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De politie tast nog steeds in het duister over de oorzaak van de brand in de zendmast van Morborne, nabij Peterborough. Zaterdagavond brak er brand uit in de 153 meter hoge stalen mast, waarna de mast volledig instortte. De mast miste op een haar na de nabijgelegen betonnen zendmast van British Telecom.

Ik krijg opeens zin om met PhotoShop een plaatje van een rookworst te pakken te nemen. Vanwege dit nieuws.

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The U.S. is unable to do what countries like Botswana, a southern African nation of 1.6 million people, are capable of doing: delivering election results within a day.

“Americans and the rest of us will be surprised that a country that sent a man to the moon 30 years ago can’t give us the results of an election on the same day,” said Klas Eklund, chief economist at SEB AB, the third-biggest Nordic bank by assets in Stockholm and a former adviser to the Swedish government.

On Oct. 30, the ruling party in Botswana was reelected, winning 44 out of 57 parliamentary seats in a country where average income is less than 10 percent of the U.S. The opposition accepted the results that evening. Observers at the Stockholm- based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance said the election was fair.

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Never buy a glass desk!

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�?�?��?��?��?�?��?�パーソナルコンピューター�?��?アップルコンピューター�?�Macintosh LC�?��?��?�。�??れ以�?��?�?�マック�?�世界�?�魅了�?�れ�?��?��?��?�。�?�れ�?�らも�?�?��?�以上�?�魅力的�?�進化を続�?�るマック�?��?��?�。�?��?�ホームページ�?��?��?�?�自己中心的�?�考�?��?��?新種�?�マックを�?��??�?��?��?��?��?�。�?�ょ�?��?��?��?��?�?��?��?�?�マック（新種林檎）�?��?��?��?��?��?�?��?��?��?�覧�?��?��?��?��?��?��??�?��?��?�。
My first personal computer was Macintosh LC . Thereafter I have been strongly attracted to Macs. Macs have incredibly changed in the past. I believe Macs will have great evolutions many times in the future. In this homepage, I display my imaginary designs of future apple products. Please take a look at them.

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The suspect arrested for the killing of a controversial Dutch filmmaker had ties with Islamic extremists and was a friend of a terrorist suspect, Dutch newspapers said on Wednesday.

Amsterdam police declined to comment on the information or their investigation. “He is under arrest, but I can’t say where he is or what we are doing,” a spokesman said.

Filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who had been accused by Muslims of ridiculing their religion, was shot dead on his bicycle on Tuesday. Two knives were left in his body, one pinning a note to his chest.

The Volkskrant newspaper said the 26-year-old suspect, who has dual Dutch and Moroccan nationality, was known to national security services but was not among a group of 150 Muslims the AIVD security service is monitoring.

De Telegraaf paper said the suspect was a friend of Samir Azzouz, whose arrest in June provoked a national “terror alarm” after detailed maps of buildings and weapons were found in a house search.

A picture on the front page of De Telegraaf showed the body of filmmaker Theo Van Gogh lying on the street with two knives sticking out

Tot zonsopgang was zelfs mijn telefoon ‘too close to call’

Sad result nº 5:
Here we go again…

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Slate finds itself deeply dismayed by this turn in events. Americans are an independent and resourceful folk. Why should the lawyers have all the fun? “Get out the vote” is so last millennium. We’re here to help “get out the plaintiffs.” To that end, we present herein a handy Slate litigation kit for all you do-it-yourselfer litigants out there, eager to cut out the middleman and file your own election-related lawsuit.

Sad result nº 4:

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Bomb threats to an elementary school that served as a polling place forced officials to move students and voting from the campus Tuesday morning.

Three calls placed early in the morning made bomb threats to Longview Elementary School, said Phoenix police spokeswoman Sgt. Lauri Williams.

Police searched the school and didn’t find anything.

However, Maricopa County elections officials decided to move the voting to a nearby church.

Sad result nº 3:

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If you intend to cast a paper ballot today, please be ready for an adventure. This morning in Santa Clara, Vickie and I signed in the way we always do and requested paper ballots. Hilarity ensued: attempting to vote on paper caused a flurry of activity: oh-no-you’re-not, you-have-to-vote-with-the-machine, what’s-your-major-malfunction-mister, and other clucking noises.

There was no “votamatic” machine for paper ballots any longer; we had to enter a plain brown cardboard voting station that looked exactly like a refrigerator carton and mark our ballots with a pen. (Pen not supplied; bring your own.) I was first in line; after marking my ballot I approached the desk and asked the Nice Lady on the end if I should put it into the box. She nodded and smiled at me, so in it went.

Then I turned to look at Vickie and the rest of the line and noticed they all had big pink envelopes to put their ballots into when they were done. A tiny peanut-sized bulb flickered to life inside my brain. I went to the stack and checked, and sure enough: the big pink envelope said PROVISIONAL BALLOT on it. It had several choices to check: you had no ID, you had moved after the registration deadline, or were Otherwise Unclean. The Other Nice Lady–the one who had her act together–was making everybody who voted on paper seal it inside the provisional ballot envelope, even though there was no “I HAVE BEEN REGISTERED VOTER IN THIS PRECINCT SINCE 1987 AND I AM CHOOSING TO VOTE ON PAPER DAMMIT” box to check.

Further hilarity ensued: Vickie is a lawyer with a long history of political activism, so there was much back-and-forth between her and the Other Nice Lady, who then got on the phone with Headquarters and came back with the following ruling: we were all to mark our paper ballots, seal them in pink envelopes, and don’t worry about filling out our names and addresses on the envelopes. Somehow–the nebulous theory goes–the election workers will be able to magically detect the paper ballots filled out by properly identified voters and pull them out to be counted tonight.

We left the station feeling VERY unsure that our votes would be counted.

If I was a busy election worker tonight, I’d just grab all those pink envelopes and heave them into the Provisional stack. And if I was the guy at the Provisional Counting Station, I’d have to seriously consider trashing all those envelopes without names and addresses filled in on the form on the outside. That’s the point of a provisional ballot envelope, after all: to make it possible for them to verify your right to vote.

Sad result nº 2:

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Want to know what this image is? It’s a picture I took with my cellphone-camera of an electronic voting machine screen. I took it today when I went down to vote for the next President of the Unites States in Santa Clara California. The screen says “Vote Save Error #9. Use the Backup Voting Procedure.” A news crew was on hand to film Californians using the voting machines. I pointed to this particular screen and said “There’s your story – right there. I just took a picture of the screen and plan to share it with 6.4 billion of my closest friends on the Internet tonight. I suggest you do the same.” To my astonishment, the cameraman did shoot some footage of the screen, though I don’t know what was shown later on television.

Now that I’ve told you the story behind the picture, I need not mention the maelstrom of thoughts that go through my head whenever I look at it – the picture is testament enough. The next revolution will not be televised. The next revolution will be blogged.

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GNN.tv produced a get-out-the-vote Eminem video that they uploaded to the Archive. While we have a gigabit connection to the Internet, even that is being pounded by this movie.

We are serving more around 2 videos each second at this point (that is about 500Mbits/sec between the US and the EU archives).

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The mountable model is capable of carrying its passengers almost anywhere they need to go. It is fun to ride and operate.

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Burgemeester Job Cohen heeft opgeroepen tot een “luidruchtige tocht” vanavond in het centrum van Amsterdam. Een “stille tocht” vindt hij blijkbaar te volks en niet passen bij Theo van Gogh.

De gevestigde partijen en belangen van de corrupte (a-)sociale democratie zullen acte de presence geven en hun krokodillentranen plengen over het offer dat Theo van Gogh heeft gebracht op het altaar van de vrijheid van meningsuiting.

Het is onvoorstelbaar schijnheilig van onze bestuurders om het volk zó bij de neus te nemen! Zij zijn niet in staat voor een veilige publieke ruimte te zorgen en proberen met een braaf volksoploopje alsnog legitimiteit voor hun falende bestuur te krijgen.

Het lijkt me bovendien een intellectuele marteling om de zelfbenoemde vertegenwoordigers van de moslimorganisaties daar te horen spreken over hun zopgenaamd vredelievende religie die in Nederland steeds onderdrukkender trekken begint te krijgen.

Op straat – voor de camera’s van de politiek-correcte TV – durft al geen enkele burger meer zijn of haar mening te geven over de gruweldaad. Je weet maar nooit…

Om in zo’n sfeer van intimidatie en terreur te vragen om een demonstratie op de Dam is enkel bedoeld om ongenoegen te kanaliseren. Er is geen vrijheid van meningsuiting meer als daar de ruimte voor ontbreekt. De ruimte op de Dam is mij te klein.

In héél Nederland moet het weer mogelijk worden radicale kritiek te hebben op die facetten van de islam die nu hebben geleid tot het afslachten van Van Gogh.

Ik ga pas weer de straat op om samen met benoemde bestuurders voor de vrijheid te demonstreren als zij Ayaan Hirsi Ali kunnen garanderen dat zij óók veilig de straat op kan.

Volgens de laatste geruchten is onze Somalische voorvechtster van vrouwenrechten meteen na het bekend worden van de moordaanslag ondergedoken, ergens in dit “gezellige en tolerante” landje.

A man wearing a George W. Bush mask stands in line at a mock polling station in Brussels, Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2004. Organizers of the Boycott Bush International Campaign set up mock polling stations to give non-U.S. citizens the opportunity to vote against their view of Bush’s foreign policies. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert)

A thaw of the Arctic icecap is accelerating because of global warming but nations in the region including the United States are deadlocked about how to stop it. Due for publication on Nov. 8, an eight-nation report compiled by 250 scientists says the Arctic is warming almost twice as fast as the rest of the planet due to a buildup of heat-trapping gases and the trend is set to continue. (Reuters Graphic)

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Barack Obama, the son of a Kenyan father and an American mother who shot from obscurity to political stardom in mere months, trounced Republican Alan Keyes on Tuesday to claim a Senate seat in Illinois. He will be just the third black U.S. senator since Reconstruction.

The resounding victory is the latest stride forward for a man who grew up on the beaches of Hawaii and the streets of Indonesia barely knowing his father but has gone on to become a linchpin of the Democratic Party’s future.

Prediction: “Hillary/Obama 2008″ bumperstickers?

Sad result nº 1:

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In a resounding, coast-to-coast rejection of gay marriage, voters in 11 states approved constitutional amendments Tuesday limiting marriage to one man and one woman.

The amendments won, often by huge margins, in Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Ohio, Utah and Oregon — the one state where gay-rights activists hoped to prevail. The bans won by a 3-to-1 margin in Kentucky and Georgia, 3-to-2 in Ohio, and 6-to-1 in Mississippi.

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Spiced-ham maker Hormel has announced a massive UK advertising campaign in what may be seen as an attempt to wrestle back the name of its flagship ‘spam’ product from widespread negative associations with unsolicited email.

For the first time ever Hormel will begin advertising on UK television screens next week with a campaign that cost £2m, according to a report on the BBC.

So, “spam-makers spam to say spam is spam” would be an accurate headline? Cue the Monty Python sing-a-long…

Well, there’s egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam; spam bacon sausage and spam; spam egg spam spam bacon and spam; spam sausage spam spam bacon spam tomato and spam;

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An announcement last week from adware vendor WhenU and anti-spyware company Aluria Software has raised red flags in the anti-spyware community.

As part of its new “Spyware SAFE Certification Program,” Aluria gave passing marks to WhenU, which historically has been characterized as spyware by many in the industry. In a separate development, Aluria also now runs WhenU’s UControl, a free desktop scanning program launched Monday that removes unwanted spyware programs.

“Aluria has gone almost immediately from targeting WhenU as spyware to the next day having a partnership,” said Mike Healan, editor of SpywareInfo.com. Healan said he has de-listed Aluria, no longer recommending or linking to the company from his site.

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The most comprehensive study ever undertaken by the mi2g Intelligence Unit over 12 months reveals that the world’s safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment – operating system plus applications – is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin.

Eight-week-old kitten Milo sits Monday Nov.1, 2004 in the washing machine that nearly killed him earlier after he climbed in through curiosity. Milo disappeared at Ginny Troth’s house in Redditch, central England, recently and bedded down in the laundry for a cat-nap. But Mrs Troth, who had been searching for him, unwittingly switched on the machine for a spin wash. Mrs Troth said she only realized where the inquisitive tabby might be about halfway through the cycle. (AP Photo/Rui Vieira)

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Het negentienjarige slachtoffer uit Renswoude, dat afgelopen zaterdag ernstig gewond raakte bij een verkeersongeval op de Renswoudseweg in Ederveen, bij De Klomp, is in de nacht van maandag op dinsdag overleden. De Renswoudse zat in de auto bij een 21-jarige man uit Veenendaal, die afgelopen zaterdag op de Renswoudseweg tegen een boom reed. De Renswoudse raakte daarbij bekneld en ernstig gewond. Nadat ze door de hulpdiensten was bevrijd was ze in zorgwekkende toestand overgebracht naar het Ziekenhuis de Gelderse Vallei. Vanwege haar letsel is ze later overgebracht naar het Radboud-ziekenhuis in Nijmegen, waar ze dinsdagochtend vroeg aan haar verwondingen is bezweken. De politie heeft in de nacht van zaterdag op zondag een negentienjarige man uit Barneveld en een achttienjarige Renswoudenaar aangehouden die mogelijk bij het ongeval betrokken waren geweest. Zij worden ervan verdacht ieder met hun auto achter de Veenendaler aan te hebben gereden. Dat naar aanleiding van een ruzie eerder. Na het ongeval zouden beiden zijn doorgereden. Ook de 21-jarige Veenendaler, die bij het ongeval licht gewond was geraakt, is later na behandeling in het ziekenhuis door de politie aangehouden. Zijn rijbewijs is ingevorderd, evenals dat van de twee andere aangehouden verdachten. Alle verdachten zijn na het afleggen van een verklaring weer vrijgelaten. De politie heeft proces-verbaal opgemaakt. Justitie beslist over het verdere lot van de verdachten.

Klinkt eenvoudig… maar er zit meer achter

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Indian Muslim clerics have the rather tricky task of deciding whether an email sent by a US-based husband divorcing his wife in India is valid, the Hindustan Times reports.

Rahat Iqbal married Rubab in 1998. He left for the US shortly thereafterafter, promising to call for her in three weeks. Six long years later, she received her official email notification of divorce from the absent Rahat.

Clerics are now debating the validity of Rahat’s e-divorce. Maulana Khalid Rashid stated that since emails contained no signature, the husband would need to authenticate the missive – preferably by calling her to confirm his intentions. Furthermore, the email must adhere to the “triple talaq” principle – whereby a wife can be disposed of if her spouse repeats “talaq” (“I divorce thee” or thereabouts) three times.

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The current edition of Restaurant Magazine has an article on a restaurant in the suburbs of London where there are no prices on the menu. Customers pay what they think the meal was worth. It is called Just Around the Corner and has been around for 17 years. From what I saw when I went to help photograph it for the magazine, it serves old fashioned French food of an average standard (soup, chicken supreme, profiteroles…).

Here are some interesting quotes from the owner:
In a cheaper area the restaurant wouldn’t survive because people wouldn’t pay the money I expect and in a busier, more central area, we couldn’t build up the trust.

When people don’t pay what the owner thinks appropriate (about £20 a head) We just thank them nicely and give them their money back. These people know they don’t belong here, they try you out and by giving them their money back nicely, you ensure that they never return.

Apparently this is a unique operation and as the owner admits, location is key. But I think there is more to the location than simply wealth, as the owner states. If there were more competition (there isn’t a great deal nearby), would it survive? Why hasn’t the approach been imitated, as it is obviously profitable?