June 8, 2012

New cookie law confuses Dutch website owners

Filed under: IT,Technology by Branko Collin @ 12:36 pm

Hardly any Dutch website adheres to the new cookie law that came into force last Tuesday, online tech mag Webwereld reports.

The law, which is a strict implementation of the EU cookie directive, aims to protect website visitors’ privacy by making tracking illegal. Tracking is a way of building a profile of you and your likes by monitoring which websites you visit. This profile can then be used to tailor advertisements to your tastes, or for far more heinous purposes.

Among the larger sites only De Telegraaf has put up a banner informing visitors that it uses cookies, and that they can opt out. As Webwereld points out the banner is not in compliance with the law, which states that website owners must explicitly ask permission for every tracking cookie a site uses.

Enforcement agency OPTA says it is not their job to determine the contours of the law. “We expect the market to take care of that.” The agency told Webwereld it will start enforcing the law right away, but will first focus on “sites with dangerous cookies, and sites with cookies that are hard to remove.”

Arnoud Engelfriet points out that even the government is still serving cookies without permission at rijksoverheid.nl.

24 Oranges is currently looking at its cookie use and responsibilities before the law. As you may gather from the above article, this matter is more complex than it seems at first sight, so apologies for the delay.

In the meantime if you’re worried about your privacy—as you should—consider disabling third-party cookies in your browser and installing ad blockers. Neither method is perfect as far as I know.

(Screenshot: the Telegraaf cookie banner)

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June 7, 2012

Diehard elderly Frisian man finishes 240 km bike race

Filed under: Bicycles,Sports by Orangemaster @ 2:28 pm

The Fietselfstedentocht (Eleven Cities Cycling Tour), an annual event which was held last 28 May (on Whit Monday), is a 240 km long ride through 11 different cities in Friesland. This year marked the 100th year anniversary of the event, going strong since 1912.

This Frisian video is about Wiebe Idsinga, this year’s ‘hero’ of the race, and the last person to finish the ride.

Following right behind him is a journalist and a cameraman from Frisian television, mesmerised by his endurance and persistence. They ask him at some point if he’s tired because he’s not sitting up straight but it’s because of his two replacement hips! It reminds me of the Belgian film ‘Le vélo’ (in English, Ghislain Lambert’s Bicycle) where Ghislain is always last in the race but gets the most on air time due to his endurance and persistence.

“At the beginning, they tell him he still has 35 km to go. At the first stoppage, he is told that it’s past midnight and the race is officially over and he won’t have any further support. At the second stoppage, he is told in Dutch that he must stop or he won’t get recognition for what he has done so far, and after that he is driven to the end.

After he gets his medal, he says he’s going to bike home. You can see one of the officials do a facepalm because Idsinga lives some 15 km away. They offer him a ride home.”

(Links: www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com, www.nijsnet.nl)

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June 6, 2012

Speed skaters more popular than football players in the Netherlands

Filed under: Sports by Branko Collin @ 6:19 pm

Arjan Robben and Dirk Kuyt may be household names the world over, but this year they have to leave the strongest brand title to long track speed skater Sven Kramer.

A poll held by Hendrik Beerda Brand Consultancy confirms this. The first woman in the list of strongest brands is Ireen Wüst, also a speed skater, taking the number three spot between the two strikers.

A similar poll two years ago had football goalie Edwin van der Sar in the lead, but he has retired since then.

The Elfstedentocht and the Olympic Games switched positions as the most popular events, the latter taking over the number one spot, followed by the World Cup football and the Tour de France. The European Football Championship only came in fifth among events.

Outside the Netherlands Sven Kramer is perhaps best known for the gold medal he failed to win at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics due to a technicality. He has been ruling supreme in long distance and all-round championships since 2007, although he had to skip the 2010-2011 season due to an injury.

(Link: Algemeen Dagblad. Photo of Sven Kramer by Mingo Hagen, some rights reserved)

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Helicopter cat Orville goes up in value

Filed under: Animals,Art by Orangemaster @ 2:29 pm

Artist Bart Jansen didn’t kill his cat Orville, a car hit him. Then he stuffed it in an unconventional way and turned him into a remote-controlled flying cat. Jansen had originally asked € 12,500 for his work of art, which was on display in Amsterdam at the KunstRai art fair until last Saturday. “The work has not yet been sold but we have an offer of € 100,000 on the table,” Jansen’s dealer Geoffrey van Vugt told Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant.

Cat brother Wilbur, both named after Orville and Wilbur Wright (aka the Wright brothers) is just a regular Dutch cat eating cat food made from other dead animals who obviously had a worse life, Jansen mentioned to the press.

It’s a tribute to the cat Orville, that was named after the famous aviator Orville Wright. After the cat was killed by a car, and followed by a period of mourning, visual artist Bart Jansen transformed him into the Orvillecopter: Now he is finally flying with the birds. The greatest goal a cat could ever reach!

You may choose to dislike Orville for all kinds of reasons — it’s pretty freaky! — but saying he killed his cat is utter nonsense. Last year Dutch conceptual artist Tinkebell was found not guilty of animal cruelty for an exhibition with 95 hamsters in exercise balls, while she had killed her ‘depressed’ cat and turned it into a handbag.

It will always be hypocritical to believe that some animals deserve to die for our use (pigs, cows, chickens) and get upset at cute pussy cats flying around because cats are cute and pigs are bacon. Hate Orville the Flying Cat, but Bart Jansen didn’t do anything wrong or even illegal. In fact, he’s honouring his cat in his own freaky way, whether we like it or not.

For anybody who needs an ethical reality check, the real dead people show Bodyworks (even more controversial) is still on in Amsterdam until 17 June and nobody is whinging about that anymore — and they used to. It was on at the very same time and not very far from the Art Fair where Orville was flying around until last Saturday.

(Link: www.dutchnews.nl, Photo of Dead cat by ndanger, some rights reserved)

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June 4, 2012

Colourful balloons ‘floating’ on and over water

Filed under: Art by Branko Collin @ 11:56 am

Artists Merijn Hos and René Reijnders from Utrecht worked together to create this Florentijn Hofman-like installation called Bubblegum for the Cultural Night in Almere (2010).

The balloons had LED lights inside, so that they could be lit up at night.

Link: The Pop-Up City. Photo: Merijn Hos.

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June 3, 2012

Mobility scooter club wins VPRO Dream City Award

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 12:12 pm

After Richard Min’s wife died, he got lonely and decided to do something about it. He founded the Scootmobielclub (‘mobility scooter club’), which tours through pretty parts of The Hague.

Apart from getting Richard out of isolation, the club also won VPRO’s Dream City award for grassroots contributions to the liveable city. Part of the award was a 1,500 euro prize.

Other contestants were the Repair Cafés and an initiave that lets children become journalists for their neighbourhoods, Wijktijgerpersbureau.

The audience award was won by another initiative from The Hague, the FAST surfers’ village.

(Link: The Pop-Up City)

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June 2, 2012

Amsterdam petting zoo looking for ‘Holland’s next Octopus Paul’

Filed under: Animals,Shows,Sports by Branko Collin @ 3:43 pm

In 2010 a German octopus called Paul made worldwide headlines by correctly ‘predicting’ the results of South African football World Cup matches.

A petting zoo called De Pijp in Amsterdam (after the neighbourhood) is now trying to ride Paul’s famous name by organizing an ‘eviction show’ called Holland’s Next Octopus Paul in which twelve animals compete for the honour of being the most prescient.

The format is similar to a lot of reality shows. Animals have to predict the outcomes of a 2012 European Football Championship match by eating from a container with the flag of a competing country. The animal that gets it wrong, gets the axe—not literally, we hope. Parool reports that the contestants include a sheep, a horse, a donkey, a mouse, a cat, a guinea pig and a chicken.

The first predictions, for the Netherlands v. Denmark match, are now in:

(Photo of an octopus by NOAA, which means it is in the public domain. Video: Youtube / ‘octopus paul‘)

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Monumental tobacco barns may now be used to house businesses

Filed under: Architecture,History by Branko Collin @ 8:19 am

The municipality of Utrechtse Heuvelrug has broadened usage rules for so-called ‘tabaksschuren’, or ‘tobacco barns’, barns that were used in the 18th and 19th century to dry tobacco leaves.

According to De Telegraaf the region used to be the tobacco centre of the Netherlands. The barns were typically 24 metres long and 12 metres wide, and had a tarred roof and shutters in the gable to keep the inside cool and draughty.

Until last Wednesday old tobacco barns could only legally be used as homes, but the municipality will now allow businesses such as offices and tea houses to operate from the classic barns.

A list of tobacco barns (with photos) can be found here (PDF).

(Drawing by Paulus van Liender, 1731-1797, of a tobacco barn just outside Amersfoort.)

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June 1, 2012

Fat pregnant cows get prenatal work out

Filed under: Animals,Science by Orangemaster @ 4:25 pm

Livestock researcher Roselinde Goselink of Wageningen UR explains in this Dutch video from 2011 why it’s good for fat pregnant cows to get a proper workout before cranking out calves.

Pregnant cows need to boost their metabolism so that they can get used to giving lots of milk, and exercise apparently helps. Two years ago at the testing farm Waiboerhoeve near Lelystad they got some 30 odd cows to go round and round for 5 kilometers a day every day until September in a mill, which looks like a pony ride attraction for children.

Imagine generating electricity with cows getting a workout.

Oh and look how happy they are when they finally get to go outside in the spring:

(Link: melkveehouders.nieuwsgrazer.nl, via www.waarmaarraar.nl)

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May 31, 2012

Dead Duck Day is just around the corner

Filed under: Animals,Science,Weird by Orangemaster @ 2:08 pm

Kees Moeliker, curator of the Natural History Museum in Rotterdam, was awarded an IgNobel back in 2003 — the tongue-in-cheek awards of Improbable Research — for writing about “The first case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard.”

On 5 June 1995 an adult male mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) collided with the glass façade of the Natural History Museum in Rotterdam and died. An other drake mallard raped the corpse almost continuously for 75 minutes. Then the author disturbed the scene and secured the dead duck. Dissection showed that the rape-victim indeed was of the male sex. It is concluded that the mallards were engaged in an ‘Attempted Rape Flight’ that resulted in the first described case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard.

This year Dead Duck Day will be celebrated on the lawn next to the new glass pavilion of the Natural History Museum in Rotterdam at 17:55 sharp, the actual time the duck lost his life on that historic day in 1995. The historic stuffed necro-duck will be at the event, owned by Moeliker himself. They’ll be a discussion about finding new ways to prevent birds from colliding with glass and more news about dead ducks.

Don’t miss out on the traditional six-course duck dinner at the Chinese restaurant around the corner afterwards.

And if you have room for dessert, enjoy this six-minute movie about the two colliding ducks.

(Link: www.improbable.com, boingboing.net)

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