Barnhard Blog

Skip for a moment the discussion professional journalist vs. bloggers and head over to comment one of the speakers made; “regular but interested people” did not in this scale talked over the world with eachother before since the internet users went blogging. (via)

I was shocked when I read this article:

Google developing eavesdropping software

It seems that besides the the legistration some government implement to “protect” us against terrorist:

Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.

Benjamin Franklin

Now companies like google are working on eardropping tools too:

The first thing that came out of our mouths when we heard that Google is working on a system that listens to what’s on your TV playing in the background, and then serves you relevant adverts, was “that’s cool, but dangerous”.

The idea appeared in Technology Review citing Peter Norvig, director of research at Google, who says these ideas will show up eventually in real Google products - sooner rather than later.

Website: www.theregister.co.uk [via]

Forget this quote:

Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.

Benjamin Franklin

While recently CrazyEgg came out of Beta and is limited available for free, competition is apparently working on a similar type. Here is a way to make them using Ajax and Ruby. (via)
 

[via]

Voila. Done.

Apply more than once is better.

Dutch television is using 911 all day to discuss Bush his reaction to the 911 event. Which in the end led to the invasion of Irak. Some programs discussed the conspiracy theories that sprung out of the event.

Well I am getting pretty tired of all the sick conspiracy theories displayed on my screen. They are a bit like the above one. I do not believe that the Administration eg blew the WTC tower 1, 2 and 7 up. If it was true it would shake the whole democratic world. I can’t and do not want to believe that any US-president could be so evil.

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At RoomWareDevHouse we intend to investigate possible applications, host discussion and do some hacking while enjoying a tasty beverage. The event is free and anyone interested can attend as long as you intend to participate.

Loosely styled after SuperHappyDevHouse we hope to talk about and even build some of the applications that we will display at a later RoomWare event. Furthermore we intend to start development on an open source RoomWare platform that anyone can build on to provide RoomWare applications at their own event or location. The event is on Upcoming too…

Website: http://blog.pussycatlounge.nl

Join us:

RoomWare is software applications running in a defined space. The people in a RoomWare enabled space can use the services running on a local server through their mobile phone (Bluetooth), laptop (Wifi) or other means (RFID). Possible services range from live interaction with the music or video screens to introducing parts of an online profile into the local space.

Website: http://roomwareproject.org

It all begins when science whiz Freddy T. Funkhouser invents five life-size, superpowered spuds (actually six, if you count heads) as a “secret weapon” to win customers for the failing family business, the Burger Castle.

Website: www.freddyandthefrenchfries.com
Games: www.freddyandthefrenchfries.com/game/

Again my question, what’s going on? This time at Digg. Top users say goodbye, top diggers possible eliminated? Go on holiday people! update: logical response

What News Corp doesn’t want you to know about MySpace: Condensed edition

About four months ago I was hired by an online publisher as a freelance journalist to write an article detailing the history and business model of MySpace.com (the project has previously been mentioned on this blog). After months of journalistic research and interviews I finally sought comment from News Corp. Instead of getting comments or an interview from News Corp., they began harassing my employer. Due to groundless legal implications, the article I had written was no longer to be published. However, I now own the rights to my work and after weeks of looking for support and contemplating the situation I have decided to publish the article in its entirety on Valleywag.

Website: www.valleywag.com

XDTalk is a chat plugin for wordpress that allows registered users to Instant message each other while on your site.

As you can see it is still pretty buggy. Please help with the devolopment of the XDTalk Plugin

More info here: www.xdweb.net and here: forum

Update: Maybe someone like Pierre could help us?

Whereas most Universities had their hided section of online papers, now it becomes a bit easier to search for them with more of them on one site “DAREnet”.

Good news for academics I reckon.
 
 

Clive Stafford Smith defends prisioners at Guantanamo Bay. One hour interview dutch journalist Chris Kijne talks with Clive Stafford Smith about the rights people have and why things have gone really bad. Clive Stafford Smith brings it very clear-cut and not overloaded with emotion.

Meanwhile the Dutch (or EU position for that matter) is just as bad. Some ministers are even suggesting finding loopholes to endure these activities… I’m speechless for now.

Direct link to video: here
The introduction is in Dutch, the rest is in English.

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On 17 September 1944 thousands of paratroopers descended from the sky by parachute or glider up to 150 km behind enemy lines. Their goal: … alle » to secure to bridges across the rivers in Holland so that the Allied army could advance rapidly northwards and turn left into the lowlands of Germany, hereby skirting around the Siegfried line, the German defence line. If all carried out as planned it should have ended the war by Christmas 1944.

Unfortunately this daring plan, named Operation Market Garden, didn’t have the expected outcome. The bridge at Arnhem proved to be ‘a bridge too far’. After 10 days of bitter fighting the operation ended with the evacuation of the remainder of the 1st British Airborne Division from the Arnhem area.

Source: video.google.com

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According to wikipedia Chris Anderson coined the word “Long tail”. Here’s his presentation with more about it. Good if you have an hour spare and want some more familiar examples.
[related post: day of the longtail]

You can loose your own copyright for 50 years because someone else uses it? That’s just wrong.

Update:
Is it now changing a bit?
 

Het heeft weinig zin om de actualiteit in Thailand op dit moment te plaatsen daar de volledige wereldpers het nieuws u sneller kan brengen. De Nederlandse televisie heeft vanwege Prinsjesdag er vrij weinig aandacht aan besteed. Thaise televisie is op dit moment op zwart gegaan.

Gelukkig is er op het internet informatie te vinden, al is feitelijk nu nog weinig duidelijkheid. Met betrekking tot de veiligheid van bijvoorbeeld buitenlanders in Thailand heeft alleen Australie een negatief reisadvies afgekondigd. Het vliegveld meld tegelijkertijd dat er geen vluchten zijn geannuleerd.

Lees het hele artikel op Bangkok Talk

Amazon just released Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). Amazon recently released scalable storage infrastructure (S3) and scalable (artificial) artificial intelligence (Mechanical Turk.) Now they have done the same thing for computation.

Update of: Amazon S3 - Simple Storage Service

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Although I doubt that making lists is changing the world nor might be true for many developers, here’s another. Notice number 2?

All public adresses in one place.
 
Update:
Mashable! article about it.
Radio discussion about it (dutch).