PDF claims to be an open standard. (“Formerly a proprietary format, PDF was officially released as an open standard on July 1, 2008, and published by the International Organization for Standardization as ISO/IEC 32000-1:2008.” wikipedia for more details).
Mobibook is another standard for publishing ebooks. Although, using proprietary extensions it is “based” on open standards. It says: “The Mobipocket file format is a binary format for the distribution of eBooks. It is one implementation of the Open eBook Publication format with a number of proprietary extensions. The Open eBook Publication format is developed and specified by the IDPF (International Digital Publishing Forum) an independent organization formerly known as the Open eBook Consortium.”

Know what? It turns out both aren’t that open. My ebook reader can’t display both legaly, as licensing each format requires entering an exclusice license, it seems. The irex community blog states:

Unfortunately the relationship of Adobe and Mobipocket DRM’s is an exclusive one, and both can not be supported on one device at the same time. In order to ensure that our customers are not limited in any way from obtaining the content they desire to view on their eReader, we have decided to keep the old firmware with Mobipocket DRM available. This means that you as a customer can decide if you like to run Mobipocket or Adobe DRM on your device.

What the heck are “open standards” if they require exclusive license. Shame on both Adobe and Mobibook.

Wenn ich in der Schweiz mein Halbtax vergessen habe, dann:

1. Checkt der Conducteur meinen Ausweis, sieht online (oder per Telefon) dass ich ein Halbtax besitze und stellt mir gegen eine Gebühr von 5CHF(~3€) einen provisorische Halbtaxkarte aus, so dass ich den Rest der Fahrt keine Probleme bekomme.
   (alternativ kann man am Schalter vor der Fahrt für 5CHF eine provisorische bekommen)

Wenn ich in Deutschland meine Bahncard vergessen habe, dann:

1. Sagt der Schaffner dass es keine andere Möglichkeit gibt, als sofort den Aufpreis von von 57€ zum vollen Preis zu zahlen (inkl. Zugzuschlag).
2. Gibt es keine Möglichkeit eine provisorische Karte zu bekommen, weder im Zug noch am Bahnschalter, so dass man auf der Weiter oder Rückfahrt auf alle Fälle wieder die gleichen Probleme bekommt.
3. Ist die einzige Möglichkeit sein Geld zurückzubekommen, an einem Deutschen Bahnschalter seine Bahncard vorzulegen
   (was schwierig ist wenn man im Ausland ist und halt seine Bahncard vergessen hat!).
   Klar weiss die DB Datenbank dass ich eine besitze. Aber selbst mit Personalausweis kann die Deutsche Bahn dass anscheinend nicht herausfinden.
4. Wenn man darauf hinweisst, dass man im Ausland wohnt und nicht so oft die Gelegenheit hat in Deutschland an einen Schalter zu kommen, sagt der Schaffner dass man das auch noch jederzeit später könnte.
5. Geht man 3 Monate später -beim nächsten Deutschland Aufenthalt- zum Bahnschalter, wartet brav 20 Minuten in der Schlange und legt Bahncard und den Nachzahlungsbeleg vor.
6. Sagt die Schalterangestellte, dass man das Geld nur innerhalb von 14 Tagen nach der Fahrt zurück bekommen könnte (da hatte doch der Schaffner noch etwas anderes erzählt…). Sie bräuchte aber sowieso die Original Bahnfahrkarte noch, zusätzlich zum vorgelegten Nachzahlungsbeleg (auf dem der Preis, die Strecke, und mein voller Name/Adresse/Passnummer vermerkt sind) und könnte daher nichts machen.
   (Weiss der Geier ob ich die Original Bahnfahrkarte noch habe…)
7. Sagt die Schalterbeamtin, dass die einzige Möglichkeit meine 57€ (minus 15€ Gebühr) wiederzusehen ist, die Bahncard, die Originalbahnfahrkarte, UND den Nachzahlungsbeleg per Post an das Bahncardservicecenter einzuschicken. Sie könnte da am Schalter nichts machen, einen schönen Tag noch.
8. Sich über die saublöde, komplizierte und bürokratische Bahn ärgern und 57€ für die eigene Vergesslichkeit abzuschreiben. Mein Bahncardabo werde ich kündigen.

Sorry, Deutsche Bahn, so behält man keine Stammkunden!

Currently staying at hotel Panorama in Hamburg, which is quite nice.
Except for the prices of an Internet connection. It’s a T-Online hotspot and either they charge you 8€ (Yes, that is about 12USD) for 1 hour of internet or you have to book the 30 days option (with me staying for 3 days in total…).
What the heck?

Did you ever wonder what the formula for measuring the efficiency of urinals?
XKCD has a detailed analysis of the efficiency of usage based on the number of urinals. Hidden assumption is that no two men stand next to each other without some personal distance space. Geeky fun…

5 Urinals are being used rather efficiently (if men behave according to protocol)

Eight cannot be used efficiently withou violating the tacit personal distance protocol.

I will probably be using Zotero to automatically manage my reference lists. As there are no citation styles for the (to me) important journals yet, I have created a CSL style sheet for Organization Science. UPDATE: This is now included as an official Zotero style.

http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/2009/08/13/lego-hops-off-the-cluetrain-onto-the-tracks-in-front-of-it-wondering-what-that-increasingly-loud-sound-could-be/:

A 14-year-old user used Legos to create a stop-motion homage to Spinal Tap, which Spinal Tap projected in concert and wanted to include in its DVD. Lego refused to give permission. As a company spokesperson said: “…when you get into a more commercial use, that’s when we have to look into the fact that we are a trademarked brand, and we really have to control the use of our brand, and our brand values.”

LWN’s John Corbet writes

Here is a press release from legal firm McKool Smith, which is quite proud at having gotten a US court to rule that Word violates patent #5,787,499. “Today’s permanent injunction prohibits Microsoft from selling or importing to the United States any Microsoft Word products that have the capability of opening .XML, .DOCX or DOCM files (XML files) containing custom XML.” The text of this patent is quite vague; if it stands it could almost certainly be used to make life difficult for free software as well.

This is Depeche Mode and I am about 20 meters from the stage.

Dave Gahan

By the way, it was raining from 11am till 7pm…

Pictures by Matthew Taplinger on flickr.

The famous Buckingham fountain (as known from the title squence of “Love & Marriage”) is also in Grant Park where the festival happened:

Stefan Haefliger and I flew to Chicago yesterday to participate at the Aom conference. It was a flight operated by Swiss and it was a completely new A330-300, which was very nice. Moviews to recommend: “Star Trek” (really not bad, actually); not to recommend “Fast & Furious”. They forgot Stefan to put on the vegetarian meal list which he had required when booking, but he reminded them so no harm done. and they forgot to serve me a meal at all (it must have been served during my 30 seconds on the toilet :-), I don’t know). When I asked about 30 minutes later if the meals had already been served (every one else was finished eating), they were REALLY embarassed and offered me pasta (Hörnli) or the kids menu. I chose the kid’s menu: chicken nuggets, and pommes frittes, with haribo gummibären as dessert. They apologized about a hundret times and were especially friendly to Stefan and me for the rest of the flight. Actually, I preferred the kid’s menu and will order that every time now. As I am the first search result in Google when you search on Google for “swiss airline sucks”, google hear me:” swiss airline service rocks”!!! at least for this flight.

The Monaco hotel is great as well. we got it by auctioning the room via priceline.com, I don’t dare to say how little we paid for it… It’s a huge room, nicely decorated. Free wine every evening. Free WiFi. Cool.

One thing impressed me hugely: I was at an Apple store for the first time in my life because Stefan wanted to buy an ipod. it was massively crowded because there was a band (Passion Pit) playinng upstairs. There were about 25 sales people standing around and when Stefan asked for an ipod he would be showing him one. When he said that he would take it, she just tookout some mobile gadget and swiped his credit card and he could take it with him. The only thing she wanted was his email address because they mail the receipt. no queuing at a counter, no paper printouts. This is really efficient with about 200 people crammed in the store. I actually would classify that as a shopping experience :-).

Yesterday evening we ate at Jake Melnick’s which is a kind of barbeque restaurant. I had a ‘Animal Collective’ plate, which I ound quite a funny name. afterwards I found out it is a band playing at the current Lollapalooza festival. Which does sound like a nice open air festival. Stay tuned for more news on this. Went to bed with Stefan (yes, we are sharing one bed again :-)) after being awake for 22hours in a row.

On Friday morning we started with breakfast at Ina’s, a place that -according to the Intelligent Life magaine- helped a lot with the Obama campaign as lots of talks were held here. I can vouch for that, but their breakfast is great. I discovered, that i don’t have any session planned on Friday and none of the PDW workshops that happen today are really that appealing to me. So, I decided to do something nasty rather naughty today. I only say http://2009.lollapalooza.com/schedule/2009/08/07.