Monthly Archives: April 2011

How the 2011 Japan tsunami happened

PBS NOVA science documentary about the events of Japans March Earth Quake.

    Posted in Nature, Science | Tagged | Comments Off

    Petabyte Infographic

    Petabyte Infographic from pedro pimenta on Vimeo.

      Posted in Innovation & Knowledge Economy | Tagged | Comments Off

      Member states to clash with EU parliament on passenger data

      “A huge amount of data on EU citizens will be retained daily, without having any concrete investigations, leaving room for random profiling and data mining. This is far beyond the commission’s proposals and if the Council of ministers agrees to this, it won’t be in line with what several constitutional courts and the European Court of Human Rights have said,” Albrecht stressed.

      When does the profiling stop? More..

        Posted in General Interest | 2 Comments

        Sheen to be seen

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          European Commission wants ISPs and online services to act as copyright cops, snoops and censors

          The European Commissioners are meeting today to decide the future of EU copyright policy. French Commissioner Michel Barnier is pushing for a set of control measures aimed at ISPs, web-hosts, social networking services, and related services that would force them to act as private police for the entertainment lobby, who would be able to direct them to spy on and block domains and users without judicial oversight or due process:

          Oh dear.. not again. More see also ACTA.

            Posted in General Interest, Politics, Privacy | Tagged | Comments Off

            Mike Monteiro: F*ck You. Pay Me

            2011/03 Mike Monteiro | F*ck You. Pay Me. from SanFrancisco/CreativeMornings on Vimeo.

            Nice 101 on what small businesses primers should be aware off, especially when it comes down to getting paid for work well done.

              Posted in Art & Design | Comments Off

              TNW2011 coming up again

              tnw2011

              27-29 April the well known The Next Web conferences are coming up. Again the speaker line up is an interesting pick. Some veterans, some newsworthy, some slightly new voices.

                Posted in General Interest | Tagged | Comments Off

                Earth’s Companion

                e

                Astronomers from the Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland have found that a recently discovered asteroid has been following the Earth in its motion around the Sun for at least the past 250,000 years and may be intimately related to the origin of our planet. Their work appears in a paper in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

                For more on rocks around earth, see here.
                For more on space, seehere.

                  Posted in Nature | Tagged , | Comments Off

                  Map of Tweet

                  map-of-a-tweet

                  More.

                    Posted in Innovation & Knowledge Economy | Tagged | Comments Off

                    Masters 2011 Live-Stream


                    Stream videos at Ustream

                    Gotta Love the internet.

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                      Franken: Pay for War before authorizing

                      Senator Al Franken has proposed a “Pay for War” resolution that would require Congress to raise taxes and/or cut spending before authorizing new acts of war, so that American foreign adventures can’t contribute to the national debt.

                      (via)

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                        Staatssecretaris Teeven not for open government

                        internetfreedom

                        Today was the Press-conference of secretary-minister about government plans for banning downloading in the netherlands. This is of course repressive, dumb, to great loss to everyone, policy. Teeven is trying to silently bring it to a vote in Parliament. Avoiding (like above bouncer notes – “No Bits of Freedom people”) the plans to become available to general public and groups as bits of freedom, which are very well informed of the implications and rights people have on the issue.

                        Bits of Freedom people are no intrusive activists and well respected. So Teeven, if your arguments are THAT weak, that you cannot be open about it, it cannot be a good idea. If you need to avoid dialogue, even repress the public from knowing the details, are these not more signs of the kind of ideas you have for the public… repressive, unopen.

                          Posted in Politics, Privacy | Comments Off

                          Tsunami – Heed the Warnings

                          heed 

                          centuries-old tablet that warns of danger of tsunamis stands in the hamlet of Aneyoshi, Iwate Prefecture, northern Japan. Hundreds of such markers dot the coastline, some more than 600 years old. Collectively they form a crude warning system for Japan, whose long coasts along major fault lines have made it a repeated target of earthquakes and tsunamis over the centuries.

                          (via
                            
                          More Tsunami posts.

                            Posted in Nature, Science | Tagged , | Comments Off

                            50 Years of Manned Spaceflight

                            While with a stopped shuttle, space station just financed and entrepreneurial space agencies in their starting block. How much further will we get in another 50? Much much more on the first flight.
                            For more on space, seehere.

                              Posted in General Interest | Tagged , | Comments Off

                              6 Year Old Girl Groped By TSA

                              W … H … Y .. ? It is bullshit and TSA knows it. There are so many better ways of keeping people employed and doing just their jobs!

                              See more TSA?

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                                The Illustrious Omnibus of Superpowers

                                A

                                  Posted in Art & Design | Tagged | Comments Off

                                  EU MEP are going for copyright extention (AGAIN)

                                  Peter from the Open Rights Group sez, “In 2009 a Directive aimed at extending the term of copyright protection for sound recordings from 50 to 70 years, which flies in the face of all the credible evidence, passed the European Parliament. This week, the plans are back in front of the European Council and may soon become law. But there’s a chance we can stop this if we make enough noise. We need people to write to their MEPs and ask them to oppose these plans and make sure the Directive gets properly debated.”

                                  This is a dreadful idea that will damage our cultural realm for the benefit of a vanishingly small number of people.
                                  So please write to your MEP now and let’s try and see this off.

                                    Posted in Dutch, Innovation & Knowledge Economy | Tagged | Comments Off

                                    Unicode – All 49000 plus characters

                                    Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world’s writing systems. Developed in conjunction with the Universal Character Set standard and published in book form as The Unicode Standard, the latest version of Unicode consists of a repertoire of more than 109,000 characters covering 93 scripts, a set of code charts for visual reference, an encoding methodology and set of standard character encodings, an enumeration of character properties such as upper and lower case, a set of reference data computer files, and a number of related items, such as character properties, rules for normalization, decomposition, collation, rendering, and bidirectional display order (for the correct display of text containing both right-to-left scripts, such as Arabic and Hebrew, and left-to-right scripts).[1] As of 2011, the most recent major revision of Unicode is Unicode 6.0.

                                    That’s many characters. (via)

                                      Posted in Reading | Tagged | Comments Off

                                      More dramatic Tsunami footage

                                      Probably the last video we drop here with drama kind of footage.
                                      Warning: Skip de last 30 seconds for young eyes and weak stomages.
                                      More tsunami

                                        Posted in Nature | Tagged | Comments Off

                                        Bird & Fortune – What caused the crisis

                                          Posted in Humor, Politics | Tagged | Comments Off

                                          The douche

                                          More douches.

                                            Posted in General Interest | Comments Off

                                            TSA Investigates… People Who Complain About TSA

                                            “CNN has obtained a list of roughly 70 ‘behavioral indicators’ that TSA behavior detection officers use to identify potentially ‘high risk’ passengers at the nation’s airports, and report that arrogant complaining about airport security is one indicator TSA officers consider when looking for possible criminals and terrorists. When combined with other behavioral indicators, it could result in a traveler facing additional scrutiny. ‘Expressing your contempt about airport procedures — that’s a First Amendment-protected right,’ says Michael German, a former FBI agent who now works as legal counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. ‘It’s circular reasoning where, you know, I’m going to ask someone to surrender their rights; if they refuse, that’s evidence that I need to take their rights away from them. And it’s simply inappropriate.’ Interestingly enough, some experts say terrorists are much more likely to avoid confrontations with authorities, saying an al-Qaeda training manual instructs members to blend in.”

                                            While we are complaining, here’s more TSA.

                                              Posted in General Interest, Privacy | Tagged | 1 Comment

                                              How Copyright Extention Really Works

                                              It did not come to a vote last week, but there is a game plan by some of the opposing parties.

                                                Posted in Innovation & Knowledge Economy, Privacy | Comments Off

                                                FED pays millions “bailout” money to housewives

                                                America has two national budgets, one official, one unofficial. Both just as big. As America girds itself for another round of lunatic political infighting over which barely-respirating social program or urgently necessary federal agency must have their budgets permanently sacrificed, apparently Kadaffi, wallstreet billionaire wifes and USA industrial competition overseas get millions, subsidized and tax-evaded, for free. Now that’s a free lunch!

                                                Social equality?

                                                  Posted in Politics | Comments Off

                                                  A new Copernican revolution?

                                                  The strange thing is that the science community is really digging for those facts..
                                                  We live in weird times.

                                                    Posted in Science | Comments Off