Monthly Archive for September, 2005

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Crooks and Liars – Bittorrent

Published on September 9, 2005 in Media, Science, USA and WWW. 0 Comments

Since last week, I’ve been trying to get as much information about the hurricane Katrina disaster as possible. I’ve stumbled over a weblog that regularily publishes news snippets from CNN, FOX, MSNBC and others. Crooks and Liars by John Amato is very critical of the current U.S. government and the style of the postings might not be everybody’s taste, since they get explicit at times – but the weblog certainly raises a lot of valid questions about how the government responded to the disaster.

Seeing the number of videos they offer for download and the high number of visitors, I thought their server must have been under lots of stress lately. I emailed to the weblog’s author and suggested to use torrents for distribution. Bittorrent and similar clients are programs for easier distribution of huge files. Since many use them to download movies and songs, RIAA and MPAA are trying to sue operators of websites that host torrents, which are neccessary for clients like Azureus to “find” the file in question and download it. The websites that offer those torrents are quite easy to find, just google for it.

In spite of the entertainment industry opposition to the torrent technology itself, there are lots of legal uses, as can been seen at Legaltorrents, also, the beta version of World of Warcraft, Planetshift (a free, cross-platform MMORPG) and the fan-film Star Wars: Revelations have been made available through torrents. The basic idea this technology is founded on is great – everybody in the network shares his file with everybody else. In the end, everyone gets his file faster and supports others in doing so while the peers in the network with complete copies have a lower traffic load. Visiting Amato’s weblog again this morning, I found torrent files all over the place. I’m not a lawyer, but I assume the files offered there can be considered legal, at least in the U.S. (it might fall under fair use), but I’m curious about other countries, like Germany.

“Crooks and Liars” starts using torrent files

update: Why P2P is Here to Stay

update: NASA Blue Marble Project uses bittorrent

Japanese Passivity

Published on September 7, 2005 in Japan and Politics. 0 Comments

Ishihara does it again: A short article with long known platitudes and black-and-white thinking about Japan and its foreign policy …

It clings to a hopelessly idealistic and historically illegitimate constitution handed down by U.S. occupation forces nearly 60 years ago to block Japan’s reemergence as a military power. Japan now entrusts its survival to the United States, has forsaken independent thinking, and has become spineless.

If you’ve never heard about Tokyo’s governor, this article gives you a quick and direct introduction.

Foreign Policy: Japanese Passivity

Digital Illusions

Published on September 7, 2005 in Curiosa and WWW. 0 Comments

If you like Albrecht Dürer and optical illusions, you’ll like this, too:

Illusions at Jalenack

Engadget

Published on September 6, 2005 in Flotsam, Science and WWW. 0 Comments

A very popular weblog at the moment – a techie site about gadgets.

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American Red Cross – Response

Published on September 6, 2005 in Media, Politics, USA and WWW. 0 Comments

The coverage about Hurricane Katrina and the desastrous reponse – or to say better – initial lack of it and slow start stirred up even conservative politicians and media, reading through the net last night really surprised me.

What I don’t understand is how the U.S. government could fail in responding to this catastrophy? After 911, there must have been myriads of people thinking about what could happen to America and how to prevent it or act. In 2001 a scenario like what happened in NOLA was mentioned among the top three dangers to America. There’s a lot of coverage at CNN, but the really interesting information is in the blogosphere. Take Metafilter, Dailykos, Boing Boing and Crooks and Liars. The latter also publishes excerpts from U.S. television media.

There’s information which is hard to believe, like this, this, this, this or this.

One thing about the story over at Dailykos: This is an important sign for so many people all over the world, not only in the U.S., people in Europe and elsewhere who talked angrily about and repeated so many times about high levels Anti-Americanism everywhere: America is in distress and dire need of help. According to many people involved, like New Orleans Major Ray Nagin, the US government is moving far too slow, but a long list of countries all over the world, even Cuba, which has not the best relations to the US, offered help, countries like Sri Lanka, Jamaica and Afghanistan (!), which are not among the well-off themselves, offered help, immediate neighbors like Canada and Mexico as well as the United Nations and Europe, OAS and WHO, China, Japan, India and South Korea are offering all kinds of help. When people are dying, it is not important whether the victims are black or white, rich or poor, what nationality they are, people from all corners of the world rush to help and grant relief. Does it matter that the US government is not popular? No, right now it doesn’t, not at all, right now the only thing that is important is to get clean water and food, clothing, transportation etc. whereever it is needed. Quick:

American Red Cross – Responding to Hurricane Katrina

US accepts offer of UN help in Katrina aftermath

Published on September 5, 2005 in Politics and USA. 0 Comments

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has decided that no offer that can help alleviate the suffering of the people in the afflicted area will be refused.

Some 60 nations have offered help, from longtime American friends such as Japan, Germany, Canada, France and Britain as well as Cuban President Fidel Castro, who is willing to donate doctors and medicine and the Venezuelan government, frequently criticized by the Bush administration.

With the desaster unfolding and help still not arriving everywhere it should the offer of countries all over the world – and not only friends – it still good to know that international cooperation and the system and structures to facilitate it, namely the United Nations, are willing, capable – and exist.

US accepts offer of UN help in Katrina aftermath

Food for Thought

Published on September 5, 2005 in Food. 0 Comments
food/DSCF0076.JPG

Another post for the food department – this is Kimchi Chigge with tofu and tuna, chicken stripes with gingko and other vegetables, Ozingo (sepia in red pepper pasta), beef and potatoes in soy sauce, spinach with garlic and sesamy, doraji with cucumber and the daily portion of rice with black rice and green peas.

JE Kaleidoscope

Published on September 4, 2005 in History, Japan and WWW. 0 Comments

Japan Echo, a journal about Japanese media set up a website, JE Kaleidoscope with translations of approved textbooks:

JE Kaleidoscope, a Japan Echo website, presents in-depth information to researchers and other people who need a deeper understanding of Japan. The main feature on the website now is a collection of translations of middle school textbooks. These are the Japanese history textbooks approved by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology for use in the school year beginning in April 2006; we present the sections on Japan’s early modern and modern history.

Foreign interest in Japan’s school textbooks is extremely high. The textbook translations have been commissioned by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which hopes to see this information accurately presented to people around the world. The translated material comes from all eight of the Japanese history books approved for the 2006 school year.

The data is not completely available yet, but you can already view partial English translations. The list of textbooks includes the controversial edition of Fushosha Publishing, that has been accused of whitewashing Japanese history in regard to World War II. The book is in use in 0.1% of Japans school – tendency rising – but the publishers hope for more acceptance this time.

Hello WordPress

Published on September 3, 2005 in Weblog. 0 Comments

Back online – at last. Moving to WordPress actually wasn’t as simple as I hoped it would be. After importing all postings I had to assign categories and add titles to older posts, several plugins messed around with the content, display or other functions behind the scenes and freeing myself from thirdparty services turned out to be difficult. I won’t use “Hello/Blogger” to post images anymore, but Gallery2 in the future. I also won’t use javascript anymore as a target_blank ersatz (the latter is deprecated anyway), if you want a link to be opened in a new window, please use the middle mouse button.

what doesn’t work yet (sorted by importance):

  • Internal&Dashboard: posts can’t be searched
  • Internal: gallery2 needs to be configurated and set up
  • Display: images formerly hosted at Blogger/Hello aren’t always displayed
  • Internal: xhtml plugin causes all kinds of errors (currently disabled)
  • Internal: multiple languages within a posting and text formatting (TextControl) at the same time doesn’t work
  • Design: the upper part of the right border disappears if the number of horinzontal pixels is uneven
  • Listings: all bloglists, catalogues, etc. need to be updated to the new url
  • Design: post titles in archives are not displayed properly
  • Internal: the post preview doesn’t refresh
  • Dashboard: (save&editing) “save” posting and return to overview doesn’t work sometimes
  • Design: smilies under IE have no real transparency (I’m waiting for IE7)

P.S.: If you wonder what the countdown is for, click here.