June 30, 2011

Amsterdam roller derby team’s first ever bout

Filed under: Dutch first,Sports by Orangemaster @ 12:03 pm

Back in January, we told you how the originally American all-female sport roller derby was taking off in the Netherlands. Now, the Amsterdam Derby Dames, one of the Netherlands’ eight teams (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht, Eindhoven, Enschede, Arnhem, Groningen and Limburg), will be playing its first ever bout (official competition) in Germany against the Devil Dolls Essen team of the Ruhrpott Roller Girls league.

The moment everyone has been waiting for has finally arrived: the Amsterdam Derby Dames will be playing their first official bout! Your dames are busy forming the first official team to represent the Amsterdam Derby Dames league and training hard. We’re so excited, we want to bring everyone along with us. Friends, family, loved ones, supporters, fans. We want you there! And what better way to get everyone there than to organize transportation for everyone? Well, that’s exactly what we would like to do.

There is a sign up form if you want to ride the ADD bus, but you absolutely have to fill in the form (form link here) so that they have an idea of how many people might be interested.

(Disclaimer: Orangemaster, aka Nasty Moves #76, is a member of the Amsterdam Derby Dames. Photo of mixed Dutch team scrimmage (unofficial competition) in Antwerp, Belgium)

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June 29, 2011

Six things you should know about the Dutch cookie law

Filed under: IT by Branko Collin @ 8:12 am

There seems to be a lot of misinformation going around about the fresh Dutch (Internet) cookie law, so Internet lawyer Arnoud Engelfriet set out to dispel the myths in a few excellent articles.

1. First this. The Dutch call their cookie law ‘cookiewet’ instead of ‘koekjeswet’ in spite of the Dutch origins of the English word. (The oo sound is spelled oe in Dutch.)

Says Arnoud (and I paraphrase):

2. Other ways than invasive pop-ups are OK to ask permission to plant cookies. A checkbox on a profile page, a central register, and even browser settings can be used to get and store permission. You are even allowed to use cookies for which you did not ask permission to store the fact that you got permission for other cookies.

(more…)

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June 28, 2011

Data centres in churches kept cool, churchgoers kept warm

Filed under: Design,Religion,Sustainability,Technology by Orangemaster @ 3:37 pm

Warming big old churches and cathedrals are a costly affair in the Netherlands. And when it’s too cold, sometimes they even cancel services. Sustainable consumer platform Nudge in Haarlem held a contest called ‘Holy Warming’ to collect ideas about how to warm up Sint Bavo Cathedral in a sustainable way . The winner was ‘Church on a cloud’: heat the Cathedral by putting a data centre in the cellar. The Cathedral keeps the racks cool and the computers keeps the flock warm. Amen!

(Link: bright.nl, Photo of the Saint Gertrude cathedral in Utrecht by Wikimedia user pepijntje, some rights reserved)

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June 27, 2011

Rotterdam plans to give away free bikes from stash

Filed under: Bicycles by Orangemaster @ 12:53 pm

The city of Rotterdam is currently looking into the possibility of giving people whose bikes were stolen a new bike — well no, ‘another’ bike, one that was ‘towed away’. Illegally parked bikes (yes, if you park it in the wrong place because the racks are too full or whatever, the city takes them away) are to be re-used and given to people who had their bikes stolen.

The odd reason behind this move is to encourage bike use (do we really need to do that?) and help out the ‘victims’ of theft. Very nice spin, PR people. The goal is actually to do something with all the bikes not picked up by their owners taking up space in some Rotterdam city depot somewhere.

Don’t people whose bikes were stolen just grab, steal, borrow or use another one? How many stories have I heard about how time-consuming and complicated it is to find out where your bike was ‘impounded’, never mind having to pay like 50 euro to get it back? What if I had my bike stolen in, let’s say, Gouda, and I needed a new bike?

Shame on you media for buying into this ‘let’s make Rotterdam a less scary place to live in’ when it was crowned for the fifth time most dangerous Dutch city to live in. Your Dutch city really goes downhill when you actually need PR to encourage bike use in one of the most bike-friendly countries in the world.

(Link: blikopnieuws)

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June 26, 2011

Following your competitor’s Twitter followers is now legal

Filed under: Technology by Branko Collin @ 3:52 pm

Two weeks ago the court in Amsterdam held that trying to get your competitor’s Twitter followers to follow you is indeed perfectly legal.

Mediavacature.nl (which means ‘mediajob.nl’) had asked the court to stop mediavacatures.nl from abusing their trademark. The court ruled that trying to hijack your competitor’s followers is not illegal per se (PDF, Dutch):

4.10 Twitter

The defendants admit that the Twitter account @mediavacatures is being used to follow customers of the plaintiff on Twitter. Twitter is all about following and being followed. Furthermore all data on Twitter are public. Following the followers of a competitor can therefore not be seen as an illegal act per se. What is more, profiting of somebody else’s product, effort, knowledge or insight is not illegal by itself, even if this harms the other party. This only becomes illegal if a Twitter user (intentionally or otherwise) causes confusion with the general public.

Unsurprisingly the court ended up finding for the plaintiff, but the defendant did not have to turn over their Twitter account, domain name and brand, as they were no longer allowed to keep using them anyway. The defendants call themselves MV Jobs Media now.

At Arnoud Engelfriet’s blog somebody claiming to work for Media Vacature (plaintiff) pointed out that the Twitter claim was just a small part of their set of claims.

(Illustration: Twitter logo. Link: De Pers.)

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June 25, 2011

Masturbating motorist almost frightens cyclist to death

Filed under: Bicycles,General by Branko Collin @ 1:44 pm

A fourteen year old girl on a bicycle got so scared by a man in a car next to her masturbating that she took off and almost got hit by a passing bus last Wednesday, the Den Bosch police report.

The man was in his early twenties, drove a black Seat Leon, and was of a skinny build. He wore a white vest with a broad, horizontal stripe. He had short, blond, curly hair and a pair of the most remarkably bright blue eyes. And those are all the details about him we got.

The incident took place last Wednesday around 10 p.m. at the intersection of the Zevenhontseweg and the Eekbrouwersweg in Den Bosch. Two girls were waiting to cross the intersection when a car pulled up next to them up. The occupant was watching the girls while he was pleasuring himself.

It’s not clear if the police have looked at video imagery of the bus’ on-board security cameras, but they sure would like to lay their hands on the perpetrator.

(Photo of the alleged intersection by Google Streetview.)

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June 24, 2011

University of Groningen gaining popularity with Brits

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 2:21 pm

While the slow Dutch students run off to Flanders to finish their studies, the British students in question don’t necessary plan to study up north in Groningen, but their application numbers have gone from 38 to about 100. Big whoop? Not if you can study at a good university for 2,000 euro instead of the 10,000 (9,000 pounds) they will soon have to pay in England. According to the BBC, tuition fees in England will go up from 6,000 to 9,000 pounds as of 2012.

Back in 2010 Maastricht University was busy cashing in on Brits who failed their A-level exams (British entry exams for higher education) by offering degrees in English in eight subjects, with the cost of tuition about half that charged by British universities. The idea behind Maastricht University’s move was to tap into the huge mismatch between demand and supply in the UK in general, amounting to some 150,000-200,000 students missing out on a place.

(Link: rtvnoord.nl)

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June 23, 2011

First ever coins with QR codes issued are Dutch

Filed under: Dutch first,General,Technology by Orangemaster @ 2:10 pm

The Netherlands is the first country in the world to issue coins that are legal tender with QR codes on them. The Royal Mint decided to celebrate the 100th year annivesary of the mint building with this unique coin. One side features a 3D portrait of Queen Beatrix and on the other, when scanned, goes to a special page created for the occasion, activated yesterday by the Queen.

Like many other people, we are wowed by the Dutch design coolness of the whole thing, but not really wowed by their web page. We do understand how cool it could be in the future to have QR codes used for educational purposes about coins and what is pictured on them.

The coin was designed by mint designer, Juan José Sánchez Castaño.

(Links and photo: dutchcowgirls.nl, dvice.com, q5g)

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June 22, 2011

Oldest supermarket employee dies at 100

Filed under: General,Health,Weird by Orangemaster @ 4:41 pm

elderly_man

On Monday, 20 June, Jan Leugs, who worked at the local supermarket in Ten Boer, Groningen, died at age 100. Even at his age he worked two mornings a week and could still drive a car, which is why this made the news. They say he was a very cheerful man, but got suddenly ill and passed away. RIP.

(Link: telegraaf.nl. Photo of elderly man by Frank Mayne, some rights reserved.)

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June 21, 2011

‘Amsterdam second largest anglophone city’

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 10:47 am

According to business facilitator Iamsterdam, the high level of English proficiency in the Netherlands is only surpassed by that of Norway’s. All the Norwegians I have ever met speak English, even foreign national Norwegians.

The Netherlands ranks second in a proficiency index carried out, reflecting the fact that almost the entire Dutch population speaks English, especially in the greater Amsterdam area, a fact attributed to all the foreigners living there.

Some 80% of the workforce speaks English, making Amsterdam the largest anglophone city in continental Europe. Some 90% percent of the workforce speaks two or more languages.

To all the blind policy makers that keep saying you need Dutch to get a job in the Netherlands: it’s not true: thousands of expats, foreign nationals and immigrants live and work for years without learning proper Dutch and do just fine, whether you like that or not.

(Link: iamsterdam, Photo taken from Dunglish, a site with Dutch-English mistakes)

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