Archive for the 'Europe' Category


Oil prices, carriers and the Spanish government

By: psr, 2008-06-14

The recent increase in oil prices affects all transport. Air, ground and sea transportation, passenger and cargo alike, have seen their costs rising in the last few months.

Analysts have provided several theories on the causes behind the oil price hike. Some put the blame on the credit crisis in the USA, others blame oil producers, others point at the US Federal Reserve, and others remind us of the significant increase in energy demand. I am not going to analyze the reasons here.

This week Spain saw a strike by some truck drivers (apparently about 20% of them), demanding Government intervention to help their activity, after fuel price increases are rendering their business a loss-making operation. Their strike blocked major communication roads around the main …

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2008-06-14 | Economy - Europe - Spain - Braindead | Trackback | No Comments »

Language, communication and freedom

By: psr, 2008-06-08

Language is often considered to be an aspect of culture. I dissent. First and foremost, language is a means of communication, but the diversity of languages certainly makes humans associate a particular language with a particular group of people. Humans feel identified with other human beings who speak the same language, while feeling more distant from those speaking a different tongue.

Culture or not, language is essentially what allows humans to communicate with other humans and it is therefore a catalyst for growth of the human spirit as language permits access to knowledge and to interaction and relation with other people. The use of language should therefore not be limited nor restricted in any way. This apparently elemental assertion has rarely been true throughout …

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2008-06-08 | Rights - Europe - Spain - General | Trackback | 1 Comment »

Privacy: awareness better than technology

By: psr, 2008-04-02

This week I am at the Bled “Future of the Internet” conference, where the European Commission tries to coordinate efforts among the research projects they fund with the goal of positioning Europe as a leader in the definition and research of the Future Internet (or “Internet of the Future”, or whichever name people want to call it).

There was a good opening speech by Dr. Žiga Turk, Slovenian Minister of Growth, relating future developments in the Internet to past developments in human communication technologies. The message was clear and true, and I think it most importantly highlights that such developments take place with little planning. For this reason, I believe that specific efforts to develop a Future Internet are superfluous and most likely inefficient. The …

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