Consequences of EU for national governments

Here in The Netherlands, our political landscape is made up of four hierarchical layers: city councils, provincial government, national government and the EU. For the last 20, or so, years we've been going through a process where the influence and importance of the provincial government is slowly diminishing, to the point where they are only responsible for public transport. Likewise, a parallel trend was, and still is, to decentralize the national government, by handing out more and more tasks and responsibilities to the local level.
On top of all this, the main thing our national government is responsible for is making sure that European legislation finds it's place in our national law. And because of the fact that so much of the carrying out of legislation has been decentralized to the cities and municipalities, our national government has been degraded to a translation agency for EU legislation.

So there are two trends at play here:

1. Decentralizing the national government.


2. Becoming obsolete as a legislator.

Extrapolating these two trends, the only conclusion is that the national government will itself become as unimportant as the Dutch provincial government is. The EU will determine the legislation and the local government will carry it out. This trend to unimportance also explains why so many national politicians in the EU are showing nationalists tendencies. It's simple job protection for them.

Zaaf

Location:Rijksweg,Muiden,Netherlands

Happy birthday iPad

Since a year the iPad is on the market. It's been available here for slightly over eight months. And still I get lots of questions about it from people who show interest, but who do not know what to do with it. And every time I have to explain that, yes, it's just a big iPhone, without the phone, and no, it is something very different.
Apple got mocked for calling it magical, but that seems the correct term for it. The big screen size, combined with the responsiveness of the touch interface, combined with the fact that the screen shows the app in full, without any UI element of the OS, allows you to be immersed into your app. This effect is so much stronger on the iPad than on the iPhone that it seems magical.
I've been trying to figure out where that difference comes from. And to me, it stems from the bigger screen, combined with the fact that I use it with one app at the time. This gives such focus to what I'm doing with it, that I feel immersed in the app. Whether it's reading e-mail, e-books, tweets, or the Economist, or when it's 'just' a simple game like Doodle Jump or Sudoku, the iPad morphs into that app. And it's this morphing quality that makes it special and that somehow lacks on the iPhone. The specs of the iPad help here, especially the battery life. But it's the absence of any sign of anything other than the current app that makes this possible. And that is thanks to the operating system. iOS gets out of your way and lets you get on with your things.

The iPad 2 seems to have everything that makes it even more immersive: more ram, faster processor, thinner and lighter. Combined with a unobtrusive OS, it is a must buy for any doubter.

Zaaf

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Impala,Huizen,The Netherlands

And it's so like leica

So last week, I finally decided I needed a photo camera. I've never ever in my life owned a photo camera before, so this is a bigger decision than you'd might think. Yes, I've had mobile phones with camera's, three up 'till now, and I've even used them to make pictures, but never a real photo camera. So, what changed my mind? In short, it was a link from daringfireball.net to this page, a wonderful love story of a guy with a Leica M9, written by Thorsten Overgaard. It's described there as a mix between a DSLR and a point and shoot camera, with the goodies of both.

Leica's are hard to find around here. And it turns out that the M9 is horribly expensive. It can cost up to €6000, but in his love letter he mentioned a cheaper alternative, the Leica D-lux. So after reading the whole article, I took the plunge and decided I needed a Leica D-lux 5 for €699. However, because it would become my first camera, I needed to hold it in my hands before buying it. As it turned out, this was a good call.

Upon arriving in the photo store, the seller told me that, yes they have a Leica D-lux 5, but did I know that for €220 less I could be the owner of exactly the same camera but with a Panasonic label instead of the iconic red Leica label? He had both in stock, and demonstrated them both to me. Upon a few external design differences, they were practically the same.

So now I'm the proud owner of a Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX5


And it's so like leica...

Zaaf

Pineapple

Just cleaned a pineapple and I had to throw away about half of the pineapple on accord of it being inedible. Why can't they invent a more efficient one?

Java Exceptions Explained to All

AWTException

You are using AWT, which means your GUI will be ugly. This exception is only a warning and can be ignored.

Tell it like it is! I just wish that every programming language had such great documentation.

Zaaf

Steve Jobs

I just watched a rerun of the 2007 Macworld Keynote, the one where Steve announces the iPhone. Since that time, Steve's weight has been dropping slowly but steadily. The reason behind Steve's weight loss is perfectly captured in this comic:


Zaaf

Our food is patented (c)

Just recently, the EU announced that the number of allowed pesticides in the EU will be drastically reduced. On first sight this seems like a good idea, especially when you read that some pesticides are carcinogenic in their own right, meant to alter the DNA of the crop it is applied to. This DNA alteration is meant to make the crop more resistant to the environment. And when it can alter the DNA of a plant, it is quite imaginable that it can alter DNA of animals too. That's why they're carcinogenic of course. But when I read this article on the BBC website, it made me think again if said move by the EU is really a good thing. Because, to make up for the fact that crops' DNA cannot be altered by pesticides, its DNA has to be altered beforehand. This means genetically modified crops. Now I'm not against GM crops, but they do have a strange side effect. Because the crop isn't natural, but made by a company, it can be, and in fact it is patented. This means that by eating our daily slice of bread, we not only sponsor the farmers, but also the patent holders of the wheat. It also means that big corporations can decided how healthy our food is and where in the world it will be deployed. Somehow, I find this a troubling thought.

Zaaf

Easy does it

I just logged an incident at our facility management about the lights in our department. And because they have a nice system, I got a direct reply via the mail, stating that my call will be done around noon tomorrow. What made this automated reply a bit strange, was that the incident I logged states: "Many lights are broken.". And I suspect that this will still be the case by tomorrow afternoon.

So that's an easy way to close a call,

Zaaf

Emacs.app

Hi all,

Just a small note to inform you that I've compiled a new GNU Emacs for Mac OSX 10.5 for x86. You can find the .dmg here. It's a brand new version, freshly compiled from cvs sources, with version number 23.0.60.

Interesting bit about the Emacs version numbering is that Richard Stallman decided to do away with minor versioning and treat every version as a major version. This explains the high number 23, which according to RMS should be read as 1.23. However, it seems human nature to have major and minor version number, as can be seen from the current number.

Zaaf 2.0.1

There is a Moose Loose Aboot the Hoose

A few days ago our team went to a day long offsite meeting. And since no one at work has a laptop, I was charged to bring my trusty MacBook Pro. Every teammember had prepared a few slides about a topic that's near to his work heart. Each presentation consisted only of a few slides, but since they all sparked a discussion of dozens of minutes, the day was easily filled.
The most interesting experience, however, was not the discussion of the topics, but the way in which each of us did our presentation. Next to bringing my MacBook Pro, I had brought my wireless mighty mouse. And whenever someone was due to present, he would stay seated, receive the mouse and start his talk. At the end of the day, we were all yelling for the mouse in the same way someone would yell for the remote controle of the TV.

Sent from my iPod

What you can buy for $8.5 trillion

I just read the news that the US government bailout of banks has risen to $8.5 trillion. This seems like a very large number. So large in fact that it seems unreal.
So let's take another look at that number. In yesterdays news, it was announced that the French government started construction of a 106km long canal in the north of France. This will connect Paris with the harbour of Antwerp, and therefore Rotterdam. The proposed project costs are EUR 4.2 billion. Suppose that the real cost of making this canal will be more around EUR 8.5 billion and suppose dollar-euro parity, this means that for the price of the US Governement bailout you can create 1000 similar canals.
That's 106,000 kilometers, or two-and-a-half times around the earth.


Now that is what I call perspective,
Zaaf

Snow Leopard is hot

Apple made a good move by announcing that their upcoming version of Mac OS X will be named Snow Leopard. The snow leopard is already earning prices!

Zaaf

Who will become the next President of the USA?

Just a quick post to let you know my 2 cents.

Because of all the voting rigging that is going on, I think that John McCain will win the election.

Zaaf

Who is the scariest?

(Yet Another American Politic Post)

I don't trust Senator Barack Obama, somehow I think he's to glib. The way he seems to convince more than half of the American electorate by eloquently reiterating a message of hope and change, without any real substance to it, scarce me. And if he can do that, I'm sure that he can convince people of anything.

Just my two cents.

Zaaf

How many candidates do you know?

In the US presidential race, there are six primary candidates. However, somehow only two have access to the presidential debates on television. And since the US president is chosen based on the ammount of TV-airtime he or she has, this seems like censorship. The debates are organized by the Commision on Presidential Debates and somehow they ony let in democratic and republican candidates. To understand why, I did a little search and came up with the following; The Commision on Presidential Debates is bipartisan, meaning it is owned by the Democratic and Republican parties. None other is allowed in. So that's why almost everybody outside of the US thinks that the United States have only two political parties where in fact they have many.

This feels like censorship to me,

Zaaf

Slippery Oil Price (2)

Another reason for the drop in oil price could be that the powers that are in control want to punish the government of Iran. The first step was the hike in the oil price up to $147 a barrel. They also made it look that this high price was because of supply and demand and as a result they made it look that the price should remain high. This made Iran increase it spendings. The second step would then be to bring the oil price down to $60 a barrel. This will create economic havoc in Iran, as this article shows.

I do not believe that the oil price is a result of supply and demand. The supply side has dropped a bit in the past few months and the demand side is has dropped a bit as well, so the equilibrium between supply and demand is not affected. To me, it looks more and more as if the oil price is manipulated.

Zaaf

Slippery Oil Price

What in the world is going on with the price of oil? Just a few months ago, in June 2008, it was $140 a barrel and now it's less than $97. The high price was justified because of demand, but what justifies the drop? Surely, the demand has not dropped 40% in four months?

<tinfoil-hat>
Surely it has nothing to do with keeping Oil as the primary energy source? With a oil price above $130, it makes economical sense to develop alternative sources of energy. With the oil price dropping, this might not be the case anymore. So the investments in alternative energy sources will come to a halt. And oil remains the primary energy source.
</tinfoil-hat>

Zaaf

iPhone App Store exclusion policy

Apple's application store for the iPhone and iPod Touch has some nice things about it: One central point for the developer to promote his app, one central point where the billing and accounting is done. For me as a user it has some nice points as well in that it is the only place I need to look if I want to find an app or an app update.

However, since Apple is also the one allowing or disallowing applications based on their functionality, this single point of entry is not so shiny. In the past, Apple removed the I'm Rich app that cost $999,- because it did not have any functionality. The other thay, a genuine podcatcher application with more functionality than the iTunes / iPhone combination was rejected because it duplicated Apple functionality. Read about it here. Ultimately this will lead to the Worst Case Scenario Extrapolating From the iTunes App Store, Fully-Expressed in the Form of a Single Tweet by Steven Frank

(For those to lazy to click):

Scenario: Apple makes code-signing mandatory for desktop Mac applications. You can now only buy them through iTunes. Think it can't happen?

Scary isn't it? When that happens, the Mac-platform as we know and love it will be dead.

Zaaf

Reduce Mac Pricing?

In a recent article, ars technica suggests that Apple should reduce the prices of their products in order to gain market share. In my non-statistically sound experience of buying two high-end Apple-branded laptops I can definitely state that macs have become a lot cheaper.
My first ever Macintosh computer was an Apple Titanium Powerbook G4 667MHz with 30GBytes of hard drive and 512MBytes of RAM, which I bought for € 3229 (excluding 19% sales tax) on March 30th, 2002. I recently bought a MacBook Pro 2.5GHz core 2 duo with 250GBytes of hard drive and 4GBytes of RAM for € 1995 (excluding 19% sales tax). My TiBook had only half of its maximum RAM where the MacBook Pro has its full RAM allotment. So over the course of six and a half years, the high end Apple Macintosh laptop has become 38% cheaper.

I wouldn't mind if Apple dropped their prices even more, but I'm not complaining about their current prices.

Zaaf

Sloppy Brits spill data beans

The past year or so, I've heard plenty of reports on UK institutions losing data to the public. This latest article is of a bank selling an old PC on eBay without properly destroying the data on it. Somehow I find it difficult to believe that these type of accidents only happen in the UK. Why wouldn't it happen in other European countries?

So, the big question here is: "Are the Brits very sloppy with their data, or are they just not so good at covering it up?"

Zaaf