Houtong Cat Village is a very interesting place in Taiwan — that is, full of cats. There is actually a story of how a few dozen cats managed to save an entire community in 2008 after coal extraction ceased in the 1970s.
As a bonus to the aforementioned two articles, I’ve added a few photos taken in Houtong by copycatko:
■ First table: some popular phones, as reviewed and testet by notebookcheck.net – the header is self-explanatory with regards to the usage scenarios. I don’t understand the first one (if the phone is idle, the screen should be black, not at minimum brightness), but I value the 2nd one very much – surfing the web while on Wi-Fi. Read more
So this is iOS7:
And it’s ugly like shit.
It’s not just the icons (photo: Alex Washburn / Wired): Read more
Yes, it is. And yes, if you care about how it looks, you must add (with simple quotes, not these fancy ones):
<meta name=”viewport” content=”width=device-width, initial-scale=1, maximum-scale=1, user-scalable=no”>
and no less, regardless of what some people say.
But my blog doesn’t look as expected on smartphones. This responsive theme adjust the layout, so that the top navigation menu shows as rectangular blocks for screen widths of 768px or more, and only degrades into a dropdown menu for smaller screen. However, even on smartphones having 800px or more (say, in landscape), it looks like this: Read more
Is it me, or there is indeed a trend in designing ugly car rear lights? 2013 rectangular-ish collection:
2013 VW Polo BlueGT:
2013 Dacia Logan and Sandero:
2013 Fiat 500L Trekking: Read more
1942. Uzinele Renault de la Boulogne-Billancourt lansează un atac nerușinat asupra glorioasei Royal Air Force. Cel puțin așa credea Virginia Carianopol în 1999:
Parmi les autres produits interdits par les connards contemporains, un produit qui était très efficace contre la transpiration des pieds (bromhidrose, hyperhydrose localisée): l’Ephydol “classique”, celui qu’on a retiré du marché soit le 09/10/2007, soit le 05/07/2010, selon la source.
Son problème? (À part l’efficacité exemplaire.) Son contenu en formol (formaldéhyde). En effet, en voici la formule originale: Read more
Înțeleg să interzici substanțele nootrope și psihostimulante care pot da dependență sau au efecte adverse deosebit de periculoase, dar cu meclofenoxatul ce-au avut? În anii ’60-’70, francezii îi ziceau Lucidril, iar în anii ’80, se găsea la liber în România socialistă. Era bun când învățai pentru un examen, ceva, te ținea treaz. Avea 100 mg, și cred că mergeau până la 6 pe zi. Era ieftin.
În „civilizația contemporană”, nici o companie farmaceutică mainstream nu-l mai fabrică. Nostalgicii sau nespălații pe creier care-l doresc se văd obligați să-l comande de pe Internet de la fabricanți de suplimente alimentare. De pildă așa: Read more
Aproape singurul produs românesc (din cele care încă mai sunt „de pe vremuri, ca pe vremuri”) căruia o să-i duc dorul atunci când va dispărea. Apa de gură Ossidenta „clasică”. Atenție, nu pișaturile astea îndulcite „cu aromă de cireșe” sau de mentă, ci adevărata Ossidenta, cea care se diluează (iar soluția diluată se tulbură într-un mod specific), care este astringentă și care conține printre altele fenicul.
Adică asta: Read more
Fraunhofer SIT (Fraunhofer-Institut für Sichere Informationstechnologie) is currently developing a so-called SiDiM (Sichere Dokumente durch individuelle Markierung) technology meant to replace the current DRM methods by an outrageous “individualization” of a book’s contents — each and every reader will see a slightly different text, and this subtle watermarking (a sort of steganography) is meant to track down the original owner of a book.
As Janko Roettgers reports by summarizing info from several sources, SiDiM-protecting an e-book means
changing wordings like “invisible” to “not visible” and “unhealthy” to “not healthy.” Other examples included sentences in which the order of words was changed, or in which hyphens were added to words.
From the original blog report, alterations on German texts:
| Ihr hättet sie empört abgelehnt, um weiter in einem Hexenkessel von Kriegen, Gewalt und Verbrechen zu existieren. | Ihr hättet sie empört abgelehnt, um weiter in einem Hexenkessel von Gewalt, Verbrechen und Kriegen zu existieren. |
| Der Staub den er aufwirbelte, ließ ihn nicht sichtbar aus der Stadt verschwinden. | Der Staub den er aufwirbelte, ließ ihn unsichtbar aus der Stadt verschwinden. |
| (…) als ungesund wird aber auch eine unzweckmäßige Vereinigung von Speisen zu einer Mahlzeit oder auch ihre schlechte Zubereitung verstanden. | (…) als nicht gesund wird aber auch eine unzweckmäßige Vereinigung von Speisen zu einer Mahlzeit oder auch ihre schlechte Zubereitung verstanden. |
| Er musste schwer beladen sein, denn das Motorengeräusch war sehr laut, was auf eine niedrige Getriebeübersetzung schließen ließ. | Er musste schwer beladen sein, denn das Motorengeräusch war sehr laut, was auf eine niedrige Getriebe-Übersetzung schließen ließ. |
This is more than outrageous, this is criminal! Changing the exact words an author (or a translator) has put in his or her work is cultural terrorism!
Fraunhofer is going to kill the e-book, and this is happening with the complicity and funding of the Federal Government of Germany!
Dieses Projekt (Förderkennzeichen: 01IS10054A) wird im Rahmen von KMU-innovativ durch das Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung gefördert.
Sure thing, the Fraunhofer Institute — the best example of how German “intellectual property protection” can be worse than in the United States — is also the infamous owner of several patents on the MP3 file format and algorithms. Alongside Thomson Multimedia (RCA), and with the licensing rights managed by Technicolor, Fraunhofer owns 20 patents on MP3 and MP3Pro. That would be “software patents”. Algorithms. Mathematics. Patenting mathematics.
Notwithstanding the reasonably large number of licensees for the MP3 patents, the fact that MP3Pro was never an open and free format simply killed it — and MP3Pro was by large the best audio file format ever, much better than the mediocre MP3! The MP3Pro case shows that sometimes a patent does not “protect” the inventor, nor does it “support innovation”, but it simply buries the patented concept so that it never reaches market acceptance.
And now, the same rapacious idiots from Fraunhofer are going to kill the e-books, but in an such ignoble way — by altering the text!
For any conscious individual, it should be a shame to work for (or to be associated with) Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. Since the Nazi period, it’s the worst way the German research has damaged our civilization.
If in some cases (such as the MP3 licensing), the researchers themselves have no direct responsibility in any wrongdoing, those who develop a technology for voluntary altering of e-books are definitely jerks. Protecting the intellectual property by destroying it?
