What the Minister of Justice is saying: only minor corrections needed to the software patent directive. Yes, great, shopping carts for web shops are already patented - and it is exactly these trivial patents that are criticized in this nonsense. But Zypries continues to lie.
The BBC is offering recordings of all Beethoven symphonies for online download. Currently, numbers 1-5 are available, with the rest to follow over the coming weeks. All performed by the BBC Philharmonic. No DRM or any such nonsense, just plain MP3.
Load your iPod
Did you mean to my right or to your right?
To put it plainly: Köhler is a hack. And politically not neutral. Anyone who argues about that makes themselves look ridiculous. Very few German federal presidents were truly politically neutral - and hacks were certainly more than just Köhler and Carstens. However, it is undeniable that Köhler's election and term of office are hard to surpass in terms of embarrassment - but this is by no means due to Köhler alone.
I also still remember well the praise that came for him even from the SPD camp when he was proposed and then elected. I thought it was pitiful of the Union to ram through such an emergency candidate (after they had almost torn themselves apart in strained attempts to come up with a presentable candidate) just because they once again wanted to play out their majority - purely on principle, even though it made no sense. But pitifulness is what characterizes federal politics at the moment - both in the coalition and in the opposition.
In that sense, a hack as federal president is also fitting ...
At least that's how it looks after the current stage of the Dauphine at Mont Ventoux. Wow. Hopefully no accident for him before the Tour - the duel between him and Armstrong could be very exciting.
In the Zeit: Open Season, a dossier about the victims of attention-seeking ala Raab and Bild ...
The major problem I see here is not just the Bild newspaper and Raab and similar media garbage - the real problem is the acceptance with which this crap is consumed. After months, you no longer know where you read or heard something - and in doing so, you contribute as a vector to the spread of this nonsense.
When I then imagine the Springer publishing group wanting to get its hands on the Pro7/Sat.1 group and with that, presumably next, Bild newspaper and Raab pulling together on the same rope, I feel sick ...
A democratic society lives, among other things, on the diversity of opinion that must also be reflected in media diversity. But when the media landscape becomes dominated across media by a corporation with a clear political agenda (anyone who doubts that can just look at the coverage of Bild newspaper around the time of the last Hamburg citizenship election - best have a sickness bag ready or it'll hit the keyboard), an important factor for democracy is lost.
And so an ugly alliance forms between business associations and a media culture in which one no longer wants to use the word culture - and it degenerates into incitement against the sick, the unemployed, foreigners and left-wing politicians, which already uncomfortably resembles times one actually thought were over ...