Rant on Cristian Livadaru's Blog

We're heading towards a dark future

Sat, 22 Feb 2025 14:16:28 +0100

Current political events are bringing up too many memories that shouldn’t be brought back. We’re heading towards a dark future, and if we continue down this path we will end up in a place I never thought would be possible again.

Enshittification of Social Media

Sun, 09 Feb 2025 16:05:24 +0100

A short talk about the current state of social media or rather it‘s Enshittification. What options are there and what are the downsides?

Fuck the war

Tue, 12 Apr 2022 17:26:33 +0000

One moment you are out and drinking a cup of coffee, the next moment you are in the middle of a war. You have done nothing wrong, your family and friends have done nothing wrong, but you are being slaughtered regardless.

Freedom of expression

Fri, 28 Jan 2022 05:21:50 +0000

Freedom of expression can be a complicated thing. Accepting that someone protests against core values of yours isn’t easy. I strongly believe that you have a right to your own opinion, but you can’t have your own facts.

Dear Austrian Bookstores, we need to talk!

Sun, 03 May 2020 11:58:50 +0000

Trying to do the right thing and buy local, avoiding big corporations isn’t as easy as you think. I noticed this trying to buy some books locally.

Transferring domains away from world4you

Thu, 06 Sep 2018 16:19:25 +0000

Domains transfers normally cause no downtime and no issues but if some registrar want’s to play rough it can definitely cause some headache.

The ugly side of fintech startups

Fri, 01 Jun 2018 08:24:32 +0000

Fintech is great, startups are great, everything happens so fast, progress, less bureaucracy, but is it really all sunshine and happiness? What happens if a bank decided to stop doing business in your country and you had only two months to change everything?

So, it finally happened in Austria

Wed, 28 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Bad news for all People driving a diesel car in Austria. Diesel is now more expensive the normal Gasoline On Sunday I noticed this and it didn’t change in the last days. A quick check over the internet shows that nothing changed. Well let’s see what comes next. Still waiting for a 100% electro car that can get me to work and back.

Winter is here

Fri, 16 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0000

As expected and announced on the news, it snowed last night till today. But as every year there are some idiots, especially lory drivers, that think they are king of the road and they don’t need winter tires. Well the result of this was, as most of the time when it snows, trucks get stuck, blocking the freeway, by this blocking the complete traffic and also the cars that should clean the snow. Since last night, the A21 was blocked, thousands (as far as I can remember from the news) of people blocked on the freeway. All trucks coming from eastern europe trying to go towards germany where also blocked. The freeway S1 was a big lory parking lot. With lorries parked on the first lane and on the emergency lane for about 4 km. I would give them huge fines to driver and to the company that owns the lorries. But it’s not only the lorry drivers, also car drivers are stupid. Yes, you don’t have to have winter tires, but at least don’t be so fucking stupid to go anywhere with your car with summer tires if you see the huge snow amount on the street. If you where to fucking lazy to put on your winter tires in time, then leave your fucking car at home and use the public transport. I mean … it’s middle of november, when did you intend to put on your winter tires? March? April?

Computerworld - Just how did Microsoft get OOXML support in Eastern Europe?

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 00:00:00 +0000

This question, is simply answered by reading my blog about corruption

After the International Organization for Standardization voted to reject Microsoft’s Office Open XML document format as a standard, the detailed results from ISO member countries give us a lot of material to analyze.

Votes from South-eastern Europe and former Yugoslavia countries showed Microsoft’s domination of that market, and especially good connections with authorities because most of the national standardization bodies voted “Yes with no comments”.

Telekom Austria (AON) also thinks we are stupid

Sat, 21 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Seems like AON is trying to fool consumers. They have launched (quite some time ago but I saw it now for the first time) a commercial campaign against mobile internet. They say that “real broadband” is better, faster and cheaper and also that if you have reached your limit you will have to pay for mobile internet but with “real broadband” you pay from 4 euro more and have flat rate. Ok, lets compare We will take the cheapest AON has to offer, that will be AON speed 500. This will be 20 Euro a month and receive 500MB traffic included and a speed of 512kbit/s down, we will ignore upstream. This means you could download with max 64kb/s! And what if you exceed the included 500MB ? You pay 7 cents for each MB! Oh, almost forgot, you need a phone connection for AON ! This means you also have to pay the phone, this is NOT included in the 20 Euro. Now let’s look at what one HUI has to offer. You pay 10 Euro a month and get 250MB for this, if you want extra 250MB you pay 5 Euro. So you have the 500MB for 15 Euro. How about the speed? See for your self

Fuck MTV and VIVA, long live gotv

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I didn’t watch MTV or VIVA since a long long time (over a year if not already two). First of all, the music they play is mostly crap. Second, the commercials, the ring tone commercials are just unbearable! Then they have got so many stupid shows. ehmmm… wasn’t MTV supposed to be “Music Television”? So who needs shows about the 16th birthday of some stupid kids? No matter if anybody knows them or not. Anyway, gotv also has commercials (why shouldn’t they) but they have maximum one commercial about ring tones and way on a higher IQ level then the stupid commercials from MTV. Enough complaining today, it’s way to hot …

Great service from One

Fri, 06 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000

On Monday I received my One H.U.I (hell fast, ultra simple internet) A fast internet connection for my laptop, from wherever I am in Austria. One delivered real fast but unfortunately there no drivers for Mac, even though they promised that it works for Mac, of course the drivers for Windows are available on the Modem itself which has about 150MB space on it. After some research on the One homepage I found out that there should be a CD in the package, which seemed like they have forgotten. Well this can happen so I called One to ask if they can mail me the drivers or give me a link where I can download the drivers, but this is not possible, they will send me a CD with the drivers. This really pissed me of, how hard can it be to offer the drivers for download like for example Vodafone does! Since I didn’t have the drivers yesterday (Thursday!!) I called the hotline once again and the lady from the hotline told me that the drivers have been sent on the 6. April, which was today! They need 4 days to send out a cd? I still don’t understand why they don’t offer the drivers for download. They told me that they have send some thousand Packages without mac drivers and that’s why it took so long to send until they have sent me the CD. Look one, this is, from my point of view, it would have been easier and a lot cheaper to offer the driver for downloading then sending a CD by mail. I am used to stupid things like this from T-Com/T-Online in Germany, but One? Anyway, the problem was solved by the hotline by calling some One-Shops and asking if they have a Mac driver which they could copy me!

Killergames, a new point of view

Tue, 06 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Most people in Europe might know the debate that is going on in Germany at the moment. They are trying to forbid so called “Killergames” like CounterStrike since they accuse the games for being the reason why kids in past became killers and ran amok in schools. Most politicians and media have here the same point of view, forbid the games, then the problem is solved. So I was very very surprised to see on “Welt der Wunder”, a “knowledge” show on RLT2, that really did some research before opening their mouth. They interviewed a doctor that measured the brain activity while someone was playing counterstrike. The doctor said “The only thing these people are able to do after playing the game, is clicking the mouse very fast. There is no reason why a player would start killing”. A different person, no idea what function he has, played the games before giving a statement, his opinion was that the games can be used like a script for how one could do his mass killing, the same how books or movies can be used for that, where violent movies are twice as bad as the so called “killergames”. Ever heard something about forbidding violent movies? I don’t understand what is going on in the heads of the stupid politicians. Just look a bit at the past, forbidden games where the games that where most successful after they where forbidden. Lets say that in Germany the games will be forbidden. There is still the internet where one could get the pirated version of the game. So the result is, the state looses money by taxes it didn’t get from the sales and the people would still get to play the games. And once again, the politics saved the day

German TV

Tue, 27 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I almost forgot how bad the german TV was … it even got worse now. Since I have my receiver and watch most of the time Cinemax, HBO, Discovery and National geographic I got rid of all the bad memories of the german TV, but now in Berlin where I don’t have a choice, except not to turn on the tv, I had to find out that the german tv got even worse. There still are some nice series but most of the time it’s only crap! Ring-tone commercials didn’t really change, but the late-night shows did, the ones where there was some girl in bikini trying to convince some stupid fools to call and solve the riddle to win some money, well now the girls don’t have a bikini anymore, they now are half naked, hoping that by showing their tits, more fools will call. What doesn’t the TV do for money? Oh, and for this high quality tv they want to charge money now. But not all german channels are like this, I really like Terranova, but it seems that I’m a bit to young for the commercials on that channel, the target group seems to be people above 70 years, anyway much better then the ring-tone commercials that seem to have as target group people with the IQ of a chicken (sorry, didn’t mean to offend chicken!).

I am becoming a ISTQB Certified Tester

Wed, 06 Dec 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I usually don’t post blogs regarding my work but I think this one is worthy for being blogged. Last month I attempted the first part in Budapest.

“ISTQB – Certified Tester, foundation level”

I was rather optimistic about this Certification, or rather about the seminary and learning some new things, but I was quite disappointed. Things like skipping pages from the material but then get questions about that skipped material at the exam. The material was also extended, my colleagues that did that seminary one year ago, had 25 pages in the “syllabus” we (the 4 of us that didn’t have time one year ago) had the same 3 days, but our syllabus had now 73 pages. Things like the moderator not knowing answers to example questions without looking at the result page didn’t really increase my mood and the trust in this seminary.

Camcorder problems

Sun, 22 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I always had this problem since I have my Panasonic NV-MX300! I do not know how to explain the problem so I will demonstrate it with this movie

Noticed the squares appearing two times at the beginning? This can be only from the camcorder. I do NOT have this on the tape if I play it with my camcorder (the same as used for recording, as mentioned, the Panasonic) on TV I do not have these problems. It can not be from the software, I had this in Pinacle, Vegas on windows and also on the Mac in iMovie and Final Cut so there is no way this could be from software or the OS. Neither could it be the hardware, it occurred on my old PC (1.7GHz), Laptop(3GHz), Mac Mini and on the iMac. I once had to capture a movie from a different camcorder, also Panasonic but a different model and there I did not have this problem. So what is this and how do I solve this? Or is there some external device I could use to capture the tapes?

Stupid questions

Thu, 31 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I love this message from the Hitachi RMA, hmm… what should I press? I agree or I don’t agree? The best thing was, they REALY asked me this also on the phone !

In order to create a RMA, please read and respond to the following:

Export Compliance Certification

By clicking the “I agree” button, I agree that Hitachi GST products will not be used for the design, development, manufacturing, testing, stockpiling, or use of biological, nuclear, missile or chemical weapons.

Is the EU prepared for Romania ?

Sat, 19 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I was reading my favorite comic, userfriendly and there was something about youtube … so I was kind of bored and searched the term: Romania on youtube. The first thing I found was some commercial for tourism, oh my good … that commercial is almost a 1:1 copy of the Turkish commercial, so I would say … do your own thing next time. The next thing was something about a taxi driver, that had a fake taxi and was requesting exaggerated prices from passenger, I love the typical Romanian reaction as he notices the passenger doesn’t have money to pay and his excuses as he was confronted with the camera! Great!

compatible=mysql40, or how to screw your database in 2 easy steps

Mon, 07 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Yes once again I had nothing better to do then move servers, fuck and today it wasn’t even raining. Ok I came across a lot of problems as usual, one was that I decided not to use debian testing anymore, I wanted only stable ! One of the problems was that stable had mysql4.0 and my old database was 4.1 and of course there where problems while trying to import the database, but hey, there is a nice parameter –compatible=mysql40 sounds like exactly what I needed … After I finished the server almost I found out what “compatible” means for the sickheads who implemented this parameter. “compatible” means that this line: `object_id` int(11) NOT NULL auto_increment, will be transformed into this: `object_id` int(11) NOT NULL default ’0′,

Free TV not free anymore?

Sat, 05 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000

RTL and MTV are planing to transmit encoded from 2007, actually they have already signed a contract with Astra. Pro7 and Sat1 are also planing to encode. This won’t affect only MTV and RTL, also everything that belongs to it, this would be: RTL, Vox, RTL II, Super RTL, n-tv, RTL Shop, Traumpartner TV, MTV, VIVA, NICK and Comedy Central! The monthly fee should not exceed 3,50 Euro and the receiver needed for decoding shouldn’t exceed 100 Euro, this is what the article says in “derStandard”

Bush has left, finaly

Thu, 22 Jun 2006 00:00:00 +0000

hurray mister “I-am-as-stupid-as-amonkey-but-leader-of-the-us” has left Austria, but not without leting the people know and feel that mister “I-am…” you know the rest …, is on the way. The complete city was packed, the freeway A4 and S1 where full because mister monkeyface went to the airport. Oh here a short message, not that I think that anyone would ever read this, to mister monkeyface ( yes, Bush ! ) but since the english language doesn’t have the words I need to express my self … I will write my message in romanian.

The incredible stupidity of T-Com

Wed, 03 May 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Once again I had to talk on the phone with one of my favourite German company, the big, bad Magenta coloured T-Com. I had to pay a bill, but since I have a Austrian bank account I need IBAN and SWIFT/BIC for the transaction but they wrote only the IBAN on that bill, now this is the first real stupid thing! So what should I do … call T-Com, the ones responsible for bills, so I assumed they have at least a clue about banking.

RTFM! posibly before installing something

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I should know it better, especially that this isn’t the first time it happens. I installed once again after a long time nagios on my server so I have something that keeps an eye on the server. Anyway … I installed nagios-mysql ( as I did the last time ) but it looks like the database has to be created before installing, or … who knows, I still didn’t RTFM. well the result was that the 5 min. nagios was running I dumped about 2 gigs of syslog messages that where saved in the syslog, message, users AND the nagios.log … I had over 8 Gigs of logs, good performance test for syslog-ng by the way. Anyway now I finally cleaned up everything, as .gz the file isn’t that big at all only 8.5 MB, OK now that logrotate is finished I should get back to my server.

Racism and apartheid

Mon, 17 Apr 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Once again on Phoenix ( German TV channel ) it’s time for history. “The past 100 Years”, I already seen this once and from the most things told there I have already heard. But there was one thing that shocked me, I was shocked last year as I saw this and I was still shocked as I saw this today. It’s about the apartheid in South Africa. I can’t imagine how stupid we humans are. Racism is and will always be the worst thing on this world. I always thought that something like this is against the law everywhere but that the apartheid was still present till 1993 sounds so unbelievable to me. 1993 can you imagine this? Can you image signs that show “For members of the white race group only” ? I would be ashamed to live in such a country where somebody hasn’t got the same rights that I do just because of religion or race … This blog could be continued to a very long roman I think, but for everyone that is interested in this subject I can only recommend the.

Stupid Microdrive

Fri, 24 Mar 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Great … after 6 months my great 4GB Hitachi Microdrive doesn’t work anymore! I put it in my card reader, got some pics from it, put it back in the camera and that was it … no reaction anymore. Just some very strange sound. No mater where I connect it, if it’s the camera or the card reader. Good that I had a 512MB CF with me, is enough for some weekend pics. But no way I will ever buy I Microdrive, I will try to see if hitachi wil change it, since I don’t have the original package anymore which Promarkt requests. Anyway, It’s broken and in waranty and someone will have to come up with a replacement! But I’m realy disapointed from the microdrive.

Christmas, the biggest punishment for every city

Tue, 13 Dec 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Oh how I love it every year … Trafic, a lot of people shopping like it would be their last day on earth, this can only mean christmas is coming … Continue reading “Christmas, the biggest punishment for every city”

Last Christmas, I gave ...

Tue, 13 Dec 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Oh no… another Christmas punishment, every fucking year this stupid morron from wham! gives his heart away and every year he want’s to give it to someone special.George Michel, didn’t you notice that we all hate you? Please stop giving your heart away, or at least don’t cry every fucking year about the fact that nobody likes you!

Great support from TomTom (I'm Ironic) [UPDATE]

Wed, 30 Nov 2005 00:00:00 +0000

So here I am with my new Palm T|X and now I want my TomTom navigation on the Palm so I install the Palm version (works incredible fast and reliable since the Palm Hotsync does the installation and copy of the maps ) anyway I installed TomTom5 conected it to the BlueTooth GPS and waited to get a GPS signal, but … what is this ? My Palm poers of … Continue reading “Great support from TomTom (I’m Ironic) [UPDATE]“

Server Hacked

Thu, 13 Oct 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday I received a mail from my mailer-daemon that a message could not be delivered nothing unusaual, but I noticed that the mail was sent from my server and it was a spam mail.Since the mail was send with the apache user I checked the access.log for strange things and what I found didn’t make me happy.Continue reading “Server Hacked”