Open-source Europe

The next time the French parliament opens its doors, they will be serving Linux. According to this “Business Week article”:http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/mar2007/gb20070312_042781.htm?campaign_id=rss_daily , 1,154 computers will be switching to Ubuntu Linux from Windows XP, including all of the MPs staff and personal PCs. France has had a long history of embracing open-source software like Open Office and Firefox, but this will be the first mass switch of operating systems.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1798381/posts article reports the Shadow chancellor George Osbourne's statement that Britain should support more open-source software in order to save the people 600 million pounds/year. That article features some other good examples of governments going open-source.

Selfish thinking taken to a new level

In one of the more blatant acts of selfishness I have heard of, a group of American families hurt by the USS Cole-incident, is suing the government of Sudan for $100 million. Some facts for you: The bombing of the USS Cole killed 17 sailors in October of 2000. Since 2003, the genocide in Sudan has taken the lives of probably 400,000 people and displaced a further 2.5 million. If this law suit goes through and the Sudanese do pay, I think we all know where it’s going to come from. It’s one thing to file ridiculous law suits within the US where we’re all relatively well-off, but this is unconscionable.
A “BBC article”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6444449.stm on the subject.
A very well-referenced “Wikipedia page”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darfur_conflict on the Darfur tragedy.
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Climate Change Game

In honor of the British government taking on the strictest (but still not nearly strict enough) carbon regimen in Europe, I give you “this game.”:http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/hottopics/climatechange/climate_challenge/ In this better-than-average flash game, you the player are the president of the EU and you balance money, electricity, food, water, and carbon emissions against each other, guiding the Union into the future. Some options are very realistic (like tax breaks for domestic solar cells) and some are less so (like mag-lev trains) but overall this is a pretty good waste of time, and not a bad way to look at the decisions facing governments.
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Exploding laptop batteries

Laptop batteries have been exploding for a long time, but it’s been a phenomenon I’d largely ignored until now when I read an “Inquirer article”:http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=38176 about a MacBook exploding this morning. Then I went in search of evidence. I found this “video”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeWq6rWzChw&mode=related&search= and I realized that when they say exploding, they actually do mean *exploding.*

According to an article on the subject at “Howstuffworks.com”:http://computer.howstuffworks.com/dell-battery-fire.htm , these explosions/meltings/fires are caused by small amounts of metal floating in the lithium fluid piercing the separation walls between the cells, causing a short circuit. Bad luck eh?

Lego computer

So we’re all big nerds right? Well it turns out that some of us are way cooler nerds than others and have managed to combine the childhood obsession with building things, Lego construction, with the more adult version, computer-building. I was hunting around for cool case ideas for a home theatre PC I’m thinking of building when I came across this cool Lego computer case by “Winston Chow”:http://www2.hawaii.edu/~wchow/ at the University of Hawaii.

The build is recounted “here”:http://home.hawaii.rr.com/chowfamily/lego/

Google's Zeitgeist

I found something new from Google. I know, big surprise there’s something new from the company that keeps on giving, but it’s absolutely worth a look. “Zeitgeist”:http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html is a site that tracks the trends in Google search terms, sponsored by the company itself. As opposed to the normal “what everyone searches” stats, (sex, boobies, etc…) this site shows the big gainers per month, week, or even year. For example, here is the page for 2006 in review: “Zeitgeist”:http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/zeitgeist2006.html
Zeit·geist | Pronunciation: ‘tsIt-“gIst, ‘zIt | Function: noun | Etymology: German, from Zeit (time) + Geist (spirit) | Date: 1884 | Meaning: the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era.

Russian theatres jam cell phones

Here’s a “link”:http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=38057 to a posting on TheInquirer.net about two theatres in St. Petersburg who got so frustrated at patrons not silencing their mobiles, they simply jammed the signal. Sure it violates some rights, but it might be less annoying than those ‘turn off your cell phone’ PSAs they run in the movie theaters in the States.

South Korea to draft first "Robots' Rights" legislation

A five-member committee will release The Robot Ethics Charter in Rome sometime in April. Obviously South Korea is the most technologically advanced and connected in the world but I didn’t think this was going to happen for quite some time. Artificial intelligence and the ethical ramifications of ‘machines with dreams’ have long been the subject of science fiction work starting with Isaac Asimov’s “rules of robotics” from the 1942 story, _Runaround_ that featured in _I, Robot_ . I’m very much looking forward to the Charter’s announcement and will report it here when it happens. In the meantime, here’s a more in-depth look by the BBC. “article”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6425927.stm

Our President looks like a monkey

So it’s no secret. He does. Not only does he look like a monkey, but sometimes he probably smells like one too, although I wouldn’t know because I’ve never been that close to him. To celebrate his looking a bit more simian than the rest of us, I’m glad that the internet has produced “bushorchimp.com”:http://www.bushorchimp.com/ in which pictures of President Bush are put right next to pictures of chimpanzees. Almost 5 million people have visited since the site went up in 2000, join them. Here are some of my favorites: