[Quote:]

Two traveling penguins from Seaworld in San Antonio went through regular airport screening at Denver International Airport recently. Here, Pat and Penny are removed from their carry-on case so they can walk through the metal detector. (Pat is the good looking one)

[Quote:]

Ms Duncombe had told the Daily Telegraph she did not know what the flag signified until the controversy erupted, but would not remove it because her four-month-old daughter liked its bright colours.

Just in case, the newspaper added this last paragraph to the article..

The red Nazi flag, with its black swastika on a white circle, was the symbol of Adolf Hitler’s anti-Semitic German Third Reich, responsible for the slaughter of millions of innocent people.

[Quote:]

Aviation history was made this morning when the first A380, the world’s largest commercial aircraft, successfully took off on its maiden flight, leaving Blagnac International Airport in Toulouse, France at 10.29 hours local time (08.29 UTC) from runway 32L. The A380 first flight is taking place above the region west of Toulouse and South West France.

[Quote:]

Als de terroristische aanslagen in de Verenigde Staten twee weken eerder zouden hebben plaatsgevonden, dan had oud-premier Kok niet in 2001 zijn afscheid als PvdA-leider aangekondigd.

Kok maakte op 29 augustus dat jaar bekend niet beschikbaar te zijn voor een nieuwe periode. Twee weken later, op 11 september, waren er de terroristische aanslagen in de VS.

In het boek “Met Kok over veranderend Nederland”, dat op 3 mei verschijnt, zegt de oud-premier: “Als 11 september twee weken eerder was geweest, dan zou ik de aankondiging dat ik wegging waarschijnlijk niet hebben gedaan. Niet omdat ik het niet zou hebben aangedurfd de PvdA aan andere handen toe te vertrouwen, maar omdat ik dan niet de verantwoordelijkheid zou hebben durven nemen Nederland zo achter te laten, als het ware in de steek te laten”.

Hij heeft duidelijk evenveel vertrouwen in balkje als ik…

[Quote:]

This experiment follows the pioneering experiment carried out in Bergen, Norway (1999). The experiment demonstrated the feasibility of the “IP over Avian Carriers” protocol – an RFC for delivering data using pigeons, formulated by David Waitzman’s. This B2P (Back to Pigeons) line of research was significantly extended by Ami Ben-Bassat, Guy Vardi, and Yossi Vardi. In 2004, Ben-Bassat et al sent three homing pigeons to a 100 kilometer distance, each carrying 1.3 gigabits on tiny flash memory cards, yielding a transfer rate faster than ADSL.

Yet the Wi-Fly TCP (Transmission by Pigeons) protocol of wireless internet has had its limitations. First, pigeons cannot fly through Windows. Second, since they don’t fly in darkness either, this method’s bandwidth drops to zero 50% of the time. Finally, there’s the problem of droppings download. We are pleased to report that all these shortcomings were resolved in our new data transfer protocol, as we now turn to describe.

[..]

Denial of service: In some regions, most notably France, culinary habits may pose a denial-of-service (DOS) risk. In particular, French users will have to choose whether they want to be served data-ex-cargo or an escargot.

Each time you step on a snail from now on, you will have to pick it up, look at the source adress, and send back an icmp code 11,0 (time to live expired in transit).

[Quote]:

The Business Software Alliance (BSA) today joined the global community in commemorating 2005 World Intellectual Property Day, an initiative to educate young people about how intellectual property rights foster innovation, creativity and economic opportunity.

“Copyright infringement threatens the promise and potential of so many young entrepreneurs, inventors and technologists,” said BSA President and CEO Robert Holleyman. “We must continue our shared public-private efforts to deter piracy and promote intellectual property rights in every corner of the globe. Our children’s ability to learn, create and innovate must be protected now and in the decades ahead.”

In an effort to promote a safe and responsible digital world, BSA has developed global educational programs for elementary and higher education students that emphasize the importance of being good cyber citizens and respecting the intellectual property of copyrighted works. These programs also encourage students to use only legal software and to understand the impact of software theft.

We already have a World Cancer Day and a World AIDS day, why shouldn’t we have a World Intellectual Property Day too? I’d like to give my support to all the victims of Intellectual Property and I’m sure a lot of other people would too.

[Quote:]

Het Instituut voor Publiek en Politiek (IPP) wil dat het linkse actiecollectief Eurodusnie stopt met zijn site Referendumstemwijzer.nl.

Zelf maakt het IPP gebruik van het domein Referendumwijzer.nl voor zijn online stemhulp voor het referendum over de Europese grondwet. Volgens het IPP lijkt de door Eurodusnie gebruikte naam daar te veel op.

Daarom eiste het IPP dinsdagochtend voor de Haagse rechtbank dat Eurodusnie stopt met het gebruik van de naam Referendumstemwijzer.nl.

Eurodusnie is niet van zins het domein zonder slag of stoot op te geven. “Wij van Eurodusnie vinden het te bizar voor woorden dat een uit overheidsgeld gefinancierd instituut, dat tot doel heeft de ‘politieke en maatschappelijke participatie te bevorderen’, een maatschappelijke organisatie als Eurodusnie voor de rechter sleept”, schrijft het actiecollectief op zijn site. “Alsof mensen te dom zijn het verschil tussen de verschillende politieke voorkeurstesten te zien.”
Paspoort

De opzet van de alternatieve stemwijzer van Eurodusnie is vergelijkbaar met die van het IPP. Bezoekers moeten reageren op stellingen als ‘Schaalvergroting en centralisering van besluitvorming zijn goed voor de democratie’. Na het doorlopen van 27 vragen krijgt de bezoeker een advies. Bijvoorbeeld: “U bent 75 procent tegen de EU grondwet.”

Het Leidse Eurodusnie heeft een subsidie gekregen van 40.000 euro voor een campagne tegen de Europese grondwet. Dat bij Eurodusnie niet de grootste fans van de Europese grondwet zitten, blijkt ook uit de vraagstelling van hun alternatieve stemwijzer.

Wie het eens is met de stelling ‘Alle inwoners van de Europese Unie dienen dezelfde rechten te hebben’, krijgt bijvoorbeeld het advies om tegen de grondwet te stemmen. Immers: “Niet alle inwoners van de Europese Unie zijn voor de grondwet hetzelfde. Enkel de bezitters van een paspoort van een van de lidstaten kunnen genieten van de status van ‘Europees Burgerschap’.”

Eerder stelde de SP – eveneens tegenstander van de Europese grondwet – dat de ‘offici�le’ stemwijzer van het IPP bevooroordeeld zou zijn. SP-kamerlid Harry van Bommel noemde de online referendumwijzer ‘buitengewoon selectief en buitengewoon misleidend’.

De vragen van Eurodusnie hebben af en toe inderdaad een overduidelijke voorkeur, maar veel interessanter zijn de twee dingen die de “gewone” stemwijzer niet lijkt te hebben: een laatste pagina met een hoop vinkjes waar je kan aangeven welke onderwerpen voor jou extra belangrijk zijn, zodat ze dubbel meegeteld worden, en een resultatenpagina waar exact wordt uitgelegd waarom een keuze die je gemaakt hebt voor of tegen de grondwet meetelt. Ondanks de duidelijke voorkeur lijkt de stemwijzer van Eurodusnie van hogere kwaliteit en correcter te zijn, en dat wil wat zeggen over de “officiele”.

“I must be extra careful not to get pregnant,” said Julie to her best friend June.

“But I thought you said your hubby had a vasectomy,” June responded.

“He did. That’s why I have to be extra careful!” shrieked Julie.

Interesting. Yesterday I entered an order for a new iBook on the online Apple Store (if my iBook had died a month later, I might have begged you all for a birthday gift for my 40th on June 4th).

At first, the status listing showed it would ship “on or before April 26″. Just a few minutes ago, this showed up in my email:

Wij stellen het op prijs dat u voor de Apple Store hebt gekozen.

De vraag naar het door u bestelde product is groter dan verwacht. Daardoor is het
niet mogelijk u het product op de opgegeven verzenddatum toe te sturen. Uiteraard zullen
wij het bestelde product zo spoedig mogelijk verzenden. De verzending zal nu naar verwachting op 3 mei 2005 plaatsvinden.

translation:

Thank you for choosing the Apple Store.

Demand for the product you ordered is greater than expected. Therefore it is not possible to send you the product on the date quoted. Of course we will send you the ordered product as soon as possible. We now expect to ship may 3rd.

I ordered a stock, vanilla 12″ iBook – smallest harddisk (I don’t need more than 30 Gb on my laptop), no memory extension (after-marktet is significantly cheaper, I ordered an additional 512 Mb seperately elsewhere), so basically no ‘built-to-order’ difficulties whatsoever. So there’s a few options:

1. They really are selling more than expected
2. They want to ship it with Tiger, which officially doesn’t ship until the 29th – so I’ll get Tiger pre-installed instead of a coupon (which I would have been happy with, of course)
3. They are about to introduce a speed-bump or similar new hardware. Now traditionally the week after the NAB expo they introduce new desktop machines, and all the rumor sites indicate that new desktop hardware is indeed imminent, if you could call a premature listing at Amazon “imminent”. But new portable hardware, and certainly low-end, is unlikely after the expo.

Any guesses which one it will be?

Yippie! I scored 267 on my first attempt at Guess-the-google

[Quote:]

The BBC has uncovered evidence that the police and security services have compiled lists – some containing names of innocent people – to show to suspected al-Qaeda terrorists when interrogating them. The BBC’s Barnie Choudhury reports.

I met Ghalem Belhadj at his solicitor’s office in Glasgow. A big man, over 6ft, dressed in Islamic silwar-kameez, and beard. There is no doubt he is a Muslim. And he says, with no irony in his voice, that means he must be a terrorist.

Well, that is what Strathclyde Police must have thought for, he says, they bashed down his door and arrested him. Despite his repeated denials he was jailed for three months and then released without charge.

“First time I think it was immigration and after that they give me a sheet of paper in Arabic, it say they stop you and say you are for group terrorist,” he says in broken English, “They stop me, surprised and put me in white suit and they took me to Glasgow to Govan Police Station. ”
….

He believes the intelligence used is flawed because, he says, the police and security services are getting it by putting pressure on vulnerable people such as asylum seekers.

This claim is backed up by Mohammed Asif, a former asylum seeker from Afghanistan who now works in Glasgow.

He says he was approached to become an informant just after the collapse of the Taleban, while seeking asylum.

“A police officer, who was a very close friend of mine, he is retired now, and he said that there are two possibilities that people are talking in the force. Either you get arrested or you work for them. But I am not interested in dirty work,” he said.

With his contacts among the asylum seekers, Mr Asif is in no doubt it is still happening today, especially among the Algerian community. We wanted to take up this point with Strathclyde police but they declined to comment.

We tried to find out what had happened to the 82 on the list. We could not track down 52 of the names. Of the remaining 30, twenty-six were either never charged with or convicted of terrorism. That means almost a third on the list of 82 were innocent of terror charges in the eyes of the law.

In the war on terror the lack of openness by the police and security services about how they obtain their intelligence and its accuracy is understandable.

But among human rights campaigners there remains an uneasiness that innocent people are being added to lists and accused of crimes they have never committed.

Technically, you’d only need one time traveler convention.

[Quote:]

Becta, the Government’s lead agency for ICT in education, is set to release a new report which will say that schools could save significant sums by switching to open source software, eGov monitor can report.

The landmark report will show that OSS can be implemented successfully in schools and present documented examples of cost savings from its use.

Becta’s report, based on a study of 15 schools, will state that open source office products have been demonstrated to offer schools a cost-effective alternative to proprietary software.

Among the key findings will be that primary and secondary schools using OSS substantially reduced the total cost of ownership per PC. Support costs – typically accounting for more than half a PC’s total cost – showed the biggest reduction.

Furthermore, case studies showed that the cost advantages of OSS were often used to increase provision, rather than reduce overall budgets in schools.

It will also highlight that OSS can provide an appropriate infrastructure for schools and is well supported, with good reliability and performance.

When some people say they’re creating a Home Theater, they mean it.

[Quote:]

SP-kamerlid Harry van Bommel noemt de online referendumwijzer ‘buitengewoon selectief en buitengewoon misleidend’. De site van het Instituut voor Publiek en Politiek (IPP) helpt de kiezer zijn standpunt te bepalen bij het referendum over de Europese grondwet.

Zelf kreeg Van Bommel, verklaard tegenstander van de Europese grondwet, bij het invullen van de test een score van 68 procent (eens met de grondwet). “Het IPP kan beter stoppen met deze referendumwijzer”, meent Van Bommel.

Ik heb de “test” ook even gedaan – en kwam op 66 procent uit. Mijn belangrijkste thema’s kwamen in het geheel niet voor in de test – de wijze waarop bijvoorbeeld de Europese Commissie wordt samengesteld, toch het machtigste orgaan in de EU, wordt niet genoemd. Rechten van het parlement om de Commissie te “corrigeren” ook niet. Democratie is kennelijk geen issue voor de grondwet, dus ik blijf een “Nee” stemmer.

[Quote:]

The Inter-American Telecommunication Commission meets three times a year in various cities across the Americas to discuss such dry but important issues as telecommunications standards and spectrum regulations. But for this week’s meeting in Guatemala City, politics has barged onto the agenda. At least four of the two dozen or so U.S. delegates selected for the meeting, sources tell TIME, have been bumped by the White House because they supported John Kerry’s 2004 campaign.

The State Department has traditionally put together a list of industry representatives for these meetings, and anyone in the U.S. telecom industry who had the requisite expertise and wanted to go was generally given a slot, say past participants. Only after the start of Bush’s second term did a political litmus test emerge, industry sources say.

The White House admits as much: “We wanted people who would represent the Administration positively, and–call us nutty–it seemed like those who wanted to kick this Administration out of town last November would have some difficulty doing that,” says White House spokesman Trent Duffy.

Many, many more jewels of graphic design here…

[Quote:]

L’UFC-Que Choisir a obtenu de la cour d’appel de Paris l’interdiction de placer des dispositifs anticopie sur les DVD. Ils sont jugés incompatibles avec l’exercice de la copie privée.

Et tu, EU?

Translation of the article:

UFC-Que Choisir (a French consumer protection organization) has been granted a prohibition on DVD copy protection devices by the Paris Court of Appeal, these devices having been judged to be incompatible with private copying rights.

Arnaud Devillard, 01net., April 22, 2005 at 7:28pm

What consumer protection groups have not yet succeeded in gaining for CDs, they have just obtained for DVDs. On April 22nd, the Paris Court of Appeal prohibited the use of DVD-based copy protection systems. The reason? The incompatibility of this practice with private copying rights.

Two companies, Les Films Alain Sarde and Studio Canal, thus suffered a serious setback after having won the case in the Court of First Instance at the end of April 2004.

UFC-Que Choisir latched onto the case of a consumer who was unable to copy a DVD of Mulholland Drive, a David Lynch film produced by Alain Sarde and Studio Canal, onto a video cassette. This person wanted to watch the film at his mother’s, who did not have a DVD player. The strict familial context mandated for the exercise of private copying rights was therefore applicable.

The tribunal also faulted the DVD producers for lack of consumer information. This was not entirely absent but was judged to be insufficient. The label “CP” for “Copy Protected” was indeed present on the jacket, but in “small characters” and not sufficiently explicit.

A worrying judgement for the French Video Producers’ Association.

Les Films Alain Sarde and Studio Canal have one month to unblock their DVDs. At the same time, Alain Sarde and Universal Pictures Video France must pay 100 euros in damages to the consumer in question. The same two companies, and Studio Canal, must also pay him 150 euros as well as 1,500 euros to the consumer association.

On the other hand, the court refused the request for damages and interest by UFC-Que Choisir against Studio Canal. The consumer association admitted to a legal misstep on its part, having chosen the wrong target for its request. The court also refused to release a judiciary communiqueé on the decision.

It goes without saying, however, that UFC-Que Choisir is more than satisfied, as the damages and interest were not the main object of the case. This was rather the acceptance of its argument regarding private copying. This, and the fact that the decision can be applied to other cases “as long as the original DVD was purchased legally,” says Gaëlle Patetta of the association’s legal department.

But for the delegate general of the Video Producers’ Association, Jean-Yves Mirski, the decision is “worrisome”. Not having had the time to analyze the decision in detail, the VPA has not yet decided whether to appeal the decision to a higher court (the Court of Cassation). But this is far from out of the question.

In any case, according to Jean-Yves Mirski, this judicial turn of events “directly contradicts the European Copyright Directive.” The latter permits the use of copy protection systems. This will certainly not make future legal action on this subject any simpler.

http://www.geefjemeningvleugels.nl/

[Quote:]

The weather in Oslo was pleasantly mild as Jon S. von Tetzchner prepared for his transatlantic swim this morning. After struggling with the wet suit for over an hour, the 195 cm tall CEO looked sharp and focused as he took his last steps on Norwegian soil before entering the freezing Oslo fjord.

“We are so proud of Jon for doing this,” said Anne Stavnes, HR manager, Opera Software. Considering that the closest thing Jon has ever come to swimming was in the hot springs in Iceland when he was a kid, and those aren’t even 3 feet deep.”

Sporting the Norwegian and the U.S. flag as an appropriate symbol of the journey ahead, the company inflatable raft, “Phantom”, had been duly prepared for the long trip. Manned with a satellite phone, maps, food, water and a book with inspirational quotes from the Viking sagas, Opera’s PR manager, Eskil Sivertsen, had taken it upon himself to row alongside Jon for the duration of the trip,
partly out of guilt for having made his CEO’s bold statement public.

[Quote:]

In our three-part history of animation in Britain, we look at delightful cartoons for children, engaging advertising and truly challenging films. We meet some of the innovative artists involved and, following on from the documentaries, will screen three showcases of animated films.

Link to index of Real Player clips

[The Quote:]

Pope Benedict XVI faced claims last night he had ‘obstructed justice’ after it emerged he issued an order ensuring the church’s investigations into child sex abuse claims be carried out in secret.

The order was made in a confidential letter, obtained by The Observer, which was sent to every Catholic bishop in May 2001.

It asserted the church’s right to hold its inquiries behind closed doors and keep the evidence confidential for up to 10 years after the victims reached adulthood. The letter was signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was elected as John Paul II’s successor last week.

Lawyers acting for abuse victims claim it was designed to prevent the allegations from becoming public knowledge or being investigated by the police. They accuse Ratzinger of committing a ‘clear obstruction of justice’.

[quote]:

Juf Ingrid heeft voor opschudding gezorgd in Harkema na een blootsessie in het sexblad Foxy. De foto’s kwamen onder ogen van de schooldirecteur van It Holdersnêst waar de juf werkt. De juf is daarop een week lang thuis gebleven in overleg met de directie. Er is de afgelopen week veel gesproken. De juf zal waarschijnlijk dinsdag weer aan de slag gaan als de gemoederen zijn gesust.

De foto’s werden genomen op de Kamasutra erotiekbeurs in Utrecht waar Ingrid samen met vriendin Durkje aan de fotosessie kon mee doen. In het huidige nummer van Foxy staat een voorproefje van de gehele fotosessie die in het volgende nummer te zien is. De schooldirectie vindt de huidige situatie erg vervelend omdat een juf toch ook een voorbeeldfunctie heeft. Voor sommige schoolkinderen maakt het misschien minder uit. Zij zijn al aan het sparen zodat ze het boekje waar hun juf in staat straks kunnen kopen.

[Quote]:

UK music lovers are getting frustrated with restrictions placed on digital music tracks once they buy them from online stores, says PC Pro magazine.

The magazine reported that people are also being turned off net music stores because of pricing and disappointing sound quality compared to CDs.

[..]

One confused reader said he had spent 40 pound in an online store. Although his MP3 player played Windows Media Audio (WMA) files that he created, it would not play the copyright-protected WMA files he had purchased.

Another revealed to the magazine how he had to pay twice to download a song because of an error with the online store.

When he tried to swap the song onto another computer he found he was restricted from doing so.

PC Pro says people are growing increasingly dissatisfied with restrictions on tracks they have paid for, especially if the price they pay is similar to that which is paid for a physical CD.

Looks like people are finally reading the fine print…

My iBook died this weekend. That is, the machine works fine except for the video. I gues I’ll turn it into a small server.

For donations for a replacement: contact me

In the mean time, I guess I won’t be blogging as much, since I’m now temporarily using a 380 Mhz Pentium II laptop with a knoppix installation without all the goodies I’ve been getting used to in OS X.

-John

[Quote:]

Marla Ruzicka went to Iraq with one clear purpose — to help Iraqis who are victims of the ongoing battle with insurgents. Tragically, she too was a casualty, killed in a suicide bombing. But those whose lives she touched say she will never be forgotten.

This photo with an Iraqi child was taken only hours before Ms. Ruzicka’s untimely death. The little girl was just three-months-old when she lost her entire family in a rocket attack.

It was for this child, and many other Iraqis victimized by the ongoing violence, that Marla founded the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, or CIVIC.

Because the Pentagon doesn’t keep track of civilian casualties, Marla visited homes and hospitals in Iraq, trying to get an accurate count and description of civilians killed or wounded.

Her work took her to the most dangerous areas. Those who knew Marla feared for her life; she frequently drove around Iraq without any bodyguards. Sadly, their worst fears came true recently, when Marla was killed in a suicide bombing near Baghdad.

[Quote:]

Growing at a rate of about 900 inmates each week between mid-2003 and mid-2004, the nation’s prisons and jails held 2.1 million people, or one in every 138 U.S. residents, the government reported Sunday.

By last June 30, there were 48,000 more inmates, or 2.3 percent, more than the year before, according to the latest figures from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. …

…While the crime rate has fallen over the past decade, the number of people in prison and jail is outpacing the number of inmates released, said the report’s co-author, Paige Harrison. For example, the number of admissions to federal prisons in 2004 exceeded releases by more than 8,000, the study found.

Harrison said the increase can be attributed largely to get-tough policies enacted in the 1980s and 1990s. Among them are mandatory drug sentences, “three-strikes-and-you’re-out” laws for repeat offenders, and “truth-in-sentencing” laws that restrict early releases.

…Added Malcolm Young, executive director of the Sentencing Project, which promotes alternatives to prison: “We’re working under the burden of laws and practices that have developed over 30 years that have focused on punishment and prison as our primary response to crime.”

He said many of those incarcerated are not serious or violent offenders, but are low-level drug offenders. Young said one way to help lower the number is to introduce drug treatment programs that offer effective ways of changing behavior and to provide appropriate assistance for the mentally ill.

According to the Justice Policy Institute, which advocates a more lenient system of punishment, the United States has a higher rate of incarceration than any other country, followed by Britain, China, France, Japan and Nigeria.

There were 726 inmates for every 100,000 U.S. residents by June 30, 2004, compared with 716 a year earlier, according to the report by the Justice Department agency. In 2004, one in every 138 U.S. residents was in prison or jail; the previous year it was one in every 140.

In 2004, 61 percent of prison and jail inmates were of racial or ethnic minorities, the government said. An estimated 12.6 percent of all black men in their late 20s were in jails or prisons, as were 3.6 percent of Hispanic men and 1.7 percent of white men in that age group, the report said.

[Quote...]

Children’s roundabout solves the water problem in remote areas.

In remote areas the chore of fetching water usually falls to the women or children. A common sight in rural South Africa is that of water carriers covering large distances in order to fulfill their daily water requirements.

Traditional sources of water collection are from dams, springs, rivers, streams and farm reservoirs, with the introduction of boreholes where these traditional sources of water are unavailable. Until now such boreholes have been operated by handpumps as the use of modern alternatives such as diesel, petrol or electric pumps are costly to install and have the concomitant constant financial burden of fuel and maintenance costs.

Cavorting on a roundabout has always been fun for children. Now pure, clean borehole water can be pumped into water storage tanks while the playground roundabout equipment is in use. The Play-Pump is a specifically designed and patented playground roundabout that drives conventional borehole pumps, keeping costs and maintenance to an absolute minimum, while entertaining the children.

Last wednesday I had a post about Nikon using encryption in their camera’s. Nikon has now responded. Let’s see:

[Quote:]

The Nikon D2X professional Digital Single Lens Reflex camera has received widely positive acclaim for its overall performance and image processing quality. Recently, speculative statements which appear to be based on misunderstandings and misinformation about the D2X camera’s “encryption” of certain white balance data have propagated on the internet.

The purpose of this advisory is to clarify this matter with facts and explanations.

The Nikon D2X is capable of producing high quality images that can be saved in a variety of file formats, including the proprietary Nikon Electronic Format (NEF), standard TIFF and several levels of standard JPEG compressed files.

The NEF, a Nikon proprietary raw file design, was introduced with the Nikon D1 Camera and Nikon’s original Capture software. The combination of Nikon camera, in-camera image processing, NEF file format and in-computer image processing with original Nikon Capture software was developed as a system that faithfully saved image files that represent the camera settings made manually or automatically by the photographer at the time a picture was taken.

(Note that the only difference between just about all other RAW formats and “NEF” is the obfuscation of the white balance info.)

Nikon’s preservation of its unique technology in the NEF file is employed as an action that protects the uniqueness of the file. At the same time, Nikon makes available a software developer kit (SDK) that, when implemented appropriately, enables a wide range of NEF performance, including white balance, for Nikon photographers and their productive use of the NEF file.

Since the inception of the system, Nikon has always provided photographers with choices about how they might use the system’s performance and enjoy high quality images. Nikon’s choices for opening and processing NEF files have been and continue to include:

* Nikon Capture software
* Plug-in for Adobe’s Photoshop
* Nikon PictureProject software
* Nikon View software
* Availability of Nikon Software Developer Kit (SDK) and the software that has been developed using the SDK

Through use of the Nikon Software Developer Kit, authorized developers can produce software by applying creative concepts to their implementation and adding capabilities to open Nikon’s NEF file and use NEF’s embedded Instructions and Nikon’s Libraries. Nikon photographers reap benefits from independent developers’ approaches, because it allows the photographer to open and process their NEF images.

[..]

Nikon continues to welcome dialogue with bona fide software developers.

So let’s translate:

“Nikon�s preservation of its unique technology” still meanas they want to control how I edit my images.

“Nikon continues to welcome dialogue with bona fide software developers.” means a camera manufacturor now gets to decide who is a software developer. I guess Open Source developers, or “the little guy” can go fuck themselves.

Nope, sorry Nikon, my next camera will still not be one of yours. I like to stay in control of my pictures, thank you very much.