Most people already know that In his 1984 book "Neuromancer" he basically predicted the future importance and uses of the internet and the existence of portable devices to access it (It was he that coined the term Cyberspace). he also emphasised virtual reality, which back then was somewhat of a niche fad but even now is about to become more mainstream with the imminent release of Occulus Rift, off the back of which there is already a series of similar devices being leaked/advertised.

Agreed. But for me the most visionary prediction in the trilogy is that corporations have basically taken over the reign of the world. Which nowadays is terribly spot on, unfortunately.

Works in German, too: Wenn Fliegen hinter Fliegen fliegen, fliegen Fliegen hinter Fliegen.

This is Germany, we're talking about, so that's not NIMBY, but the St. Florian Prinzip: "Heiliger Sankt Florian / Verschon' mein Haus / Zünd' and're an! (Saint Florian / spare my house / burn others' (house) down).

My guess would be: 1) as you stated: not many cryptographers tackled the riddle and 2) a simple substitution is easy to spot, if you know the language. Not sure how many people these days "speak" runes and know their pronounciation (which seems part of the substitution).

Here Here.

Did you by chance mean "Hear, hear"?

Actually, the second guy from the bottom on the right is a CCP employee. So much for "can't get jobs" ...

Also, enjoy Mark Twain's The Awful German Language. A brilliant take on my native language.

The EU is also responsible for the Data Retention Directive.

Indeed. Which is - I admit - a shame. But we're also capable of learning from our errors, it seems:

The European Union's data retention directive is incompatible with the bloc's charter of fundamental rights, Advocate General Pedro Cruz VillalÃn said in an opinion Thursday. [...] The opinion isn't binding on the European Court of Justice, Europe's highest court, but in the majority of cases, advocate general opinions are followed.

Source

I wish the same could be said about Obama's administration and its stance towards the NSA spying.

That wasn't it (although that still applies). It had something to do with the nations/institutions doing arctic research helping out each other.

I just think it is cool there is such cooperation between Russia, China, and Australia

I've learned these days that they're acting not so much out of 'coolness', but due to international agreements. Unfortunately I don't remember the agreements name (other than it being a typical bureaucratic monster term) and my Google Fu is rather weak today, it seems.

Why has it failed to protect to Mr. Appelbaum ? Just because the word "Appelbaum " sounds Jewish ?

You're asking too much here - I mean, we're not even able to protect our own Bundeskanzlerin, let alone a mere mortal foreign citizen ...

[...] plus inhouse VB stuff that keeps some stuff on old MS Windows systems here

All of our VB(6) stuff runs without problems on Win7 without me having done anything special to make it run there.

I'd go so far to say it's even better now, because Win7 (and Vista before) have the VB runtime included, so installation has basically become a copy & paste of the EXE.

[...] a coincidence that this happened just before XP is retired.

Yes and No.

I disagree. I'm not a native English speaker, but most music I listen to has English lyrics. Now - I've even got a hard time to understand the lyrics in my native language. For English songs, I really need to concentrate hard to understand the lyrics. Therefore they could very well sing "LaLaLa" (OK, with some variations ...) and it wouldn't change much the way I feel for/perceive a song. It's more about the phrasing, rhythm and melody. The voice is just another instrument - and a very versatile one. Oh, and did I mention that I absolutely love monumental choirs? :)

"I have seen the horse vomit."

That's not right. Our expression is "(Aber) Man hat schon Pferde vor der Apotheke kotzen gesehen." A translation might be "(But) Horses have been seen vomitting in front of a pharmacy". It's a phrase that's added after describing a very unlikely situation, which may nonetheless happen, e.g. "Given X and Y, I doubt that Z will happen ... but horses have been seen ..."