Madonna heeft een liedje gemaakt. Op zich niets bijzonders, totdat je de tekst bekijkt. Het nummer heet “sorry” en het idee is dat dat in de tekst in 5 talen vertaald wordt.

Waaronder het Nederlands.

[Quote:]

Je suis désolé
Lo siento
Ik ben droevig
Sono spiacente
Perdóname

Madonna heeft kennelijk niet de moeite genomen om iemand te vragen die gewoon de taal echt praat. Babelfish is kennelijk genoeg:

[Quote:]

Just last year, I got a phone call from the CEO of a home electronics chain, asking if I could devise a new communications strategy for him. He had read one of my books on Internet culture and was wondering if I could help him make use of some of this ‘below the line’ advertising he’d been hearing so much about lately. He wanted his marketing to be ‘less Saatchi and Saatchi and more craigslist.’ By this he meant he wanted to rely less on the expensive, high-concept traditional television advertising created by agencies like Saatchi & Saatchi, and somehow do his communications through bottom-up online communities, like the one that had developed around the craigslist online bulletin board.

As I reviewed the company’s dossier, product line, and customer experience reviews, I realized this CEO had a much bigger problem than his ads. The chain had lost its way. It had alienated its core customer base by abandoning the electronics business and becoming more of an appliance store. It had pushed design and manufacturing offshore, leaving headquarters without talent who really understood electronics. As a result, the quality of store-brand products had deteriorated, leading customers to buy other brands at thinner margins. Finally, corporate HQ had alienated its store managers through infantilizing incentives schemes, and irritated its employees with oppressive ‘loss prevention’ (antitheft) policies. Yet this CEO really thought a shift in marketing would change his whole business.

That’s when it hit me: What this fellow needed was not to hire companies who could market like craigslist but to be more like craigslist, himself. That is, simply understand what specific product or service he’s really offering, and then do it as well and expertly as possible. That’s not what he wanted to hear. No, he wanted a new marketing campaign to define his business for him, from the outside in.

Too many companies are obsessed with window dressing because they’re reluctant, no, afraid, to look at whatever it is they really do and evaluate it from the inside out. When things are down, CEO’s turn to consultants and marketers to rethink, rebrand or repackage whatever it is they are selling, when they should be getting back on the factory floor, into the stores, or out to the research labs where their product is actually made, sold, or conceived. Instead of making their communications less Saatchi and more Craig, they should be reinventing their core enterprise.

Over the past ten years, I’ve spoken with a lot of people about this conundrum, its historical context, and the ease with which so many businesses could transcend their reluctance to draw on their own expertise. Invariably, the Fortune 500 CEOs, billionaire entrepreneurs, and intellectual leaders with whom I engaged implored me to share these insights with the audience who needed them most: businesspeople. That’s why I’m making such a simple proposition: stop solving your problems from the outside in. Get back in the box and do the thing you actually do best. This disciplined commitment to your own core passion – and not a consultant, ad campaign, or business plan – is the source of true innovation.

The longevity and prosperity of any enterprise depends most on its participants’ ability to maintain the wellspring of innovation. And the way to do this is to remember that you are always the source of your own best ideas. The most successful businesses for the next century will turn out to have been based not on infinitely repeatable Harvard Business School lesson plans, but on a combination of competence and passion. Dissecting an enterprise after the fact to see what made it work is akin to conducting on autopsy on a person to see what made him live. The very pursuit is symptomatic of the highly fragmented approach to business we’re leaving behind.

[Quote:]

Great Ormond Street children’s hospital is worried that that Google’s online publishing scheme could cost it much-needed income.

The hospital, which receives all the royalties from sales and performances of Peter Pan in the UK, fears that it could suffer a drop in revenue if Google includes the children’s classic in its plan to scan, digitise and make searchable the world’s books.

Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity has received royalties from Peter Pan since 1929. An Act of Parliament, passed in 1988, extended the book’s copyright indefinitely. If people stopped buying the book, and accessed it through Google’s service, the hospital – which cares for seriously ill children – fears it could lose millions of pounds.

Ignoring the stupidity of financing a hospital by giving them an eternal monopoly on an arbitrary piece of work, google will only display snippets, thus likely increasing revenue by promoting the book. Also, since Peter Pan is in the public domain in the entire world except the UK, you can download it for free from Project Gutenberg. Well, unless you’re in the UK, of course. Then you’d be breaking a law.

[Quote:]

A bomb squad blew up a metal pipe that had a battery, wires, rope and an electrical switch, only to realize it was an eighth-grade science project.

“An electromagnetic fishing pole,” Allegheny County Bomb Squad Sgt. Robert Clark said, holding the contraption with the battery blown off.

A clerk found the device – made from three feet of half-inch metal pipe – near the greeting cards display at a drugstore Thursday.

Police Chief Roger Beadling said he got within six feet and decided not to take any chances. “It definitely appeared to be some kind of explosive device,” he said.

The bomb squad used a robot to examine the device, then destroyed it.

A 10th-grader at Frazier High School said the science project is something eighth-graders do every year. “You have to make it so it can pick up metal paper clips, but you can’t use magnets,” Tiffany Burton said. “I hated that project.”

Jim Shahan, owner of a pizza shop a few doors away, said had he seen the device, he might have saved everyone a few anxious hours.

“I just helped make one for my daughter,” he said.

How dare they ask 8 graders to do science!

The guy who initially discovered the root kit on Sony CD’s als studied the patch, and found a potential blue screen and data loss.

He also found something else:

[Quote:]

The EULA also makes no reference to any ‘phone home’ behavior, and Sony executives are claiming that the software never contacts Sony and that no information is communicated that could track user behavior.

Guess what.

Yep. They lied.

Mark also debunks a rebuttal that the rootkit creators sent him.

Oh, and the first lawsuit as a result of this rootkit was filed in Italy.

[Quote:]

A Hong Kong man has been jailed for three months for film piracy after he shared movie files over the internet.

The authorities say he is the first person in the world to be prosecuted for passing on files using a popular file-sharing program called BitTorrent.

It makes the sharing of material easy by breaking a file up into fragments and then distributing them.

The film industry says it hopes the sentence handed down to Chan Nai-ming will prove a deterrent to others.

Because if it won’t, they’ll have to jail 50 million people…

[Quote:]

Microsoft and the British Library have inked a deal, wherein Microsoft will scan around 1,00,000 out-of-copyright books from the British Library, and post them online.

Much to the delight of readers across the globe, they will now have access to nearly 25 million pages of digitized content, without having to actually visit the British Library or pay any fees.

MSN Search will reportedly launch an initial public beta next year. With this move, Microsoft and the British library intend to enable people to find exactly what they’re looking for on the Web.

Both sides have agreed in principle that only older books from the Library’s rich and varied collection of 13 million titles will be chosen, since these don’t fall under copyright any more.

Sources reveal that Microsoft is pumping an initial investment of approximately $2.5 million into the project; however plans are in the offing to digitize more titles in future.

I wonder… if Google jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge this afternoon, what bridge would Microsoft pick?

(via)

The former British ambassador to Washington, Sir Christopher Meyer, has revealed that the Bush administration would have been willing to wait as late as 2004 to go war with Iraq, in order to get Britain’s support.

He reveals that Karl Rove, the political adviser to the president, told him there would have been no problem for Mr Bush in waiting until the end of 2003 or even early 2004 and this would not have risked entanglement in the US presidential campaign.

This comes from an article in London’s Guardian newspaper introducing Sir Christopher’s new book, DC Confidential .

This revelation is quite significant.  If Bush thought he could wait until 2004 to go to war with Iraq, why did he hastily pull out the weapons inspectors before they finished their jobs, in March of 2003?

U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan March 17 ordered all U.N. weapons inspectors, peacekeepers, and humanitarian aid workers to withdraw from Iraq[...]
The secretary general said that he and Mohamed ElBaradei, IAEA director general, were notified by the United States on March 16 that it would not be “prudent” to leave U.N. and IAEA staff in the region.

Indeed, it was not because the Bush administration believed Iraq posed an urgent threat, but because the U.N. process was so successful that it threatened to unravel the Bush administration rational for the Iraq war before it even had begun.  

Inspectors Call U.S. Tips ‘Garbage’

February 20, 2003
(CBS) While diplomatic maneuvering continues over Turkish bases and a new United Nations resolution, inside Iraq, U.N. arms inspectors are privately complaining about the quality of U.S. intelligence and accusing the United States of sending them on wild-goose chases[...]
In fact, the U.S. claim that Iraq is developing missiles that could hit its neighbors – or U.S. troops in the region, or even Israel – is just one of the claims coming from Washington that inspectors here are finding increasingly unbelievable. The inspectors have become so frustrated trying to chase down unspecific or ambiguous U.S. leads that they’ve begun to express that anger privately in no uncertain terms[...]
So frustrated have the inspectors become that one source has referred to the U.S. intelligence they’ve been getting as “garbage after garbage after garbage.”

The Bush administration didn’t care about WMD.  They wanted a war no matter what, and would do anything to get it, including lying, and smearing people that got in their way.

Impeachment, anyone?

[Quote:]

In this day and age, it’s hard for me to travel anywhere.

I am 22 and an editorial assistant at the Chicago Tribune. I have a passion for photography and reading, and I’m known to play a mean guitar.

I am also Middle Eastern and I speak with an accent. I’ve been living in the U.S. for 12 years.

In a post-Sept. 11 world, people give me icy glares. Once, a girl at a nightclub who at the beginning of the night was into me (or so I thought) changed her tune when she found out I was from Jordan: “I’m sick of what you guys are doing to my country. Go back home.”

And when I check in at an airport, 8 out of 10 times I get pulled out of line and questioned by authorities.

I was getting sick of it. So a few weeks ago I decided traveling by train would give me less grief.

Boy, was he ever wrong.

The USA appears to have given up everything that once made it a great country. I won’t be traveling to the USA until the sane people take back the country..

[Quote:]

US military intelligence warned the Bush administration as early as February 2002 that its key source on Al-Qaeda’s relationship with Iraq had provided “intentionally misleading” data, according to a declassified report.

Nevertheless, eight months later, President George W. Bush went public with charges that the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein had trained members of Osama bin Laden’s terror network in manufacturing deadly poisons and gases.

These same accusations had found their way into then-secretary of state Colin Powell’s February 2003 speech before the UN Security Council, in which he outlined the US rationale for military action against Iraq.

“This newly declassified information provides additional, dramatic evidence that the administrations pre-war statements were deceptive,” said Democrat Carl Levin, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who pushed for partial declassification of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document.

In this picture released Sunday, Nov. 6, 2005, by the US Marine Corps, Marine Sergeant Dennis Howard talks with local children at the displaced persons compound, in Husaybah, Iraq during Operation Steel Curtain. Scores of terrified Iraqis fled the besieged town Sunday, waving white flags and hauling their belongings to escape a second day of fighting between U.S. Marines and al-Qaida militants along the Syrian border.(AP Photo/U.S. Marine Corps, Cpl. Michael R. McMaugh, 2d Marine Division Combat Camera)

[Quote:]

This past weekend, we witnessed the indictment of the I. Lewis Libby, the Vice President’s Chief of Staff and a senior Advisor to President Bush. Libby is the first sitting White House staffer to be indicted in 135 years. This indictment raises very serious charges. It asserts this Administration engaged in actions that both harmed our national security and are morally repugnant. The decision to place U.S. soldiers in harm’s way is the most significant responsibility the Constitution invests in the Congress. The Libby indictment provides a window into what this is really about: how the Administration manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to sell the war in Iraq and attempted to destroy those who dared to challenge its actions. As a result of its improper conduct, a cloud now hangs over this Administration. This cloud is further darkened by the Administration’s mistakes in prisoner abuse scandal, Hurricane Katrina, and the cronyism and corruption in numerous agencies. And, unfortunately, it must be said that a cloud also hangs over this Republican-controlled Congress for its unwillingness to hold this Republican Administration accountable for its misdeeds on all of these issues. Let’s take a look back at how we got here with respect to Iraq Mr. President. The record will show that within hours of the terrorist attacks on 9/11, senior officials in this Administration recognized these attacks could be used as a pretext to invade Iraq. The record will also show that in the months and years after 9/11, the Administration engaged in a pattern of manipulation of the facts and retribution against anyone who got in its way as it made the case for attacking Iraq. There are numerous examples of how the Administration misstated and manipulated the facts as it made the case for war. Administration statements on Saddam’s alleged nuclear weapons capabilities and ties with Al Qaeda represent the best examples of how it consistently and repeatedly manipulated the facts. The American people were warned time and again by the President, the Vice President, and the current Secretary of State about Saddam’s nuclear weapons capabilities. The Vice President said Iraq “has reconstituted its nuclear weapons.�? Playing upon the fears of Americans after September 11, these officials and others raised the specter that, left unchecked, Saddam could soon attack America with nuclear weapons. Obviously we know now their nuclear claims were wholly inaccurate. But more troubling is the fact that a lot of intelligence experts were telling the Administration then that its claims about Saddam’s nuclear capabilities were false.

The situation was very similar with respect to Saddam’s links to Al Qaeda. The Vice President told the American people, “We know he’s out trying once again to produce nuclear weapons and we know he has a longstanding relationship with various terrorist groups including the Al Qaeda organization.�?

The Administration’s assertions on this score have been totally discredited. But again, the Administration went ahead with these assertions in spite of the fact that the government’s top experts did not agree with these claims.

What has been the response of this Republican-controlled Congress to the Administration’s manipulation of intelligence that led to this protracted war in Iraq? Basically nothing. Did the Republican-controlled Congress carry out its constitutional obligations to conduct oversight? No. Did it support our troops and their families by providing them the answers to many important questions? No. Did it even attempt to force this Administration to answer the most basic questions about its behavior? No.

Unfortunately the unwillingness of the Republican-controlled Congress to exercise its oversight responsibilities is not limited to just Iraq. We see it with respect to the prisoner abuse scandal. We see it with respect to Katrina. And we see it with respect to the cronyism and corruption that permeates this Administration.

Time and time again, this Republican-controlled Congress has consistently chosen to put its political interests ahead of our national security. They have repeatedly chosen to protect the Republican Administration rather than get to the bottom of what happened and why.

There is also another disturbing pattern here, namely about how the Administration responded to those who challenged its assertions. Time and again this Administration has actively sought to attack and undercut those who dared to raise questions about its preferred course.

For example, when General Shinseki indicated several hundred thousand troops would be needed in Iraq, his military career came to an end. When then OMB Director Larry Lindsay suggested the cost of this war would approach $200 billion, his career in the Administration came to an end. When U.N. Chief Weapons Inspector Hans Blix challenged conclusions about Saddam’s WMD capabilities, the Administration pulled out his inspectors. When Nobel Prize winner and IAEA head Mohammed el-Baridei raised questions about the Administration’s claims of Saddam’s nuclear capabilities, the Administration attempted to remove him from his post. When Joe Wilson stated that there was no attempt by Saddam to acquire uranium from Niger, the Administration launched a vicious and coordinated campaign to demean and discredit him, going so far as to expose the fact that his wife worked as a CIA agent.

Given this Administration’s pattern of squashing those who challenge its misstatements, what has been the response of this Republican-controlled Congress? Again, absolutely nothing. And with their inactions, they provide political cover for this Administration at the same time they keep the truth from our troops who continue to make large sacrifices in Iraq.

This behavior is unacceptable. The toll in Iraq is as staggering as it is solemn. More than 2,000 Americans have lost their lives. Over 90 Americans have paid the ultimate sacrifice this month alone – the fourth deadliest month since the war began. More than 15,000 have been wounded. More than 150,000 remain in harm’s way. Enormous sacrifices have been and continue to be made.

The troops and the American people have a right to expect answers and accountability worthy of that sacrifice. For example, 40 Senate Democrats wrote a substantive and detailed letter to the President asking four basic questions about the Administration’s Iraq policy and received a four sentence answer in response. These Senators and the American people deserve better.

They also deserve a searching and comprehensive investigation about how the Bush Administration brought this country to war. Key questions that need to be answered include:

o How did the Bush Administration assemble its case for war against Iraq?
o Who did Bush Administration officials listen to and who did they ignore?
o How did senior Administration officials manipulate or manufacture intelligence presented to the Congress and the American people?
o What was the role of the White House Iraq Group or WHIG, a group of senior White House officials tasked with marketing the war and taking down its critics?
o How did the Administration coordinate its efforts to attack individuals who dared to challenge the Administration’s assertions?
o Why has the Administration failed to provide Congress with the documents that will shed light on their misconduct and misstatements?

Unfortunately the Senate committee that should be taking the lead in providing these answers is not. Despite the fact that the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee publicly committed to examine many of these questions more than 1 and ½ years ago, he has chosen not to keep this commitment. Despite the fact that he restated that commitment earlier this year on national television, he has still done nothing.

At this point, we can only conclude he will continue to put politics ahead of our national security. If he does anything at this point, I suspect he will play political games by producing an analysis that fails to answer any of these important questions. Instead, if history is any guide, this analysis will attempt to disperse and deflect blame away from the Administration.

We demand that the Intelligence Committee and other committees in this body with jurisdiction over these matters carry out a full and complete investigation immediately as called for by Democrats in the committee’s annual intelligence authorization report. Our troops and the American people have sacrificed too much. It is time this Republican-controlled Congress put the interests of the American people ahead of their own political interests.

Via Seeing The Forest