Belgian Kimberley Vlaeminck, 18, went to a tattoo parlor and asked for 3 tattooed stars. But, she fell asleep and woke up with 56 black stars. In a sense, this is nice, but she seems pissed off.
PETER DECONINCK/AFP/Getty Images
Update on 24-June: It appears that after some time and media pressure, Kimberley admitted that this was not a mere issue of misunderstanding between the tattooist and her. Frightened by her father reaction to her stars, she tried to explain that it was not her fault. But she actually requested 56 stars from the beginning. So, she was lying…
It seems that everything has already been said about the riots and protests that are currently observed following the presidential elections in Iran.
Up to now, I felt unable to even comment about it. But I wanted to add my own little pebble to the building of putting light onto the events that are probably at the core of a real re-foundation of the Iran nation and society.
Like many others, I have the intense feeling that this is a battle between two factions inside the same political regime. The difference between Mousavi and Ahmadinejad still is more a difference of degree than a difference of nature and even if the results have been rigged by the State direction (see on the right the Iran TV announcing results in favor of Mousavi, then correcting them in favor of Ahmadinejab – while the Ministry of the Interior had already unofficially informed Mousavi of a victory that would come to be quickly denied), the candidates were no less pre-approved before the elections.
Call me pessimistic, but I fear this revolt will not be the revolution awaited by some many people out of Iran.
In the meantime, people are killed while fighting for their liberty. This is exactly the kind of fight that is bringing democracy in a country… in the end.
Apple is not only delivering sleek computer designs and nice little mobile phones. They are also producing a good web browser: Safari.
It’s new version, Safari 4, is just out. Faster, still as good and powerful, but Apple is now claiming the crown for the “fastest” web browser. It could well be possible when Snow Leopard OS-X becomes available later this year. Running natively as a 64-bit Mac application, it could gain 50% from today’s already powerful base of Safari 4.
I’ve been using and recommending the Opera web browser for many years. It’s a kind of a Firefox where everything you need would be directly included rather than having to download extensions. And it’s fast too. For mobile applications (PDAs, mobile phones, etc.) Opera Mini is probably the best possible option and it is in a tight competition for the market leader position.
Now, Opera is launching a beta test version 10 of the browser. And it has amazingly interesting new features.
Fast browsing on slow connections
Tab browsing enhanced and flexible
Speed dial from the empty new page
Web mail integration
Re-sizable search field
Much faster web engine and impressively standards-compliant
In-line spell checker (I use it a lot to support my blogging habits)
Auto-update (better than merely asking you to check for updates)
Mouse control
Even better, after testing it in alpha, I can tell you that it is quite stable. The beta version should stay that way and that is a good thing too.
Say you are parent to a kid who is more than willing to play those games that he/she discovered with his/her friends and you don’t know much about them. It’s time to learn some before you make a decision about letting fun happen or not.
True Marble™ is a true color, photo-realistic, high resolution, 3 terabyte image of the earth. All data is provided at a base 15 meter resolution. Even if this was not shot in a single time (sattelite imagery is a bit more complex than Gigapan panoramas), this is really stupendous. But even more, you can download your own reduced subset for free. Keep cool, this is a lot of downloads of big files (they are even available on BitTorrent – much more practical than FTP downloads, and faster too). But it’s definitely there.
While I had a long love affair with BitComet as my prefered BitTorrent client, it happens that I currently prefer to use the lean and clean uTorrent software. It is a bit smaller (but it has a tendency to eat up memory if left serving files for a long time -it’s ok if you stick to downloading) and it has a nice little interface that is clean and easily understandable.
As with many a BitTorrent client, µTorrent or uTorrent tends to have a relatively complex configuration. Many options, some of them utterly cryptic, a lot of them with a possible impact on performance. After months of tweaking, I think that I have obtained a configuration that is clearly optimized to download several giga-byte-sized packages (videos/movies, Linux distributions, full databases, etc.) on a fast ADSL connection (20Mbit/s, here).
So I was suggested to share it with all the ones who want to try and get quickly a BitTorrent connection working as fast as possible.
All the options
I don’t need to explain the choice of language (µTorrent has one great advantage of having such a large choice for localization).
I did not install IPv6 support (my ISP does not support it), but it is a very critical item to check because -as soon as it becomes readily available- it will bring a significant layer of compression and obfuscation to avoid your ISP throttling down your P2P traffic (as some US and Canada ISPs currently do; Shame on them!).
I don’t care receiving the beta upgrades (I’m all for the stability of software) and I favor browsing as anonymously as reasonably possible.
Since I am working at home, there is no need for the anti-boss key.
Download: I prefer to immediately pre-allocate file size (rather than seeing the software program stop later because it has been eating up all disk space), and I don’t want to the PC to shut itslef down while downloading. While it is generally good to reduce electricity consumption, stopping in mid-transfer is not good for the efficiency of the whole process. (more…)
We all love when things come free to us. Here I found a treasure trove of movies that are free to download. Legally.
Thanks to the Canadians of the National Film Board of Canada. They give us feature-length movies, documentaries, animated short movies. Everything, of the best quality, at the best price: Free.
We knew that Ryan Air was an Irish airline able to bring air fares to a very low level. They use all tricks at their disposition to spend as little money as possible. But sometimes they go too far and their latest ideas give a bad press to the whole low-cost airline industry which were merely having you pay for your lunch in the plane (and, after all, why not pay your own soda like in any convenient pub on the ground?) Here are some of their latest brillant proposals (sometimes already in place):
They tried to tell that there should be no valuables (sunglasses in the trial case) in the checked-in luggage. A judge corrected this.
It appears that on several trips, buying a round-trip is more expensive that buying two one-way tickets. Always check!
Ryan Air want to fine passengers caught with a hand luggage over the weight limit (checked-in luggage has to be paid for).
Ryan Air proposes to charge passengers to use the in-plane toilets. Your flight would better be on-time if you don’t have small change, or will they accept credit cards…
Everything points at a stark increase of elephant poaching in Kenya after years of relative calm. More precisely, in the Tsavo National Park, in the 6 most recent weeks, rangers of the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) found 5 dead elephants whose tusks have been sawed.
This is a reminder that some habits which we thought mostly gone are not. Sales of ivory (includign the official ones) are on the rise and there would be some troubling links here. Nevertheless, the KWS rangers already arrested two men and seized AK-47 assault rifles with ammunitions, but it could well be only the tip of a rising iceberg.
If you want to fish sardines, ask advice from a pro : The sailfish (Istiophorus platypterus). This slides diaporama from National Geographic shows sailfishes grouping themselves to hunt a big school of sardines. Really beautiful and utterly technical.
Thanks to European Community! It just proposed, no! Announced that they would force the mobile phone manufacturers to all use a single type of battery charger.
It’s been years that we all accumulated chargers ready to be abandonned because none is compatible with more than one phone. The EC decided to reduce pollution linked this electronic waste. A European regulation nobody will ever regret!
The universal charger will have to use the micro-USB interface already found on some existing chargers here and there. It will deliver 5V output in a maximum of 2.5 watts.
When will it be compulsory for photo cameras, PDAs?
The GSM Association (no less than 17 phone manufacturers) is setting up plans for an accepted 2012 target.
After several months when we all heard that corporate jets were the mark of the truly immoral bank or corporate CEOs, it seems that private jet companies are starting to take notice: All this bad press is putting more pressure on them than they would like to in difficult times like ours.
Hawker Beechcraft and Cessna Aircraft (the Empire, here) are fighting back with advertising to support the idea that it’s only true visionaries who are able to forget about all this and will keep using and buying their corporate business jets. Say that to Richard Wagoner Jr or to Dick Fuld! Or speak of stimulus ads!
According to the International Herald Tribune and Reuters, Cessna Aircraft is saying “Timidity didn’t get you this far” or “True visionaries will continue to fly” in their message. Hawker Beechcraft is also promoting its King Air 350 as “the world’s greenest and highly efficient aircraft“.
I am not sure whether this will really boost sales abck to stratospheric levels, but it’s an example of companies which are decided not to let the business go down the drain, despite bad times and worse PR.
We don’t use this in France (storms are enough to bring a forest to the ground) but here is the real hardware you need to cut down a forest in a few days only:
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