Another WordPress weblog by Enno ter Keurst
I watched Scoble and Thomas Hawk on the ZoomrTV stream getting their iPhone.
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.
The European court has ruled that the Netherlands is not allowed to make diesel particle filters compulsory on new cars. Instead the Netherlands has to wait till the end of 2008. Making the filter compulsory in the Netherlands would be unfair the the manufacturers because they would have to make changes to the product only for the Dutch market.
The Dutch government wanted to make the filters compulsory earlier because of the problems the Netherlands have with the European rule on clean air. Despite the ruling, 60% of the cars sold in the Netherlands which are equipped with diesel engines are also equipped with a particle filter.
One example of how the market can react quicker than the European politicians and how Europe should not interfere with the activities in the individual countries.
We have an ex-member of the Dutch government who is regularly showing us how thick the plank is in front of his head. When we held the referendum in the Netherlands he was the one who made remarks like; if we don’t say yes war will break out in Europe, all the light will go out and we will fall in complete chaos. You cannot blame the guy because he use to work in the European parliament from 1994 to 1999. He must have lost it then working in a parliament with no power, doing nothing all day.
Now that the negotiations the new constitution are started he felt it necessary to write an article in our regional newspaper, the Eindhovens Dagblad, about the necessity of the European Union. What is striking in the piece is his lack of understanding how he, as a Dutch representative in Brussels, failed to tell his party and more important, failed to tell the Dutch people how important the EU for us is and how important their work is. No, instead he can only say ‘WAR WILL BREAK OUT IF YOU SAY NO’. Furthermore he keeps repeating that we do not understand the issue, that it was never the intention to build a European superstate, and that the flag, the Nation Anthem and the European President had nothing to with. Yes sure!!
One argument he uses, the rising of new economic superpowers like China and India and the fact that the European economy would benefit from more cooperation, is one which I can agree with. We need to cooperate better, made it easier to transport our goods and services but we also need to keep our National identities, our habits, and our approach to life and work. Diversity is one of the strengths of the European countries and economies, that is what made to Germans so efficient, that’s what made the Italians so creative, that what made the Dutch a bit of it all. That is lacking in economies like that of the US. That is all blend and tasteless.
So Mister Brinkhorst, I will vote Yes if:
I could not go to Le mans 24 hours, but I can watch it on RTL Grand Prix who is streaming it on the Internet. Great!!!
Unfortunately Jan Lammers is not doing very well and Audi can not be beaten.
KABUL (Reuters) – Suicide bombers attacked foreign troops in central and southern Afghanistan on Friday, killing five children and a Dutch soldier in a day of renewed bloodshed.
[link]
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.
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.
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?
[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.
