Upon coming home tonight, i found a large envelope from xs4all (my ISP) leaned against the door of my apartment. Felt like there was a t-shirt inside and sure enough there was. The included letter referred to my recent switch to a xs4all only subscription (ADSL without having to pay a fee to the former national telco KPN for a landline): Apparently there have been problems with the bandwidth of these connections (which i have not really noticed) as the majority of the people who have switched over to this new form of ADSL subscriptions are ‘heavy users’:

when starting to offer xs4all only we have connected relatively small groups of customers to one port. However we have discovered that this group of customers has generated so much traffic that the speed of the connections dropped during peak hours. In other words: our loyal xs4all subscribers are typical ‘heavy users’ that use every bit available to download :). [translations mine]

The letter goes on to describe that they have reduced the number of subscriber lines per port and that the speed issues should be resolved by now. they offer their excuses and go on to state:

… and secretly we are proud that our customers do not fit in the standard profile of our [downstream] network provider. To thank you for your active contribution [?? i did not even notice the whole thing] and in order to compensate you for your troubles we are sending you a unique t-shirt. It has been specially designed for this occasion and is produced in limited edition. we hope that you will wear this t-shirt with pride and that you will continue to download a lot with XS4ALL only.

I guess i will…

Summer is approaching and that means a seasonal increase in African migrants who try to reach Lampedusa, Sicily or Malta from the coasts of Libya and Tunisia. As in the last couple of years lots of them manage to reach these island outposts that have come to be the most accessible edges of the European Union and lots of them don’t. An sometimes people are deliberately left hanging in between these two options for a while:

Over the weekend 27 migrants spent a day at sea holding on to buoys around a giant tuna net attached to a maltese tow-boat. the captain of the tow-boat had saved them from the waters off the Libyan coast after their boat had sunk. They had to stay there for more than 24 hours because the owners of the tow-boat where afraid to let them aboard in order not to jeopardize the 1 million euro worth of tuna in the net as both the maltese and the Libyan authorities refused to save them from the seas. After 24 hours the Italian authorities intervened and transferred them to an Italian navy vessel (more in this times online article).

The whole thing reminds me of the fact that Moritz has some really amazing pictures of sicilian tuna fishers online. Well worth checking out…

Lawrence gave a pretty amazing presentation on ‘what can be learned from asian cinema?‘ at piratecinema on sunday morning. His general point was how new forms of distribution (read shameless copying) slowly lead to another form of aesthetic/cinematorgaphic practice in Asia (or to be less general China & India). towards the end he showed a couple of slides form an earlier presentation he had given at the Asia commons conference in Bangkok last year. I really liked this diagram, which gives a little bit of context to my earlier post about obtaining the latest Bond movie:

Bonus recommendation: Suzhou he (Suzhou River)

There are two articles about the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) in the spring 2007 issue of بدون/bidoun. the second one (‘let them eat laptops’ (p72ff.) – not available online) is a relatively serious email discussion about the merits of the project between a couple of academics. the other article ‘glory‘ by Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina) takes the OPLC project as a starting point for a fascinating exploration into how technology is appropriated. It’s one of the best texts i have read in a long time and starts like this:

I was twelve years old, in a small public school in Nakuru. One day, the whole school was called out of class. Some very blond and very serious people from Sweden had arrived. We were led to the round patch of grass next to the parade ground in front of the school, where the flag was. Next to the flag were two giant drums of cow shit and metal pipes and other unfamiliar accessories. We stood around, heard some burping sounds, and behold, there was light.

This is biogas, the Swedes told us. A fecal matyr. It looks like shit-it is shit-but it has given up its gas for you. With this new fuel you can light your bulbs and cook your food. You will become balanced dieted; if you are industrious perhaps you can run a small biogaspowered posho mill and engage in income generating activities.

We went back to class. Very excited. Heretofore our teachers had threatened us with straightforward visions of failure. Boys would end up shining shoes; girls would end up pregnant.

Now there was a worse thing to be: a user of biogas.

… and ends with this:

There are few useful “development models” for genuinely selfstarting people. I am sure the One Laptop per Child initiative will bring glory to its architects. The IMF will smile. Mr Negroponte will win a prize or two or ten. There will be key successes in Rwanda; in a village in Cambodia; in a small, groundbreaking initiative in Palestine, where Israeli children and Palestinian children will come together to play minesweeper. There will be many laptops in small, perfect, NGO-funded schools for AIDS orphans in Nairobi, and many earnest expatriates working in Sudan will swear by them.

And there will be many laptops in the homes of homeschooling, goattending parents in North Dakota who wear hemp (another wonderproduct for the developing world). They will fall in love with the idea of this frugal, noble laptop, available for a mere $100. Me, I would love to buy one. I would carry it with me on trips to remote Kenyan places, where I seek to find myself and live a simpler, earthier life, for two weeks a year.

In-between these two parts it covers all of the subjects in the title of this post and many more. my favorite part is probably the bit about Kenyan cellphone culture.

A guy called Njoroge has a business in Nairobi’s industrial area called “Lord of the Ringtones.” They digitalize and sell ringtones, 220,000 of them a month. Cellphones are the biggest business in Kenya.

And they are transforming culture, even as they spawn new markets. In Nairobi, a student paper caters to kids from across the city’s high schools; submissions are sent in by text message, with articles written in textesewords broken into their smallest possible lucid components. Every few months or so, rumors circulate, breaking some code or other and giving free airtime or texts. Some people have learned to communicate for free with their regular clients or family by coding their ringing: one ring, I am on my way; two rings, I have picked up the kids; three rings, I love you.

One of the things that has always fascinated me about borders is the way they structure the local economies of adjacent regions. People one the one side suddenly start selling ridiculous amounts of all kind of things that are not available – or much more expensive – on the other side. Particularly vivid examples of this phenomenon can be observed on the fringes of France. The area around Calais is full of shops selling booze and cigarettes to busloads of brits & in Portbou just across the border to Spain where there is not a single store that does not sell Pastis in 5 litter bottles to visiting Frenchmen. Laila adds another although – although completely unrelated to leisurely border crossing – example from the border between Gaza & Israel:

“Yes, you know, the Imsaddar household. Their farms are near the border with Israel, in eastern Gaza… their bees fly across the border and gather pollen from the Kenya trees and Orange groves in their farms. So the honey is just better.”

How is it that honey from bees gathering pollen from trees across the border is better? Is it because the flowers are freer? Less empty or trapped or sad? Less occupied, perhaps?

“I think they just have more trees and flowers there. After all, most of our groves were razed during the Intifada,” explained a friend.

Taken from her excellent ‘Raising Yousuf, Unplugged: diary of a Palestinian mother‘ blog

Sarai independent fellow Zubin Pastakiais talking pictures of old-style Bombay cinema halls, and has started posting them to his blog:

I am currently photographing cinema halls in Bombay, India, the city in which I live. Here, we still have a mix of older, single-screen halls, and modern multiplexes. I am fascinated by the cinema hall – from its built architecture and physical surfaces to the people that come to watch films and the people that work there. The project seeks to photographically explore the cultural experience of different types of cinema halls in Bombay city.

There are some really beautifully shots on the blog already and he promises that there are much more to come. I really like the ones showing projectionists next to those ancient projectors so common in indian cinema halls. I took some very similar shots two years ago in Bangalore.

When i first flew to Beirut in 2005, i was seated next to a Microsoft representative who then mentioned that Microsoft could not do business in syria, ‘because it is on the shit-list‘ (guess her refers to John Bolton’s extended axis of evil). Of course that does not mean that no one is using Microsoft products in Syria (in fact there are shit-loads of computer shops and internet cafes in Damascus if one considers that computers and internet have only been legalized in 2000). In fact you can buy the latest Microsoft products almost anywhere, the only thing that differentiates them from Microsoft products in other countries are the installation instructions:

Install Windows Vista Ultimate Without Entering a Serial Number. Chose The Option “windows vista ultimate”

after completing the installation, go to your cd drive and open the folder “crack” from there, and run the application “crack.exe” and wait until the activation process complete and you’ll se a message says: the process is completed successfully, and requesting a system restart.

after restarting system you will receive a pop message says” activation done successfully now close the message windows and start windows.

and that’s all, now you can enjoy the most complete edition of windows with no time limits, and can be updated directly from Microsoft.com

… and everybody is talking about the next war. seems to somehow involve iran, the US, israel, the valet parkers, Syria and Lebanon, but there is neither real agreement about the constellation nor does anyone come up with a credible motivation for someone to attack the others or the other way around (except maybe for the US to attack Iran). Meanwhile last summer war has once again (see here for last years favorite ad) been picked up by the advertising industry, this time in the form of an billboard-advertisment for a teenagers credit card, which seems to be inspired by this years world press photo (which caused quite a bit of confusion after it won the award):

So apparently some rather scary dudes from Austria (see picture below, but generally all males from Austria who are older than 50 give me the creeps) have come up with a really sick idea: Set up a charter airline that specializes in deportation flights from Europe to the warmer parts of this globe. If you believe the press reporting about their yet-to-be-realized plan then they are all about saving european taxpayers a couple of euros and making those forced deportations a little bit more enjoyable for everyone involved:

“With a professional service the deportations will be faster, chains will not be needed and the deportees can enjoy a meal.” The planned flights will have guards, medical staff and a representative of a human rights group on board, though there is no immediate news of plans for in-flight entertainment or a frequent-flyer scheme. [taken from an article from dermobilitaetsmanager.de, a website which advertises itself as the prime magazine about business travel]

Don’t really know where to start here. maybe with the ‘brilliant idea’ of having some clueless NGO provide in-flight legitimation. Mo doubt that there will be enough ‘human rights groups’ who are just waiting for that opportunity (they probably teach this kind of stuff during 1st year introduction classes for political science and communication studies students now). Or with the fact that they won’t have a frequent-flyer scheme? How lame is that? I mean even Lufthansa’s deportation classhad one way back in 2002!

But i guess none of this really matters. To figure out where this idea comes from, you just need to take a good look at the three people behind this ‘plan’ (deportation lawyer Hermann Heller, aviation consultant Heinz Berger and entepreneur Carl Julius Wagner): The picture pretty much tells it all: combine a sick obsession for military aircraft, with the urge to be some kind of modern day slave master and your wet dreams will inevitably make you fantasize about ‘asylum airlines’…

As usual the google ad-words engine is one spot on with its commentary sponsored links. the story on the mobilitäts manager site pulls up two google adds: one that suggests a probably even cheaper means of transport (but then these low cost airlines do not really fly outside of Europe so they are pretty much worthless when it comes to deportations) and the second one suggests a the next step for the deportees after they have finished ‘enjoying their meal’: Apply for a visa for the US:

Gotta love the chinese! [from ananova.com via boingboing]