12/26/2014

Es wird keine Ausländermaut geben

Allenfalls gibt es eine Maut für "nicht-inländische Kraftfahrzeughalter" (Merkel am 22.1. auf dem CSU-Parteitag), und "Nicht-Inländer" sind ja noch lange keine "Ausländer".

Und diese Maut gibt es nun ohne Wenn und Aber, außer "es tauchen ganz neue Aspekte auf" (Merkel ebenfalls am 22.1. auf dem CSU-Parteitag) - eine Hintertür muss man sich ja noch offenhalten.

Beim Fernsehduell im September 2013 hatte Merkel noch getönt: "Mit mir wird es keine Pkw-Maut geben." Das klang so definitiv - wie ist sie denn da nochmal rausgekommen? Oder geht sie das Geschwätz vom letzten Jahr nichts mehr an?


12/07/2014

Netzneutralität und Autobahnmaut

Die Bundesregierung und allen voran Frau Merkel preschen auch im "Neuland" kräftig voran: nun wollen sie in Brüssel eine "Überholspur" für Daten beantragen.

Überraschend ist das nicht, die Regierung betreibt schon seit Jahren Klientel-Politik für die Industrie.

Die Telekom-Unternehmen freuen sich, der normale Verbraucher und kleine Unternehmen werden sich ärgern.

Frau Merkel, wenn wir schon dabei sind: würde es da nicht auch Sinn machen, für die linke Spur im Rahmen der Autobahnmaut nochmals Extra-Gebühren zu erheben? So könnten die dicken CO2-Schleudern noch schneller fahren - und wen interessiert schon der Stau auf den anderen, billigen Spuren?

10/05/2014

Fritzbox Phonebook Connected to Google - How to Sort by Last Name


I found many posts on how this is not possible, but I desperately needed my FritzFon to sort contacts by last name instead of first name, so I did some research myself.

Here's what I found:
FritzBox only stores a single name field, they do not distinguish first and last names - so the only way to sort by last name is to enter contacts as "last name, first name".

Of course, when you connect your FritzBox to Google contacts, you need Google to deliver the names in this format. So where does FritzBox pick up the name from?

An experiment showed that even though Google does distinguish between first and last names (use "..." next to the full name to view these), it also saves something like a " display name" field.
If you enter names in the form "last name, first name" into Google, it sets the display name accordingly, and upon syncing to the FritzBox, you also get your contacts in this form there.

Problem solved? Not quite.

My problem was that I already had hundreds of contacts in there, and there was no way I would manually change each one of them. Here's how I ended up doing this in a semi-automated fashion:
  • in Google export all contacts in Outlook format, this creates a csv file
  • open the file in Excel, add a column named "Name" and enter a formula that creates the format that you like for the display name, then save as csv again
  • delete all contacts in Google and import said csv file
  • now all your contacts will have the correct format in their display name
  • for new contacts, make sure you enter them in this format
Finally, to make these changes visible on the FritzBox, I had to delete the phone book and re-establish the connection to Google. Syncing also did not do the trick, not sure why.

Afterwards, the contacts showed up in the desired sort order on my FritzFon.

@AVM: it is about time you updated your FritzBox to support different name fields to make this easier!

Addition, 7 June 2015: a year later, another problem arises
Recently (a week ago?) Google updated their APIs, since then I have an empty phone book, and when I update my configuration, I get something like "invalid username or password".
This is partly due to Google's lack of communication to developers. AVM will need to update the FritzOS to make it work again.
Now my FritzBox is out of warranty, and I don't think I will receive any update. So I finally decided to "unlink" my phone book from Google and import contacts instead. This was actually quite easy:
  • in Google mail, export your contacts in vCard format
  • download the Contact Conversion Wizard from here
  • in the wizard, import your vCard file and export in Fritzbox format
  • finally, in your FritzBox, "restore" the phone book from the generated file
This only takes 5 minutes.
I don't know how you feel about it, but I do prefer repeating this procedure twice a year rather than running into all the trouble I had before again.
Search term for German readers: Fritzbox Telefonbuch nach Nachname sortiere

6/30/2014

Exporting Attendees and Their Status from an Outlook 2007 Appointment

This add-in will add a button to your Outlook ribbon: http://1drv.ms/1q8XqoK

Simply click Attendees in the Export group; this sends the names, role, and status to the clipboard. Then paste into Excel, Word, or whatever you like.

Has been tested with Outlook 2007. Outlook 2010 and later have the functionality already built-in, so this is only useful for 2007 and earlier.

Provided free of charge and free of support :-)

4/15/2014

AirBnB Experiences in Europe

Here's a quick summary of my AirBnB experiences so far:
  • 3 Jun 13: inquiry sent to location in Hessia, Germany - no response, I closed this on 9 Jun 13
  • 18 Jun 13: inquiry sent to Madrid, Spain - no response
  • 18 Jun 13: given my previous experience, I immediately sent out a second inquiry to another location in Madrid, Spain - no response
  • 18 Nov 13: inquiry sent to Karsruhe, Germany - got a response, then a back-and-forth started with my hostess not being sure whether her friend would be visiting at the time, yada-yada. This kept going for two weeks until I finally canceled on 1 Dec 13
  • 29 Nov 13: inquiry sent to second location in Karlsruhe, Germany - no response, and this time I did not wait long before my next inquiry
  • 30 Nov 13: inquiry sent to a third location in Karlsruhe, Germany - this time I got a positive response, booking confirmed on 1 Dec 13

Statistics:
Does not look so good. Either something is wrong with me (or my profile), or AirBnB have a lot of dead hosts around here ...

4/05/2014

Haben wir wirklich ein Rentenproblem?


Ja, es ist wahr, jeder Erwerbstätige müssen für immer mehr Rentner aufkommen. Aber jeder Erwerbstätige erwirtschaftet auch immer mehr.
Letztendlich geht es ja nicht um das Verhältnis der Rentner zu den Erwerbstätigen, sondern darum, wieviel Geld zur Verfügung steht.

Betrachten wir das doch mal ganz naiv: von 1950 bis 2013 stiegen
  • das Verhältnis von Rentnern zu Erwerbstätigen von 38,8% auf 60,3% - das sind 155%
  • das Bruttoinlandsprodukt von 50 Mrd € auf 3593 Mrd € - das sind satte 7184%
  • das jährliche Durchschnittseinkommen stieg von 1600 € auf 32.446 €, also um 2027%
  • zum Vergleich: der Brotpreis steig in diesem Zeitraum um 900%

Wenn man das Bruttoinlandsprodukt betrachtet, fragt man sich doch, wo da ein Rentenproblem sein soll ...

Vielleicht liegt es daran, das diejenigen, die das BIP erwirtschaften, nur mit 28% an der Steigerung des BIP beteiligt sind, gleichzeitig aber höhere Preise zahlen und für mehr Rentner aufkommen sollen.

Dann stellt sich natürlich die Frage: wer schöpft denn da so viel ab, ohne für die Rentner aufkommen zu müssen? Staat, Arbeitgeber - oder beide?

Oder habe ich hier nur zu blauäugig gerechnet?

3/31/2014

Chromecast and Netflix Outside the US

So you already have a provider that enables you to view Netflix from outside the US, but your Chromecast refuses to play movies from Netflix?

The reason for this is that the Chromecast uses fixed DNS servers (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4).

You could use iptables on your router to redirect these addresses to your preferred DNS server. BUt ypur router may not support iptables.

Here's a solution without iptables: most routers will support setting up static routes, so all it takes is to add routes for the above addresses that refer to a non-existent address in you LAN. When the Chromecast detects that its known DNS servers are unreachable, it falls back to what you have configured in your router.

I tested this approach with my FritzBox, and it works like a charm.

P.S.: Could be that this loophole will be close soon; Google were pretty quick to fix the root exploit that served similar purposes.

3/12/2014

Chechens, Ingush and Dagestani Also Ready to Vote on Their Nationality

Grozny, Magas, Makhachkala - Could the vote of the Crimean population about their nationality be the next export/import hit? Separatists from the Russian republics of Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan described the planned referendum as the "best idea that Putin ever had." Now the residents of the North Caucasus provinces want to vote on their nationality on 16 March, at the same time as the Crimea. The Russian population of the three republics is between 0.8 and 3.6 percent.

The original article is much longer, and in German, it can be found here.

And just in case it was not obvious: this is satire.
 

SharePoint: "Attempted to use an object that has ceased to exist"

I got this error after migrating sites from SharePoint MOSS 2007 to SharePoint 2013.

Problem
The scenario: a document library that uses a lookup to another list and allows multiple values to be selected

The effect: when you have the lookup column as part of your view of the document library, you get the  error message: "Attempted to use an object that has ceased to exist". When you remove the column from the view, it works just fine.

With new sites in SharePoint 2013, the above does not happen, the issue is related to migrated sites only!

Solution
While I have not been able to identify the root cause, I have found the following workaround:
change all columns of type "People" in the document library from "Name (with presence)" to "Name" only.

I have no clue why this makes a difference, but it does!

Kudos
And here is where I got this hint from - thank you so much!
The post also mentions that "Microsoft is now evaluating if they will create a hotfix for this." dating from November 2013.

Non-Kudos (or whatever the opposite of kudos may be)
So far, there is not hotfix and SP1 did not fix it :-(


adaxas Web Directory