The Hypocrisy Weblog

“Pop-up” company 180solutions fires almost 1/4 of their employees according to swedish alternative news-site What.se.

1/4 fired is equivalent to 50 people out of 210 employed at 180solutions, and this is a result of the popup-blockers being more effective, at least if you quote What.se and Martin Edenström.

I am happy to say that spyware does not pay off in the long run and that the increased usage of Mozilla Firefox, as well as Microsoft finally incorporating a popup-blocker in their web-browser Internet Explorer !

German city of Mannheim switches to Linux, ZDnet UK writes.

The German city is on target to complete the first stage of a major migration to Linux this year.

“In the first phase, due to be completed this year, Windows NT servers will be replaced by 110 Linux servers. After the first phase the city council hopes around 3,700 desktops will follow the servers onto the open source OS. So far Mannheim is still using Microsoft desktop applications, but has commissioned a study to look into the introduction of OpenOffice.org, the open source productivity suite.”

Apparently, Microsoft’s withdrawal of support for Windows NT in 2004 had a major part to play in the city’s decision to migrate to the open source alternative. IBM is the technical partner in what is called Mannheim’s “gentle migration”.

This project is very important for the open source movement, as well as those companies having open source software and solution as a core part of their business. If this migration goes through without major pains, more cities and entire nations will (hopefully) consider to switch to the cheaper (and better) open source alternative.

Ah, so now it finally happened, the bird flu is now inside the borders of the EU. The greek island of Inousses is reported to have sick turkeys on it’s farms, though it is not yet known if these sick birds have lethal H5N1-strain of the bird flu virus, or a virus that “only” transmits between birds and not bird to human.

Reuters posted an article, which both speaks about the greek newsmedia running amok (as usual) and a small island of 600 whose population is around 680 people, mostly elderly, being invaded by a horde of scoop-hungry journalists and where the whole world of these 680 people getting thrown upside down, where neighbours turn on neighbours and where fingers are pointed.

Also, the mainland of Greece is being svept by panic, and all bird flu vaccines are sold out at local pharmacists. This is really bad planning from the Greek state’s side, as the limited amount of vaccine should only be given to those individuals that are needed to keep the country going – it shouldn’t be a “up for grabs” kind of system. If there is a pandemic, then the lack of planning from the Greek government’s side will bite them in their backsides, but more important: the citizens will suffer from this, in fact – the whole of Europe will suffer.

As the bird flu found in Turkey was of the deadly H5N1-strain, I am worried, to say the least. If this virus mutates further, the vaccine that we have today is totally useless, and we’ll be seeing people dying like flies, economies collapsing and general human suffering.

If there is a god, I hope he / she is fair to us in our near future.

The Swedish edition of IDG writes about PhD in search engine marketing Elias Kai in the town Kalmar of southern Sweden who named his son “Oliver Christian Google Kai”.

The father, Elias Kai, says that his wife had no problem with naming her son after the search engine, and Elias also got the question if he’ll name his next baby “Yahoo!”if it’s a boy or “Altavista” if it’s a girl, but as a self-proclaimed fan of Google, Elias says “no way” and that he’ll considerate names such as “Giggol, Gaggol eller Boogol” instead.

So, what does Google have to say about this? Well, Google’s European vice president Nikesh Arora held a presentation during London Ad Tech in September, and Elias Kai got to speak at the podium and tell the audience that he’ll name his son “Google”. The audience laughed and no-one thought that Elias actually was serious in naming his son Google, though he was.

Perhaps Elias Kai should’ve taken the 200 people strong audience’ reaction more serious and not name his son after a search engine?! I think so… Maybe his father thinks it’s cool to name his son after his favourite cult-object, but I doubt that the father considered the problems that his son will get in the future with such a name, everything from bullying in school to problems at misc. tasks of life – such as applying for a job, applying for a job etc.

I don’t want to paint it all black, but come on…

Google Kai has his own site at http://www.google-kai.com and of course his own blog at http://googlekai.blogspot.com

Though, regardless of anything else, no-one can deny that Google Kai is a cute baby boy, and I am sure that everyone who reads this post will wish him and his family all the luck in the world in his life!!!

Slashdot writes:

“Steve Soderberg’s latest film will be released in a manner that directly challenges the traditional Hollywood distribution chain. Soderberg’s been influenced by Mark Cuban, the dot-com billionaire who owns the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, and Todd Wagner, another dot-commer whose ideas about the movie business are radical departures. Wagner’s financing this one. The movie, Bubble, is the first of six that Soderberg will film in HD video; all will be released simultaneously in theaters, as HDNet movies, and on DVDs.” From the article: “As independents, Soderbergh and Wagner are willing to talk openly about subjects that are being hotly debated behind closed doors elsewhere in Hollywood. When Disney chief Robert Iger recently brought up the concept of shortening the window between theatrical release and DVD, he was fiercely criticised by the National Association of Theatre Owners.”

Steve Soderberg is doing what should’ve been done a long time ago: release a film in multiple distribution-chains at once and see how these compare with each other. This is especially wise of a director such as Steve Soderberg who makes movies that are slightly different from those of Steven Spielberg and Ridley Scott (i.e. is films that don’t have a mastodont budget and are aimed at a mass-audience). I doubt that this experiment or even the discussion will be repeated again by any of the above filmmakers, but it’s most certainly healthy that it has been done by such a big fish as Soderberg.

Well done.

Tim Grieve writes:

“When Tom DeLay appeared on “Hardball” this week, he complained about the unfairness of the grand jury process that led to his indictment. “You know, grand juries, it’s all one-sided,” DeLay said. “It is all what [the prosecutor] presents to the grand jury, how he spins, how he presents it.” DeLay said that Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle has had him under a cloud for two years while “never talking to me, never talking to me, never asking me to testify.”

It’s a good story for someone who could use a little sympathy just now. It just happens not to be true. “

Read more here.

On the Salon.com Blog, Geraldine Seale writes about the reasons of Paul Wolfowitz being appointed the head of the World Bank after working close-knit to the Pentagon.

A short yet informative piece.

PS. Salon.com is ad-supported, so you might have to look at an ad before getting to the actual Blog.