September 17, 2011

Judges not allowed to piece verdict together on the internet

Filed under: General,IT by Branko Collin @ 1:43 pm

The appeals court of Den Bosch got bitch slapped by the Dutch supreme court for inserting its own facts into a verdict without giving the parties involved a chance to respond.

A legal guardian had bought a license for Smart FMS, a sort of bookkeeping package, to take care of the accounts of his ward. It’s not clear to me who sued whom, but at some point the protagonists of this case found themselves in front of the appeals court of Den Bosch. And when the dust settled and the verdict came out, it turned out that the judge had been googling for extra information, and had concluded that

this software is first and foremost a system to aid the guardian’s administration, and it only helps clarify the payments of the clients as a side-effect. The clients furthermore have no say about the usage of this particular system, assuming they are even willing to bear the costs, and are capable of using it. […] Although the guardian did not provide [this court] with information about the software, the internet did.

The guardian was not pleased, as he had had no chance to defend himself against the court’s allegation. Last week the supreme court agreed with him. That the parties involved in legal proceedings have a right to be heard is a Dutch legal principle.

(Link: Iusmentis. Verdict in Dutch at Jure.nl.)

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September 16, 2011

Man arrested after trying to pay for pizza using stolen coupons

Filed under: Food & Drink,General by Branko Collin @ 10:02 pm

A 22-year-old man from The Hague was arrested today at a pizza place on the Laan van Meerdervoort when he tried to pay with stolen coupons.

The owner called the cops because the coupons had not been published yet. In fact, they had just been printed, and had been stolen earlier that same day from a car in the Torenstraat.

While in gaol, the suspect will have plenty of time to listen to André van Duin’s song Pizza: “Wait a bit … a little longer … a little longer … even longer … pizza!”

(Link: Police Haaglanden region. Photo by Uggboy, some rights reserved)

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September 10, 2011

Laura Dekker in Australia

Filed under: General,Sports by Branko Collin @ 11:23 am

Two weeks ago ‘sailor girl’ Laura Dekker reached the shores of the Northern Territory of Australia, and not a moment too soon.

Her boat Guppy was in desperate need of repairs as both the genoa and the rudder had broken down. In Darwin she re-united with her father who had flown in to celebrate her sixteenth birthday (September 20). From that day on she has about a year and week to complete her global circumnavigation if she wants to become the unofficial record holder of being the youngest person solo sailing around the world.

In the past months Dekker sailed past the country of her birth, New Zealand (she has dual citizenship), even though she professed a desire to visit. Says stuff.co.nz:

Her manager, Australian Lyall Mercer, [said] today Dekker did not take her New Zealand nationality lightly and had especially embraced it since starting to feel “disconnected” from The Netherlands after courts there stopped her from embarking on her trip when she was 13.

“Yet she has failed to find any support from New Zealand, unable even to source a New Zealand flag that she wants to fly from her boat ‘Guppy’ for the duration of her trip,” Mercer said.

I wonder if there is not more to that story. In August 2009, Elsevier reported that the New Zealand authorities had threatened to seize Laura’s boat for reckless behaviour if she ever entered one of the country’s ports while sailing alone.

The best place to follow Dekker’s exploits is still her blog, which she keeps in both English and Dutch. Dekker spends her days playing the guitar, writing her book, and reading. Still no word on if she has ever touched her homework.

See also: more stories about Laura Dekker.

(Photo of an entirely unrelated boat by the US Navy)

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August 30, 2011

24 Oranges: switching from a Facebook Group to a Facebook Page

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 7:50 pm

We will be abandoning our Facebook Group and continue with a Facebook Page instead. You can find the page at http://www.facebook.com/24oranges?sk=wall.

If you were a member of our group, follow us on Facebook by ‘liking’ our Page, as the group will be deleted.

We use Facebook for all kinds of things. We connect with our readers through it, and our page wall has its own content, although sometimes we post a link to a blog posting if the article is especially apt for our Facebook friends.

As for the difference between Facebook’s ‘pages’ and ‘groups’, they continue to mystify us and everybody else including, I gather, Facebook themselves. It would seem that the philosophy behind a page fits us better. From what I understand, Facebook initially intended groups to be a way for friends and family to connect, whereas pages are intended for larger groups of people.

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August 28, 2011

Weather prediction for the next ten years—rain, rain, rain

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 12:09 pm

It’s been raining a lot here this summer—I thought I’d share the pain (and the view from my window) a bit.

Meanwhile, Noordhoff publishers and the Dutch weather office, KNMI, presented a climate atlas last week. Some interesting tidbits:

* Worldwide the temperature has risen 0.7 degrees Celsius over the past 50 years, in the Netherlands that was 1.4.

* The temperature in Amsterdam averages 11 degrees Celsius over the past thirty years, which is the same average as Lyon (in the South of France) had thirty years ago.

* The rainiest places in the country are the Veluwe (the nature reserve in the middle of the country) and the North of Amsterdam.

* The skies released 850 litres water per square metre on average; 100 years ago that average was 700 litres.

Since we’re in the middle of a period of global warming, it is expected that these trends will continue (though KNMI is hedging its bets).

Update August 31, 2011: Dutch News: It’s official: this is the wettest summer since 1906.

(Links: Parool.nl, Vereniging voor Weerkunde en Klimatologie)

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August 17, 2011

Shooting incidents involving cops almost doubles

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 7:12 pm

The National Police Internal Investigations Department (Rijksrecherche) reports that incidents in which police officers injured or killed people using guns have increased from 14 in 2006 to 25 in 2010, Telegraaf reported last Thursday.

According to the department all uses were justified. Shooting incidents, the paper reports, formed the largest category of investigations, followed by investigations into corruption.

Dutch ‘beat cops’ are armed with handcuffs, a Walther P5, and “pepper spray, a truncheon, a walkie-talkie, a mobile phone and a ticket pad”, politie.nl lists meticulously. The site adds that all these items are worn on a belt. NOS Nieuws reported last January that police union NPB was surprised about not having been consulted about the new side-arm, the SIG Sauer, especially considering that the weapons testers chose another gun.

(Photo by Facemepls, some rights reserved)

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August 6, 2011

Mac ‘n’ Cheese (animated cartoon)

Filed under: Film,General by Branko Collin @ 3:11 pm

Four students at the Utrecht School of Arts made the following cartoon:

From the artists’ Vimeo page:

This two minute animation took about five months to make, and about a bajillion peanut butter sandwiches.

Synopsis: When you find yourself running scared and running out of energy, there’s only a few options left to outrun your opponent through the southern desert.

(Source video: Youtube / Tom Hankins, Gijs van Kooten, Guido Puijk, Roy Nieterau)

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August 3, 2011

The best places to live in the Netherlands

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 9:42 am

In a tongue-in-cheek article, daily De Pers figured out the ideal Dutch towns to live in for large groups of people:

For the poor, Vaals (in the Southernmost tip of the country), because it is apparently easy to get social security there. The town wants to crack down on social security tourism though.

For the gays, Hillegom (South of Haarlem), of which the Pink City Guide of Bureau Movisie says it’s the gay friendliest town in the country. The municipality is working on a policy to support eldery gays, amongst others.

For the elderly, Kerkrade (Limburg). The paper quotes a citizen as saying: “Perhaps we can even draw older people from the rest of the country or even from abroad, because growing old in Kerkrade is fun.” It doesn’t say why it is fun.

For muslims, Alblasserdam (near Rotterdam). The town sports the highest percentage of muslims in the country.

For the handicapped, Huizen (East of Amsterdam), which is quick in allotting funds for medical needs.

For the Polish, Venray (Limburg), which realizes it will always need seasonal workers, so why not be nice to them.

For the drug addicted both Amersfoort (near Utrecht) and Utrecht (near Amersfoort). Junkies get free beer in the former town, and free methadone in the latter. (Pretty girls get free beer in Weert, Limburg. From the bar owners, that is.)

For the students, Sittard (Limburg), as it has the cheapest student housing of the country.

And finally, for sailors, the devoutly religious town of Urk (near nowhere in particular) which refuses to charge boat owners money for delivering electricity and water on Sundays, as that would constitute working on a Sabbath.

(Photo: an abandoned looking factory in Huizen)

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August 2, 2011

iPhone app for dog pooh and bike carcasses

Filed under: Animals,Bicycles,General,IT by Orangemaster @ 12:03 pm

The iPhone app ‘Opgeruimd’ (‘Cleaned up’) being tested in Amsterdam West, where my personal experience says many users still don’t have smart phones as the population is kinda poor, lets people tell the district where annoying dog pooh and old bike carcasses can be found. Instead of calling or commenting on a website to complain, now the rich can use their iPhones, while anybody else can’t. You see where I am going with this.

You can even send in pics and the exact location of the annoyance until 1 November 2011. If all goes well, the rest of iPhone using Amsterdam can vent their grievances, while all us non smart phone, HTC, or other users will continue to be ignored by the city.

(Link: www.dutchnews.nl, via www.west.amsterdam.nl)

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July 29, 2011

Limburg town to refuse EU nationals without income

Filed under: Dutch first,General by Orangemaster @ 1:20 pm

Drielandenpunt (Vaalserberg), is where Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands meet, also the highest point of the Netherlands. Way back before 2002 you could pay your Dutch, German or Belgian fries (yes, three separate stands) with either Dutch guilders, German marks or Belgian francs.

The wee town of Vaals, Limburg, where back in the pre-euro days, my German friends from Aachen went shopping to buy Dutch food products, is now taking a firm stand on EU nationals eating up their welfare benefits. Vaals wants to refuse residency rights to those who do not have a job or enough income to support themselves as of September 2011.

Before critizing Vaals, let’s do the math. Vaals has a population of about 10,000 and claims that 40% of the 300 townspeople on welfare benefits (120 people) are from other EU countries. The town council says that’s a higher number than even Rotterdam, and is costing them a whopping €Â 400,000 a year. Out of every 100 people who want to live in Vaals, nine of them ask for benefits, mostly Poles and Romanians who do not yet speak the language.

Ironically, all this movement within the EU and within the Netherlands tends to expose all kinds of problems that nobody would have noticed if it wasn’t for EU nationals trying to work the system.

In nearby Plombières, Belgium, they’re already applying a European guideline to restrict residency for EU nationals without work or income. If and when Vaals does this, they will be the first Dutch town to do so.

(Link: www.volkskrant.nl.nl)

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