Friday, February 19, 2010

ELENA ab jetzt, Auskunftsrecht dann in 2 Jahren

Folgender Satz steht auf meiner aktuellen Einkommensbescheinigung:

"Ihre Daten wurden entsprechend der gesetzlichen Vorgaben an die ELENA-Speicherstelle übermittelt.
Weitere Informationen finden Sie unter http://www.das-elena-verfahren.de. Sie haben das Recht, von der ELENA-Speicherstelle Auskunft über gespeicherte Daten zu verlangen."

Schön, dass ich das Recht habe. Und davon Gebrauch machen würde ich auch erstmal gerne. Wenn sich mir schon die Vorteile des neuen ELENA-Systems nicht erschliessen dann will ich mich doch zumindest von der Transparenz des Verfahrens überzeugen. Dann lese ich jedoch auf der offiziellen Webseite:

"Im ELENA-Verfahren besteht ab 2010 für den Teilnehmer ein Anspruch auf Auskunft über die zu seiner Person gespeicherten Daten. Eine Auskunft ist vor 2012 aber nicht realisierbar, da der Abruf durch die abrufenden Stellen erst ab 2012 möglich ist."

Super Aktion! Ich habe also Anspruch, kann davon aber keine Gebrauch machen? Wie soll das denn funktionieren? Klingt als lief das Ganze mal wieder so schnell schnell. Hauptsache erst mal Daten zentral sammeln. Datenschutz und Transparenz haben wir auch... irgendwie... irgendwann, erstmal nicht so wichtig.

Friday, February 5, 2010

Mass Effect 2 - what a game!

I've spent most of my freetime the past week playing Mass Effect 2 on my Xbox. And after finishing it, I'm simply staggered... It's one of the best games I've ever played!

The game looks amazing, the controls feel right, the music, sound and voiceacting are excellent... but most of all: it has atmosphere! The story is solid but what really takes you in are the characters, the people, the places, the worlds, races and crew-members feel believable, real, with substance. They all are unique, have personality and strengths and weaknesses.

You play the game and you're sucked into the world of Mass Effect and you begin to genuinely care for your crew-/party-members. The dynamic plot- and chat-options often give you really tough choices, and many times I've found myself really cringing and wondering what I should chose... and the gameplay was so much fun I ended up playing all bonus- and side-missions and quests before starting the final battle, because I wanted the gaming-experience to last as long as possible and I wanted to see everything the game has to offer.

**** SPOILER ALERT ****




It went even that far that I ended up re-playing most of the final mission a couple of times, only to ensure I made the right choices to not have any of the party-members die (and I mean die story-wise!) because I didn't want to lose precious, loved characters and I wanted to make sure I can see them again in the 3rd and final game of the trilogy.

If a game takes me in that much, it's something special, and I enjoyed the ride alot. I was sad when the game was over, but at least it lets you continue to "free-roam" the galaxy afterwards, which makes you feel alot better since the ending is not so "final".

So how can I end this? By thanking Bioware for creating such an amazing gaming-experience! And with one of my favorite quotes that made me laugh after finishing the game and talking with my crew again... (though I fear only people will understand that did actually play the game aswell and in a certain way)


“I just wanted you to know, I’m running a minor fever, my joints ache, and my sinuses are packed with I-don’t-know-what. But it was TOTALLY worth it.”
"I just wanted you to know, I'm running a minor fever, my joints ache, and my sinuses are packed with I-don't-know-what. But it was TOTALLY worth it."

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Firefox 64-bit - no Flash? no problem!

Recently I tried out the 64-bit version of Firefox 3.6 ("Namoroka"). I have to say it does feel alittle smoother and faster - that could be just a subjective impression of course, though results of performance-tests online seem to agree with me.

What caught me by surprise was that there's no 64-bit version of the Flash-plugin for Windows available from Macromedia.

So I've been using Namoroka 64-bit for a while now and I have to say that I actually like surfing without Flash. You don't even need an ad-blocker anymore for most websites to look so much cleaner... no more full-screen ads as backgrounds, no more animated logos that play weird sounds or mini-games inviting you to beer-drinking contests.

I realized most of the things I look up online are usually plain infos, and those you can easily get across with just text and static pictures. I still have a 32-bit browser installed in case I do need to see a flash-video of some sort, but chances are high that with the release of direct video-embedding in HTML5, those Flash-videos/Flash-video-players will die out sooner or later... and I won't miss them.