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Archive 18. December 2005
Wretched Swindlers
Gas prices to become even more expensive in 2006
A spokesperson for the long-distance gas company VNG confirmed Weyand's prognosis and added: "According to our findings, this will be in the double-digit percentage range."
But the whole privatization bullshit is just so great. And the market will take care of it. It's just strange that energy prices for consumers only go up and the profits of energy suppliers rise to utopian levels. Great market that regulates itself ...
Pandora - first experiments
Pandora I had already briefly linked here before, but I only got around to trying it out myself today. Wow. Really brilliantly simple setup. And although I didn't directly expect it - it works. Ok, there is one problem with my music taste: the musicians have done very different things, so it's strongly dependent on the initial piece in which direction the service goes if I only enter one musician. Unfortunately, when searching for titles, there is often a "not found" as an answer (or only titles of the same name by other musicians - Black Moon by ELP, for example). But if the starting point is usable, it really continues very consistently afterwards - and many musicians are brought in whom I had never heard before (ok, from some I also don't want to hear anything in the future).
In any case, it's really more than just a toy - it's really fun to just let the station run. And as a registered user (optionally free with ads or paid without ads) you can configure up to 100 stations and build your own mood radio.
Quality Assurance in the iTunes Music Store
There isn't, really. Partly truly shocking. Marianne Faithfull. "A Stranger on earth" is rock. "A perfect stranger" they classify as folk. And "Blazing away" they classify as pop. Do they still have all their marbles?
And yes, before someone here gives me a lecture, I know about their older stuff and their folk experiments. But these three albums are the ones that have "Sister Morphine" on them - and the rest also goes in similar directions. That's neither folk nor pop, you poppets.
SVG Has Landed
This will please the shockwave rider: SVG is enabled by default in Safari Nightlies. The special thing about it: now documents can contain mixed XHTML and SVG tags and be styled with a common CSS - which opens up pretty cool possibilities, as the SVG objects are no longer embedded with OBJECT or EMBED tags, but are an integral part of the document.
How about training?
Microsoft Germany chief warns of "severe IT skills shortage":
Gallmann had already complained in November that there was a lack of young talent. IT companies would hire graduates from abroad under these circumstances, he said three weeks ago. Now the Microsoft Germany chief has backed up his warning with more figures: Even now, the demand for IT engineers can only be met to 80 percent.
Everyone can complain well, and they are masters at warning. However, most avoid the consequence of training themselves. Large companies that really lack IT professionals can easily remedy this shortage on their own: create training positions. This then has the added advantage that these employees know the company well when they become productive. But perhaps the consequence is not understandable for business graduates.
Instead, companies continue to look for employees in their mid-20s with a degree and 10 years of professional experience even for normal IT jobs. And then they complain that vocational training in Germany takes too long and that skilled workers are too expensive - well, what do you expect if you constantly only want fully qualified graduates?