Category: News

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Growing pain for the SP

It seams that the political party SP is having problems keeping all members together. A recent conflict about the election of a member to the ‘eerste kamer’ (house of lords) has escalated into the suspension of the editor of the party newspaper. The editor had written a critical piece about the election procedures in the SP. Party officials did not like the piece and asked her to retread it. Main argument was that the article was to one-sided.

For Dutch readers, the article can be found here [link].

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Global warming debate on Dutch TV

After the worldwide Al Gore/Music show and the movie “The unconvenient truth” the Dutch TV program Reporter is showing a program of the opposition (the Great Global Warming Swindle), the one who is doubting whether mankind is (fully) responsible for the global warming effect. The program will be followed by a discussion.
On Dutch radio some journalist reacted to this saying; “This is a bad idea, it will only confuse the public and we know that the story of the other party is wrong, …”.

I think that last reaction is a very narrow minded. I would like to hear Al Gore’s story and the story of the opposition. Yes, I think we are responsible for most of the global warming but I am also sure that there are some other factors having a bad effect and I would like to know what experts think of that. The last thing what journalist should be doing is deciding for us what is the truth. That will only lead to people thinking this is just another hype.

One day later. I saw the program and I followed the discussion. What did I think of it, am I confused now as the journalist feared or am I in the Al Gore camp now or in the other camp?
Well, I think it was a good program and they should have shown this. The discussion was a bit pressed on time but they had the right guests and they asked a lot of good questions.
No, I am not confused quite the opposite it is a lot clearer.
Yes, we need to do something about our energy consumption, waste production, greenhouse gas production, more sustainable way of living, etc. And yes both sides have twisted the truth in and used scientific research order to get their message across.
No, science does not have the conclusive evidence. There are a lot of things which are contradicting and there are a lot of questions about the models being used.

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Connexxion sold

Recently the Dutch public transport firm Connexxion was sold to the French company Transdev. Connexxion was sold because it was owned by the Dutch government and we want competition on the transport market. So, now it is sold to a French company which is owned by the French state.

Who thought of that???

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Scoble and the iPhone hype

I watched Scoble and Thomas Hawk on the ZoomrTV stream getting their iPhone.

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They stayed their all night blogging and streaming. It was a bit idiotic but at was a big party with lost of fun people in line.
Next thing is checking out ebay and see how much a second hand iPhone goes for. There were 6249 offers the last I checked, prices around the $900.

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ABN AMRO take over

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Atticus Capital isn’t the only hedge fund which wants Barclays (nyse: BCS – news – people )to give up its fight for Dutch lender ABN Amro. (See: “Activists Slate Barclays On ABN Amro”) Seacliff Capital, a hedge fund in San Francisco, had its doubts from the moment market rumors started swirling that a deal was in the works.

So one hedge fund it telling another hedge fund that it is not a good idea to merge with ABN AMRO. True TCI never said that ABN AMRO should merge with Barclays. But isn’t the message ‘ABN AMRO is not as good a catch as it first looked like’. The longer this process takes, the worse the deal will be.

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AT&T willing to spy for NSA, MPAA, and RIAA

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In a move that has executives from movie studios and record labels grinning from ear to ear, AT&T has announced that it will develop and deploy technology that will attempt to keep pirated content off its network. The move is spurred in part by the company’s decision to offer IPTV television service as part of its U-Verse package, AT&T senior VP James W. Cicconi told the Los Angeles Times.

The first step for AT&T is coming up with a technological solution that works: something that can effectively filter out illicit traffic while protecting its users’ privacy. That’s a tall—if not impossible—order. YouTube hasn’t managed to do it even for video yet, and that’s when customers are sending them entire files which they can scan at their leisure. Monitoring all the files sent through BitTorrent—which splits them into tiny pieces—could be even more difficult; doing it in real-time sounds both expensive and impossible.

I agree that the industry should be able to protect its interests and income but I do think it is going a bit to far in trying to control the use and ownership of audio and video content and the effect is has on their customers, namely us.

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The end of the Dutch Pinpas payment system?

Wiebe Ruttenberg of the European Central Bank has stated that the European Banks should introduce an European Debitcard system or they would lose that market to the American, Japanese en Chinese banks.

Cause of it all is the introduction of the Single European Payment Area (SEPA). The introduction of SEPA could have the effect of the disappearance of Nation Payment systems as the Dutch pinpas system.

Another example of the over regulating effect of Europe. It looks like nobody has heard of the KISS system, Keep It Simple Stupid!
The pinpas is a cost effective and widely used system in the Netherlands. The big drawback of credit- and debit card systems is the big overhead and the fact that it is very expensive. I am sure that other countries also local systems which work effective and at low costs. Why try and throw that away for something which most probably is a bad solution?

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Rostock 2007

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[link]

Tell me, what is your objective? Do you want to communicate? Do you want to make something clear? Do you have something new and radical which will change to world and solve all our problems? Or is it that you just want to have a fight with anybody you don like?
I do not think the G8 will deliver much new and it is costing us far to much. But at least these men, these ‘leaders’ are talking.

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Scary person that President Hugo Chavez

A strange and scary person that President Hugo Chavez! In the resent past he nationalized oil companies, he wants to do the same with banks and now he wants to silence the opposition by taking away the ‘indipendent’ TV stations.
I known he is big buddies with Fidel but that doesn’t mean you have to take over his bad habbits.

[link]

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Sarkozy and the simplified European constitution

Sarkozy went to the European parliament. And it was funny to see how the reactions were on his suggestion for a simplified version of the European constitution. An earlier suggestion by the Dutch was received with a lot skepticism.

I think a simplified version is not going far enough. I think the whole European institute should be scaled down and more of the issues handled in the European parliament should be handled by the local parliaments of the countries.

[link]

By the way, France and the Netherlands rejected the constitution. But also by the UK, who cancelled their referendum. The Czech republic, Denmark, Poland and Portugal either cancelled or postponed their decision.

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Energy saving lamp nonsence?

A member of our Government suggested that the Netherlands should follow the example of Australia and ban the use of standard light bulb and instead only permit the use Energy saving lights. As a result a lot of, so called, experts began to fumigate. The energy conservation of this action would be neglectable and the energy saving lights would be bad for the environment because of the mercury inside of them. Furthermore you wouldn’t be able to use them because they wouldn’t fit in the armatures.

I think that is a load of nonsense. Most of the lights I use in my house are power saving light and yes, they don’t function well in situation where you switch them on and off a lot. But I have no problems putting them in any armature and why would you need an energy saving light in your toilet?