René Rebe

It’s near to impossible to find, google their telephone number, … Gotcha. I should have taken it!

(Yes, I’m eagerly waiting to finally hold a Nokia Booklet in my hands. Why are there no deliveries? Damned.)

Update: +49 (0)30 23691800, and of course they still had no Booklet, …

ExactScan / Pro 2.8 will comes with yet more polishing all over the place, including a couple of all-new scanners driver, see the updated lists of compatible scanners.

Release seeds and press announcements after the break.

Tonight we had the first internet server hickup (connection loss) for years. At our new flat the tree in front of the balcony fell over (by storm, rain?). Calling my parents some 300km away it turned out they had a power outage (very rare in Germany).

What a crazy night.

The Sony Vaio P series just got a refresh here in Germany–now with Atom Z540 at 1,86GHz by default at the same price the 1,33 GHz version was before (99x EUR incl. tax). So my Netherlands tipster was right, and the German Sony store did not know what’s up.

Oh, and the X series just blended in.

Some underclocking, undervolting, and putting less pressure on the CPU by actually making use of the PowerVR graphic hardware acceleration would certainly help the battery life, … overall user experience.

To: Palm, Inc.: you can certainly contact us if you need a hand with the open and future tasks!

‘waiting most of the day for some German Telekom technician to show up, wire up the landline of our new flat. Of course they did not come–got an automated SMS in the afternoon informing about the fact. Listed reason: “unknown”.

The joy of the last mile all in one companies hand. At least O2 3G allowed me to continue with work over the air™.

Bets taken, will they come next Monday (the supposedly next possible target date)?

Update: The story get’s more “funny”. As the 19th is the my father birthday -and while my parents are visiting us for some days here in Berlin- we cancelled their proposed day. Just some days ago we finally go a confirm that it’s cancelled and they would give us another date. Now guess who was standing at our door, ringing, this morning 7:30 AM? Yeah, right–a Telekom technician. At least we now have the signal on the landline, …

So all of this major operating systems, such as Mac OS X and Windows now got some kind of little apps between the real apps universes. Like the OS X “Dashboard”, or this Windows Vista and up “Sidebar”. Too bad they’re just lower quality sandboxes with nothing really useful in it, just wasting your CPU cycles, memory and storage.

How’s that? I tried to use the most useful OS X Dashboard widget: the Stickies “mini app”. Not only are they not resize-able, so the content you can fill in there is limited. Today had to find out that it does not even support undo! Accidentally typed with some line selected, and whoops, off your note went. So with no undo (manager) in place, into the data nirvana your supposedly precious note went. Steve: You did notice it’s 2009? It’s even your latest, greatest Snow Leopard I’m talking about–ant the most useful app shipped by default.

Well, what do I complain. At least it supports cut’n paste. There where (phone) OSs that had to live without the later for some two major incarnations.

So, “finally”. The first De-Mail was sent. A Sack of Rice fell over in China.*)

So who exactly should care? I mean, we now have e-mail for over 20 years. Can sign them with PGP (GPG), X.509, whatever.

What the heck should we need some German specific crippled crap e-mail for? Who would want to use some arbitrary, half Governmental -whatever- e-mail service? Probably including some design glitches and/or security flaws at best? Ok. If you’re the company getting the multi million service contract (T-Systems, right?) and are some involved politician now probably driving some shiny new Volkswagen Mercedes you probably care.

But aside from that: No thank you. I’ll continue to use my own, e-mail server and IMAP storage. Or use something like Google Mail otherwise. Hopefully we’re not forced to sent emails to the Government with this crap mail, can still walk there, show up in person.

Though if you’re someone with some other millions to waste spare, I got some more useful ideas, feel free to contact me.

*) German (, or maybe somewhat international) slang expressing nothing too important happened, …

Update: Chaos Computer Club

I’m waiting for a perfect ultra-portable (these days most often known NetBook), for some ridiculous amount of years, now.

It looks like I have to wait even longer, at least ’till October 22nd, when Windows 7 comes out. There is currently just not much going on in that market. Apparently all vendors wait with the irshiny new potential candidates for the Windows 7 lunch to get them out of the door. You know, the usual “just one SKU”, no “Windows 7 update coupons” requests and handling, no “double testing”, and no “old Vista bundled boxes in the warehouse”, etc. …

Damn-it. And not even Apple is getting some decent material out. Well, no, the Air doesn’t count–too limited, and too big (e.g. for in-train and in-airplane use).

Well, hopefully at least something in time for my birthday party at the end of October. Hopefully. Finally.

So time to vote, again. To make sure your position counts for the next years in German and European political development be sure to go and make your vote!

Without taking part there is no excuse for complaining what the politicians do wrong - they are elected by the public, including you. If you are lazy, or think you show them your discomfort with the governing party you do not do any better. By skipping the vote you do not express your opinion, but just contribute to an higher overall percentage for left and right extreme parties (as their fellows certainly do go vote and thus people who do not vote bias the relative percentage towards these extremes).

If you are dissatisfied with your favorite (or any) political party a better options is to write a letter to them, expressing your dissatisfaction and points to improve.

To contribute to the future, and hopefully sustained development, especially given the current economic and environmentally challenging times, of Germany, Europe and the world as a whole I strongly suggest to go and make your vote.

It can be a quite comfortable and sunny walk this Sunday in anyway.