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Listening to Million Mama
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Visitors to the Yokohama Triennale interact with Shigeaki Iwai’s installation, Million Mama, consisting of a circle of phone booths ringing incessantly and playing back a soundtrack of a Japanese mother talking to the listener as if they are her child.
Wehkamp schrapt banen bij lagere kredietrente
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Het thuiswinkelbedrijf Wehkamp gaat banen schrappen als de plannen van minister Zalm (Financiën) om de maximaal toegestane kredietrente te verlagen, doorgaan. Dat heeft de onderneming dinsdag bekendgemaakt. “De plannen lossen niets op, ze brengen alleen de werkgelegenheid in gevaar”, aldus een woordvoerder.
Best Wehkamp, bedrijven die hun bestaansrecht ontlenen uit het feit dat klanten de goederen niet kunnen betalen kunnen we in nederland missen als kiespijn.
Capitol Hill Blue: An enemy of the state
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According to a printout from a computer controlled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Department of Justice, I am an enemy of the state.
The printout, shown to me recently by a friend who works for Justice, identifies me by a long, multi-digit number, lists my date of birth, place of birth, social security number and contains more than 100 pages documenting what the Bureau and the Bush Administration consider to be my threats to the security of the United States of America.
It lists where I sent to school, the name and address of the first wife that I had been told was dead but who is alive and well and living in Montana, background information on my current wife and details on my service to my country that I haven’t even revealed to my wife or my family.
Although the file finds no criminal activity by me or members of my immediate family, it remains open because I am a “person of interest’? who has “written and promoted opinions that are contrary to the government of the United States of America.”
[..]
When I asked to keep the copy of the file, my friend said “no.” I promised to keep it and the source confidential.
“You can’t,” he said. “You can’t keep anything hidden. Your life is an open book with us and it will be to the day you die.”
Well, that brings back memories…
Kedar
Kedar, a baby African elephant born Oct. 18, makes a face as he struggles to regain his footing, keep close to his mother Kubwa, a 29-year-old African elephant at the Indianapolis Zoo, Friday, Nov. 4, 2005. Kedar will be on exhibit, weather permitting, from 1-2 pm through Nov. 6. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
Over 1 million Windows to Mac converts so far in 2005?
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The momentum generated by Apple’s iPod digital music players and related products continues to translate into new Macintosh sales according to one Wall Street analyst who estimates that over one million Windows users have purchased a Mac in the first three quarters of 2005.
In a research note released to clients on Monday, Needham & Co. analyst Charles Wolf said the number of Windows users purchasing a Mac appears to be far higher than the firm had previously anticipated.
“If we assume that all of the growth in Mac shipments during the past three quarters resulted from Windows users purchasing a Mac, then purchases by Windows users exceeded one million,” the analyst said. “Indeed, the number of Windows users purchasing Macs in 2005 could easily exceed our forecast of 1.3 million switchers in 2006.”
Needham had previously estimated that 500,000 Windows users would purchase a Mac in 2005, but says its model underestimated the number of Windows users the Mac could capture because it was limited to Windows users who had purchased an iPod.
According to checks with Apple Store Specialists, Wolf also said a larger than expected percentage of Windows to Mac converts appear to be purchasing Apple’s higher-end systems and that their transition is fueled by the epidemic of viruses and malware on the Windows platform.
Belated SQL Server Upgrade Retains Its Appeal to Testers
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Microsoft Corp. is finally set to launch its SQL Server 2005 database today. And despite a two-year delay, several users who have tested the software cited the improved performance and new functionality it brings as positive developments that likely will convince them to upgrade soon.
Fine. Good for Microsoft. And in their target market, this will surely be a big hit. Here’s an example from that target market, from the same article:
Raichura said the support for Microsoft’s Common Language Runtime technology via Visual Studio will let him avoid having to go to multiple developers with different specialties. “I can natively write stored procedures straight into software,” he said. “This increases my resource pool because it reduces the distinction between software developers and architects.”
Having a limit on what you can do with stored procedures is often a good thing; you aren’t able to give in to the tendency to stick application logic in the database tier. If I were to translate what this Raichura guy says, it would be something like this:
“Now, I can pay people less to create a complete fucking pigsty that will perform well enough that the app will appear largely stable, and paint me further into a corner such that migration to another DB is next to impossible.”
It is pretty easy to scale most things in a big n-tier system. Just buy more servers. The database however is really hard to scale. You quickly get to a point where twice the money will buy you only very little extra performance.
Therefore I treat the database as the “sacred resource”. This almost always means that business logic is kept outside the database, and it must be replacable.
Last Supper
eBay.ca: Handmade Flying Spaghetti Monster
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This hand crafted plush toy will not only look wonderfully great on yer cube desk or mantle but one touch to His noodly appendage will ensure ye direct and speedy access to the heaven of the Flying Spaghetti Monster upon yer death.* Ye will bask in the glory of the beer volcano and enjoy the convince of the adjacent stripper factory.
Not only will yer bid benefit ye in the afterlife, but it will benefit the National Center for Science Education right away. All of the proceeds from the auction will be donated, and for a limited time, if ye bid before the end of the auction, I’ll take advantage of the donation matching provided by my employer. 200% of the bounty will be donated up to 1000 gallions (a.k.a. USD) matching.
YARR!!
* Afterlife in any religion not guaranteed.
Timbers Shivered by Shivering Timbres
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The crew of a luxury cruise ship used a sonic weapon that blasts earsplitting noise in a directed beam while being attacked by a gang of pirates off Africa this weekend, the cruise line said Monday.
The Seabourn Spirit had a Long Range Acoustic Device, or LRAD, installed as a part of its defense systems, said Bruce Good, a spokesman for Miami-based Seabourn Cruise Line. The Spirit was about 100 miles off Somalia when pirates fired rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns as they tried to get onboard.
The subsidiary of Carnival Corp. was investigating whether the weapon was successful in warding off the pirates, he said. The ship’s captain also changed its course, shifted into high speed and headed out into the open sea to elude the pirates, who were in two small boats, he said. He had no further details.
The LRAD is a so-called “non-lethal weapon” developed for the U.S. military after the 2000 attack on the USS Cole off Yemen as a way to keep operators of small boats from approaching U.S. warships.
The military version is a 45-pound, dish-shaped device that can direct a high-pitched, piercing tone with a tight beam. Neither the LRAD’s operators or others in the immediate area are affected.
The device’s makers compares its shrill tone to that of smoke detectors, only much louder. It can be as loud as about 150 decibels, while smoke alarms are about 80 to 90 decibels.
The non-lethality is important. We simply cannot afford to kill any pirates, since the worldwide decline in the number of pirates is clearly responsible for global warming
(seriously, piracy is a growing problem)
Quote…
The makers may make and the users may use, but the fixers must fix with but minimal clues…
FLIP!
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FLIP was created more than 40 years ago by two Scripps scientists, Drs. Fred Fisher and Fred Spiess. They needed a more quiet, stable place than a research ship to study how sound waves behave under water.
Ships bob up and down and roll side to side. Even when their engines are turned off, a ship’s experimental equipment makes noise as it is heaved up and down in the water.
When FLIP is in its vertical position it is both extremely stable and quiet.
“Fosforo bianco contro i civili” Così gli Usa hanno preso Falluja
A news program on Italian satellite TV, RAI News 24, has substantiated the claim that the US military has been exploiting the dual use of white phosporus. In its siege of Fallujah, the chemical was used on the civilian populace. The story is in today’s Repubblica.
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In gergo i soldati Usa lo chiamano Willy Pete. Il nome tecnico è fosforo bianco. In teoria dovrebbe essere usato per illuminare le postazioni nemiche al buio. In pratica è stato usato come arma chimica nella città ribelle irachena di Falluja. E non solo contro combattenti e guerriglieri, ma contro civili inermi. Gli americani si sarebbero resi responsabili di una strage con armi non convenzionali, la stessa accusa di cui deve rispondere l’ex dittatore iracheno Saddam Hussein. Questo racconta un’inchiesta di Rai News 24, il canale all news della Rai svelando uno dei misteri del fronte di guerra tenuto più nascosto dell’intera campagna americana in Iraq.
“Ho sentito io l’ordine di fare attenzione perché veniva usato il fosforo bianco su Fallujah. Nel gergo militare viene chiamato Willy Pete. Il fosforo brucia i corpi, addirittura li scioglie fino alle ossa”, dice un veterano della guerra in Iraq a Sigfrido Ranucci, inviato di Rai News 24.
“Ho visto i corpi bruciati di donne e bambini – aggiunge l’ex militare statunitense – il fosforo esplode e forma una nuvola. Chi si trova nel raggio di 150 metri è spacciato”.
L’inchiesta di Rai News 24, Fallujah. La strage nascosta, in onda domani su Rai3, presenta, oltre alle testimonianze di militari statunitensi che hanno combattuto in Iraq, quelle di abitanti di Fallujah. “Una pioggia di fuoco è scesa sulla città, la gente colpita da queste sostanze di diverso colore ha cominciato a bruciare, abbiamo trovato gente morta con strane ferite, i corpi bruciati e i vestiti intatti”, racconta Mohamad Tareq al Deraji, biologo di Falluja.
translation: In soldier slang they call it Willy Pete. The technical name is white phosphorus. In theory its purpose is to illumine enemy positions in the dark. In practice, it was used as a chemical weapon in the rebel stronghold of Fallujah. And it was used not only against enemy combatants and guerrillas, but again innocent civilians. The Americans are responsible for a massacre using unconventional weapons, the identical charge for which Saddam Hussein stands accused. An investigation by RAI News 24, the all-news Italian satellite television channel, has pulled the veil from one of the most carefully concealed mysteries from the front in the entire US military campaign in Iraq.
A US veteran of the Iraq war told RAI New correspondent Sigfrido Ranucci this: I received the order use caution because we had used white phosphorus on Fallujah. In military slag it is called ‘Willy Pete’. Phosphorus burns the human body on contact–it even melts it right down to the bone.
RAI News 24′s investigative story, Fallujah, The Concealed Massacre, will be broadcast tomorrow on RAI-3 and will contain not only eye-witness accounts by US military personnel but those from Fallujah residents. A rain of fire descended on the city. People who were exposed to those multicolored substance began to burn. We found people with bizarre wounds-their bodies burned but their clothes intact, relates Mohamad Tareq al-Deraji, a biologist and Fallujah resident.
(remember the shooting of the car with the Italian reporter/kidnap-victim? There were stories questioning whether the car she was riding in was intentionally shot at by the U.S. Well, I guess now we know.)
Hostettler
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When the House voted in early September for a $1.4 billion relief bill for victims of Hurricane Katrina, Rep. John Hostettler (Ind.) was one of 11 Republicans to oppose it.
Yesterday, the congressman, who is facing a tight race next year, and several other Indiana members asked President Bush for money to help victims of another natural disaster – the tornado that ripped through many areas in his 8th District.
[..]
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) declined to comment on the race. But privately, Democrats voiced disbelief and amusement with Hostettler, saying the fifth-term congressman would rather help tsunami victims halfway around the world and rebuild Iraq than aid poor Americans drenched by hurricanes.
One prominent Indiana Democratic source recalled: Its something that we were talking about when he made the first vote. What happens if something like this happens in our own back yard? And then it did.
Pleni sunt
cueli et terra parmesan Tua.
Benedictus qui venit in nomine Spaghetti.
Fokke & Sukke
Chinese Democracy
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My wife is Chinese. We’re having issues with our Homeowner’s Association, and she’s happy that she thinks she’s found the right person to bribe, and now she just needs to bribe him until we get what we want (architectural changes to shared property).
She explains to me, “This is how you do things in China. You find the person to bribe, then you bribe him, then things get done. In the USA, you don’t know who to bribe!”
“Yes,” I replied. “Here, you have to be pretty well-connected or wealthy to know who to bribe. It helps keep the plebes out of politics. We’re much less democratic than China.”
Whilst the Phos wasn’t being used for its intended purpose i.e. for extra illumination in mortars, smoke cover etc, its a bit of a stretch to lump this in with the use of chemical weapons in the conventional sense e.g. blistering agents etc.
Don’t you think the headlines they are using a little bit over the top? i’m not to take anything away from the innocent victims, but chemical weapons as the public understands them are in a totally different league from the localised damage white phos can do. I guess you could point out that death would have been just as horrendous but nevertheless it doesn’t make it a Chemical Weapon as the man on the street would understand it.
Kam, for just about every country in the world, this is indeed prohibited use of a chemical weapon. Just about every country signed “Protocol III of the Geneva Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons” – the USA did not. So you might argue that the use by the USA was “legal”, but you cannot argue that it is not a “Chemical Weapon as the man on the street would understand it” because that is exactly what is is if the street that man is standing on is in any part of the world other than the USA.
John,
I’m not arguing that it was ‘legal’, regardless of whether the USA signed the agreement or not. Quite on the contrary. Attack on an any civillian population with *anything* is illegal as is attack on non-civillians with Chemical Weapons as you rightly point out. And of course technically the report is correct in that it is the use of a “chemical weapon”. However, it should be qualified, because the average person on the street immediatly has images of soldiers in NBC gimp suites when they hear Chemical Weapon. They, rightly or wrongly, associate it with some form of WMD. My argument is not on the technical level as clearly technically, the report would be correct.
What i’m talking about is Context. I very much doubt that the average person on the street would associate an incendiary device with a Chemical Weapon. By using this term and immediatly going for the emotional response, the report merely loses some credibility. If i was to say to someone undecided about the war that the US used Chemical Weapons, and then cited White Phos, i think they would quite rightly regard me as less than honest and possibly clutching at straws for examples to convince him.
Just to back up my claims on what most people regard as Chemical Weapons here’s a link right at the top of google http://www.opcw.org/ whose page on types of Chemical Weapons doesn’t mention anything other that what Jo average would regard as WMD. If you read the definition of the chemical weapon in the PDF, White Phos would barely at a stretch fall into the category. Now with hindsight i would say Napalm should probably be in there somewhere (yes incendiary, and it was specifically designed to kill). But White Phos, no way. More like misuse of something to kill, rather than something that was specifially created for killing.
Kam,
I don’t think the headlines they are using a little bit over the top as you think.
I think that you should try to inalate just a little bit of “phos”, like you name it, than you can come back on this blog and go on speaking about WMD! if you are still alive!
Well PeteRed,
How do you justify that headline? It is nothing more than that. A headline to grab attention. Read the definition of a chemical weapon tell me with a straight face that white phos is a chemical weapon.
It is not listed on any list of banned chemical weapon nor is it some mysterious secret weapon that has just appeared. It is an *incendiary* device and it has been around for years. Just because it is used to kill doesn’t make it a chemical weapon. Using the term chemical weapon carries with it a lot of emotive “baggage” and i can see that is why media would want to use the headline. But it does the anti war lobby no favours whatsoever to start inflating claims in an attempt to justify it’s stance. If the anti war lobby is to convince anyone then they should stick with the truth. If they don’t, they run the risk of going down the same path as the current U.S./British administrations, where claims are inflated and any information contrary to their aims is conveniently swept under the carpet.
Kam, WP is clearly a very nasty. It is not just used to kill, it’s main perpose is to maim, as the Americans know very well, since they bombed half of Germany with it. It is used in Iraq to make people leave their hiding places, so they can be killed with the conventional stuff. Just imagine the suffering, if you perfer to
leave your couver into a sertain (sloppy) dead by a hail of bullets. Civilian or other.
Don’t take it from me, take it from a non biased source like http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/wp.htm
Incandescent particles of WP may produce extensive burns. Phosphorus burns on the skin are deep and painful; a firm eschar is produced and is surrounded by vesiculation. The burns usually are multiple, deep, and variable in size. The solid in the eye produces severe injury. The particles continue to burn unless deprived of atmospheric oxygen. Contact with these particles can cause local burns. These weapons are particularly nasty because white phosphorus continues to burn until it disappears. If service members are hit by pieces of white phosphorus, it could burn right down to the bone.
…
Moisten skin and remove visible phosphorus (preferably under water) with squared object (knife-back etc.) or tweezers. Do not touch phosphorus with fingers!
…
It is neccessary to dress white phosphorus-injured patients with saline-soaked dressings to prevent reignition of the phosphorus by contact with the air.
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Some nations recommend washing the skin with a 0.5-2.0% copper sulphate solution or a copper sulphate impregnated pad. Wounds may be rinsed with a 0.1%-0.2% copper sulphate solution, if available. Dark coloured deposits may be removed with forceps.
…
It may be necessary to repeat the first aid measures to completely remove all phosphorus.
Jan-Mark,
I fail to see how nasty WP is has got to do with the argument here, though I totally agree that it is nasty! Not for one moment have i denied that. If you read my other comments on this topic you will see that i believe it was probably illegal of them to use White Phos, especially if civillians were around. That it should *not* have been used and it’s legality is not the issue here. My issue with the entire story that was presented by RAI was the use of the term Chemcial Weapon. If you want the reasoning i point you to the comments in reponse to the initial story in The Daily Kos and LiberalsAgainstTerrorism.com where people have summed up the points far better than i have, though to give you a summary i list the following.
1. It is not listed in CWC as a chemical weapon
2. It is not the toxicity that directly kills, it is the burning effect. (yes phos is toxic, but that is not the part that kills you)
3. The US never signed Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons so rightly or wrongly they are not restricted by it
4. It is not a muntion specifically designed for killing, it is for smoke screening/incendiary (secondary)
What i think is at stake here Jan-Mark is credibility. Like i stated before in a post, there is no way i would use White Phos as an argument to convince a pro war lobbyist of the error of their ways. It simply has no credibility. The slight twisting of facts is all pervasive in blogs as they are not subject to the same scutiny as profesional journalism and are more a personal view on something rather than impersonal fact reporting.
Just to give another example on this blog read the article “Phosphorus ‘may have killed’ in Iraq” the article states that civilians *may* have been killed. Now, in my mind i have no doubt that civilians probably were killed. But i would not assert that as fact without the evidence. But read the text below that article and you will see that is exactly what has occured. There a tacit assertion/assumption is made that there were civilians killed. But it is not the known truth (the investigation as i write this, is still under way). (this is not a personal attack on john, as i understand this to be a rather emotive subject at the moment!)
The coalition adminstrations got themselves into very hot water by overstating threats and ignoring information contrary to their stance. If the antiwar lobby does the same, it too will be just as guilty of lying and deception. The biggest weapon the antiwar lobby has is the truth because the reality is quite bad enough without having to throw in half truths and lies to increase the impact of their claims.
(this is not a personal attack on john, as i understand this to be a rather emotive subject at the moment!)
No worries, I didn’t see it as a personal attack. Anyway, the who iraq was has become an issue so polarized that if the “WP as chemical weapon” registers on the radar any more, it’s a very, very small blip. We’ve come to the point in the cycle that any critical remarks on the war are immediately Treason. Read this for another example..