Torsten's Thoughtcrimes

Category: english

  • I won the GA election

    Today, I was notified that I won the general assembly elections. This came quite as a surprise, but I am glad the election worked out that well for me. I would like to thank everyone who voted for me or gave me a high ranking. I also would like to thank the other candidates for […]

  • Microsoft denies certain countries access to its messenger

    My recent blog entries were about Skype and about how companies might eventually abuse the power they have over some of our technology. Many of my arguments against Skype also apply to Microsoft’s instant messenger. Now Microsoft gave one more example that this abuse actually happens. Ars technica writes: Microsoft this week decided to turn […]

  • Brave New Skyping World Revisited

    A vigilant reader of my blog challenged my earlier criticism of Skype thoroughly and even though I felt his remarks could have been tempered a bit, here is my thoughtful response. I am very thankful for all of the comments I receive and encourage more people to express their opinions here. It is only when […]

  • Ten Reasons Why You Should Boycott Skype

    If you want to understand what Skype actually is, it might help to picture an almighty telephone and mail company. This company can not only spy on your private conversations and has total control over them, but it also forces you to use it. It owns the telephone lines and all mail transportation and does […]

  • Facebook’s outragous Terms of Use

    Many of us knew already that Facebook’s Terms of Use are unacceptable and that nobody should ever use Facebook, but work on a free (as in free speech) alternative to Facebook. A couple of weeks ago, Facebook changed their Terms of Use again without notifying its users. It basically grants itself an “irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, […]

  • Ogg Vorbis and Theora on its way to become a video standard?

    The Mozilla Foundation just released native support for the free (as in freedom) audio and video codecs Vorbis and Theora in Firefox. These codecs are possibly the best free codecs existing. Encoding (producing) and decoding (consuming) audio and video files using these codecs is unrestricted by EULAs or license fees for patents. Currently, the largest […]

  • ICQ Locks Out Users

    As of today, users with old or non-official ICQ Clients are no longer able to log into the ICQ Network. They received no prior notice and just get the message that their client is too old. The reason for this is still not known, but it has been speculated that it is due to ICQ […]