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olarPC today announced the availability of a $100 PC called the SolarLite. It is a solid-state computer targeted at organizations that require the efficiency of a maintenance free Internet PC. The SolarLite was also created to offer an ecologically and economically viable method to provide information to billions of disadvantaged people around the world. In addition, it serves as a response to last month’s challenge by Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer for the computer industry to build a $100 PC.

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De koningin gaat niet in op publieke oproepen om het ondergedoken Tweede-Kamerlid Hirsi Ali (VVD) te bezoeken. Premier Balkenende heeft dat geschreven aan de auteurs Max Pam en Nelleke Noordervliet. Hij reageert op een brief van die twee aan de vorstin, waarin een dergelijke oproep staat. Dat heeft de woordvoerder van de premier zaterdag gezegd.

Volgens Balkenende moet de koningin in haar optredens boven de partijen staan.

Balkje, je kan iemand ook als persoon bezoeken….

Maar wel de Koningin een moskee laten bezoeken. Briljant. Wedden dat de politiek de eerstvolgende peiling verbaasd is over de winst van Groep Wilders?

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Most of the desktop computers in the UK’s Department for Work and Pensions were paralysed for four days on Monday, when a failed upgrade took them offline. The outage, covering 75-80 per cent of the DWP’s 80,000 PCs, is one of the largest in the UK Government’s not entirely impressive IT history.

And possibly one of the most costly. According to staff reports the outage occurred on Monday afternoon, disconnecting staff email, benefits processing and Internet and intranet connectivity. According to one, a limited network upgrade from Windows 2000 to Windows XP was taking place, but instead of this taking place on only a small number of the target machines, all the clients connected to the network received a partial, but fatal, ‘upgrade.’

Another source says that the DWP was trialing Windows XP on a small number (“about seven”) of machines. “EDS were going to apply a patch to these, unfortunately the request was made to apply it live and it was rolled out across the estate, which hit around 80 per cent of the Win2k desktops. This patch caused the desktops to BSOD and made recovery rather tricky as they couldn’t boot to pick any further patches or recalls. I gather that MS consultants have been flown in from the US to clear up the mess.” EDS is also thought to be flying in fire brigades.

Oh my god! Piracy is now really killing the record industry! Look at the tremendous drop in sales!

Oh, wait…

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“Baywatch,” the sun-bleached saga of Californian life guards, was voted the worst-ever U.S. television import in a British survey released Thursday.

“Baywatch,” which starred Pamela Anderson and David Hasselhoff, ran from 1989 to 2001 and was once ranked the world’s most popular program, with viewers in 140 countries.

Broadcast magazine’s poll of about 20 program buyers from British terrestrial, cable and satellite channels acknowledged the appeal of a “series about a muscular lifeguard and his crew of pneumatic young helpers with raging hormones,” but condemned “Baywatch” for scripts “of mind-numbing predictability: beachgoer is saved from drowning.”

Second place in the poll went to “The Anna Nicole Show,” the reality program featuring Playboy Playmate turned model Anna Nicole Smith.

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Members of a California Army National Guard battalion preparing for deployment to Iraq said this week that they were under strict lockdown and being treated like prisoners rather than soldiers by Army commanders at the remote desert camp where they are training.

More troubling, a number of the soldiers said, is that the training they have received is so poor and equipment shortages so prevalent that they fear their casualty rate will be needlessly high when they arrive in Iraq early next year. “We are going to pay for this in blood,” one soldier said.

In this photo released by the state Department of Transportation, state Department of Transportation workers work on a section of Interstate 70 that is closed Thursday, Nov. 25, 2004, near Glenwood Springs, Colo., after a rock slide that left boulders embedded about six feet deep into part of the highway.(AP Photo/Colorado Department of Transportation)

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Congress last weekend included more than $131 million for abstinence programs in a $388 billion spending bill, an increase of $30 million but about $100 million less than Bush requested. Meanwhile, a national evaluation of abstinence programs has been delayed, with a final report not expected until 2006.

Ten state evaluations, compiled by a group that opposes abstinence-only education, showed little change in teens’ behavior since the start of abstinence programs in 1997.

The president has been a strong proponent of school-based sexual education that focuses on abstinence, but does not include instruction on safe sex.

“We don’t need a study, if I remember my biology correctly, to show us that those people who are sexually abstinent have a zero chance of becoming pregnant or getting someone pregnant or contracting a sexually transmitted disease,” said Wade Horn, the assistant secretary of Health and Human Services in charge of federal abstinence funding.

Those who say schools also should be teaching youths how to use contraceptives say Horn’s argument ignores reality. Surveys indicate that roughly 50 percent of teens say they have sex before they leave high school. While the nation’s teenage pregnancy rate is declining, young people 15 to 24 account for about half the new cases of sexually transmitted diseases in the United States each year.

Teaching only about abstinence means students will be less able to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, say supporters of comprehensive sexual education.

“The only 100 percent way to avoid a car collision is not to drive, but the federal government sure does a lot of advocacy for safety belts,” said James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth, a group that promotes education about birth control and condom use.

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A few years ago an Italian friend of mine travelled by train from Boston to Providence. She had only been in America for a couple weeks and hadn’t seen much of the country yet. She arrived looking astonished. “It’s so ugly!”

People from other rich countries can scarcely imagine the squalor of the man-made bits of America. In travel books they show you mostly natural environments: the Grand Canyon, whitewater rafting, horses in a field. If you see pictures with man-made things in them, it will be either a view of the New York skyline shot from a discreet distance, or a carefully cropped image of a seacoast town in Maine.

How can it be, visitors must wonder. How can the richest country in the world look like this?

Oddly enough, it may not be a coincidence. Americans are good at some things and bad at others. We’re good at making movies and software, and bad at making cars and cities. And I think we may be good at what we’re good at for the same reason we’re bad at what we’re bad at. We’re impatient. In America, if you want to do something, you don’t worry that it might come out badly, or upset delicate social balances, or that people might think you’re getting above yourself. If you want to do something, as Nike says, just do it.

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We made Disctop to bring a bit of fun in working with your brand new iMac G5, although it can be of use as well, and not only for owners of an iMac. Normally when you insert a CD in your Mac it disappears, but where does it go? They simply pop up on your desktop! After installing Disctop, your inserted CD or DVD slides in from the side and neatly fades back into your desktop picture. Now you always know if there’s a disc inside, and what type it is.

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A leading Wall Street analyst expects 100 million Windows users to own iPods by 2008.

In a 27-page note released to clients, Needham & Co. analyst Charles Wolf revealed that, when such critical mass is achieved, “Mac sales could surge if only a nominal fraction of this group make a purchase.”

While Apple has remained tight-lipped concerning claims that it intends releasing a flash-based iPod, Wolf says: “Although we expect hard drive players to capture an increasing share of the portable music player market, flash players should dominate the market through 2006.”

[..]

Microsoft argues that consumers want choice in their online music purchases, and will eventually favour non-Apple devices. Wolf declares that the Redmond company’s assessment, “ignores reality”.

Wolf does not believe music lovers care about music formats when they buy songs, and that most songs are ripped from CDs or downloaded elsewhere. He argues that consumers don’t care which online service they use, as long as it has what they want and is compatible with their device, and adds that content will not drive a single standard service to emerge, as music content will be identically-available on multiple services.

“There are no compelling economic reasons why Microsoft’s Windows Media Audio music software platform should end up dominating this market just because it’s been adopted by a host of online music stores and music players”, he writes.

“In our opinion, the only way Windows Media could emerge as the dominant platform is if Apple stops innovating its iTunes software and the iPod,” he states.

[..]

“We’re forecasting iPod sales of 23.5 million units in 2006,” Wolf adds.

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De bevolking van Curaçao kan op 8 april naar de stembus om in een referendum haar mening te geven over de staatkundige toekomst van het Antilliaanse eiland. Dit heeft de Curaçaose gedeputeerde van Algemene Zaken, Jesus-Leito donderdag bekendgemaakt.

Er zijn vier opties. Optie A staat voor het behoud van de situatie zoals die nu is, dus Curaçao blijft deel uitmaken van de Nederlandse Antillen. Optie B houdt in dat Curaçao een autonoom land binnen het koninkrijk wordt. Optie C betekent dat Curaçao een deel van Nederland wordt. Optie D pleit voor onafhankelijkheid.

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I got back into LEGO building in June, 2000, shortly after adopting Precious, my third cat. She loved to be amidst my building from the start. She didn’t disturb partially assembled LEGO objects, or even piles of bricks, so I could leave her to play around my assembled work without too much fear of damage.

My first project was to be a large house, about 4 feet by 2 feet in size. I drew floor plans and built much of the front wall as a test of concept, then set about creating a pattern for the floor that was to become the living room. I quickly came up with a double row of crosses that reminded me of the center aisle of a church, and building a church suddenly seemed like a more interesting project.

The flood of American liberals sneaking across the border into Canada has intensified in the past week, sparking calls for increased patrols to stop the illegal immigration.

The re-election of President Bush is prompting the exodus among left leaning citizens who fear they’ll soon be required to hunt, pray and agree with Bill O’Reilly.

Canadian border farmers say it’s not uncommon to see dozens of sociology professors, animal rights activists and Unitarians crossing their fields at night.

“I went out to milk the cows the other day, and there was a Hollywood producer huddled in the barn,” said Manitoba farmer Red Greenfield, whose acreage borders North Dakota.

The producer was cold, exhausted and hungry.

“He asked me if I could spare a latte and some free-range chicken. When I said I didn’t have any, he left. Didn’t even get a chance to show him my screenplay, eh?”

In an effort to stop the illegal aliens, Greenfield erected higher fences, but the liberals scaled them. So he tried installing speakers that blare Rush Limbaugh across the fields.

“Not real effective,” he said. ”The liberals still got through, and Rush annoyed the cows so much they wouldn’t give milk.”

Officials are particularly concerned about smugglers who meet liberals near the Canadian border, pack them into Volvo station wagons, drive them across the border and leave them to fend for themselves.

“A lot of these people are not prepared for rugged conditions,” an Ontario border patrolman said. ”I found one carload without a drop of drinking water. They did have a nice little Napa Valley cabernet, though.”

When liberals are caught, they’re sent back across the border, often wailing loudly that they fear retribution from conservatives. Rumors have been circulating about the Bush administration establishing re-education camps in which liberals will be forced to drink domestic beer and watch NASCAR.

In the days since the election, liberals have turned to sometimes ingenious ways of crossing the border.

Some have taken to posing as senior citizens on bus trips to buy cheap Canadian prescription drugs. After catching a half-dozen young vegans disguised in powdered wigs, Canadian immigration authorities began stopping buses and quizzing the supposed senior-citizen passengers.

“If they can’t identify the accordion player on The Lawrence Welk Show, we get suspicious about their age,” an official said.

Canadian citizens have complained that the illegal immigrants are creating an organic-broccoli shortage and renting all the good Susan Sarandon movies.

“I feel sorry for American liberals, but the Canadian economy just can’t support them,” an Ottawa resident said. ”How many art-history majors does one country need?”

In an effort to ease tensions between the United States and Canada, Vice President Dick Cheney met with the Canadian ambassador and pledged that the administration would take steps to reassure liberals, a source close to Cheney said.

“We’re going to have some Peter, Paul & Mary concerts. And we might put some endangered species on postage stamps. The president is determined to reach out.”

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According to a survey of iPod users by financial analysis firm Piper Jaffray, Macs are basking in the reflected glory of the iPod, with some who own the music player saying they have already or are intending to ditch their PCs for Macs.

The research found that 6 percent of iPod users have made the switch. An additional 7 percent said they are planning to dump their old PC for an Apple machine, according to the survey.

Gene Munster, Piper Jaffray senior research analyst, said the iPod halo effect will make a difference to Apple for a while to come.

If Picasso were alive today, he would paint this NBA picture..

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Young people just aren’t interested in reading newspapers and print magazines. In fact, according to Washington City Paper, The Washington Post organized a series of six focus groups in September to determine why the paper was having so much trouble attracting younger readers. You see, daily circulation, which had been holding firm at 770,000 subscribers for the last few years, fell more than 6 percent to about 720,100 by June 2004, with the paper losing 4,000 paying subscribers every month.

Imagine what higher-ups at the Post must have thought when focus-group participants declared they wouldn’t accept a Washington Post subscription even if it were free. The main reason (and I’m not making this up): They didn’t like the idea of old newspapers piling up in their houses.

Don’t think for a minute that young people don’t read. On the contrary, they do, many of them voraciously. But having grown up under the credo that information should be free, they see no reason to pay for news. Instead they access The Washington Post website or surf Google News, where they select from literally thousands of information sources. They receive RSS feeds on their PDAs or visit bloggers whose views mesh with their own. In short, they customize their news-gathering experience in a way a single paper publication could never do. And their hands never get dirty from newsprint.

found here

Stand on the shoulders of giants

About Google Scholar - Google Home

©2004 Google

[Google Scholar enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web.

Just as with Google Web Search, Google Scholar orders your search results by how relevant they are to your query, so the most useful references should appear at the top of the page. This relevance ranking takes into account the full text of each article as well as the article’s author, the publication in which the article appeared and how often it has been cited in scholarly literature. Google Scholar also automatically analyzes and extracts citations and presents them as separate results, even if the documents they refer to are not online. This means your search results may include citations of older works and seminal articles that appear only in books or other offline publications.

This couldn’t be easier. Just follow these simple instructions:

1. Click your mouse just to the left the letter "S" below.
2. Hold down the mouse button and move your mouse down and right until you are to the right of the letter "K".
3. Voila!

stop screwing around and
get back to work

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You know holiday shopping is offensive and wasteful. You know Christmas “wish lists” and “gift exchanges” degrade the concept of giving. You know Christmas marketing is a scam, benefiting manufacturers, stores, and huge corporations, while driving individuals into debt. You know this annual consumer frenzy wreaks havoc on the environment, filling landfills with useless packaging and discarded gifts.

Yet, every year, you cave in and go shopping.

The relentless onslaught of advertising exerts constant pressure. So do the unified bleatings of herds of shoppers, who call you “Scrooge” if you fail to enthusiastically join their ritual orgy of consumption. Friends and family needle you with gift requests, store windows beckon with shiny colorful packages, the same “classic” holiday jingles are piped constantly through every speaker in town.

How can you resist?

Join the Christmas Resistance Movement!

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Keitai Watch reports that as part of a renewal of their site, Amazon Japan has introduced a flattering new feature called “Amazon Scan Search.” After users download an application to their cell phone free of charge, they can scan barcodes of ordinary products, which in turn enables them to search the cell phone version of Amazon.co.jp for the respective product. Once they get a result on their search, they can then choose to purchase the item right from their phone.

found here

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The US military says Marines in Fallujah have shot and killed an insurgent who engaged them as he was faking being dead, a week after footage of a marine killing an apparently unarmed and wounded Iraqi caused a stir in the region.

“Marines from the 1st Marine Division shot and killed an insurgent who while faking dead opened fire on the marines who were conducting a security and clearing patrol through the streets,” a military statement said.

The point-blank shooting on November 13 of a wounded Iraqi was caught on tape and beamed around the world.

It raised questions about the degree of military restraint and fanned Arab resentment.

The marine was withdrawn from combat and an investigation launched.

Military sources had said that the rules of engagement were looser during the operation launched in Fallujah, for fear that rebels would be disguised, fake death or wear suicide explosives belts.

This happens in all ‘wars’. By definition, a war is a form of disease, of madness. You can’t make sense of it, explain it, separate yourself from it. There is only one option: make sure it never happens; and if it is thrust upon you, do everything you can to stop its spread. Journalists need to realize that their role is more like an observer in an insane asylum: if they try to make sense of whats going on around them, they will be sucked into madness. Their job is to observe, clinically, objectively, un-Romantically. They must show the truth as unpleasant, as ugly, as violent as it is, as there is no other road out of madness than an unflinching confrontation with its pathology.

“Choose your enemies carefully, for you will come to resemble them”

– Sun Tzu