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when will MUJI open at Hackescher Markt? The city waits and wonders while MUJI assembles the workforce.

Today I called the office of the city of Berlin and after being re-routed from office (PR > Umweltamt > PR > Verwaltung für Inneres > Ortnungsamt Neukölln > Bürgertelefon der Polizei (4664-4664) > PR der Polizei) to office for a while, I got ahold of someone who gave me a few numbers on the overall usage of the Umweltplakette (”environmental sticker”) in Berlin.

In case some of you don’t know/remember - starting from 01/01/2008 you need a sticker for your car to drive inside the S-Bahn ring. There are four different kind - one, two, three and to the four (!). All designated your “level of access” to the designated zone. Currently only 2 (red), 3 (yellow) and 4 (green) are allowed in the inner circle and there are some set dates such as 01/01/2010 from which on only 4 will be allowed in the city. So this is how it works.

Now the stats…

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From around 4:30 AM tomorrow (Monday, 17th March 2008) buses, subways and trams will continue to operate and service will be provided more regulary. According to bvg.de the administrative office and the repair shops of BVG are still on strike, which is why they cannot yet guarantee 100% regular service.

Subways will run at least every 10 minutes. Huge improvement over last week - if you ask me.

No subways, trams and buses are running in Berlin:
"bvg+streik" @ Flickr

[via]

Many people were not convinced with “Be Berlin”, some even started a counter-movement (including nifty little poll). Head on over to Berlin Bewegt (”Berlin moves”) and cast your vote.

BZ ran an article today where one guy knifed another guy because the other asked him to not bother his girlfriend. Which brings up the question, WHAT THE FUCK?

It happened right outside Universal at Oberbaumbrücke, which is not the worst area at any given time of the day. The poor guy who was attacked is in ICU at the moment and doctors say he might still die from it.

Generally, I’m a huge advocate of  courage and I try to get involved whenever I see crap happening and I never experienced anything like that in return in almost eight years of Berlin. I bet we all agree that the most we would expect from such a situation is an oral/verbal argument but stabbing someone is so totally out of line that I am inclined (displacement) to not believe it happened, especially because it’s so close.

Of course I am somewhat shortsighted. After all I live in Berlin and I am surrounded by all this and it probably happens more than I am aware of it. And sometimes it takes those super drastic events to take notice. But I wonder what’s next - shooting over organic food and parking spots?

Better not leave the Kiez on Wednesday. Effectively from 3 AM no trains will work and the BVG people are on strike.

So I had the maybe weird pleasure to see this lecture two days ago. I went primarily not because I wanted to know so much about free software, but rather for reasons such as I think Richard M. Stallman (RMS) is someone you have to at least witness once. Especially when you are involved in this open source (he objects to this term) thing.

About RMS - there is literally too much on the Internet already to really sit there with no expectations or second thoughts.

All in all I had a pretty entertaining evening. Roughly three hours were over in no time, which in my opinion is always a compliment for the speaker. I twittered the entire lecture, if you care you need to browse my Twitter for that.

He started off by explaining the basics - Free (GNU) and Non-Free. Explained the four freedoms, which are to run/use software as you wish, to adjust software, to (re-)distribute, including your “adjusted” copy, and to contribute to the software. During the evening he basically came back to those citing examples why Free is what we should aim for and Non-Free is not.

He then briefly went over the license (GPL) used for free software and explained the basics of Copyleft. I think I found this part particularly interesting because licenses are generally a book of seven seals and he managed to explain the reasoning behind the GPL really well.

He also once more iterated about the issue of the naming of the operating system, Linux vs. GNU - when Linus Torvalds wrote a Kernel for GNU and now people mistakenly call what is supposed to be called GNU, Linux. Though he’s fine with GNU/Linux (”GNU slash Linux”) because it gives credit to everyone involved.

So without diving more geekery and tech-talk - he objects all forms of non-free. Even GNU/Linux-distributions (haha) which contain a little of the so called closed source software (often in form of binary drivers) are not free, but non-free. It’s as easy as that. And to be honest I had hoped for a little grey, but apparently it’s very black and white - good and evil - there is no fading.

In the end RMS introduced his other identity (so he says), which is Saint Egnusius of the Church of Emacs. Pretty funny, but More like geek fun. I can already see people rolling eyes, when I call this funny. So you didn’t read that.

Last but not least - time for Q&A. Well, almost. He managed to not let anyone else speak. People were cut off all the time while they were asking a question which was either not accurate or plain wrong - according to the star of the evening. I had really hoped for this part of the evening and found this part of the session to be extremely narrow-minded. Time for an exchange? Rather a wasted opportunity and all because his ego didn’t fit into the room.

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der fleischerei krimi geht weiter, originally uploaded by Fleischerei Bln FleischereiBLOG.de.

Fleischerei is about to lose its location in Torstraße, near Rosenthaler Platz.

Fleischerei is not a butcher’s shop - even though the name makes believe. Fleischerei exists since 2002 and it is many things, none of which have to do with meat. Fleischerei is a creative space, self funded. A place to screenprint, a place for exhibitions, a place to hang out and learn, a place for workshops and among many other things also an art collective.

Aside from supporting and working with artists, Fleischerei also supports youth work in Mitte. Fleischerei itself is a voluntary efford.