[Quote:]

A Dutch judge has ruled that US President George W. Bush can visit the Netherlands as planned this weekend and should not be arrested.

The ruling in a court in The Hague on Wednesday comes after a group of Dutch nationals lodged legal action against the State in the lead-up to Bush’s visit.

The activists demanded that Bush be arrested or a court order issued to block his entry to the Netherlands due to “numerous, flagrant breaches of the Geneva Convention”.

However, the judge rejected the request on the grounds that such a refusal was a political matter and therefore not something the court could rule on.

Granting the request would also have had “far
reaching consequences for relations between the Netherlands and the US,” the judge said.

A pity. I work 150 meters from the International Criminal Court, which would give me a front-row seat for the inevitable Black Hawk Invasion to set him free.

check this out – the white building is the ICC, I work in the red buildings on the left

Upon hearing that her elderly grandfather had just passed away, Katie went straight to her grandparent’s house to visit her 95-year-old grandmother and comfort her.

When she asked how her grandfather had died, her grandmother replied “He had a heart attack while we were making love on Sunday morning.” Horrified, Katie told her grandmother that two people nearly 100 years old having sex would surely be asking for trouble.

“Oh, no, my dear,” replied granny. “Many years ago, realizing our advanced age, we figured out the best time to do it was when the church bells would start to ring. It was just the right rhythm. Nice and slow and even. Nothing too strenuous, simply in on the Ding and out on the Dong.”

She paused to wipe away a tear, and continued, “and if the damned ice cream truck hadn’t come along, he’d still be alive today.”

[Quote:]

It was late September when the 21-year-old man, fresh from a three-week commitment in a psychiatric ward, showed up at an army recruiting station in southern Ohio.

The two recruiters there quickly signed him up, and even after the man’s parents told them he had bipolar disorder – a diagnosis that would disqualify him – he was set to go to training camp before senior officers found out and canceled the enlistment. Despite an army investigation, the recruiters were not punished and were still working in the area late last month.

In northern Ohio, another recruiter said the incident hardly surprised him. He has been bending or breaking enlistment rules for months, he said, hiding police records and medical histories of potential recruits. His commanders have encouraged such deception, he said, because they know there is no other way to meet the army’s recruitment quotas.

“The problem is that no one wants to join,” the recruiter said. “We have to play fast and loose with the rules just to get by.”

[Quote]

ABB serves as main sponsor of the ABB e=motion electric car, which will make its May 5 record attempt on a closed, secured section of paved road near the city of West Wendover, northeastern Nevada.

The FIA, the world’s leading motorsports ruling body, will monitor and certify the attempt. To qualify as an official land speed record under FIA rules, the car must perform two recorded runs at better than 252 mph over a distance of 0.622 miles (one kilometer).

The current FIA electric car record is held by the White Lightning team from the U.S. Other record attempts have been made, but not under FIA rules.

….

The ABB e=motion car has no mechanical gears – acceleration is controlled entirely by ABB variable speed drives regulating two 50-horsepower electric motors from ABB. The motors produce a combined output of more than 500bhp (brake horsepower, i.e. power measured at a vehicle’s crankshaft).

As a comparison with gasoline-driven cars, the new Chevrolet Corvette, launched this year is fitted with a 7.0-litre (427-cubic-inch) V8 engine that produces 500bhp. “ABB technology has put this car in the super-speed league, and demonstrates our unique ability to meet unusual technology challenges with a pioneering spirit,�? said Ron Kurtz, ABB U.S. spokesman.

If we don’t ban the sexy cheerleaders, the terrorists will have won.

(I knew my cheeleading burkha would one day come into fashion)

[Quote:]

The British Steam Car Challenge was conceived with the twofold aim of breaking the land speed record for steam powered vehicles as well as creating excitement in the arena of alternate fuels. It is hoped that the project will create interest among the next generation of engineers and designers to work toward cleaner and safer forms of transportation, both public and private.

The first mention of a steam powered vehicle will usually conjure images of ancient tiller steered motor cars and pre-war rail engines. It was during the early nineteen hundreds that the petrol engine gained dominance in the personal transportation marketplace. Many ascribe this shift to market and business pressures rather than technological advancements or lack thereof. A big argument for this shift is the dominance of the steam turbine in the power generation sector of the economy.

While not exactly new in concept, steam powered vehicles have potential that today’s internal combustion engines lack. While the compact size and robust power density figures make the internal combustion engine attractive, its drawback also stems from its popularity. The current reliance of the internal combustion engine on highly refined hydrocarbon based fuels makes the external combustion engine an attractive concept for many applications. External combustion engines such as the steam engine are not fuel specific, meaning that any fuel can be used. This includes the cleanest fuel, direct sunlight.

[Quote:]

You know the real reason Excite went out of business? We couldn’t figure out how to make money from 97% of our traffic. We couldn’t figure out how to make money from the long tail – from those queries asked only once a day.

Overture figured it out, Google perfected it and we all know what happened from there. Those guys figured out something revolutionary — the long tail of search was a advertising marketplace. But it wasn’t a traditional advertising marketplace like television, where a handful of large advertisers reached out to a handful of very large markets. It was a special kind of marketplace where small advertisers could reach small markets efficiently. It was and is a revolution to the traditional economics of advertising (where the cost of producing and distributing advertising requires large markets to justify the expenditure).

Search is a long tail business and that is the source of its power and profit.

[..]

What all these data points mean to me (and to most folks who are interested in long-tail stuff) is that the most interesting, transformative businesses that have been built over the last decade and that will be built over the next one are going to operate in and make money from the long tail.

Google, eBay, Amazon, Rhapsody, Netflix, iTunes. What do they all have in common? They all work the long tail and they�re all radically changing the dynamics of their more traditional businesses.

The Long Tail of Software

The long tail doesn�t just apply to music and movies. There�s a long tail for software as well. Here�s why.

The purpose of software in business is to support the way a business does business � from the way a business runs it�s hiring and firing to the way it orders materials to the way it tracks sales. In the market-speak that surrounds the technology business, the purpose of software in business is to support these �business processes�.

Let�s do some simple math. First, every business has multiple processes. Things like hiring, firing, selling, ordering, etc. Second, while some of these are pretty common in name from business to business (recruiting, for example), in practice, they are usually highly customized. Finally, there are simply a large number of processes that are either unique or that are common to millions of very small markets and therefore not traditionally worth the effort to buy software for (for example, the process by which an architecture firm communicates between it�s clients and the city planning office).

These three facts

* every business has multiple processes
* processes that are similar in name between businesses are actually often highly customized
* there exist a large number of processes unique to millions of small clusters of industries.

means that there is a combinatorial explosion of process problems to solve and, it turns out, little software to actually support them.

Said another way, there is a long tail of very custom process problems that software is supposed to help businesses solve.

So – forget about SAP, Oracle, Baan and such. The next Great Thing in software is going to be in the long tail of software development…

Little Urchins

[Quote:]

Human Rights Watch researchers Dr. Annie Sparrow and Olivier Bercault visited Chad in February 2005 to assess the issues of protection and sexual violence in the refugee camps along the Darfur/Chad border. In her work as a pediatrician, Dr. Sparrow habitually asks children to draw while she talks to their parents or guardians. She did the same thing in Darfur. While Bercault and Sparrow spoke with parents, teachers, and camp leaders, the children drew. Without any instruction or guidance, the children drew scenes from their experiences of the war in Darfur: the attacks by the Janjaweed, the bombings by Sudanese government forces, the shootings, the burning of entire villages, and the flight to Chad.

As Sparrow and Bercault visited schools in refugee camps in Chad, many children between the ages of 8 and 17 shared the drawings they had done in their school notebooks, often alongside their lessons in Arabic or math. Schoolchildren from seven refugee camps and the border town of Tine offered Human Rights Watch�s researchers hundreds of drawings in the hope that the rest of the world would see their stories as described in their own unique visual vocabulary of war.

“I am looking at the sheep in the wadi [riverbed, or oasis]. I see Janjaweed coming�quickly, on horses and camels, with Kalashnikovs�shooting and yelling, ‘kill the slaves, kill the blacks.’ They killed many of the men with the animals. I saw people falling on the ground and bleeding. They chased after children. Some of us were taken, some we didn’t see again. All our animals were taken: camels, cows, sheep, and goats. Then the planes came and bombed the village.”

view the whole series

Beautiful

one of the many great pictures on this site:

[Quote:]

Yu Quan, like every music act in China, gets almost no income from CD sales, even though millions of its CDs have been sold. As soon as a CD is made, the pirates are on the street, offering them for a fraction of the retail price. Stores sell pirate copies. Legitimate CDs all but vanish.

So artists have to regard CDs as essentially promotional tools, not as end products. Yu Quan makes money by performing concerts, getting endorsement deals and appearing in commercials. If people hear and like Yu Quan’s songs on pirated CDs, at least they’ll be more likely to come to the concerts and buy what the duo endorses.

It’s possible that this is the future of the global music industry. And even though that sounds dire for music and musicians, surprisingly it might not be.

This all started to become clear with one comment. I was riding through Beijing in a car with Calvin Quek, a Beijing-based vice president of Silicon Valley venture-capital firm Global Catalyst Partners. Quek knows Chen Yufan and Hu Haiquan, the two guys who make up Yu Quan.

We were listening to Quek’s iPod, plugged into his car stereo. I asked Quek if there was an equivalent of iTunes – a legitimate music download service that charges for music – in China. With no hesitation, Quek answered: “No, and there never will be.”

Music pirating is so rampant and so entrenched in China that it’s unlikely to ever be eradicated. Chinese consumers have come to believe that music is worth, at most, a few cents a song, and that copying and sharing music are totally acceptable. In all probability, no company will ever be able to sell $15 CDs or 99 cents-a-song downloads in the world’s most populous nation.

The International Federation of Phonographic Industry, which tracks music copyright issues worldwide, agrees. It figures 95% of music sales in China are of pirated copies. Instead of predicting that China will change as it engages with the global economy, the federation warns that China is, in fact, the leader. The federation’s chairman, Jay Berman, has been quoted as saying, “The business model for the record industry worldwide is moving toward resembling what we see in China today.”

[Quote:]

1. Vraag

Kent u het bericht over het wissen van AIVD-banden met gesprekken van leden van de Hofstadgroep twee dagen voor de moord op Theo van Gogh? 1)

1. Antwoord

Ja.

2. Vraag

Waarom zijn die banden gewist?

3. Vraag

Bestaan voor het wissen van banden richtlijnen? Zo neen, waarom niet? Zo ja, is in strijd met die richtlijnen gehandeld?

4. Vraag

Is er reden om wel richtlijnen te maken dan wel om de richtlijnen aan te passen?

5. Vraag

Is bekend of nog te reconstrueren is wat de inhoud van de gesprekken was?

2, 3, 4, 5 Antwoord

In het NOS-journaal van 13 april jl. werd de suggestie gewekt dat de AIVD banden met uitwerkingen van met een microfoon opgenomen gesprekken tussen leden van de Hofstadgroep zou hebben gewist. Dit is echter niet het geval. Anders dan bij de opbrengst van telefoontaps hebben door de AIVD geplaatste microfoons ook opbrengst op de momenten dat geen gesprekken plaatsvinden. De microfoon neemt ook geluiden op die geen relevantie hebben voor het onderzoek. De audiobewerker binnen een team van de AIVD selecteert de geluidsfragmenten die wel relevant zijn voor het onderzoek en maakt hiervan een schriftelijk verslag.
Deze selectie vindt plaats aan de hand van de teamopdracht en de daaraan gekoppelde onderzoeksvragen. Zie hiervoor ook mijn antwoorden op kamervragen van lid Vos (TK 2004-2005, Aanhangsel van de Handelingen, 930). Binnen de AIVD is staand beleid dat van microfoons alleen de geluidsfragmenten die door de audiobewerker als relevant zijn aangemerkt en waarvan dus een schriftelijk verslag is gemaakt, worden bewaard. De beluisterde niet relevante geluidsfragmenten waarvan geen verslag is gemaakt, worden na een bepaalde periode overschreven. Deze periode varieert van een week tot een aantal weken, gerekend vanaf het moment van opname. Er is geen sprake van dat eenmaal beluisterde geluidsfragmenten die relevante gesprekken bevatten, zijn gewist.

Ik stel voor dat we van de AIVD een internetprovider maken. Dan zijn ze binnenkort verplicht gewoon alles te bewaren.

[Quote:]

Na de Socialistische Partij (SP) uit nu ook de ChristenUnie kritiek op de referendumstemwijzer van het Instituut voor Publiek en Politiek (IPP).

Volgens de ChristenUnie is de stemwijzer ‘misleidend en onbruikbaar’. “Notoire tegenstanders krijgen geheel onverwacht de uitslag dat ze voor de grondwet zijn”, stelt de partij. “Dat komt omdat voor hen belangrijke zaken compleet zijn weggelaten.”

“Tevergeefs zoek je bijvoorbeeld naar een keuze als: ‘Nederland moet zijn eigen Europees Commissaris behouden’, of: ‘In de EU dienen de grote landen niet meer macht te krijgen’. De referendumwijzer verzwijgt ook, dat de Unie zonder instemming van de nationale parlementen haar bevoegdheden mag uitbreiden. Een advies krijgen om ‘nee’ te stemmen, wordt zo wel heel moeilijk”, meent de ChristenUnie. De partij is tegen de grondwet.

Eerder uitte de SP al vergelijkbare kritiek op de stemwijzer van het IPP. SP-kamerlid en fervent tegenstander van de grondwet Harry van Bommel was het volgens de online stemhulp voor 68 procent met de grondwet eens. Van Bommel vindt de referendumwijzer dan ook ‘buitengewoon selectief en buitengewoon misleidend’.

Volgens het SP-kamerlid hebben de opstellers van de referendumsite voornamelijk positieve zaken uit de grondwet opgenomen. “Enkele van de belangrijkste kritiekpunten van de tegenstanders – de passages over concurrentie en marktwerking en de gevolgen ervan voor de dienstverlenende sector – komen geheel niet aan de orde in de test.”

[Quote:]

Stringent enforcement of US visa policy and seemingly overzealous immigration officers following the September 11, 2001 terror attacks are not only scaring away foreign students and tourists but dampening the investment climate of the world’s richest nation and taking a toll on its economy, experts told the conference organized by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Among the other cases cited to highlight the economic, security, scientific and diplomatic implications of changes in US visa policy were:

– An international business conference in Hawaii had to be shifted to Hong Kong at the last minute because the organizers could not obtain travel papers for most of its participants, who were from China.

– Some of US aviation giant Lockheed Martin Corporation’s testing of its civil space activities have been delayed because visas could not be obtained on time for Russian scientists.

– A company in northern Illinois waited in vain for seven months for its prospective buyers from China to get a visa to inspect its products and close a multi million dollar sale. Eventually the company became bankrupt and was auctioned off.

According to one private sector study, US businesses lost nearly 31 billion dollars in sales between 2002 and 2004 because foreign executives could not get into the United States to purchase American goods and services or attend trade shows.

From 2003 to 2004, there was a roughly 30 percent decline in the number of applicants for US graduate programs and correspondingly 20 percent decline in admissions, university figures showed.

Four peregrine falcon chicks sit in their nest on a ledge of the Pacific Gas and Electric Company in downtown San Francisco, Wednesday, May 4, 2005, before being tagged by scientists with the University of California Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group. The bands will help scientists and researchers identifty the peregrine falcons and monitor their progress in the wild. Peregrine falcons were first nesting on the ledge of the PG&E building over two years ago. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)

At least today we won’t be confused by date-formatting problems…