Joao Rei's ramblings

 

Hundreds of Passengers Stranded on Ferry Stuck in Ice

 Nearly 850 passengers are stranded on an Eckerö Line ferry that got stuck in the ice half an hour after leaving Helsinki Friday morning. The vessel, which was heading to Tallinn, is waiting for an icebreaker to dislodge it. Officials say they can't predict when the ferry will be freed.

The ferry was scheduled to arrive in Tallinn at 11 am. The vessel is still waiting for an icebreaker from Finland to dislodge it from the ice. However icebreakers are currently busy helping free other vessels.

Eckerö Line says the passengers are not in any danger and are being offered food and beverages. The company says it doesn’t expect the Nordlandia ferry will face travel difficulties in the coming days.

Port authorities say this is the worst ice situation in years.

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January 2010

 

Romanian's orphans - 20 years on...

 How can we tolerate this happening in Europe?

The images are not only shocking, they are dramatically similar to those shot right after the fall of Ceausescu's regime 20 years ago.

Wasn't one of the conditions of accession to the European Union that Romania had to provide better conditions to its state orphanages? Hasn't the EU sent millions of Euros to Romania (much of that money lost to corruption....) to help them tackle this and other problems? I understand if roads and telecommunications are a priority, but these are human beings we're talking about here! Defenseless and with no hope of leading a normal life.

I mean no disrespect to my many Romanian friends, and I know that every country has its problems. Especially when you have to deal with a legacy of a communist and closed-to-the-world rule. But ignoring it won't make it go away. This needs the good people of Romania to be so enraged over it, that it's on the agenda of every candidate to the next elections. Sadly they just had elections, and I don't recall this being on anyone's agenda.

Shame on you Romania, shame on us Europe.
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January 2010

 

The Estonian e-learning center a reply to @mrdatahs
Click here to download:
strat_final_en_web.pdf (188 KB)
(download)

This is basically a reply to Christopher Dawson's post on his implementation of a Learning Management System in his district in the U.S.

He's in charge of implementing (by yesterday as he says).

Chris, I tried to reply on ZDnet but it required registration, and I'm too lazy for that, so I decided to write my reply as a blog post and put the reply as a link to your initial twitter post. (sounds more complicated, I know, but somehow for me it's easier)

You should check out the implementation of the Estonian state e-learning initiative. I use it everyday for my classes in the Technical University.

they mostly use moodle. One moodle for the whole country (1.4 mil inhab.) That's right, one single, centralized moodle for all learning institutions (public and private) in the whole country. Most courses require a registration key that each teacher gives to their students. Assignments, grades, wikis, blogs, tests, discussions. Everything you can imagine is online.

It helps that a) Estonia is a relatively small country, b) the population is fairly IT minded and c) there probably was a clean slate to start with, and not many legacy systems around. It might have been that the largest teaching institution (the Technical Uni.) was using it, and it then got extended to all the other.

I took the liberty to attach their e-learning development center strategy paper to this blog post. Give it a glance, maybe you'll find some good ideas there that might help you.
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January 2010

 

[Google Fast Flip] German government warns against using MS Explorer

 Sent to you by joao.rei via Google Fast Flip:

German government warns against using MS Explorer

By Daniel Emery The German government has warned web users to find an alternative browser to Internet Explorer to protect security. The warning from the Federal Office for Information Security comes after Microsoft admitted IE was the weak link in recent attacks on Google's systems. Microsoft rejected the warning, saying that the risk to users was low BBC News German government warns against using MS Explorer...

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January 2010

 

[Google Fast Flip] Facebook Now Running Virus Scans on Users' PCs

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Facebook Now Running Virus Scans on Users' PCs

Facebook Now Running Virus Scans on Users' PCs Earlier this week, Facebook and security company McAfee which offers Facebook's 350 million users a free six-month subscription to McAfee's security software. Interested parties can visit the on Facebook to sign up for the deal. However, the most interesting part of this new partnership isn't the online ReadWriteWeb Facebook Now Running Virus Scans on Users' PCs...

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January 2010

 

[Google Fast Flip] Spanish MP's photo used for Osama Bin Laden poster

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Spanish MP's photo used for Osama Bin Laden poster

A Spanish politician has said he was shocked to find out the FBI had used his photo for a digitally-altered image showing how Osama Bin Laden might look. Gaspar Llamazares said he would no longer feel safe travelling to the US after his hair and parts of his face appeared on a most-wanted poster. He said the use of a real person for the mocked-up image BBC News Spanish MP's photo used for Osama Bin Laden poster...

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January 2010

 

[Google Fast Flip] Media Criticism - Salon.com

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Media Criticism - Salon.com

It's not 1984, but Newspeak lives on in the media's skewing of the terms of our political debate Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper and Sen. Bernard Sanders, I-Vt. "War is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength" -- more than a quarter-century after those oxymorons were supposed to pervade an Orwellian 1984, today’s media make such Newspeak Salon Media Criticism - Salon.com...

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January 2010

 

[Google Fast Flip] Jobs of 2030: Memory Augmentation Surgeon, Waste Data Handler, Narrowcaster

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Jobs of 2030: Memory Augmentation Surgeon, Waste Data Handler, Narrowcaster

BY Ariel Schwartz Today We've given you a preview of some of the best green jobs of the next decade, but what will the job market look like a bit further into the future? That's the question that research company Fast Future and the UK Department of Business, Innovation and Skills tackled with the Shape of Jobs to Come report. The report, commissioned Fast Company Jobs of 2030: Memory Augmentation Surgeon, Waste Data Handler, Narrowcaster...

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January 2010

 

[Google Fast Flip] Pixel Qi: The LCD Screen That Could Finally Kill Paper For Good

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Pixel Qi: The LCD Screen That Could Finally Kill Paper For Good

Mary Lou Jepsen has created massive holograms and cheap laptops for the developing world. Now she's rethinking the LCD screen, leading the way to the next great gadget: an e-reader to replace your laptop By Lauren Aaronson Posted 01.12.2010 at 1:01 pm 0 Comments Pixel Qi : Mary Lou Jepson's hybrid computer screen blends the best aspects of both laptop Popular Science Pixel Qi: The LCD Screen That Could Finally Kill Paper For Good...

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January 2010

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To Posterous, Love Metalab