Jord Swart EDV Beratung

Didn’t have time to write this before, but had to do it anyway, especially after the delightful KLM event that happened last week when I visited Holland.

For my 16:50 flight from Stockholm to Düsseldorf, I arrived at the Arlanda airport at around 16:00. I already had a boarding pass which guaranteed a nice place at the emergency exit, so after a tiring week, I was really looking forward to a relaxing flight. Just before I could drop of my baggage, the phone rang: it was Tanja asking me if I was already at the airport. Jokingly I told here, that although everything was looking fine, you never could know, since they might cancel a flight.

As soon as I arrived at the counter, the friendly officer behind the desk asked me where I was going. I stated my destination and the man looked a little troubled. “I think they have canceled your flight, Sir”, he said.

What did he just say? That was my line, I just said that on the phone!

The officer continued: “We have already booked you on the next plane, you will be flying to Copenhagen and then continue to Düsseldorf. Your delay will only be around 3 hours.” If this was a joke, it certainly was played rather well. A little paranoia hit me and I started looking for the hidden camera’s, but couldn’t find any. In the mean time I was handed two new boarding passes and the advise that I could get a voucher for some food and drinks at the SAS ticket counter.

At the ticket counter I had to wait for about 20 minutes. I figured there must have been a lot of people on my plane sharing my fate, so I gave a call home to tell that I would not arrive until 22:00.

Well here is a lesson learned: do not call home on the 1st of April to tell them that your flight is cancelled, after you just joked about it ten minutes before. Here I was, standing in Stockholm, being rather upset talking to Tanja on the phone, telling me that I could tell my jokes someone else. No matter what I said to her, she would not take it at all. She finally had a look at some internet sites and told me I wasn’t lying. Thanks a lot!

After the conversation I got a chance to explain my situation to the lady at the ticket desk. Once I got my story finished she asked what I expected from the ticket office. Kindly I replied that according to European Law, I should become a voucher to cover some food and drinks and I have the right to get some money for the cancellation. The lady replied that she was unable to give me money for the cancellation: “We don’t have a pile of money sitting here, that we just can hand out”, but she did offer me a voucher for something to eat. Looking at the voucher my paranoia hit again, there must be a camera somewhere, this is april the 1st, now isn’t it. Please have look at it for yourself.

Now for those of you who are not so familiar with the current rating of the Swedish Krone, the worth of the voucher is approximately 7 Euro 50. This will get you about one single beer, if you are lucky. I pointed this fact out to the SAS officer and with a very red face, she replied Continue reading »

Malte Spitz, a German politician, sued Deutsche Telekom to get 6 months of his own connection data, collected by the telecom company. Goal was to show what information could be gathered by connecting this data to publicly available information, like tweets and blog entries.

Image copyright: Zeit online

This profile reveals when Spitz walked down the street, when he took a train, when he was in an airplane. It shows where he was in the cities he visited. It shows when he worked and when he slept, when he could be reached by phone and when was unavailable. It shows when he preferred to talk on his phone and when he preferred to send a text message. It shows which beer gardens he liked to visit in his free time. All in all, it reveals an entire life.

Link.

See also:
Data Retention Directive
Telecommunications data retention

Photo taken from Flickr: { pranav }'s photostream

Discovery has an article talking about the first few moments our universe existed (those unspeakable time units shortly after the big bang). Scientists have calculated that the universe might have been going from one dimension + time, to the three dimensions + time that we value so much. They even expect the universe to go to four dimensions + time (maybe in 2012)

The thinking goes like this: Shortly after the Big Bang, the Universe possessed only one dimension of space and one dimension of time. It was basically a straight line. As the Universe began to cool, and expanded, this one dimension of space became “wrapped up” in such a way to create two dimensions of space and one of time — a plane, like a sheet of flat paper.

Make sure you have a look at the video at the end, explaining why it is so hard to understand multiple dimensions.

Link.