To Bring News To A Boil

Posted on July 12, 2010 | by Markus Stocker

(And increase entropy along the way.) The pot was placed on the cooking stove shortly after noon with the brief announcement by NZZ that at 2pm CEST the Swiss justice minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf will announce the decision regarding the U.S. request to extradite Polanski. Since, some French rejoice «Merci la Suisse! Bravo la Suisse!» while [...]

Twitter Is Not The World

Posted on July 1, 2010 | by Markus Stocker

Sunday I was back from three days without computer and any type of connectivity. Unusual circumstances, nowadays. I spent the days in a Finnish summer cottage that is built on top of a little rocky hill with a fabulous view on the Baltic sea located a good 30 minutes drive from the closest town where [...]

Serving Sensor Data

Posted on June 22, 2010 | by Markus Stocker

I’m assuming a given repository for time-series as it is common for sensor data. Such a repository may be any kind of RDBMS. In the following, I discuss what may be one possible way to serve data managed in the repository to client applications. I’m further assuming that a standard client operation is to retrieve [...]

When Things Are Not Perfect

Posted on May 12, 2010 | by Markus Stocker

Or simply not as we would like them to be. This is a note to a recent thread on one of the personal blogs I follow. The enthusiasm conveyed in an answer to my two cents to the original post motivated me to write this note. The author writes in Italian. To make it easier [...]

Exams Suomalaisittain

Posted on February 22, 2010 | by Markus Stocker

A note regarding the title. Suomi; Suomalainen; Suomalaisittain. The first one is easy, just point to Finland on a map. The second one is like in Suomalainen kielen, i.e. Finnish language. Now, the third one is where the fun begins. Suomalaisittain is the distributive adverbial case, one of 12 adverbial cases that exist in addition [...]

«It’s The Bank Secrecy Law, Stupid!»

Posted on February 7, 2010 | by Markus Stocker

The German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble has spoken: “Switzerland’s bank secrecy law has no place in the 21st century.” For starters, what in Switzerland in German is called Bankkundengeheimnis — bank client confidentiality– is the safeguard of financial privacy, not the secrecy of the bank, as I argued almost a year ago. I’m sure Mr. Schäuble [...]

A Case Against “All-Inclusive Lease”

Posted on January 31, 2010 | by Markus Stocker

There are different rental lease models w.r.t the structure of your monthly bill. Typically, I have been having the model where a fixed monthly rent was separate from a variable bill for the utilities, e.g. gas, electric, water, cable. In two occasions, including the current rental agreement, the total rent is fixed and includes the [...]

On The Affinity Of Individuals

Posted on January 3, 2010 | by Markus Stocker

I was inspired to finally write about something I have been wondering on and off in quite some time without ever finding a train of thought that seemed promising in leading to an answer; the question whether we — human beings — are (rather) similar or dissimilar. This problem shows up when I’m generalizing or [...]

On Mutual Respect

Posted on December 27, 2009 | by Markus Stocker

The one Xmas present that swung on the day into my house this year was rather unusual. I think, I am as close as never before to the place where Santa Claus is said to have his residence but this year it came from across the ocean. It wasn’t delivered by Santa Claus, I argue [...]

Avaaz And Copenhagen

Posted on December 23, 2009 | by Markus Stocker

There are many opinions one may have about activist movements and I’m sure they vary between movements and even between missions within a single movement. Typically, when I’m confronted with a movement or a mission I try to have an open ear towards the statement and every now and then I “support” some with my [...]

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