I love Wikipedia, and I think it’s a great resource. I also realize that running a large server farm costs a lot of money. But the latest drive, in which Wikipedia asks for millions of Euro, is getting on my nerves. The huge banners have been bad enough, but now we get this:

I mean – really! Do you have to make it that big and obnoxious? Besides, Wales is a thoroughly unlikable man, in my personal opinion; I am now even less inclined to donate money.

The German Government has approved a 70 billion Euro deal to save Hypo Real Estate bank. The financial crisis has therefore finally reached Europe, and it has done so in full force. I do not know how bad the situation of banks is here in Germany, but I can imagine that the loss of trust in the system is going to cause a great deal of agony in the near future.

I am not really worried, yet. But I do wonder how many hits the financial system can take before it starts to sink. It is important to remember that actual numbers on a balance sheet matter rather little if panic sets in and the dreaded “run on the banks” begins.

I do have the gut feeling that the situation is going to get a lot worse before it gets better.

Nachsendeaufträge bei der Deutschen Post kosten jetzt etwas über 15 Euro. Grossartig.

The milk I like is now at €1.09 for full milk and €0.99 per liter for low fat milk. The cheapest milk my local supermarket carries is now at €0.66. That’s DM1.29. I am pretty sure that milk cost no more than 0.99 DM when I moved to Frankfurt six years ago. And at any rate, the prices were €0.89 for my favorite milk and €0.46 for the cheap milk about three or four months ago. Talk about a price hike.

The German train drivers are on strike today. The train drivers are asking for their own contract – separate from the rest of the train company employees – and for 31% more salary.

Yesterday, it was almost impossible to get any information, as service lines were busy and the train company’s website was down due to the heavy load. This morning, I checked and it said my subway would be on time. I decided to take a risk and go for it as usual. And lo and behold – it was exactly on time. In fact, it was much more punctual than on regular days.

Assuming that the people on strike are not the incompetent people who are causing delays, I guess this simply shows that the Frankfurt rail system is overloaded – take out some trains and suddenly everything runs smoothly. As far as I am concerned, they could really make this a normal condition.

As for the 31% pay rise demanded by the train drivers… I think those guys are completely nuts.

Well, it looks like my new PC lasted less than 1.5 years. Just got back from my vacation, and I can’t even turn the damned thing on. I suspect it cooled down after running constantly and the Mobo died. I am not really sure though. And I am not really sure what I will do to solve the problem. Debugging it and buying a spare part seems like the straightforward solution; however, that would mean I will just continue the cycle of self-built PCs.

On the other hand, I don’t exactly have a heap of cash sitting around after my 3 weeks vacation… so buying a complete, high end machine is definitely not possible for me at the moment.

What to do, what do to…

Update, 2007-09-11: I fixed it last night by putting a new PSU in. Cost: 44 Euro. Cheap solution, but I am still unhappy about my setup. I guess I will find a new solution in the medium term. Until then… I’ll still need to buy a notebook next, for travel-blogging.

596I found a strange coin in my wallet: A 10 cent coin with a cathedral on the back, and writing in a language I did not recognize. Turns out it’s from Slovenia – I completely did not see the country name “hidden” among the stars at the edge of the coin. I hadn’t even realized that Slovenia was now using Euros as a currency. But they started on January 1st. The European Central Bank has an overview of the designs of Slovenian Euro Coins.

I used to “collect” foreign Euro coins I got as change. I now wonder if I still have them, or whether I may have accidentally spent them.

We always hear about pretty arbitrary compensation settlement – mostly from the United States. Sometimes it’s very low (for example when some soldier or a civilian gets killed in a war) and sometimes it’s huge sums.

But have you ever wondered how much a human life is actually worth? A lot of people might actually be offended by the question, but everything and everybody has a price. The idea behind compensation is, of course, not only to pay for the earning potential of a lost spouse, but also to help the survivors to forget their grief. So a compensation based simply on income of the deceased person doesn’t quite cut it.

Enter Andrew Oswald and Nattavudh Powdthavee. They collected data about the overall mental health of 10000 Britons since 1991, and tried to determine the amount of money that raised a person’s mental health score to the same amount that a loved one’s death had lowered it.

The annual amounts they came up with are:

• US$220000 for a spouse
• US$118000 for a child
• US$28000 for a parent
• US$16000 for a friend
• US$2000 for a sibling

Oswald and Powdthavee added that some people are harder hit than others; this could double the amounts.

(Via the Scientific American.)

The BBC reports that an unnamed individual has ordered an Airbus 380, at a cost of about US$300 million, to be used as a private jet. Environmentalists are outraged.

I don’t quite see how an A380 is actually useful as a personal jet, because it won’t be able to land at too many airports. But I guess the main purpose of the Airbus 380 will be as a status symbol: “My private jet is bigger than yours”. Wouldn’t be surprised if it ends up mostly standing around.

When I was in Tolouse in 2004, we got a guided tour of the Airbus yards and they were working on completing a smaller Airbus for private use. I forget exactly what model it was, an A320 or A340. Either way, it was destined to become a birthday gift for one of the daughters of the Sultan of Brunei, if I remember correctly. That already seemed beyond reason.

I wouldn’t mind a private jet. But I’d want it to be able to land on small, tropical islands.

Since I started using the Google ads 13 months ago on various of my websites, I have earned a total of US$300 from them as of today. Now, I’ve had higher expenses than that for my servers, domains, and so on, but I’d spend that anyway and Google gave me $300 I wouldn’t otherwise have.

Neat.