Today the F1 race the Germany ended with a bang. In the last lap the front suspention of Kimi Raikkonen gave in after he flat spotted his right tyre some six laps before.
How disappointing it was for Kimi and his (my) team, this is how racing should be. In spite of the risk of crashing, McLaren and Kimi decided to go for the win. Way to go!!!
Ongoing rant
Tdavid wrote an excellent piece on the rant between Adam and Dave. The comments are exceptional.
Read them, I’m sure there is more to come.
First tropical day in the Netherlands
Today the KNMI (Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute) registered a
temperature of 30 degrees Celsius in the middle of the Netherlands. In the
south of the Netherlands the temperature even went up to 32 degrees. This
weekend the temperature will go down again to a normal 20 degrees.
European referendum
Tonight the chairman the European committee was on TV (Mr. Barroso).
Guess what the message was: If you vote “No“, we will punish you! Look what happened to the others who tried it after the Nice treaty (Ireland and ..). We just went ahead and we changed nothing in the treaty, so just roll over and play dead.
Ongoing rant between Curry and Winer?
Today (May 26 2005) Dave Winer posted a reply on the pileup between him and Adam Curry.
In January Adam went to Florida to meet up with his friends to talk about the future of podcasting. Among those friends was Dave Winer who had been talking with Adam for weeks about going into podcasting business. After those meeting Adam made a sightseeing podcast where he sounded really frustrated. Something had gone wrong and Dave’s podcast sheds a different light on the matter.
Jummy.
Don’t worry, you are to stupid to understand this question
The remarks about the referendum are getting better and better these days.
Lately the politicians are getting more nervous about the possible outcome and are covering their ass by making remarks like: “There is no problem because 80% of the house of representatives wants the new European Constitution” and “You cannot blame the people because the question is to difficult for them”.
Furthermore, I’m really surprised that the politicians haven’t thought of a procedure in case somebody doesn’t agree with the proposed Constitution. We might be too stupid to understand the question but I think we are smart enough to understand that there might be a possibility that someone doesn’t agree with it.
This morning another crack showed up in the EU castle. The UK, the wealthiest country in the EU, with the best running economy, refuses to become a normal paying EU member. Since Thatcher the UK is paying less (they got a rebate because they didn’t use that much agricultural subsidies) than everybody else and they want to keep it this way. So now the new EU members are paying even more than the UK.
So how would the EU Constitution have changed this situation?
WMA for PC Link is here !!
WMA Music File Format Support in PC Link and the launch of the radioio music service.
You should have received yesterday an email from Philips outlining future release plans of Streamium products. We acknowledge that the product is not currently ready for the WMA Services or My Media. However, we would like to communicate the following product upgrade improvements for your consideration.
Philips Streamium SL300i, SL400i and MX6000i are ready to be upgraded to play Windows Media Audio (.WMA) music files. In addition to the currently supported MP3 and WAV file formats, Philips Streamium is keeping pace with the market, and will now support the hugely popular WMA music format! The addition of (non-DRM protected) WMA music file support will enable you to play more of your favorite music from your PC. WMA support for My media is not yet enabled but can be expected in the near future.
If they could add RealPlayer support it would be perfect!
US versus Machester United
An article in the New York Time describes the hostile situation between the fans of Manchester United and Malcolm Glazer after his take over of the club.
I quote:
How do English soccer fans hate Malcolm Glazer, the billionaire businessman who this week took control of Manchester United, one of the world’s most famous soccer teams? Let us count the ways.
There are Mr. Glazer’s personal qualities, which, according to various English newspapers, extend to rapaciousness, ruthlessness, meanness, megalomania, unflattering facial hair and a propensity, The Daily Mail says, for “wearing his trouser waistband ludicrously high.”
There is the way he is said to be saddling Manchester United with debt, using the team’s assets to help secure some £265 million ($490 million) in loans as part of the £790 million ($1.45 billion) takeover price.
As far as anyone can tell, Mr. Glazer, 76, has never been to a Manchester United game, or possibly even to any soccer game. Which might not be so surprising, according to his sister Maria. “He has never liked sports,” she told The Daily Mail.
Football may well be big business in Europe, South America and Azia. But in contrast to the “American way’, clubs have always been lead by people who have a heart for the sport and don’t see it as a tax deduction. Look at the Russian biljonair chairman of Chelsea, who also sponsors a football club in Moscow. I honestly doubt whether the son of Mr. Glazer really has such a ‘love’ for soccer (as the call the sport in the US). I think it has more to do with the will of winning, winning the big buck of the Manchester United merchandise that is.
Maybe Malcolm will learn to love the game, I doubt it. But he better do so because otherwise the fans are going to kick him out or walk away.
European Constitution and the Netherlands
The debate is heating up in the Netherlands. Better said, the debate is about nothing these days but everybody is shouting.
Our government is spending another 3.500.000€ to convince the Dutch people to say “Yes” at the referendum.
The opposition is playing in on our frustration about the EU as a whole. Dead easy of course as we were never asked whether we agreed with all the money going into that bottomless pit.
This is a situation in which our government cannot win and are going to shoot itself in the foot. Every remark they make that this referendum has nothing to do with the Euro, that it will improve our position in the EU, that ‘we’ will get a voice in Brussels because we can suggest new bills to the Euro Parliament, that we have a real veto right on the big issues, is counter productive for me. It reminds me of all treaties they made, treaty of Maastricht, treaty of Amsterdam, treaty of Nice, Portugal and what a mess they made out of it.
Do you want to make a bet on the outcome?
Majors join against global warming
This morning I saw this small message in the newspaper. It says that about 132 US majors have joined in an initiative to get the US to agree with the Kyoto treaty. Good this is that it is backed by Democrats and Republicans.
Let’s hope Bush gets influenced as well.
SEATTLE – Burgemeester Greg Nickels van Seattle probeert te bereiken dat de Verenigde Staten doen wat de regering-Bush niet wil: het Kyoto-verdrag over opwarming van de aarde naleven. The New York Times meldde dat zaterdag op zijn website.
Al 132 burgemeesters, Democraten en Republikeinen, hebben zich aangesloten bij Nickels’ coalitie om de opwarming van de aarde op lokaal niveau te bestrijden.
2012,
Zij hebben beloofd dat hun stad zal voldoen aan wat een bindende eis voor de VS had moeten zijn, als president Bush het klimaatverdrag niet had verworpen. Voor 2012 moet de uitstoot van broeikasgassen zijn teruggebracht tot 7 procent onder die van 1990.
Bloomberg
Volgens het kantoor van Nickels vertegenwoordigen de burgemeesters bijna 29 miljoen burgers in 35 staten. Donderdag sloot de Republikeinse burgemeester Michael Bloomberg van New York zich aan.
Dave Winer is not amused
Things are heating up between the Founding Father Dave Winer and the Podfather Adam Curry.
In his recent blog entry Dave is threatening to kick Adam �in the ass�.
Make love no war!
Streaming at home
Recently I bought a Philips SL400i, wireless multimedia link. The spec’s promise me the ability to listen to mp3, mp4pro, pcm and wav audio and divx, xvid and mpeg video. And it works, it works nicely
Setting up the machine was dead ease. You plug the scart plug in the back of your TV, audio into the reciever and connect the box to the internet, and off you go.
You can use it in combination with upnp Media Managers like Nero MediaHome, Philips Media Manager, SMC EZ Media Server and Microsoft Windows Media Connect. You can listen to your own mp3 files or watch your videos and pictures which are stored on a PC. But you can also connect it directly to the Internet and use streaming hosts like Yahoo, Live365 and others. It comes with a personal page (http://my.philips.com) on which you can store your preferences likes radio- & video stations, pictures and java applications.
A nice thing on the machine is that it has a display on which you can see what you are selecting. Otherwise you need to turn on your TV every time you want to change the source. Another nice thing about the machine is that it’s software can be upgraded via the Internet connection. That’s what happened to mine the moment I switched it on.
The bad thing is the limited format support. Real Player is not supported plus some other Media Player formats. Maybe it will be in the future.
Another bad thing is the quality of the upnp Media Manager software. Most of the software is to slow, hasn’t enough options and it can’t be run as a service under Windows 2003. Which I find important. For instance I would like to see to option to play radio streams and to transcode formats. Nero can transform formats but cannot play radio stations, SMC is fast but cannot transcode and Microsoft supports most of the formats, etc.
Maybe someday someone will combine all the good thing into one package.