Animals Getting Drunk! :D

Music may finally become free of DRM!

Vivendi's Universal Music has said it is to test the digital sale of songs from artists without the customary copy-protection technology.

It will allow the sale of thousands of albums and tracks available in MP3-form without the protection, known as digital rights management (DRM).

Most major recording studios insist music sellers use DRM technology to curb online piracy.

Universal artists include 50 Cent, the Black Eyed Peas, and Amy Winehouse.

Universal said: "The experiment will run from August to January and analyze such factors as consumer demand, price sensitivity and piracy in regards to the availability of open MP3s."

Retailers including Google, Wal-Mart, and Amazon.com, will participate in the DRM-free trial, Universal said.

But participants do not include Apple iTunes online music store, the third largest music retailer in the US.

Source: BBC News

Gotta Love Amy WineHouse's "You know I'm No Good"!

The Official (Plugged) Version of the Song is Awesome (you can listen to it at left) , but the Video of it Bites ... and so ... here is a Very Unplugged rendition of it ... Old-school-sailor-ink, heroin-chic-anorexia, po'-dangerous-lil'-baddd-grrrl, 60s/70s soul.

More Zimbabwe News from Joanna: Jacques.

Dear family and friends,

Jacques is now VERY happily living in Zimbabwe!

He loves this country, everywhere he goes there is grass and trees and flowers. He is passionately sniffing all the new smells of this African country, he rolls around on all the lawns and has already tried sadza – the local food stipend made of mealie-flour.

It was quite an effort to bring him over and Jacques and I would both like to thank the efforts of my friend Tanya, Mary and wonderful Mr. Andreas (Jacques doc). I would also like to wholeheartedly thank many people who bought from my little Africa Shop, without whose contributions this would not have been possible. A big thank you to Diane and to Lambrini and all her friends. Finally, thank you to the people at CYA, whose financial contribution was also a big helping factor (special thanks to Nadia and Steve for lobbying on my behalf!).

Jacques’ days are filled with walks and gardens. He usually starts the morning with a brisk trot as I leisurely cycle down to the WWF offices where I am volunteering. Then he gets to loll around their huge gardens. We then usually do another sniff-filled walk over to the MSF offices and then he gets to loll around their gardens for a while. Then it is back home, dinner time and an evening walk around the enormous compound garden grounds. All the roads we take in the city hardly have any traffic and they all have grass and trees (see photos).

Everywhere he goes Jacques get compliments. He has made quite an impression on the local populace – “that’s a very nice dog you have!” Many people are also very afraid of him which unfortunately comes from when white colonialist use to train their dogs to attack black people. But despite their fear, once they get to know him they all remark what a friendly dog he is.

Food is an issue, since we humans have not had meat in the supermarkets for the past three weeks. Thankfully, I have found a local vet clinic where they have a supply of good quality dog food.

So, big WOOF WOOF from Jacques and hug from me!!

Joanna and Jacques

A New Blog from Newburyport

Why blog Evelyn asks? Well ... it's a good way to keep in touch between friends, an excellent way to share information between like-minded people ... and even, for some very popular ones, a fun way to make a living.

Now ... as to the significance (or lack of) of an individual among the billions of people on this planet. Yikes what a thought! Though I figure that our significance is determined by how much we ourselves (and those we find interesting) care about us. That means that ... if those who are insignificant to you do not consider you significant ... who cares(?) ... just as long as those whom you consider significant to you ... also think you are significant. :)

This all came about because some of the greatest people (Nike, Lexi, Evelyn etc and some people I'm not sure I recognise) ... all from one of the most wonderful places on Earth (the Brick House) are launching their first ever blog. I hope you have a digital camera ... that's all I have to say! Anyway ... Congratulations ... Welcome to the blogosphere ... and I'm of course adding a link to it.

Cheers!

That's a goood dog!

Iota's UnderWater Art Exhibit

Tomorrow (Saturday July 28, at 10:30 am 2007 on the Island of Kea a.k.a Tzia) my friend Iota Sotiropoulou will have an Art Exhibit ... underwater in the Sea... no seriously! It's called "Ιn 2 the Βlue". You have to wear a mask and everything. Here (for those of you who can read Greek) is all about it in an article from a local Paper: Article

My Friend Cyberella is getting Married

And she has created a little storyboard of her relationship so far with her future husband:
They first met at Club Panetarium
(Click on Image to see it all on her site)

Sonata in G Minor (Cat's Fugue) by Gatonico Catlatti

Thanks go to Christina for that one.

A Greek TV Scam?

Is local "Channel 10" involved in conning needy people out of their money? I don't know, but it certainly looks like it. Can there be another explanation?

The set up is an “Anagram Game” where you can "win up to several thousand Euros":

They give you for example … POU-RKA-ZIA.

The word to be found is the evident "KARPOUZIA" (watermelons).

They then have some “caller” who of course misses the idiotically obvious "KARPOUZIA" ... offers instead “KARPOUZI” and uses a second chance to say... “KARPOUZA” (Is that even a word?). :D

Could his person possibly be part of the set-up? No, you think? Of course not!:)

The "presenter" then goes through a whole routine: "WHAT A SHAME! ... though this answer is not right … it was very close etc". She then continues with the pitch: “CALL IF YOU KNOW THE SOLUTION!” while whistles and bells and meaningless countdowns and computer-game sound-effects and suspense-movie music are blasting in the background: 10 … 9 … 8 … 7 … etc

The trick for them is of course to get people to call (1,19 Euro each call, 1,52 Euros with a cell and 1,43 euro for each SMS). And they of course say that they only have some lines opened, like 5, 9, 12, 19, 20, 21, 30 … which the "red Button" will randomly choose from. Right!

So what do you think the chances are that a real person ever gets on the air? My take is that after they've milked enough money ... they might let one real caller on ... but then again ... they probably have a friend call even for that one.

Do people actually fall for this?

Probably yes, the weak-minded, the senile and children ... though "one needs to be over 18 to call"! :)

No Comment Necessary

Hydra!

The BBC has done a TV Report about the island of Hydra, one of the few places in Greece that have been left relatively pristine. It is now being eyed by a hotel developer. He is likely to be taken to court. "There is the whole of Greece one can use for development, why must they choose historical Hydra!" said an inhabitant.

The fly!

The guys at Harvard have created a robotic fly.

Seriously!

That is undoubtedly so very cool. We can, of course, also trust that it will be used for all kinds of nice things to benefit mankind. Right! In any case, the future is certainly going to get interesting with the usoA, the Chinese, the Russians and pretty soon everybody launching cute little things like that (and who knows what else) at each other.

"The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is funding Wood's research in the hope that it will lead to stealth surveillance robots for the battlefield and urban environments. The robot's small size and fly-like appearance are critical to such missions. "You probably wouldn't notice a fly in the room, but you certainly would notice a hawk," Wood says.

Recreating a fly's efficient movements in a robot roughly the size of the real insect was difficult, however, because existing manufacturing processes couldn't be used to make the sturdy, lightweight parts required. The motors, bearings, and joints typically used for large-scale robots wouldn't work for something the size of a fly. "Simply scaling down existing macro-scale techniques will not come close to the performance that we need," Wood says.

Some extremely small parts can be made using the processes for creating microelectromechanical systems. But such processes require a lot of time and money. Wood and his colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, needed a cheap, rapid fabrication process so they could easily produce different iterations of their designs."

Thanks go to Theodore for that one.

Source: MIT's TechnologyReview

The Great Battle of Tabouli!

Thanks go to Evelyn for that one! :)

And they do mean "light" fabric.

Joanna's Zimbabwe Letter

Joanna is a journalist friend (the one who took my blog picture). She now lives in Zimbabwe with her friend who is in MSF.

From time to time she sends a letter describing her experiences there. They tend to be fantastic. So I asked her if I could publish her latest one. Here it is:

"Dear family and friends,

I have already been here (in Harare, Zimbabwe) for two weeks and am still find it hard to adjust.

EVERYTHING is difficult in this country, and believe me when I say that I’m not exaggerating. First of all – it is COLD. We are in winter time here, which wouldn’t be bad if it wasn’t for the fact that NO houses, offices, building in general have heating. At my boyfriend’s offices people type on their computers with gloves on, while I never take off my coat, unless I’m getting into bed under five covers.

Then there is the whole economical situation. When I first visited here three months ago, for 1 U.S. Dollar you could get 20,000 Zim dollars. Now you can get 125,000 Zim dollars for 1 U.S. Dollar. All the currency now in circulation though has an expiration date – imagine looking at your euro or dollar note and seeing on it: Expires on July 31, 2007 (!!!!!) (see photo). But that is exactly what Zim dollars have on them, so you can imagine the spending frenzy everyone is going to get into in these next ten days or so.

Having said that, let us look at what there is to buy with those expiring million dollar packets we are carrying around – and the answer is: NOT MUCH. A couple of weeks ago the government decided to make shops and supermarkets cut down their prices to a June level. Many did not comply; they are all now in jail. Managers of supermarkets, directors of shop, floor managers... all in jail. At the stores that did cut their prices – madness! Miles long lines of people waiting to get inside to buy all those things that now according to real value rates cost pennies. For example the government made MACRO supermarket sell its television set for 1 million Zim dollars. Sounds like a lot, but according to the black market exchange rate that is only 8 $, about 6.5 euros. You can imagine the pandemonium that broke out as people rushed to get the sets, fighting with each other, pulling, tearing, breaking things... It was even reported today that there was a pregnant woman waiting in a cue to buy fixed price items and she had her baby there at the shop!

But generally, there isn’t anything in the stores to buy because simply it is more expensive for producers to sell their products than it is to make them. So for the past two weeks there is no meat to be had anywhere in the country. Eggs are scarce, as is bread and milk. We’re all eating a lot of canned stuff, Heinz soups are especially everywhere. I’m getting to have a very close relationship with the Zim can-opener, which sometimes works, or sometimes manages to plow into my hand!!

More worrying, they also say that soon there won’t be any fuel which will of course bring the country to a stand-still. But there is now a rumor that Libya will be giving Zim fuel, one revolutionary supporting another...

Telecommunications are a complete disaster. It is almost impossible to call someone, so everyone texts people, which sometimes get there, sometimes don’t. The internet sometimes works, sometimes doesn’t.

We have power black-outs. They cut off the electricity in blocks around the city in order to economize. You don’t know when it will be your turn, and how long they will keep it off for. Then they also cut the water. We have to keep big bins filled with water just in case. Yesterday we were at the check-out counter in this huge supermarket and all the lights went out – we were all in complete darkness!! It was VERY SCARRY!!! The guards ran and shut all the doors and then everyone had to demonstrate their receipt and what they had in their bags in order to leave.

On a personal level, it is extremely risky for me to even attempt to write something as a journalist. But even looking for a job is tricky. I can’t include in my CV anything that hints that I was a journalists (which obviously leaves for a very poor resume) and I can’t really say I’m looking for a job because I’m only here on a tourist visa which they can revoke whenever they want.

Then every office I go to is behind a guarded enclosure and sometimes it is difficult even getting beyond the guards: “What do you want?” reply: “To see the human resource department” “Do you have an appointment” or “who do you want to see?” to which of course I don’t have an answer. Some look at me strange, some scornfully, some are very nice. To many places I’m just offering myself as a volunteer to see what they will offer, and hope that something job-wise will come up afterwards. But sometimes I’ve had people look at me even stranger when I say I want to be a volunteer.

I’m sending a picture of me in front of the new Medecins Sans Frontiers offices. (I am wearing my favorite sweater and necklace some VERY special kids gave me as a present!) The new offices are this incredible mansion (even with a pool in the back, which MSF rules doesn’t allow to be used) which goes for a pittance. The garden in front had even more trees, some huge mango trees included, but because some of the Zim workers had to put through a cable and the trees were in the way... they just cut them down! VERY SAD!

In the meantime, I am trying to fly Jacques, my dog, over here, which has required a lot of money and paperwork and the INCREDIBLY kind efforts of some friends of mine who are helping out. I am still waiting to see what will happen with that and will keep you all updated.

Huge hug to everyone,

Joanna"

UpDate: FireFox Use in Europe is now 28%.

Percentage Use of the Best Browser in the World

Image from XiTi

Joyeux Quatorze Juillet!

Flag Photo source: fond-ecran-image.com

France's Quatorze Juillet National Celebrations have a distinctively European feel this year.

Shaking up Traditions, the President of France invited non-French European Contingents to join the festivities for the first time. The president of the European Commission, the European foreign policy chief, the Prime Minister of the rotating EU president country and Regiments from across Europe representing the full 27 European Union countries all marched the Champs-Elysees in the traditional military parade with President Sarkozy.

"I wanted France to be back in Europe and Europe to be present in France!" said the President.

Online advertising 'growing fast'

"The annual value of pan-European online advertising is set to reach 16bn euros ($22bn; £10.8bn) by 2012, more than double that of 2006, says a study.

The report by research body Forrester said online adverts would leap to 18% of market share, up from 9% currently.

It said 52% of people were now regularly online, spending more time doing so than watching television.

The UK will continue to see the most online advertising in the next four years, ahead of Germany and France.

'Valuable medium'

European internet users now spend 14.3 hours a week online, compared with 11.3 hours watching TV, and 4.4 hours reading newspapers or magazines, the research group said.

As a result of this increased internet usage, 36% of people who go online said they spent less time looking at the television as a result.

The report said search engines would continue to dominate online advertising spend, followed by display advertisements and e-mails.

"After five years of dipping their toes into the online marketing waters, firms have come to realise that the net is a valuable medium for client acquisition, retention and market expansion," said the study."

Source: BBC

The new Audi R8 ... "Es ist nicht Audi Ihres Vaters!"

Audi R8