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May God bless us with enough foolishness to believe that we can make a difference in this world, so that we can do what others claim cannot be done.

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Chirac heeft nog maar zes weken. Maar het is zeer de vraag of zijn tussenkomst het bedoelde effect zal hebben. Als Frankrijk vorig jaar september had gestemd, dan was twee derde v��r de Grondwet geweest. Sindsdien is het bergafwaarts gegaan. Alle discussie, die vooral de laatste weken heftig was, heeft vooral meer tegenstanders opgeleverd.

Wellicht is dat ook de reden dat Nederlandse ministers zich gedeisd houden. Toch staan de handtekeningen van premier Balkenende en minister Bot onder de Grondwet. Alle 25 EU-regeringen hebben zich verplicht om de Grondwet door hun parlementen en referenda te loodsen.

Maar als regeringen campagne gaan voeren, dan dreigen tegenstanders van die regeringen van de weeromstuit ook in de oppositie tegen de Grondwet te belanden. In Nederland zijn de meeste partijen verenigd in hun steun aan de Grondwet. Maar het PvdA-kamerlid Frans Timmermans is wel gepikeerd dat de ministers zo stil zijn. ,,Ik heb in enkele weken tijd meer over Europa gedebatteerd dan in de afgelopen zeven jaar. Maar Balkenende en Bot hoor je nauwelijks. Ze duiken weg.”

Tja, stel je ook voor zeg, dat je de mensen goed ge�nformeerd democratisch zou laten stemmen over de democratie. Dat kan toch echt niet! Alles zal er op gericht zijn om de discussies te sussen en de kiezer te ontmoedigen te gaan stemmen. Daarna kunnen de partijen het overnemen en het land opzadelen met een molensteen van een grondwet, waar niemand om gevraagd heeft. En de subsidies voor de informatie over de grondwet zijn zorgvuldig over voor- en tegenstemmers verdeeld. Zorgvuldig in het voordeel van het kabinet, natuurlijk – zo is Eurodusnie ontvanger van 40.000 euri subsidie, zodat bij tegenstemmen door het volk gemakkelijk naar “de anarchisten” gewezen kan worden.

A new game for bored office workers: catch the plane in flight.

(if you follow that frame eastward, you can see the plane gaining altitude)

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This photo was taken on November 14, 2000.� The 60 x 60 meter swastika consisted of Larch trees in a Pine forest near the village of Zernikow (110 km Northeast of Berlin). It was only visible from the air a few weeks in the Spring and a few weeks in the Fall when Larch trees stood out in contract to the surrounding Pine trees.

These trees were planted in the 1930′s by a local resident during Nazi times. They were largely forgotten until after the German reunification in 1992 when planes once again flew over the area.

Local forestry officials cut down 25 of the Larch trees after this photo appeared in several German tabloids.� Swastikas are mostly outlawed in Germany.. Coins and stamps are exempt from the ban.

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Comcast, the top U.S. cable TV network operator, is being sued by a Seattle-area woman for disclosing her name and contact information, court records showed Thursday.

In a lawsuit filed in King County, Wash., Dawnell Leadbetter said that she was contacted by a debt collection agency in January and told to pay a $4,500 for downloading copyright-protected music or face a lawsuit for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Contacted by a debt collection agency? For alleged copyright violations? Weird…

Last summer, at the World Wide Developer Conference, Apple previewed Tiger, the new version of Mac OS X:

That same week, Microsoft responded with a lot of media noise about Longhorn.

Last week, Apple announced the ship date of Tiger. April 29. So, predictable, journalists are again given “an early peek at Longhorn“. Anybody want to bet we’ll see the same thing two weeks from now?

It’s the same story Microsoft has told for years.. “Yeah, those other guys might have some cool shit, but the stuff we’re working on is WAY better. Don’t buy their stuff, wait for our new thing to come out. It’ll be available Real Soon Now.”

People don’t even want to move to a free SP2, does think people will buy Longhorn?

But anway, let’s have some fun with the article:

Allchin said that Longhorn also goes further than Tiger when it comes to what one can do with search results, saying it offers new ways to organize and view the information

“We got both kinds of search views. We sort by date OR time!”

Apart from the fact that Spotlight already has that feature, there’s almost two bloody years between Spotlight and Longhorn shipping. Is he really expecting Apple to stand still all that time?

Microsoft also has focused on improving the experience when using a laptop computer. A fast-start option, combined with support for external displays, will make it easier to create computers that can display calendar information or play music without having to start up the whole PC, including the OS.

That explains the panic on the users’ face every time I just close the lid of an XP laptop, something I’ve been doing for years with my iBook.

For example, a PC with Longhorn might show all the music files together, whether they are on the local PC or another machine on the network.

Funny, the XP systems I know already do that. The application is called iTunes. Oh, wait…