[Quote:]

At its Worldwide Developer Conference today, Apple® announced plans to deliver models of its Macintosh® computers using Intel® microprocessors by this time next year, and to transition all of its Macs to using Intel microprocessors by the end of 2007. Apple previewed a version of its critically acclaimed operating system, Mac OS® X Tiger, running on an Intel- based Mac® to the over 3,800 developers attending CEO Steve Jobs’ keynote address. Apple also announced the availability of a Developer Transition Kit, consisting of an Intel-based Mac development system along with preview versions of Apple’s software, which will allow developers to prepare versions of their applications which will run on both PowerPC and Intel-based Macs.

“Our goal is to provide our customers with the best personal computers in the world, and looking ahead Intel has the strongest processor roadmap by far,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “It’s been ten years since our transition to the PowerPC, and we think Intel’s technology will help us create the best personal computers for the next ten years.”

“We are thrilled to have the world’s most innovative personal computer company as a customer,” said Paul Otellini, president and CEO of Intel. “Apple helped found the PC industry and throughout the years has been known for fresh ideas and new approaches. We look forward to providing advanced chip technologies, and to collaborating on new initiatives, to help Apple continue to deliver innovative products for years to come.”

“We plan to create future versions of Microsoft Office for the Mac that support both PowerPC and Intel processors,” said Roz Ho, general manager of Microsoft’s Macintosh Business Unit. “We have a strong relationship with Apple and will work closely with them to continue our long tradition of making great applications for a great platform.”

“We think this is a really smart move on Apple’s part and plan to create future versions of our Creative Suite for Macintosh that support both PowerPC and Intel processors,” said Bruce Chizen, CEO of Adobe.

Woa.

<Darth Vader> Noooooooooooooooooooo!</Darth Vader>

(Begun, the clone was has)

[Quote:]

He just wanted his colleagues in the government’s legislative arm to discuss the possibility of conducting a study into the feasibility of reversing the ban on women drivers the only prohibition of its kind in the world.

But Consultative Council member Mohammad al-Zulfa’s proposal has unleashed a storm in this conservative country where the subject of women drivers remains taboo.

Al-Zulfa’s cell phone now constantly rings with furious Saudis accusing him of encouraging women to commit the double sins of discarding their veils and mixing with men. He gets phone text messages calling on Allah to freeze his blood. Chat rooms bristle with insulting accusations that al-Zulfa is “driven by carnal instincts with 454 horsepower.”

There even have been calls to kick al-Zulfa from the council and strip him of his Saudi nationality.

The uproar may be astounding to outsiders. But in Saudi Arabia, where the religious establishment has the upper hand in defining women’s freedoms, the issue touches on the kingdom’s strict Islamic lifestyle.

Conservatives, who believe women should be shielded from strange men, say driving will allow a woman to leave home whenever she pleases and go wherever she wishes. Some say it will present her with opportunities to violate Islamic law, such as exposing her eyes while driving or interacting with strange men, like police officers or mechanics.

“Driving by women leads to evil,” Munir al-Shahrani wrote in a letter to the editor of the Al-Watan daily. “Can you imagine what it will be like if her car broke down? She would have to seek help from men.”

[Quote:]

De Britse regering heeft de voorbereidingen voor een referendum over de Europese grondwet opgeschort. Dat bevestigde maandag een woordvoerder van de Britse premier Blair. Later in de middag maakt minister Straw van Buitenlandse Zaken het besluit officieel bekend in het Lagerhuis (Tweede Kamer).

[..]

Uitstel of afstel van het Britse referendum over de grondwet zou premier Blair niet slecht uitkomen. Over het algemeen wordt aangenomen dat de eerste minister zijn consequenties moet trekken als de Britten de grondwet zouden afwijzen. Blair heeft steeds gezegd dat hij zijn derde termijn wil uitdienen.

[Quote:]

Adam Smith, the founder of classical economics, was certain that humankind’s knack for monetary exchange belonged to humankind alone. ”Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog,” he wrote. ”Nobody ever saw one animal by its gestures and natural cries signify to another, this is mine, that yours; I am willing to give this for that.” But in a clean and spacious laboratory at Yale-New Haven Hospital, seven capuchin monkeys have been taught to use money, and a comparison of capuchin behavior and human behavior will either surprise you very much or not at all, depending on your view of humans.

[..]

It is sometimes unclear, even to Chen himself, exactly what he is working on. When he and Santos, his psychologist collaborator, began to teach the Yale capuchins to use money, he had no pressing research theme. The essential idea was to give a monkey a dollar and see what it did with it. The currency Chen settled on was a silver disc, one inch in diameter, with a hole in the middle — ”kind of like Chinese money,” he says. It took several months of rudimentary repetition to teach the monkeys that these tokens were valuable as a means of exchange for a treat and would be similarly valuable the next day. Having gained that understanding, a capuchin would then be presented with 12 tokens on a tray and have to decide how many to surrender for, say, Jell-O cubes versus grapes. This first step allowed each capuchin to reveal its preferences and to grasp the concept of budgeting.

Then Chen introduced price shocks and wealth shocks. If, for instance, the price of Jell-O fell (two cubes instead of one per token), would the capuchin buy more Jell-O and fewer grapes? The capuchins responded rationally to tests like this — that is, they responded the way most readers of The Times would respond. In economist-speak, the capuchins adhered to the rules of utility maximization and price theory: when the price of something falls, people tend to buy more of it.

[..]

Something else happened during that chaotic scene, something that convinced Chen of the monkeys’ true grasp of money. Perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic of money, after all, is its fungibility, the fact that it can be used to buy not just food but anything. During the chaos in the monkey cage, Chen saw something out of the corner of his eye that he would later try to play down but in his heart of hearts he knew to be true. What he witnessed was probably the first observed exchange of money for sex in the history of monkeykind. (Further proof that the monkeys truly understood money: the monkey who was paid for sex immediately traded the token in for a grape.)

[Quote:]

Terwijl de Tweede Kamer druk bezig is met het bepalen van een nieuw standpunt rond softwarepatenten, stippelen de ambtenaren vast de koers in Brussel uit.

In een debat op 2 juni met onder anderen GroenLinks-kamerlid Kees Vendrik meldde staatssecretaris Karien van Gennip: “Zoals ik u ook heb geschreven, de inzet van mijn mensen in Brussel, is zich dus te onthouden van een Nederlands standpunt, totdat wij het met elkaar eens zijn wat dat standpunt is.”

Ter geruststelling voegde zij er nog aan toe: ‘En op dit moment is het zo in Brussel dat het met name nog horen en informeren is.’

Maar uit een gelekt document lijkt in de praktijk het tegendeel te gebeuren doordat Nederland actief stelling neemt tegen amendementen van het Europees Parlement, waarover nog niet is gestemd.

Uit andere documenten in handen van de Webwereld-redactie blijkt dat Jan Julianus, een hoge ambtenaar van het Ministerie van Economische Zaken, tijdens een vergadering van attach�s (geen echte diplomaten) op 27 mei actief heeft geparticipeerd.

Natuurkrachten en interoperabiliteit

Tijdens het overleg maakt Julianus bijvoorbeeld bezwaar tegen het gebruik van ‘natuurkrachten’ als eis voor patenteerbaarheid van vinding en bestempelt dat als ‘unacceptable’. Een dergelijke eis is iets waarvoor tegenstanders van softwarepatenten onder andere ijveren.

Wat betreft een eis om interoperabiliteit tussen systemen te garanderen twijfelt Julianus aan de haalbaarheid, maar verkondigt dat er in Nederland ‘sympathie’ voor is. De vertegenwoordiger maakt grote bezwaren tegen sommige amendementen van het Europarlement en verkondigt dat drie amendementen onacceptabel zijn.

Het Europees Parlement debatteert ondertussen verder over de 256 amendementen, die zijn ingediend in de hoop de richtlijn bij te spijkeren. Voorstanders van softwarepatenten proberen met ijsjes tegenstanders over de streep te trekken.

This is post number 10,000. Not all of my postings are still in the database, but it appears I’ve been weblogging for quite a while now…

Als je je afvraagt waarom er in Duitsland geen referendum is gehouden:

Hard roads: Marines search for mines and IEDs on a remote desert track near the Syrian border with Iraq

[Quote:]

Two years ago I went to Iraq as an unabashed believer in toppling Saddam Hussein. I knew his regime well from previous visits; WMDs or no, ridding the world of Saddam would surely be for the best, and America’s good intentions would carry the day. What went wrong? A lot, but the biggest turning point was the Abu Ghraib scandal. Since April 2004 the liberation of Iraq has become a desperate exercise in damage control. The abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib alienated a broad swath of the Iraqi public. On top of that, it didn’t work. There is no evidence that all the mistreatment and humiliation saved a single American life or led to the capture of any major terrorist, despite claims by the military that the prison produced “actionable intelligence.”

The most shocking thing about Abu Ghraib was not the behavior of U.S. troops, but the incompetence of their leaders. Against the conduct of the Lynndie Englands and the Charles Graners, I’ll gladly set the honesty and courage of Specialist Joseph Darby, the young MP who reported the abuse. A few soldiers will always do bad things. That’s why you need competent officers, who know what the men and women under their command are capable of�and make sure it doesn’t happen.

Living and working in Iraq, it’s hard not to succumb to despair. At last count America has pumped at least $7 billion into reconstruction projects, with little to show for it but the hostility of ordinary Iraqis, who still have an 18 percent unemployment rate. Most of the cash goes to U.S. contractors who spend much of it on personal security. Basic services like electricity, water and sewers still aren’t up to prewar levels. Electricity is especially vital in a country where summer temperatures commonly reach 125 degrees Fahrenheit. Yet only 15 percent of Iraqis have reliable electrical service. In the capital, where it counts most, it’s only 4 percent.

The most powerful army in human history can’t even protect a two-mile stretch of road. The Airport Highway connects both the international airport and Baghdad’s main American military base, Camp Victory, to the city center. At night U.S. troops secure the road for the use of dignitaries; they close it to traffic and shoot at any unauthorized vehicles. More troops and more helicopters could help make the whole country safer. Instead the Pentagon has been drawing down the number of helicopters. And America never deployed nearly enough soldiers. They couldn’t stop the orgy of looting that followed Saddam’s fall. Now their primary mission is self-defense at any cost�which only deepens Iraqis’ resentment.

The four-square-mile Green Zone, the one place in Baghdad where foreigners are reasonably safe, could be a showcase of American values and abilities. Instead the American enclave is a trash-strewn wasteland of Mad Max-style fortifications. The traffic lights don’t work because no one has bothered to fix them. The garbage rarely gets collected. Some of the worst ambassadors in U.S. history are the GIs at the Green Zone’s checkpoints. They’ve repeatedly punched Iraqi ministers, accidentally shot at visiting dignitaries and behave (even on good days) with all the courtesy of nightclub bouncers�to Americans and Iraqis alike. Not that U.S. soldiers in Iraq have much to smile about. They’re overworked, much ignored on the home front and widely despised in Iraq, with little to look forward to but the distant end of their tours�and in most cases, another tour soon to follow. Many are reservists who, when they get home, often face the wreckage of careers and family.

I can’t say how it will end. Iraq now has an elected government, popular at least among Shiites and Kurds, who give it strong approval ratings. There’s even some hope that the Sunni minority will join the constitutional process. Iraqi security forces continue to get better trained and equipped. But Iraqis have such a long way to go, and there are so many ways for things to get even worse. I’m not one of those who think America should pull out immediately. There’s no real choice but to stay, probably for many years to come. The question isn’t “When will America pull out?”; it’s “How bad a mess can we afford to leave behind?” All I can say is this: last one out, please turn on the lights.

[Quote:]

Download all nine of Beethoven’s symphonies here the day after they are broadcast. All the symphonies are performed by BBC Philharmonic, conducted by Gianandrea Noseda….

Symphonies 1 & 3 will be broadcast on Monday 6th June, and available to download from Tuesday 7th June to Monday 13th June.
Symphonies 2, 4 & 5 will be broadcast on Tuesday 7th June, and available to download from Wednesday 8th June to Tuesday 14th June.
Symphony 6 will be broadcast on Monday 27th June, and available to download from Tuesday 28th June to Monday 4th July.
Symphony 7 will be broadcast on Tuesday 28th June, and available to download from Wednesday 29th June to Tuesday 5th July.
Symphony 8 will be broadcast on Wednesday 29th June, and available to download from Thursday 30th June to Wednesday 6th July.
Symphony 9 will be broadcast on Thursday 30th June, and available to download from Friday 1st July to Thursday 7th July.