I listened to the latest 'This Week in Tech' podcast today. They mentioned a screensaver called
FlickrFan. This screensaver can connect to flickr account and images to use in the screensaver. But it also downloads current Associated Press images in high quality and more. This results in awesome pictures from around the world covering the news in HIGH-RES.
B.t.w. it's much more than just a screensaver, but I liked the screensaver-part best.
About 4 years ago (to this date), I went to the west coast of the US for a 3 week
holiday. At the time there were also several
forest fires. It almost seemed that the fires were following us. Everywhere we had been, things started to burn.
Now, exactly 4 years later, the
same thing is happening. Only difference is that I'm not in the US. So don't blame me ;-)
And again
a ridiculous law in the United States. The land of opportunities, and lame laws.
Starting in August 2007, you can't be in one place for more than a half hour to make (scenic) photographs or shoot some video. This includes the setting up of your tripod etc.
So no more waiting for that special sunset, or waiting for the sky to clear for that one special shot of/for your sweetheart. To make it even more ridiculous, you also need an insurance of 1 million USD if you need more time (which means you need a special permit).
No doubt that this is initially intended for the professional movie makers or photographers, but there's the fear that this will be abused to harass the common man/woman/tourist.
It must be very handy to have very general laws/rules, which the government can interpret as they see fit. Why don't they just pass a law which is states "It's illegal to....". In this case they can fill in the blanks whenever they want... Oh wait, they already did... The Patriot Act.
A couple of weeks ago, a non-commercial TV station
BNN announced that they would air a live kidney donor show. The idea was that a terminal ill patient got to decide which kidney patient could get her kidney. Lot's, and lot's of people (from all over the world) thought that this was an outrage.
Yesterday the show aired (even though lot's of government officials were against it). At the end of the show, it seemed that it was just a
hoax. The terminally ill patient was an actrice, but the needy kidney patients were real.
Reason for airing this show was to make people see that organ donation is needed (a lot). It seems that Holland has to lowest rate of organ donors in Europe.
Well, they surely succeeded in raising attention to the subject. The news travelled all over the world.
Personally, I've been a registered donor since 1998. They may harvest my body, when I'm dead of course, for the good of mankind. After which they may burn what's left behind.
My opinion on organ donation is that someone who is a donor should have a much higher priority for receiving a donor organ. Live isn't just about taking/consuming. It's also about giving.
If you're not registered as a donor...
click here, and make sure you become one as soon as possible.
You're in luck, if you have a XS4ALL Internet account. Normally, you have an hour a week free Hotspot access, and this summer you are even more lucky. XS4ALL provides over 900
free Hotspots throughout the land this summer (June, Juli, and August).
A usenet posting suggests that XS4ALL will provide a filtering service to their subscribers. The filter would consist of 5 levels. Ranging from fully open to 'fully' closed. The first will give you the possibility of running your own services at home, and the latter means you're only able to e.g. surf and e-mail (through the XS4ALL SMTP server).