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1 Je per ongeluk je PIN-code intoetst op de magnetron…

2 Je in geen jaren ‘patience’ met echte kaarten hebt gespeeld…

3 Je 15 telefoonnummers hebt van een familie met drie personen…

4 Je e-mail stuurt aan de persoon die naast je zit…

5 Je geen contact meer hebt met oude vrienden, omdat je hun e-mailadressen kwijt bent…

6 Je thuis komt en nog steeds de telefoon opneemt met je ‘werkstem’…

7 Je nog steeds een ’0′ draait als je van huis uit telefoneert…

8 Je vier jaar lang achter hetzelfde bureau hebt gewerkt, maar voor drie verschillende bedrijven…

10 Je baas jouw werk niet kan doen…

11 Je je familie belt om te kijken of ze thuis zijn, terwijl je de oprit in komt rijden…

12 Alle reklame op TV een internetadres heeft…

13 Het van huis weggaan zonder mobieltje -die je de eerste 10, 20, 30 jaar van je leven niet had- paniek veroorzaakt en dat je vervolgens teruggaat om hem op te halen…

14 Het eerste wat je ‘s ochtends doet is ‘online’ gaan, zelfs nog voordat je koffie gehaald hebt…

15 Je een ‘smile’ op z’n kant legt om te glimlachen…

16 Je dit leest, knikt en glimlacht…

17 En nog erger; je precies weet naar wie je dit mailtje door gaat sturen…

18 Je te druk bent om te merken dat er geen nr.9 bestaat in deze lijst…

19 Je daadwerkelijk omhoog gescrolld bent om te checken of er echt geen nr. 9 was…

20 En je nu om jezelf zit te lachen.

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Since the shooting in the Mosque, I’ve been haunted that I have not been able to tell you directly what I saw or explain the process by which the world came to see it as well. As you know, I’m not some war zone tourist with a camera who doesn’t understand that ugly things happen in combat. I’ve spent most of the last five years covering global conflict. But I have never in my career been a ‘gotcha’ reporter — hoping for people to commit wrongdoings so I can catch them at it.

This week I’ve even been shocked to see myself painted as some kind of anti-war activist. Anyone who has seen my reporting on television or has read the dispatches on this website is fully aware of the lengths I’ve gone to play it straight down the middle — not to become a tool of propaganda for the left or the right.

But I find myself a lightning rod for controversy in reporting what I saw occur in front of me, camera rolling.

It’s time you to have the facts from me, in my own words, about what I saw — without imposing on that Marine — guilt or innocence or anything in between. I want you to read my account and make up your own minds about whether you think what I did was right or wrong. All the other armchair analysts don’t mean a damn to me.

Here it goes.

(much too long to fully quote here – please do follow the link and read)

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Where to start?

As I noted here previously, sometime around September of 2003 some fliers appeared in Seattle, proclaiming the loss of what appeared to be a small boy’s frog. “Who took my frog?” the author asked, plaintively. Concluding with a determined “P.S. I’ll find my frog,” the fliers were noted and remarked upon by at least a couple of Seattle-based bloggers, Jeff Sharman and Samantha, whose last name I do not know at present.

As Jeff notes, sometime in September 2004 the flier was introduced to an online image sharing community, where it quickly became the subject of a still-growing set of visual riffs. An enterprising individual soon registered the domain lostfrog.org, where new contributions continue to be posted. Around this time, another high-traffic community website, MetaFilter, hosted two different threads concerning the frog flier and subsequent images. This image of the flier comes from the lostfrog.org site.

[..]

The person who drew the flier is a sixteen-year-old boy who suffers from autism. His father was unaware that his son may have made more than one batch of fliers (it appears that new fliers were hung in May of 2004). He did know about the loss of the frog and I believe that he knew about the first batch of fliers.

He also did not want me to give the frog to his son. He’s forgotten it, he told me. Bringing it up again will probably only bring up a bunch of bad memories.

He was quite unaware of the interest in the frog and the flier on the internet. He reiterated that he did not think it would be a good idea to show the sites to his son.

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Tokyo is an impressive city above ground, but one of the most incredible things about this city is it’s mind-bogglingly complex underground. The G-Cans Project is a massive project, begun 12 years ago, to build infrastructure for preventing overflow of the major rivers and waterways spidering the city (A serious problem for Tokyo during rainy-season and typhoon season). The underground waterway is the largest in the world and sports five 32m diameter, 65m deep concrete containment silos which are connected by 64 kilometers of tunnel sitting 50 meters beneath the surface.

The whole system is powered by 14000 horsepower turbines which can pump 200 tons of water a second into the large outlying edogawa river. I’m in the middle of playing Halflife2 right now and something like this looks like its straight out of the game or some sci-fi movie. This unbelievable gallery of photos however, is not CG, it is the real deal.

The site is all in Japanese, but if you click around the menus a bit, there are animations and diagrams of how the system works, and other interesting photos of the high-tech control center and turbine facilities. Supposedly the G-Cans project is also meant to be a tourist attraction, and can be visited for free.

link

Als Lodewijk de Waal een uitgestoken hand van een minister de Geus weigert is dat onfatsoenlijk van Lodewijk de Waal, maar als een imam een uitgestoken hand weigert van een minister Verdonk is dat onfatsoenlijk van minister Verdonk?

WTF?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali heeft de Vrijheidsprijs 2004 van de Deense Liberale Partij Venstre gekregen.

Venstre gav frihedspris til van Goghs inspirator(Berlingske Tidende)

Partijgenoot Hans van Balen nam de prijs namens Hirsi Ali in ontvangst en riep de Europeanen op de vrijheid van meningsuiting overeind te houden:

“Ayaan Hirsi Ali kan ikke handle som politiker og sige sin mening. Dette er forfærdeligt. Det kan vi ikke acceptere i et demokrati som Holland, Danmark og andre EU-lande.”

Moslimorganisaties spraken van een verkeerd signaal dat als een provocatie zou kunnen worden opgevat:

“Prisen kan virke som en provokation på de unge muslimer, der i forvejen er frustrerede.”

Aldus imam Fatih Alev.

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To generate patentable ideas, Intellectual Ventures hired a dozen top scientists as part-time consultants to participate in several all-day gabfests each month, which the company calls “invention sessions.” Lawyers transcribe the discussions, which can range from biotech to nanotech to solid-state physics, and follow up on the most promising ideas with patent applications. One participant, Dr. Leroy Hood of the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, says: “We are thinking about how you can solve problems that have never been solved before.” Since the company has been holding sessions for only a year, it has likely produced about a hundred ideas whose patent applications won’t be processed—or start earning any money—for at least three years.

But spinning new ideas is only a small part of the plan. Sources familiar with Myhrvold’s strategy say that he has raised $350 million from some of the largest companies in high tech: Microsoft, Intel, Sony, Nokia and Apple. Google and eBay also recently invested. With this large bankroll, the company is out buying existing patents in droves. (Myhrvold won’t comment on these activities, but sources say he has already purchased about 1,000 patents.) The strategy is to set up a sort of patent marketplace. Patent owners get money upfront for the dusty ideas sitting on their shelves, the investors get the rights to use the ideas without being sued and Myhrvold gets to rent those same ideas to other companies that need them to continue creating products. Intellectual-property experts say his plan is audacious and unprecedented, customized for a new, rapidly dawning business environment.

Hmm…. Let’s see. The US Constitution, Article I, section 8:

Congress shall have power . . . to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.�?

It’s clear that “exclusive” for the inventors is no longer the case: whoever “invents” it gets gobbled up by corporations. In fact, the people in the above article aren’t even “inventors”. They brain-storm for a while, and have lawyers file 1000 silly ideas hoping one or two will stick and eventually be actually invented by somebody else so they can sue for license fees. In fact, the litigious nature of ventures like this is seriously hampering the “progress of science and useful arts”.

Inevitably, something that wants to be just a “product A killer” lacks the originality that made “product A” popular to begin with.

Here’s 5 pages(!) of products that demonstrate this. Most of them are butt ugly, have way too many buttons, or they are not cheap enough to be a threat in the mass-market, (or any combination of these things).

My guess is none of them is going to be the mp3 player on the grassy knoll…

I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love.

~ Mother Teresa

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As a torrent of water gushed from a dam’s four giant steel tubes, a small group of researchers rafted down the Colorado River on a trip aimed at restoring the Grand Canyon’s fragile ecosystem.

The water was released by the Bureau of Reclamation to try to redistribute 800,000 metric tons of sediment during a 90-hour run. The release, which began Sunday, will peak when 41,000 cubic feet of water rush throughout the Glen Canyon Dam every second.

“The sediment, sand, mud and silt play an important role in the ecosystem,” said Chip Groat, director of the U.S. Geological Survey. “Hopefully that three-day peak is enough to get the sediment over the sandbars, but not enough to erode it.”

[..]

The manmade dam, built 40 years ago upstream from the Grand Canyon, forever altered the landscape. Four of the canyon’s eight native fish species have disappeared and prospects for the fifth, the endangered humpback chub, are grim.

Before the Glen Canyon Dam’s construction, natural flooding built up backwaters, eddies and sandbars with silt distributed from the Colorado’s tributaries — landscape features within the river considered essential to native plant and fish species.

At the time, about 24 million metric tons of sediment were in the river, Groat said. Only about 7 percent of the sediment before the dam was built remains.

A swarm of locust is seen in the southern Israeli city of Eilat, in the Red Sea, Sunday Nov. 21, 2004. Swarms of locusts that arrived from Egypt to southern Israel devoured lawns and palm trees on Sunday, causing a panic among farmers and children. (AP Photo/Mori Chen)

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Royal Marine commandos in central Iraq are mounting surprise road blocks from the sky in a bid to outflank suicide bombers.

The commandos drop on to desert roads near their Camp Dogwood base in helicopters and search cars which could be carrying insurgents and terrorists.

The swoops were launched to avoid the danger of fixed, ground-based checkpoints becoming a magnet for martyrdom squads.

British troops, who arrived at Camp Dogwood three weeks ago, have already faced two suicide bombings at roadside checkpoints.

In one of the attacks Black Watch soldiers Sergeant Stuart Gray, 31, Private Paul Lowe, 19, and Private Scott McArdle, 22, all from Fife, were killed. In another, several Queen’s Dragoon Guards only survived because they were shielded from the blast by their tank.

The idea behind flying checkpoints is to have the commandos on the ground long enough to make several effective vehicle stops but not long enough for them to become a target themselves.

Senior officers also hope the tactic will have a psychological effect on insurgents travelling by road.

On a flying raid a dozen commandos cram in to a Puma helicopter with a Lynx as back-up.

The helicopter touches down on a dusty desert road just long enough for them to jump off and take up positions along the route.

Some kneel in the sand at the side of the tarmac with their weapons at the ready and fingers on the trigger.

No chances are taken and as traffic approaches they order it to stop up to 100 yards away.

They then shout to occupants to get out and walk forward with their hands on their heads.

When the Iraqi civilians reach the British soldiers they are searched by hand. Most seem relaxed about being searched.

After the commandos have been on the ground less than 20 minutes their helicopter, which circles above, whisks them off to another road.

The tactic has been brought to the resistance hotbed around Camp Dogwood after being used successfully around Basra in the south.

There, Chinooks full of soldiers have been used to drop in unannounced on major highways outside the city, temporarily blocking them off.

U.S. Army soldiers search for insurgents suspected of planting a roadside bomb in Mosul, Iraq Sunday, Nov. 21, 2004. U.S. and Iraqi forces in Mosul have been working put down an uprising launched by guerrillas who seized police stations and other sites. The uprising was part of a wave of violence across the country coinciding with the U.S. offensive against the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah. (AP Photo/Jim MacMillan)

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When Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said he wasn’t really saying that Linux violates more than 200 software patents, Microsoft followed up by saying Ballmer was only citing findings from a controversial study done this summer by OSRM (Open Source Risk Management), a risk-mitigation consultancy.

The study claimed that Linux has been found to potentially violate 283 software patents. The author of that report, however, doesn’t see things the way Ballmer does at all.

“Microsoft is up to its usual FUD [fear, uncertainty and doubt],” said Dan Ravicher, author of the study Microsoft cites, who is an attorney and executive director of PUBPAT (the Public Patent Foundation).

“Open source faces no more, if not less, legal risk than proprietary software. The market needs to understand that the study Microsoft is citing actually proves the opposite of what they claim it does.”

“There is no reason to believe that GNU/Linux has any greater risk of infringing patents than Windows, Unix-based or any other functionally similar operating system. Why? Because patents are infringed by specific structures that accomplish specific functionality,” Ravicher said.

“Patents don’t care how the infringing article is distributed, be it under an open-source license, a proprietary license or not at all. Therefore, if a patent infringes on Linux, it probably also infringes on Unix, Windows, etc.,” he said.

It makes no difference whether and how software is distributed, Ravicher said. “The bottom line is there’s no reason to believe that Windows, Solaris, AIX or any other functionally similar operating system has any less risk of infringing patents than Linux does.”

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Early on Saturday morning some banner advertising served for The Register by third party ad serving company Falk AG became infected with the Bofra/IFrame exploit. The Register suspended ad serving by this company on discovery of the problem.

Bofra/IFrame is a currently unpatched exploit which affects Internet Explorer 6.0 on all Windows platforms bar Windows XP SP2. If you may have visited The Register between 6am and 12.30pm GMT on Saturday, Nov 20 using any Windows platform bar XP SP2 we strongly advise you to check your machine with up to date anti-virus software, to install SP2 if you are running Windows XP, and to strongly consider running an alternative browser, at least until Microsoft deals with the issue.

We have asked Falk for an explanation and for further details of the incident, and pending this we do not intend to restart ad-serving via the company. Falk will, we understand, be making a statement regarding the matter on Monday.

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Op zaterdag 20 november 2004 zijn de sites van ilse media, waaronder Startpagina.nl, Nu.nl en ilse.nl, getroffen door een Trojan, een variant op een computervirus. Via de advertenties op deze sites werd dit virus verspreid. Van vrijdag 22 uur tot zaterdag 13 uur hebben kwaadwillenden kans gezien een code te verspreiden via de advertenties.

Gebruik je GEEN WINDOWS of heb je onze sites NIET TUSSEN GENOEMDE TIJDSTIPPEN BEZOCHT, dan is er GEEN RISICO dat je via onze websites besmet bent geraakt. Je hoeft dan geen specifieke actie te ondernemen.

In the good old days, all you had to do was avoid “bad sites”…

The funny thing is – somebody had to tell me this, my browser blocks just about all advertising, and this incident went completely under the radar for me…

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A fresh row is threatening to mar the first day in office of the new European Commission on Monday.

France’s commissioner Jacques Barrot is under fire for failing to disclose a previous conviction for embezzlement.

Mr Barrot, the transport commissioner, was given an amnesty for his conviction in 2000, but a top European lawmaker says he should quit or be suspended.

The 25-member commission starts its work three weeks later than planned, as it was initially rejected by MEPs.

Last month, Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso had to withdraw his original line-up after some lawmakers in the European Parliament objected to Italian nominee Rocco Buttiglione’s views on women and homosexuality.

The vote was finally passed last Thursday.

Mr Barrot received a suspended prison sentence for party funding offences, but French President Jacques Chirac later gave him an amnesty.