Mittwoch, 29. Oktober 2008

Turkey blocked blog.

I just read here that Turkey has blocked all access to blogspot.com, hence this blog as well. The reason is sports. Somewhat. Some blogs had been linking to streaming sites with turk soccer matches, and the Pay-TV-Provider Digitürk was not amused.

So, whole sites can be nlocked for linking to other sites. When will google be blocked for linking to just about everywhere in the world?

other, better, news: global market share of IE is XX %, Firefoxes' is XX %, Chromes only about 0,4%. totally different is the data for access to servers of the domain .uni-freiburg.de: Firefox: 53% IE 35,5 % Safari 6,2% and others chrome not listed if i read the statistics correctly, more hits come from US-servers than from German servers which starts confusing me in questioning where firefox is more relevasnt geographicalls. surely, in the milieu of academia, firefox is more prevalent then elswhere, but besides that (i am too lazy to research this further)

Sonntag, 26. Oktober 2008

subscriptions, addictions, sockscriptions

inspired by www.quickmick.ch.

What do I think of when I talk of subscriptions. Subscritions are whatever services or goods people pay for to be receiving at regular intervals. Lets start with the obvious ones, the ones we are so used to we dont even consider to be a subscription anymore. Like water, electricity, trash, phone and Internet, continuing to cell phones, newspapers and magazines. MAybe to be continued.

Mostly, I am a big fan of subscriptions (and flatrates). They make expenses calcuable, relieve me of routine decsions (take the bike or the tram when its raining), dont force me to think about phone costs. I do wish I cold afford (and then have the time to really use) a BahnCard100 (flat rate on all German Trains for a year). Besides the practical effects there is the nice side-effect that they mostly make things cheaper anyhow (... because one consumes more).

But there are totally superfluous subscriptions as well. I recently discovered www.quickmick.ch which offers a weekly subscription of toilet paper to be delivered by mail. I am not so sure whether this is a hoax (the "joke of the day feature implies, and the lack of choice of different kinds, amounts and colours of toilet paper) or it is serious but start-up.

I wonder how many subscrition requests they get. They again link to another site offering SOCKSCRIPTIONS, implying that then one d never have to wash (and sort!) socks again.

Once one gets used to subscription, it is hard to let go again, isnt it? Getting used to wifi at home and then becoming a wifi-roamer for a while only being able to surf in cafes or in class really is annoying. As is never to be able to reach people who successfully refuse to subdue to the obligatory cell phone. I bow to these few persons, but I couldnt do it.