

another reason: cannon-throws

I never used the ground explosion techniques of Taki too much in the past. But when fighting the CPU at high difficulty, it "showed" me an arial throw that started with that explosion. I don't remember the name given for those moves in the game, but I simply call em "cannon-throws" myself. And after practicing those, they now became a fixed addition to my move-arsenal - at least when fighting against the CPU.

With those 2 new discoveries, I ended up finishing the game and story-mode with Taki over and over again, grinding money, critical finishes and guard blocks. And I was surprised how easy the game is with her, even in hard mode. And above all: It's so much fun! There aren't many games where I have a character that fits me so well... I just feel comfortable and home when I can control Taki. Her swift moves, her direct reactions to my button-pressing. And with the new techniques, I don't feel weak or fragile at all, not even when facing the biggest, strongest characters.

Had to take a picture of this. Was such a nice score with Taki on hard mode. Wasn't even aiming for it.

So thank you Namco, for designing such an amazing Fighter. And sorry for ever disbanding your for that long, Taki! I hope the long sessions I had the past few days compensated for that!

Images taken from and probably © IGN and Namco

How to use your iPhone media library on 2 comps simultaneously

And yet another post in the "why can't things simply work" category. I should probably add that category officially... Again I wanted some very special, exotic functionality from a software. This time it was iTunes (again) and the rediculous thing I wanted was to manage my iPhone music files manually from 2 comps. So I installed iTunes on a second comp and even unlocked it. 2 of 5 activations left, that's fine with me.

But as I tried to access the iPhone's music library, I got a message from iTunes telling me that the iPhone can only be synched to one Music Library at a time and if I wanted to sync it with this "new one", then all Media on the phone will be removed first. WTF?

I get the idea behind the iTunes Media Libraries and the approach they've chosen. But honestly, is it really that extraodinary to want to use your iPhone from 2 comps at the same time? Usually I just wanna copy over the one or the other file, song, video or delete some media files on the phone that I don't really need. I see why iTunes would complain if I had set it to keep the whole library synched, but if I check the "manage manually" option in iTunes, I don't wanna see a limitation like that.

After googling, I saw that I'm not the only one who would like to use that feature. And I stumbled over a solution too. It's quite easy and cheap:

http://www.andrewgrant.org/2008/03/30/how-to-sync-an-iphone-with-two-or-more-computers.html

Seems like every iTunes-installation creates a unique key for its media-library. If an iPhone is connected, it checks if that ID is equal to the one of the media library on the iPhone. If it's not, it won't allow you to modify the library on the phone. So all you need to do is to find 2 specific files and to replace the ID contained in those with the one of your previous installation. So then both iTunes Libraries have the same ID and voila, it works. It doesn't matter that the libraries don't contain the same files, but that's alright since all it does is to check the ID. And since I don't want to sync my whole library that way on two comps (since they are in different places and can't access the same files), I'm good.

Hmm, and just as a thought: By actually copying over those two files from one installation, you could probably duplicate your library on two iTunes installations easily - you just gotta make sure that the paths associated for the files themselves are identical on both machines. There might be additional files needed, like the CD-covers downloaded or so, but that's easy to figure out. Note to self: try this out one day.

Thanks go to "A blog by Andrew Grant", where I found the original idea (see the link above)

Avatar finale

After waiting a long time, there are finally new Episodes of Avatar out. And the finale of the Avatar-show! I don't know if that month-long delay was planned or the result of the writer's guild strike, but I'm glad the show came to a conflusion now. And I liked the ending. Nothing too surprising, but definitely a worthy ending to that amazing show!

I wonder if there will be more episodes coming out - or spinoffs, but I hope they won't get too greedy and keep bringing out new episodes in the future. The show was nice the way they did it, and the story was designed well. It's always best to stop when you're ontop... but it's also hardest.

BIG Pizzas!

My pizza before I ate it. Look at the fork and knife for a size comparism!

Florian eating his big pizza. I thought of getting alittle more of the scenery in the picture for a size comparism

Dominik's Pizza - with fried egg

iGotItBack!

I actually got my iPhone back today! Yay! Or to be more exact: I got a replacement, since the other one had a hardware-defect. I thought so already, since I doubted they would actually bother trying to repair something that delicate. Much cheaper to send out a new one instead. The display works fine now and I really hope it'll stay like that. Next up I will be buying a few things for the iPhone: a docking-station (if it's actually available now) and a protective coating of some sort for the display. If the display actually works now, the last thing I would want is that the display itself would get scratched or damaged physically from the outside. I'm not too careful with my electronic gadgets and I know I'll carry the iPhone around alot. My old phone didn't get a single scratch during the last 1 1/2 years of intense use, but I fear Murphy's Law too much to try the same stunt with my iPhone.

One big question remains: To jailbreak or not to jailbreak? Those who know me can probably imagine I'm always curious and I love open, free software. But I have to admit that for now, I have all the functionality and applications that I need atm... and after this last incident, I rather not void my warranty...

iAmSurprised

Ok, after being quite annoyed and restless yesterday, I feel the better today. Reason: My provider actually did surprise me positively! This morning I got an SMS notifying me that my iPhone repair is completed and that they sent it back to me.  So it seems like hopefully by tomorrow, I'll have my iPhone back. Now I just hope the problem is actually fixed.