Posted by jhs at September 22nd, 2009
…and brought the new Google Summer of Code Shirt:
The main feature of the T-Shirt is being not black and actually really looking kind of non-geeky which makes it possible to wear it outside geek areas.
Posted by jhs at September 5th, 2009
Glom now bascially starts up on maemo fremantle which means that gtkmm, libgda, libgdamm and pygda are working together now on the maemo platform. Of course lots of bug-fixing and UI work left to make this really cool.
Screenshot:
Posted by jhs at September 4th, 2009
(Disclaimer: This is a political statement, so only read on if you can cope with it)
It all came into my mind again when seeing all the reports about the phase out of light bulbs starting from 1st of september in European countries. Apparently this isn’t a major issue for most people except the Germans who always fear to loose something.
Anyway, in all this reports it was talked about that this moster called “EU” has decided that no more light bulbs may be purchased. It was never talked about that the EU doesn’t decide anything but contrary as in every democracy, it is the people who decide.
In this case the proposal was made from the european commission which consists of 27 commissioners from the European countries approved by the European Parliament. A few months ago all Europeans had the right to elect their MPs though actually not so many did (less than 50%). If they had wanted to keep the light bulbs then they could have voted for it, but they didn’t.
I am writing this to conscientize people that sentences like “Brussels has decided…”, “the EU demands…”, etc. simply are not the truth. YOU ARE THE EU, YOU DECIDE!. And if you are dissatisfied with the decision it is up to you to change the European government.
Do you really want a light bulb to light your room that needs more energy than your laptop?
Update: Some people state correctly that this is an indirect democracy so you can’t influence the decisions directly – that’s true. But it is the way most countries are governed because otherwise things become difficult to organize. And yes, you don’t vote the commissioner directly, but indirectly through your local parliament.
Update2: About this Mercury thing – there is excellent information available on this - please use google.