31 maio 2004

VITAMEDIAS

Entre 1999 e 2003, Portugal teve uma baixa de 16,7 por cento na circulação de jornais (a maior quebra entre os ex-15 da União Europeia)...
World Press Trends: Advertising Rebounds, Circulation Down Slightly
Newspaper advertising revenues are finally on the upswing as the world economy rebounds, but global newspaper circulation is slightly down, according to the annual survey of World Press Trends published Monday by the World Association of Newspapers. [...]
* Global newspaper circulation declined 0.12 percent in 2003 compared with a year earlier but was up 4.75 percent over the five-year period from 1999 to 2003.
* The number of free dailies is growing dramatically - a 16 percent increase in 2003 from a year earlier and a 24 percent increase over the past five years in countries for which data was available. [...]
* In the 15 countries of the "old" European Union, 13 reported circulation losses in 2003 compared to 2002 and in the five years from 1999. Circulation in the 15 was down 2.2 percent year-on-year and 5.9 percent over the five years period, representing a loss of 1,415,000 daily sales in one year and 4,507,000 daily sales over five years.
The two countries in this group which showed growth in 2003 were Belgium (+0.2 percent) and Spain (+0.1 percent).
Those reporting losses were: Austria -1.2 percent; Denmark -3.7 percent; Finland -1.7 percent; France -1.51 percent; Germany -3.0 percent; Greece -1.0 percent; Ireland -7.8 percent; Italy -1.7 percent; Luxembourg -2.4 percent; Netherlands -2.5 percent; Portugal -4.03 percent; Sweden -0.1 percent; and the United Kingdom -4.7 percent.
Over the five years 1999-2003, circulation declined in: Austria -12.9 percent; Belgium -5.5 percent; Denmark -9.6 percent; Finland -2.7 percent; France -4.98 percent; Germany -8.1 percent; Greece -8.0 percent; Ireland -3.8 percent; Luxembourg -7.12 percent; Netherlands -6.2 percent; Portugal -16.76 percent; Sweden -1.3 percent; and the United Kingdom -3.4 percent. [...]
* The Norwegians and the Japanese remain the world?s greatest newspaper buyers with, respectively, 684 and 646.9 sales per thousand population each day. Sweden comes next with 590 followed by Finland with 524.2.

ECOPOL

European voting rules flawed: Planned EU constitution could debase democracy.
The European Union is in danger of adopting unfair voting procedures, according to Polish scientists.
Physicists tackle EU constitution: Two scientists from Poland claim to have found a solution to the problem of voting in the newly enlarged European Union. The current voting system, which is based on guidelines set by the Treaty of Nice, and the new system proposed in the draft EU Constitution both lead to inequalities between the different member states. The new system, proposed by Karol ?yczkowski and Wojciech Slomczy?ski of Jagiellonian University in Kraków, is based on a square-root formula and would ensure that all European citizens had equal voting powers

TECNOSFERA

Will Location Blogging Take Off? Location will soon be an integral part of just about every mobile application we use, but for most people out there, it's not a reality yet. However, just like we can't imagine anyone today without a phone or without an email address, there'll be a day very soon when we can't imagine not knowing our exact location at all times.

TECNOSFERA

Drivers Want Code to Their Cars: Today's cars have 1,000 times more computing horsepower than the moon rocket. But automakers resist letting car owners access diagnostic tools. Why? Because dealers can charge $100 just to turn off the Check Engine light.

.DE!

'Plagiarist' to sue university: A student who admits down-loading material from the internet for his degree plans to sue his university for negligence.
Michael Gunn claims his university should have warned him his actions were against the regulations.

28 maio 2004

VITAMEDIAS

Who Will Read Newspapers?

VITAMEDIAS

Online film critics get mixed reviews: Film reviewers have swarmed onto the scene like so many cicadas in the past half-dozen years - thanks mainly to the Internet, where anyone with a website, a blog, or just an e-mail address can set up shop as a cinematic pundit.

ECOPOL

Policy Guidelines for the Development and Promotion of Governmental Public Domain Information: One of the ultimate goals of any society is the empowerment of all its citizens through access to and use of information and knowledge, as a corollary to the basic rights of freedom of expression and of participation in the cultural life and scientific progress. In support of this goal, more and more governmental information is being produced and made available through the Internet and the World Wide Web. Some of this information has restrictions on public access and use because of intellectual property (IP) protection, national security, privacy, confidentiality, and other considerations. A great deal of it, however, can be openly disseminated through the Internet, libraries, and other means to citizens and to a broad range of development actors such businesses and schools. Whereas the focus of most policy analyses and law-making is typically on the protection of proprietary information, the role and value of public domain information, especially of information produced by the public sector, is not widely enough addressed and is generally poorly understood. The purpose of these Policy Guidelines is to help develop and promote information in the public domain at the government level, with particular attention to such information in digital form.

CONTAMINANTES

No Sex, Please. We're Eating: Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a new study on what has come to be called "risky social and sexual behaviors." To be more precise, the report triumphantly announced that fewer high school students are having unprotected sex, drinking alcohol, and smoking cigarettes.
But there was bad news, too: Obesity rates are soaring among teens. Is there a connection? The CDC can't say?because it never correlated its findings that way.

.DE!

Euro 2004 could cure Portugal's inferiority complex: "It's not an inferiority complex, it's a crisis of self-esteem," [João Paulo Sequeira, do Portugal Positivo] said. "Portugal in the past has had a legacy of this characteristic of (lacking) self-esteem and it became part of our personality."

VITAMEDIAS

BBC Creative Archive licensing to be based on Creative Commons: The Creative Archive, originally announced by Greg Dyke in 2003, plans to offer the British public free access to some of the BBC's audio and video programming. [...]
By applying a CC-type license to the content, the BBC will enable individuals in the UK to download released content to their computers, share it, edit it and create new content. Commercial reuse of the content will not be allowed.

VITAMEDIAS

'O Periódico dos Pobres': Em 1854, o Periódico dos Pobres do Porto, onde desde 1846 colaborava Camilo Castelo Branco, denunciou haver o duque de Saldanha, presidente do Conselho e general-chefe, usado «meios ilícitos» para casar a sua filha, nisso incluindo o suposto rapto da nubente. Agravado, o duque meteu processo de querela, por difamação. O caso deu brado judiciário e, no meio de um torvelinho de peripécias processuais conturbadas, o jornal acabaria condenado, pelo júri, no mínimo da multa, por abuso de imprensa. A condenação foi tirada «na noite de 28 de Março de 1855».

Perguntado ao júri se o acusado era criminoso, os jurados haviam dito que «sim, por maioria». Perguntados os do júri pelo juiz em que grau o era em tal crime «e que quantidade de pena lhe corresponde» haviam ditado que no primeiro grau e com «a pena de dez mil réis». Estava feito. Seguir-se-ia o competente recurso, inconformado que estava O Periódico dos Pobres. Mas eis o interessante da questão. Nas palavras do director da publicação, João d'Almeida Pinto, «quando todos escandalizados nos aconselhávamos que apelássemos, é que nós resolvemos trocar o recurso judicial pelo da presente publicação. A razão por que assim o resolvemos é clara. É porque há certas torpezas que não admitem outro castigo, senão o da publicidade». Ora aí está uma questão eterna, actual em 1854 e em 2004, o apelar para os tribunais superiores ou para o tribunal da opinião pública. O jornal optou por um livro de desagravo.

VITAMEDIAS

Tabloiditis: Tabloid newspapers in many countries are full of topless women, celebrity gossip and xenophobia. But they also boast another attraction: women and younger people find their smaller pages easier to manage, especially on public transport. Broadsheets that usually look down on tabloids are now rushing to downsize. [...]
The reason? Broadsheets are mostly seeing their circulation slowly dwindle as older readers die and young people choose other sources for news and entertainment. They are also facing tough new competition from free commuter tabloids such as those published by Metro International, a Swedish firm. The trend is not entirely new.

27 maio 2004

VITAMEDIAS

How Can I Sex Up This Blog Business? Inside Nick Denton's plan to become the nanopublishing media mogul.

TECNOSFERA

Google Wins Users' Hearts, but Not Their Ad Clicks: "The study found that Google's success is based largely on the strength of its brand and its clean and simple presentation of search results," said Peter Watkins, president and CEO of Vividence, the firm that conducted the study. "Google does not appear to benefit from any advantage based on actual search results returned, and places last in the index measuring overall ad activity and awareness. This clearly shows that the battle for leadership in the search industry is far from over."

.DE!

Desenrascanço na Wikipedia [via Gildot]

TECNOSFERA

Is the Netscape Browser Being Reborn or Just Stabilized? AOL is planning to release an updated Netscape Navigator as early as June, but whether one of the Web's original browsers will make a comeback remains uncertain.

VITAMEDIAS

When A Journal Ceases Publication: What happens when a journal ceases to produce new issues? [...]
In the online environment the simple question, what happens to a journal...?, has a multitude of facets:
* has the title merged or split to continue under a new title(s)
* has the title changed
* is the question being asked/answered by a librarian/academic or a publisher
* has the title been transferred between publishers, thus possibly 'ceasing' from the point of view of the initial publisher

VITAMEDIAS

NYT Whispers Apology For WMD Stories: In a 1,100-word editors' note yesterday, the Gray Lady admitted it flubbed much of its reporting on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq last year. [...]
[Greg Mitchell, editor of the influential trade magazine Editor & Publisher] estimated that up to 300 newspapers around the country may have carried the questionable stories, which went out over the New York Times News Service.
Papers were not told until 10 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday about the massive clarification, rankling newspaper editors nationwide.
"It seems like pretty shabby treatment to subscribers of the Times service," said Doug Clifton, editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, which had run two of the questionable Times stories on its front page.

VITAMEDIAS

CNN: journalists are no longer safe: Drawing attention to the growing death toll among journalists working in Iraq, Chris Cramer, the managing director of CNN International, said media organisations - including many newspapers - were guilty of failing their own staff on assignments in dangerous countries. [...]
"How much longer can we turn a blind eye to the fact that journalists are no longer considered neutral and never will be again?" he asked.
"We all have to accept and realise that the stakes for our profession have changed. Here in Europe - and around the world - attacks are no longer unusual, no longer considered one-in-a-million chances of happening," he said
"We need to understand what the present and the future holds in a politically and religiously charged and very fragmented world. Own up to the fact that the media, particularly those in hostile zones, are no longer the victims of so-called collateral damage, but more often are the intended targets.
"It's hunting season against the media - and for some people it's a round-the-year sport," he said [...]
"I am sorry, but there is no precedent for what is happening to our profession at the moment."
Mr Cramer suggested that the media's failure to take positive action to protect journalists in war zones meant the industry was at a "dangerous crossroads".
"I predict that many organisations will decide the stakes are too high to report from a war zone like Iraq. They will decide that the attrition rate against journalists and those that work with us is fast becoming so great that we should pull out.

26 maio 2004

VITAMEDIAS

To Their Surprise, Bloggers Are Force for Change in Big Media: Bloggers' scrutiny is making its mark on traditional journalism.

VITAMEDIAS

Livro: Digitizing the News - Innovation in Online Newspapers: In this study of how daily newspapers in America have developed electronic publishing ventures, Pablo Boczkowski shows that new media emerge not just in a burst of revolutionary technological change but by merging the structures and practices of existing media with newly available technical capabilities. [...]
Boczkowski provides ethnographic, fly-on-the-wall accounts of three innovations in content creation: the Technology section of the New York Times on the Web, which was initially intended as the newspaper's space for experimentation with online news; the Virtual Voyager project of the HoustonChronicle.com, in which reporters pushed the envelope of multimedia journalism; and the Community Connection initiative of New Jersey Online, in which users became content producers.

CONTAMINANTES

Debate mensal na Assembleia da República: Na sequência do Conselho de Ministros extraordinário de Óbidos, no princípio deste ano, o Governo conferiu ao investimento em ciência, investigação e inovação uma prioridade particular.
Daí o Plano de Acção em Ciência e Inovação até 2010 que foi aprovado.
É um plano ambicioso mas exequível.
Um plano estruturado em 4 grandes eixos:
Primeiro: aumentar o investimento público em investigação, desenvolvimento e inovação;
Segundo: incentivar o investimento privado;
Terceiro: aumentar os recursos humanos qualificados, com particular ênfase nas ciências e tecnologias;
Quarto: promover o emprego científico.

ECOPOL

When advocates become regulators: President Bush has installed more than 100 top officials who were once lobbyists, attorneys or spokespeople for the industries they oversee.

VITAMEDIAS

A verdade a que temos direito: Querem as pessoas jornalistas mais activos, mais intervenientes, mais inconvenientes?
Parece que não. [...]
Os jornalistas terão culpas no cartório quanto à situação a que se chegou - pela irresponsabilidade e incompetência que campeia. Mas a verdade é que, pelo caminho que as coisas tomam, parece ser a própria sociedade - ou as suas componentes mais activas - a exigirem progressivamente menos jornalismo e não melhor jornalismo.

25 maio 2004

TECNOSFERA


BROADBAND PENETRATION IN EUROPE TO HIT 20 PER CENT AS TRIPLE-PLAY ERA ARRIVES

ZITE

KaleidoDraw

TECNOSFERA

Dos blogues:
Os seis blogosféricos candidatos a eurodeputados:
Ana Gomes (Causa Nossa) - PS - 3º lugar
João Carvalho Fernandes (Fumaças) - PND - 19º lugar
Luís Humberto Teixeira (Reciclemos!) - MPT - 11º lugar
Pedro Guedes (Último Reduto) - PNR - 14º lugar
Bruno Oliveira Santos (Nova Frente) - PNR - 5º lugar
Duarte Branquinho (Pena e Espada) - PNR - 9º lugar
Moms - and some dads - are using weblogs to chronicle their day to day lives
Sen. DeWine Assistant Fired Over Alleged Sex Blog
Resumes Are for Dummies: Forget want ads and recruiters. Bruce MacEwen has a new approach to job hunting: blogging. (ver também Los españoles aún prefieren la prensa a internet para encontrar trabajo: Internet es la segunda herramienta más utilizada para buscar trabajo, por detrás de la prensa)
Inside information being revealed on the Internet: Browse the right sites and you can get software secrets or an insider view of the market straight from the source
Welcome to the Blogosphere: Cyberspace's most dynamic journalistic innovation may be the "blog" or "Web log" - an electronic diary of personal commentary.

TECNOSFERA

CCTV goes wi-fi to fight crime: In the UK there is one CCTV camera for every 14 people. If you are in London, you could be caught on camera up to 300 times a day.
But the cameras are expensive, and once you have installed one, and laid all the wires back to base, it is fixed and cannot move.
This means if a crime hotspot moves round the corner, you cannot see it.
Westminster City Council in London have come up with a solution - CCTV cameras without wires, which broadcast their pictures back to base using the council's new wireless network. [Obrigado, Carlos]
ACABAR COM A VIDEOVIGILÂNCIA AVULSA: Aproveitei o debate de uma proposta de lei sobre videovigilância para alertar o Parlamento para alguns dos reptos que o status quo acarreta. Tudo ocorreu à hora mais discreta de um dia tranquilo, mas o aviso ficou feito e exige medidas concretas.

ECOPOL

Charles Was First: England introduced the world to "terror" more than 150 years before the French revolutionaries usually credited with the coinage. [...]
While Bush defends military tribunals as an essential part of an effective war on terrorism, the harsh justice they exercise may be used as an "Example of Terror to others, and to keepe the reste in due Awe and Obedience." When we set out to make an example of terrorists, we may end up terrorizing ourselves.

ECOPOL

A ler por quem tenciona votar nas eleições europeias ou se tenciona candidatar ao Parlamento Europeu: In Europe's Parliament, a Fondness for the Perks: A legislator from Finland can fly round trip to Brussels, where the Parliament meets, for about $240. But under Parliament rules, members are reimbursed at the highest economy price, meaning that a Finnish member could receive about 10 times the cost of the trip. [...]
There is no ban on relatives working as Parliament aides, and relatives of at least two dozen members do. There are taxi allowances, free language lessons and daily expense stipends, even on days when no official business is conducted. Most benefits are tax free. [...]
The benefits, which cost taxpayers more than $100 million a year, are intended to equalize legislators' salaries, which are determined by their individual countries and vary widely. [...]
a Finnish legislator, Reino Paasilinna, said it would be difficult to leave Parliament for another job because he would lose half his income. "It's almost 20,000 a month," he said, referring to euros. "And there isn't any taxation." [...]
Although reforms are needed, the general criticism is overblown, said Richard Balfe, an English member who heads the committee that administers the benefits.
"Don't let's pretend that people are being carried in here on litters by servants picking grapes and then going home," he said. "Most people come into Parliament because they believe they have a mission to accomplish and they work pretty hard at doing it. Clearly they need expenses and facilities to accomplish that mission."
And they get them. [...]
Then there's nepotism. Payroll records obtained by The Times and The Herald Tribune for 2002 indicate that at least 30 legislators have relatives on their staffs.
[A maior vergonha é que estes casos foram denunciados em Fevereiro e mal se ouviu falar deles na Europa! Também porque, nessa altura, Hans-Peter Martin não respondia a perguntas endereçadas ao seu "email" no Parlamento Europeu...]

ECOPOL

Portugal positivo?

Public Integrity Index measures anti-corruption environment: Overall, Portugal ranks 2nd out of 25 countries on the Public Integrity Index, falling into the strong tier. Portugal scores in the very strong tier (90-100) in Categories 1 and 5, in the strong tier (80-90) for Categories 2, 4 and 6, and in the moderate tier (70-80) for Category 3.
1. Civil Society, Public Information and Media, Very strong, ranking 3rd
2. Electoral and Political Processes, Strong, ranking 3rd
3. Branches of Government, Moderate, ranking 5th
4. Administration and Civil Service, Strong, ranking 1st
5. Oversight and Regulatory Mechanisms, Very strong, ranking 5th
6. Anti-Corruption Mechanisms and Rule of Law, Strong, ranking 5th [...]
Since its transition to democracy in 1974, Portugal has often been considered an example of successful consolidation. Today, Portugal displays features of modern democracy that match those of most full-fledged democracies: regular and free elections, party pluralism, autonomy of civil society from the state, freedom of the media, freedom of association and assembly, and public access to government information. But Portugal lacks an active civil society and has not experienced a harmonious appropriation of democratic values across its territory and population. Although this does not necessarily constitute a threat to democracy, in the sense that the vast majority of citizens accept and identify themselves with democratic rule and values, it certainly affects the way they react to public issues, such as corruption.

24 maio 2004

ECOPOL


Regarding the Torture of Others: Just as it was regarded by many as an implicit criticism of the war to show on television photographs of American soldiers who have been killed in the course of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, it will increasingly be thought unpatriotic to disseminate the new photographs and further tarnish the image of America.
After all, we're at war. Endless war. And war is hell, more so than any of the people who got us into this rotten war seem to have expected. In our digital hall of mirrors, the pictures aren't going to go away. Yes, it seems that one picture is worth a thousand words. And even if our leaders choose not to look at them, there will be thousands more snapshots and videos. Unstoppable.

CONTAMINANTES

One Very Tangled Post-9/11 Affair: A surprising number of firemen have left their wives for the widows of their brethren who died at the World Trade Center.

CULTURAS IN VITRO

Who Invented Lolita? The paternity of the famous nymphette is put in question.

21 maio 2004

TECNOSFERA

Conhecer para Agir ? Zona de KM em Portugal: Se os termos Gestão de Informação, Gestão do Conhecimento (KM), Comunidades de Prática (CoP), Weblogs, Inovação, Redes de Excelência, entre outras (ver http://www.knowledgeboard.com/community/zones/index.html), lhe dizem alguma coisa ou lhe interessam muito, então queremos convidá-lo(a) a fazer parte deste projecto Europeu e a participar, no dia 2 de Junho [no INETI, em Lisboa], no seminário sobre os SIG, um evento que marcará o lançamento da zona portuguesa do KnowledgeBoard ? ?Conhecer para Agir?.
[via B2OB]

CONTAMINANTES

Cultural evolution: The names that parents give their children illuminate cultural evolution
[Alexander Bentley, of University College, London] looked at the frequencies of different first names in American babies. One of his findings was that the ?mutation rate? in names is higher for girls than for boys. Parents, in other words, are more liable to be inventive when choosing a name for a baby girl. The researchers have found that for every 10,000 daughters born in America there is an average of 2.3 new names. For sons, the figure is 1.6.

ECOPOL

(NATO photo)
AWACS support in Portugal and Spain: NATO Airborne Early Warning Aircraft (AWACS) will provide support for two major public events: the Royal Wedding in Spain and the Euro 2004 Portuguese Championship.

TECNOSFERA

Microsoft's Gates Touts Blogging as Business Tool:
"What blogging and these notifications are about is that you make it very easy to communicate," Gates told executives gathered at Microsoft's headquarters for its annual CEO Summit.
Gates' comments on blogging technology were the most extensive thus far from Microsoft's chief software architect, signaling that the world's largest software company is waking up to the potential of blogging as a potential threat and also as a new business opportunity.

ECOPOL

Database Firm Listed 120,000 'Likely Terrorists': The company that runs the multistate MATRIX law enforcement database gave the U.S. government a list of 120,000 people who scored high on a computer profile it said was designed to identify likely terrorists, a civil liberties group said on Thursday. [...]
"People on that list ought to be concerned," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU's privacy and technology program. "Just being associated with a terrorist list is going to make people's lives miserable."

TECNOSFERA

WWW Conference Mulls Web as Personal Memory Store: Top Internet researchers attending the annual World Wide Web conference in New York this week are wondering what it will mean when individuals can recall nearly every waking moment. It's a vision of the world where everyone becomes a digital pack rat.

TECNOSFERA

Is Torvalds really the father of Linux? It's hard to imagine that Linus Torvalds could have launched Linux without directly using earlier operating system work, according to a report that has become controversial even before its scheduled publication Thursday.

ECOPOL

Street Maps in Political Hues: While records of campaign contributions have long been available online, Fundrace has a twist: plug in any address and retrieve a list of all the donors in the neighborhood, the names of their favored candidates and the amount bestowed.

VITAMEDIAS

Now you can read magazines on your phone: Mobile content producer Sendandsee has announced production of what are claimed to be the world's first magazines for viewing on mobile phones.
The Finnish company will launch the three weekly titles this month. Each magazine will contain at least 16 pages of news, images, sound and video and will cost around two Euros per week. Subscribers will also be able to use the content to personalise their mobile phone.

VITAMEDIAS

Investigative Reporting Resource Center for South East Europe

19 maio 2004

.DE!

Fish shooting is a sport in Vermont, and every spring, hunters break out their artillery -- high-caliber pistols, shotguns, even AK-47s -- and head to the marshes to exercise their right to bear arms against fish.
It is a controversial pastime, and Vermont's fish and wildlife regulators have repeatedly tried to ban it.

VITAMEDIAS

Los activistas de derechos humanos tendrán en Radio Nizkor un recurso eficaz de producción de información que se distribuye globalmente y complementario de la información documental ya disponible en nuestro sitio web.

.DE!

Bling Breakfast: According to UNICEF calculations, $1,000 is enough to feed 200 starving children a month. It's also just enough to stave off the hunger pangs of any lone New Yorker with more money than sense . . . at least until lunchtime. $1,000 is the price of the deluxe breakfast option, a caviar-laced frittata, at Norma's, one of the luxury hotel Le Parker Meridien's restaurants. Essentially, it's a glorified omelet, made from six eggs, cream, and lobster, with an extravagant 10 ounces of sevruga caviar dolloped on top. And its dozen or so cholesterol-saturated bites cost considerably more than the average New Yorker's weekly salary.

ECOPOL

The Jesus Landing Pad: Bush White House checked with rapture Christians before latest Israel move
It was an e-mail we weren't meant to see. Not for our eyes were the notes that showed White House staffers taking two-hour meetings with Christian fundamentalists, where they passed off bogus social science on gay marriage as if it were holy writ and issued fiery warnings that "the Presidents [sic] Administration and current Government is engaged in cultural, economical, and social struggle on every level"?this to a group whose representative in Israel believed herself to have been attacked by witchcraft unleashed by proximity to a volume of Harry Potter. Most of all, apparently, we're not supposed to know the National Security Council's top Middle East aide consults with apocalyptic Christians eager to ensure American policy on Israel conforms with their sectarian doomsday scenarios.
But now we know.
"Everything that you're discussing is information you're not supposed to have," barked Pentecostal minister Robert G. Upton when asked about the off-the-record briefing his delegation received on March 25. Details of that meeting appear in a confidential memo signed by Upton and obtained by the Voice.

VITAMEDIAS

Christy Canyon Kills Blogdex: Blogdex used to be a great tool. [...]
Now, the pornographers have figured out how to get their sites listed on the list. [via Ponto Media]

VITAMEDIAS

Os jornalistas gostam de se ver como "alguém que paira acima da realidade social" [até que acordam e caiem da cama...]

TECNOSFERA

Google Moves Toward a Direct Confrontation With Microsoft: the Web search engine, is preparing to introduce a powerful file and text software search tool for locating information stored on personal computers.
Google tests waters with terabyte e-mail limit: Several users of the search engine's Gmail Web-based e-mail service noticed Tuesday that their storage limits had quietly been raised to 1 million megabytes, or 1 terabyte. That's four times the typical capacity of a new high-end PC's hard drive.
[act. 20.05.04: Gmail Bug Sparks Storage Rumors: Rumors that Google is offering users of its Gmail service an unprecedented 1 terabyte of storage space are untrue, the company said Wednesday, blaming a bug in the system for the confusion. [...]
Google spokesman Nathan Tyler denied the rumor. "It's a bug," he said. "Google is offering users 1 gigabyte of storage."]

18 maio 2004

VITAMEDIAS


Subscribers See Their Own Homes on Cover of Reason Magazine

VITAMEDIAS

A French blogger arrested by the Police because of his blogging: Christophe criticizes the city management so much that they have tried to stop him for months, the city mayor has even sent him threats over the phone that he recorded and blogged, of course.
Today, he has been stopped in the street by the Police Municipale (the local French Police) who tried to arrest him for his blogging. Fortunately for Christophe, the National Police arrived immediately as they found what was happening weird, and let him go.
Mon crime: avoir pris des photos de fleurs

ECOPOL


Ranking the Rich 2004

ECOPOL

Think Again: Al Qaeda: The mere mention of al Qaeda conjures images of an efficient terrorist network guided by a powerful criminal mastermind. Yet al Qaeda is more lethal as an ideology than as an organization. ?Al Qaedaism? will continue to attract supporters in the years to come?whether Osama bin Laden is around to lead them or not.

ECOPOL

America's Abu Ghraibs - Abroad at Home: thanks to a prison population that's growing faster than jail space can accommodate it, the privatization of the prison industry, and a weakening of the laws designed to protect inmates, things only appear to be getting worse. What makes all these trends possible, of course, is vast public indifference: For all the legitimate concern over the abuses in Iraq, neither elected officials nor the public seem particularly worried that similar abuses happen all the time right here at home.

TECNOSFERA

Work porn risk for businesses: Prison sentences could await business bosses who do not do enough to stop the most serious abuse of computer networks by employees.
The warning comes from legal experts who say firms are open to prosecution because they are so ignorant about what employees are doing with company computers.
In the most serious cases some firms are unknowingly harbouring illegal images on work PCs and servers.
Firms are being urged to take the problem of network abuse as seriously as they do fire prevention.

TECNOSFERA

Scientist who testified in IBM trial withdraws article: A scientist who testified at the IBM toxics trial has withdrawn a scholarly article about cancer rates at the computer company after it warned that publication would violate a court order.
Boston University epidemiologist Richard Clapp co-wrote an article for a medical journal analyzing IBM's employee mortality records. A judge prohibited Clapp's analysis of that data from being introduced at the company's recent trial in Silicon Valley. Two former employees who worked at IBM's San Jose plant sued the computer giant, contending that they developed cancer from their exposure to toxic chemicals. Although a Santa Clara County jury in February found in favor of IBM, the company still faces about 200 similar lawsuits.

VITAMEDIAS

A revista de um homem só: La charte du Nouvel Observateur: Selon les principes fixés par ses fondateurs, Jean Daniel et Claude Perdriel, le Nouvel Observateur est un hebdomadaire culturel et politique dont l?orientation s?inscrit dans la mouvance sociale-démocrate. [...]
Le Nouvel Observateur exprime ses principes dans des éditoriaux et des chroniques. Ceux-ci sont vus par la direction de la rédaction et acceptés ou non par elle, sous l?autorité du comité éditorial. Dans ce cadre, éditorialistes et chroniqueurs bénéficient d?une grande liberté d?expression. Mais seul Jean Daniel ou la personne désignée par lui peut engager le journal. [...]
Aucun responsable du Nouvel Observateur ne peut appartenir à un parti politique ou jouer un rôle politique. [...]
Dans leurs prestations extérieures, les journalistes ne doivent pas oublier qu?ils représentent l?ensemble du Nouvel Observateur et qu?ils sont tenus d?exprimer leurs opinions en se référant à la ligne éditoriale. [E isto é constitucional ou admissível numa democracia?]
[via Jornalismo e Comunicação]

VITAMEDIAS

Media Overload on the Rise: It's projected that by 2007 the average American will spend 3,874 hours per year with the major consumer media, according to "Investment Considerations for the Communications Industry," a report released last week by investment banker Veronis Suhler Stevenson. That would mark an increase of 792 hours per year, or 21 percent, from the 3,082 hours per year that the average person spent using consumer media in 1977, the year that VSS first began tracking such behavior.

ECOPOL

A lógica do serviço público: Museu junta presidentes da democracia e ditadura: O actual inquilino do Palácio de Belém aproveitou a cerimónia para anunciar a intenção de "entregar ao Museu os presentes de Estado" que recebeu, bem como parte do seu arquivo pessoal e político. Apenas Ramalho Eanes fez uma opção semelhante, sendo por isso dele que vem uma boa parte do espólio da instituição.
Dos restantes ex-Presidentes a modalidade de cedência de documentos e bens, passou pelo depósito ou pelo empréstimo.

.DE!

Peixe fora de água: Uma empresa de automóveis enviou 7 convites pessoais a outras tantas pessoas da SIC. Sete sacos com sete peixes vivos. [...]
Eu disse que os peixes não tinham manual de instruções. É que na pressa de melhorar as suas parcas condições de vida juntaram três dos animais num só recipiente. Para quem não saiba aqueles lindos animais de farta cauda são sempre machos, a fêmea da mesma espécie é por comparação uma pobreza, esteticamente falando.
Ora estes machos são extremamente agressivos para com os outros animais da mesma espécie. Conta-se que basta colocar um espelho na frente de um deles para que o animal tente eternamente aniquilar o seu próprio reflexo.
Não sei se a história do espelho é verdadeira.
Mas sei o que aconteceu ao tal recipiente como os três machos. Mesmo enfraquecidos começaram autenticamente a arrancar bocados uns aos outros para ver qual deles conseguia sobreviver à carnificina.

CONTAMINANTES

Como bom exemplo da separação entre o Estado e a(s) Igreja(s), a Assinatura da Nova Concordata contou com uma "comitiva" de 50 portugueses.
A nova Concordata, que substitui a de 1940 e que é para regular mais tarde, tem uma nota sobre "Bens patrimoniais" para "nos planos de ordenamento do território municipal se preverem espaços para edificação de locais de culto".
Porquê?

17 maio 2004

ZITE

ImplosionWorld: where demolition comes alive

TECNOSFERA

A lei do comércio electrónico: Vai quente o debate sobre se a ANACOM pode remover blogs (pode!). (Ou Sim, é possível remover blogs por decisão administrativa)

TECNOSFERA

Getting Naked for Big Brother: Americans are willing to "get naked" for their government if they feel it will make them more secure. That's the conclusion Jeffrey Rosen reached in his new book The Naked Crowd, which explores the willingness of Americans to abandon privacy for perceived security.
Wired News: When is it OK to give up privacy?
Rosen: Individuals strike a balance in very different ways, and societies strike the balance in different ways. Unlike Americans, Europeans tend to be much more concerned about private and corporate misuse (of data) and less concerned about government. (In the case of government use,) when surrendering privacy actually brings more security, it may well be defended. But I want to insist on some degree of empirical benefit. In other words, what are we getting in response for the surrender of privacy?

VITAMEDIAS

Americans Playing More Games, Watching Less Movies and Television: 52 percent of gamers who are spending more time playing games report watching less television as a result, 47 percent go to movies less, and 41 percent watch movies at home less often.

VITAMEDIAS

Popular press and weblogs: the maximum value for occurences of the term [blog or weblog] occured in October, 1999 at 31, and the maximum number of articles published in April 2004 at 296.
The exponential growth of attention to the topic is striking, although it appears in the last month to have taper off. Comparing this trend with the average number of uses of the term per article, it appears that the more frequently the concept is cited, the fewer times the word is used per article. The obvious interpretation is that the term is slowly becoming part of our vernacular, and when journalists write about weblogs today, much less context is necessary than in 1999. Also, the number of articles exclusively about weblogs is probably on the decline, while stories only tangentially related to weblogs are on the rise.
Scholars Discover Weblogs Pass Test as Mode of Communication: "Blogologists" assemble at our virtual roundtable to discuss how blogs are changing academia, politics and traditional journalism. They see them as being important, but school is still out on whether they are journalism.
The Twilight of the Information Middlemen: If blogs represent the uncoordinated efforts of countless volunteer writers, another information explosion shows the institutional might of the state. Taxpayer money still is behind a surprising amount of crucial data: nearly all weather observations and the supercomputer-based models that create forecasts; most basic scientific research; most research into disease causes and cures. In principle, this publicly financed knowledge has always been the public's property, but until a few years ago there was no easy way to get it from research centers to a wide audience. Thus various middlemen arose - notably scientific journals, which did the expensive work of printing and distributing research papers in return for steep subscription costs.

TECNOSFERA

Blog Software Breakdown: This chart displays attributes of different user-installed blog software packages side-by-side for comparison.

ECOPOL

The Gray Zone: According to interviews with several past and present American intelligence officials, the Pentagon?s operation, known inside the intelligence community by several code words, including Copper Green, encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq.
The Roots of Torture: The road to Abu Ghraib began after 9/11, when Washington wrote new rules to fight a new kind of war.

VITAMEDIAS

Pseudo-Journalists Betray the Public Trust: All across America, there are offices that resemble newsrooms, and in those offices there are people who resemble journalists, but they are not engaged in journalism. What they do is not journalism because it does not regard the reader ? or, in the case of broadcasting, the listener or the viewer ? as a master to be served.
In this realm of pseudo-journalism, the audience is regarded as something to be manipulated. And when the audience is misled, no one in the pseudo-newsroom ever offers a peep of protest. [...]
Every fact a newspaper publishes goes into a database. So do the errors. A good newspaper corrects those errors and appends the corrections to the original stories, so that the errors are not repeated. Thus we keep the river clean. Last year at the Los Angeles Times, we published 2,759 corrections. Some of you may be shocked that a newspaper could make so many mistakes. Others may be impressed that the paper is so assiduous in correcting itself.

VITAMEDIAS

Film deal for 'Baghdad blogger': The Baghdad Blog, a book based on an online diary written by an Iraqi man about life during the conflict there, is to be made into a film.
Media group Intermedia is searching for a scriptwriter to adapt the book by the man, who calls himself Salam Pax.

TECNOSFERA

Censored words unmasked: US intelligence exposed as student decodes Iraq memo.
Armed with little more than an electronic dictionary and text-analysis software, Claire Whelan, a graduate student in computer science at Dublin City University in Ireland, has managed to decrypt words that had been blotted out from declassified documents to protect intelligence sources. [...]
"the most important conclusion of this work is that censoring text by blotting out words and re-scanning is not a secure practice".

ECOPOL

Commission will not exempt public services from competition: Proponents of competition-free management of services like health and education suffered a defeat on Tuesday (12 May) as the European Commission presented its approach to public services in the near future.
The Commission's so-called "White paper" on public services, such as energy, postal services, health, education and social services, sets out the Commission's ideas on the issue following a broad public consultation with different groups ranging from business to trade unions.

VITAMEDIAS

Da ignorância e da humilhação: A notícia da sondagem RTP/PÚBLICO/Renascença sobre as eleições europeias apresentada pela RTP1 (13.05) dava menos importância aos resultados (o PS à frente da coligação governamental) do que à ignorância dos inquiridos: mais de metade dos entrevistados (53%) não sabia quando se realizam as eleições de 13 de Junho, nem por aproximação ao mês. Ora as pessoas não sabem porque a televisão não lhes diz! Raramente a televisão fala das eleições europeias!
Um trabalho universitário recente ajudou a estabelecer uma relação entre a ignorância e a oferta televisiva. O Glasgow University Media Group fez um trabalho de análise de conteúdo de todas as notícias da BBC e da ITN entre Setembro e Outubro de 2000 sobre o levantamento palestino nos territórios ocupados por Israel. O estudo revelava que a quase totalidade das notícias se centrava em mostrar actos de violência e conflitos sem dar a mínima explicação contextual. Nas 3536 linhas de texto das 87 notícias analisadas apenas 17 explicavam o conflito (menos de 0,5 por cento!) [...]
As perguntas sobre ignorância às pessoas da rua não revelam esta verdadeira origem da ignorância: a própria televisão. É preciso que os cidadãos e os espectadores pareçam ignorantes para que a televisão pareça não o ser.

.DE!


Via euseiquemsou

15 maio 2004

.DE!

Why you should never put your picture on the Internet...

.DE!

Dear Sir, you are no longer required to pay the infringement fee.

.DE!

The basic idea in chessboxing is to combine the no.1 thinking sport and the no.1 fighting sport into a hybrid that demands the most of its competitors ? both mentally and physically.

TECNOSFERA

8th Annual Webby Award Winners

CULTURAS IN VITRO

The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie

ECOPOL

Diz a Aljazeera, sem citar nenhum: Bloggers doubt Berg execution video: Revolting millions around the world, the video footage of an American citizen's execution has also raised numerous questions concerning its authenticity.

CONTAMINANTES

In Capital Venture, Rocket Reaches the Edge of Space: A piloted rocket released from a spider-like mother plane shot straight up into the desert sky here Thursday, climbing to 211,400 feet and becoming the first privately funded vehicle to reach the edge of space.
The SpaceShipOne rocket carried 62-year-old test pilot Mike Melvill to heights usually reached only by astronauts and military pilots.

TECNOSFERA

O Sistema de blogs da Assembleia da República já conta, além de José Magalhães, com as intenções de Guilherme d'Oliveira Martins e José Leitão...

VITAMEDIAS

Vanity Fair Editor Got $100,000 for Suggesting a Movie: Graydon Carter, editor in chief of Vanity Fair, received a $100,000 payment from Universal Studios in 2003 for suggesting years earlier that the book "A Beautiful Mind'' be made into a film, executives involved with the film said. The payment was confirmed by a spokeswoman for the magazine. [...]
But the payment of consulting fees to a magazine editor who controls coverage of industry subjects has no precedent, according to executives in the publishing and film industry as well as journalism scholars.

TECNOSFERA

Browser to Deliver New Blog Entries: A new Web browser from Opera Software ASA this week is the first major browser to incorporate an emerging technology that automatically delivers new blog entries and news articles.
Visitors can subscribe to feeds using Really Simple Syndication, or RSS, and have new items come in regularly as individual messages in Opera's mail client, which is packaged with the browser.
Because RSS is integrated into Opera, visitors can easily e-mail items or open links from the same application.

ECOPOL

Também não é preciso exagerar: Iraq debacle creates crisis in Portugal: Durão Barroso represents a section of the Portuguese ruling elite that sees its interest best served by placing themselves under the wing of US imperialism. According to Mario de Queiroz of the Inter Press Service English News Wire, these layers ?are nostalgic for Portugal?s imperial past and the epic deeds of the country?s great navigators and wants to paint a rosy reconstruction of the past while highlighting the supposed errors committed by...granting the colonies independence overnight [after the 1974 revolution].?

TECNOSFERA

E-money Directive and mobile phones: Commission consults: The European Commission has published a consultation paper on the applicability of the E-Money Directive to the use of mobile phones. It principally considers whether and how prepaid mobile phone cards should be regulated as electronic money.

VITAMEDIAS

Lembram-se do Nutícias? Ainda não acabou: Naked News goes wireless it has just signed a contract with Icemobile BV in the Netherlands, to provide the Naked News content to wireless cell phones and handheld devices.

13 maio 2004

VITAMEDIAS

Um problema do mau jornalismo?
Publisher's story ends: New Millennium Entertainment, which published the ex-reporter's New York Times memoir and many show-business books, will be liquidated under an order signed this week by a bankruptcy court judge in Los Angeles.

VITAMEDIAS

More News Served on Mobile Menu: PDAs and souped-up mobile phones are already outstripping newspapers, TV and even the Web as a primary news source, a local analyst says.
[W]ireless phones - which already allow photography, instant messaging, live video and other features - will be expanded in the next few years to become powerful, multimedia devices that could replace traditional personal computers.

TECNOSFERA

New video games push the sexual envelope: Animated sex? Naked women? Streakers? They're all in this year's crop of upcoming titles.

VITAMEDIAS

Leaking self-doubt: over the past four months the media have been slack on the Abu Ghraib story, allowing it to slip through their hands on more than one occasion. The driving force for the torture scandal was not in Washington's or New York's newsrooms. This story, it seems, did not come about as a result of journalists chasing it; rather, it was effectively handed to the media by disgruntled military men.

TECNOSFERA

Intelliseek launches new blog-tracker: "Bloggers are a progressive, influential and opinionated group, and their important insights can serve as harbingers of what's on the minds of the public, consumers, voters -- any individual or group that's active on the Internet," said Intelliseek CEO Mahendra Vora

VITAMEDIAS

Is blog a masculine noun? Political blogs by women are very rare indeed [...]
Women do blog. According to a BlogCensus survey last August, just under 40% of English-language weblogs were owned by men and 36.3% by women (the rest belonged to groups, or were of unknown origin). But BlogCensus also found that nearly half the weblogs surveyed were personal diaries - and in that category, women outnumbered men by about two to one. Fewer than one in 20 of the political blogs was written by a woman.

TECNOSFERA

FBI Investigating Cyber-extortion: Jay Broder, the owner of CSI Mid-South, also known as Card Solutions International, claimed his company's Web site (authorizeit.com) went down for about a week after he refused to pay $10,000 to the sender of the email extortion threat. The email threatened to cripple the site if the money was not sent.

TECNOSFERA

Search engines take the stand: Fifteen years after his trial, a convicted drug dealer in New York state belatedly got a chance to clear his name--thanks in part to an Internet search.
A federal judge last November threw out Manuel Rodriguez's conviction and granted him a new trial after discovering evidence of potential jury tampering in a review of court records and queries on Web search engine Google.

TECNOSFERA

Congress moves on camera-phone porn: The bill, which passed the Senate last September, would prohibit taking covert pictures in locker rooms, bedrooms and other places where people have a reasonable expectation of privacy.

TECNOSFERA

How Info-Overload Experts Unwind: Ah, that constant stream of information from the PDA, the wireless laptop connection, cable TV. Sure, you can work from wherever, whenever, be entertained around the clock.
But how to manage it? How to pull back and gain time for personal pursuits, reflection and sanity?
Those were questions tackled in a novel Seattle conference this week devoted to technology overload and its impact on our lives.

CONTAMINANTES

Portugal envelhecido: Portugal está a envelhecer e o fenómeno estende-se praticamente a todo o país. Apenas as ilhas e alguns concelhos do Norte do Continente registam uma estrutura etária relativamente rejuvenescida.
A crescente diminuição da natalidade, associada ao aumento da esperança de vida, tem provocado em Portugal um envelhecimento da população. Embora o fenómeno não seja novo, ele é sempre actual pelas dificuldades que pode colocar às gerações futuras (em termos de força de trabalho, encargos com a saúde e com a segurança social, entre outros) ? questões que devem preocupar as gerações actuais.

12 maio 2004

ECOPOL

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION AND ACCESS TO GOVERNMENT RECORD LAWS AROUND THE WORLD: Access to information ebbs and flows in any country but the transformation has begun and it is no longer possible to tell citizens that they have no right to know.

VITAMEDIAS

Addicted to Media: What if media were an addiction?

VITAMEDIAS

Scholars Discover Weblogs Pass Test as Mode of Communication: how blogs are changing academia, politics and traditional journalism. They see them as being important, but school is still out on whether they are journalism.

VITAMEDIAS

Reuters picks up Web syndication technology: the provider of news and financial information began using RSS (Really Simple Syndication), a format for syndicating and aggregating Web content, based on the Extensible Markup Language. The technology allows Web sites and Web loggers, or bloggers, to receive free feeds of Reuters.com news headlines and republish a one-line description of stories. Topics include politics, international news, entertainment and sports.

VITAMEDIAS

Blair: Mirror photos 'almost certainly faked': Tony Blair said today the Daily Mirror's photographs purporting to show Iraqi prisoners being tortured by British troops were "almost certainly fake" as army investigators prepared to expose them as a hoax.

VITAMEDIAS

A blognovela continua e os Verdes esclarecem:
Tendo surgido dúvidas sobre o motivo pelo qual foi divulgado o comunicado - ?Os Verdes? consideram eventual proibição de blogs um acto de censura inaceitável ? ?Os Verdes? esclarecem o seguinte:
· O comunicado foi divulgado na manhã do dia de 12 de Maio, tendo em conta as informações existentes no momento.
· O requerimento divulgado coloca a dúvida sobre se confirmam as afirmações proferidas e questiona o Governo sobre as acções que pretende implementar para impedir a concretização desta situação - na eventualidade de ser verdadeira a informação.
· As dúvidas expressas pelos ?Verdes? são perfeitamente pertinentes na medida em que, caso se verificasse, esta acção constituiria um acto inaceitável de censura sobre os cidadãos.


Entretanto, o Paulo Querido lançou uma secção no Jornal sobre o assunto.

NOTA

Estou sem comentários mas calmamente a tentar resolver o assunto.
Queiram usar o endereço de email (está à direita) para réplicas ou acrescentos. São obviamente bemvindos.

VITAMEDIAS

Realmente, é de ficar estupefacto com a política em Portugal!
Perante um comunicado à imprensa do Partido "Os Verdes" sobre a proibição de blogues em Portugal, confirmei que foi enviado por eles e que a deputada Isabel Castro pretende mesmo "interpelar o Governo" sobre o assunto, desconhecendo que Pedro Amorim não trabalha para a Anacom (garantido pelo próprio, por telefone) e sabendo que o referido comunicado foi emitido tendo o PEV já conhecimento do desmentido de Pedro Amorim no Expresso!!!!

Eis o comunicado e requerimento de interpelação:
Aos órgãos de Comunicação Social
?OS VERDES? CONSIDERAM EVENTUAL PROIBIÇÃO DE ?BLOGS? UM ACTO DE CENSURA INACEITÁVEL
O Partido Ecologista ?Os Verdes? considera que a intenção da ANACOM de acabar com os BLOGS, a concretizar-se, seria o regresso à velha censura.
?Os Verdes?, que defendem a importância dos BLOGS, enquanto fenómeno emergente no mundo digital que corporiza um novo espaço de cidadania e de liberdade de opinião, repudiam totalmente a atitude da ANACOM, que traduz o desejo de por fim à ?incómoda? liberdade de expressão, aparentemente tão ao gosto de certos sectores do governo e da maioria.
Por último, ?Os Verdes?, que através do Grupo Parlamentar na Assembleia da República já exigiram explicações ao Governo, com a entrega de um requerimento pela deputada Isabel Castro, sublinham entretanto, o contraste entre este pendor autoritarista da Autoridade Nacional das Comunicações e o seu laxismo quando se trata de interferir em matérias que lhe competem, como são as que respeitam aos direitos dos utilizadores dos vários serviços informáticos.
O Gabinete de Imprensa
Lisboa, 12 de Maio de 2004


REQUERIMENTO Nº /IX (12 de Maio de 2004)
Assunto: Encerramento de Blogs
Apresentado por: Deputada Isabel Castro
Considerando as afirmações públicas feitas, ontem, em nome da ANACOM por um jurista que manifestou ser intenção daquela Autoridade acabar com a criação de blogs e pôr fim aos existentes;
Considerando serem totalmente inaceitáveis tais propósitos ? ainda que sob o pretexto evocado ? os quais configurariam, a ser concretizados, uma forma de censura, naquele que representa hoje, um interessante espaço de intervenção cívica e de liberdade de expressão de milhares de cidadãos;
Considerando, por último, que o Governo não pode manter o silêncio, perante a gravidade destas afirmações, que comprometem a ANACOM, mas acima de tudo, o Executivo a quem cabe a defesa de direitos fundamentais e da liberdade de expressão postos em causa por uma instituição pública, a Autoridade Nacional de Comunicação.
Requeiro, nos termos das disposições constitucionais e regimentais aplicáveis, com carácter e urgência ao Governo através do Ministério das Obras Públicas,Transportes e Habitação, as seguintes informações:
? Que medidas tomou já o Senhor Ministro para apurar a veracidade das graves afirmações proferidas por um representante da ANACOM?
? Caso se confirmem, o que pretende fazer junto da Autoridade Nacional de Comunicação para impedir a concretização de um acto, o encerramento de blogues ou inviabilização de novos, que constituiria um retorno à velha censura e um atentado a direitos fundamentais?


E, finalmente, a Anacom veio reagir à "notícia" do Expresso:
Carece de fundamento a notícia ontem publicada no Expresso Online sob o título ?Autoridade quer acabar com ?blogs??.
Não foi feita por qualquer responsável da Autoridade Nacional de Comunicações (ANACOM), em momento algum, no contexto da conferência citada ou noutro, qualquer declaração ou comentário que pudesse indiciar sequer essa posição. A matéria não se inscreve no elenco de atribuições da ANACOM.
Os comentários que alegadamente teriam estado na origem desta notícia foram já desmentidos pelo seu autor, em exercício do direito de resposta ao abrigo da Lei de Imprensa.
Lisboa, 12 de Maio de 2004.


P.S.: Pedro Amorim explicitou-me que refere a jornalista do Expresso Online como estagiária porque foi exactamente assim que ela se identificou.

ECOPOL

Military Personnel: Don't Read This! It's not exactly every day that the Pentagon warns military personnel to stay away from Fox News. But that's exactly what some hopeful soul at the Department of Defense instructed, in a memo intended to forbid Pentagon staff reading a copy of the Taguba report detailing abuse of detainees at prisons in Iraq that had been posted at the Fox News web site.
An email to Pentagon staff marked "URGENT IT (Information Technology) BULLETIN: Taguba Report" orders employees not to read or download the Taguba report at Fox News, on the grounds that the document is classified.

ECOPOL

CACI Careers: Job Openings: Interrogator/Intel Analyst Team Lead Asst. BAGHDAD, Iraq (Requisition #BZSG308) Clearance: TS
Description:
Assists the interrogation support program team lead to increase the effectiveness of dealing with Detainees, Persons of Interest, and Prisoners of War (POWs) that are in the custody of US/Coalition Forces in the CJTF 7 AOR, in terms of screening, interrogation, and debriefing of persons of intelligence value. Under minimal CACI supervision, will assist the government team lead in managing a multifaceted interrogation support cell consisting of database entry/intelligence research clerks, screeners, tactical/strategic interrogators, and intelligence analyst.
[via Rebecca Blood]

TECNOSFERA

Colleges Offering Video Game Studies: Thanks to the growing place of games in mainstream entertainment, universities across the nation are now offering classes in video game design, hoping to teach students skills for a career in a business that now generates roughly as much revenue as Hollywood's domestic box office receipts.

TECNOSFERA

Speed Limits Could Slow Viruses: Researchers from the University of New Mexico, the Santa Fe Institute, the University of Michigan, and Hewlett-Packard's HP Laboratories in England to have found a new way to slow viruses and worms. The method, dubbed throttling, involves limiting the number of new connections a computer can make in a given period of time. This promises to slow the spread of viruses and worms enough to make them easier to control and eliminate.

TECNOSFERA

Summary of National Broadband Strategies and country data: Broadband penetration in Portugal was 4.9% of the population in January 2004. Portugal is one of the very few countries in the EU where the number of cable modem subscribers is greater than the number of DSL subscribers. However, Portugal Telecom, the incumbent, is the dominant provider of both DSL and cable modem services. Portugal Telecom has 87% of the DSL market while few independent ISPs provide DSL services mainly through bitstream access.

TECNOSFERA

Online intrusions more than criminal: You should never put any personal information on the Internet that you wouldn't want to see in the newspapers.

VITAMEDIAS

Várias horas depois de ter publicado Autoridade quer acabar «blogs», o Expresso veio finalmente reconhecer: O EXPRESSO Online errou. A notícia não corresponde efectivamente ao que foi debatido sobre os «blogs» no seminário «Ciberlaw'2004» , tendo o jurista Pedro Amorim razão no seu esclarecimento. Pelo lamentável equívoco, as desculpas ao jurista e aos leitores do Online.
Mário de Carvalho
O Atrium e José Magalhães já contribuíram para a explicação de Pedro Amorim mas fiquei com as seguintes dúvidas:
- porque demorou o Expresso tanto tempo a emendar um texto errado?
- porque é que a Nota do Editor refere que a notícia não corresponde ao que foi debatido no seminário quendo a jornalista diz que falou com Pedro Amorim APÓS o evento?
- deve(ria) o Expresso ter eliminado o texto ou, como o faz, mantê-lo "online"?
- a nota do Expresso titula "Pedro Amorim esclarece" mas não devia ser "O Expresso Online esclarece"?...
- porque foram escritos tantos comentários contra Pedro Amorim (no Expresso ou em vários blogues) e poucos a explicar a dificuldade técnica em abolir os blogues?
- a Anacom tem um gabinete de imprensa mas porque não emitiu um comunicado a esclarecer a sua posição? Ou está a pensar no assunto e tinha interesse em ver as reacções?!?

11 maio 2004

VITAMEDIAS

Media Consumption Underestimated: "people spend more than double ... the time with the media than they think they do."
The total time spent with the media by the average person each day was a whopping 11.7 hours. The study understood "media" to include things like watching television, video tapes or DVDs; listening to the radio, CDs, cassettes or MP3 players; spending time on the computer, Internet, or sending and receiving e-mail; talking on the telephone or cell phone; and reading books, magazines or newspapers.
The report said the "least media-active person" observed by researchers spent 5.25 hours a day with the media, while the most active spent over 17 hours.

VITAMEDIAS

U.S. Accused of Restricting Foreign Press: An international journalists' rights watchdog group has accused U.S. officials of trying to restrict press freedoms by hindering the entry of foreign reporters into the United States.
The charge follows the recent detention and deportation of a British freelance journalist in what representatives of Reporters Without Borders said was part of a disturbing pattern of restrictions against foreign journalists trying to enter the country on assignment.

TECNOSFERA

Já está a funcionar: Google Blog. Depois da apresentação, uma bolsa de emprego...

VITAMEDIAS

Journalist fights to protect sources: A freelance journalist who has spent 30 years investigating the tragic sinking of a fishing trawler has vowed to resist an order to identify his sources to a government inquiry.

10 maio 2004

CULTURAS IN VITRO

UK fears over film ratings idea: The EU is examining the prospect of applying the same film classifications across all its member states.

VITAMEDIAS

Science and the Mass Media: A Clash of Cultures: mass media content is "a socially created product, not a reflection of an objective reality." In contrast, science is as close to an objective reality as we can muster. How the two interact is fascinating, and it's not without tension: Researchers get frustrated when the media sensationalize science, and they often lack respect for journalists, while reporters regularly find scientists to be incomprehensible and opaque, poor communicators who wrap their message within layers of caveats. [...]
science coverage in the media is growing. For example, a recent analysis of Danish newspapers concluded that there was a "dramatic and accelerating sevenfold increase in the number of articles referring to researchers" between 1961 and 2001.
What rules apply to news selection? According to Pamela J. Shoemaker and Stephen D. Reese,1 news values fall into six categories: prominence/importance, human interest, conflict/controversy, the unusual, timeliness, and proximity. [...]
A recent analysis of coverage by newspapers on research published in four elite journals concluded: "Journalists depict themselves as keen - at times even ruthless - competitors with one another, but this finding suggests a different view: When it comes to breaking news about scientific research, newspapers try to make sure that they cover the stories that other newspapers cover. The goal is not to be different, but to be the same."

TECNOSFERA


Coke sneaks phones, GPS chips into cans: About 120 Coke cans are being covertly converted into a combination global positioning satellite receiver and cell phone. [...]
The technology tracks cans to within about 50 feet anywhere in America, and winners must carry the cans at all times until one of five prize teams around the country shows up to exchange the prize for the can.

VITAMEDIAS

An Astonishing New Magazine - Sábado: Come ON... this is 2004. In Britain/France/Germany/Spain would a magazine of this standard be seen on the newstands? I hope you know the answer. Yes, this is a small country, but for such a small population it has a strong publishing industry, and this magazine just doesn't cut it.

VITAMEDIAS

A transparência no jornalismo: O advento dos bloggers permitiu que alguns se tenham tornado autores, criadores de informação, pessoas que se exprimem nas mais diversas áreas e num novo espaço público. Também a função do jornalista se está a alterar, pois a procura de informação com os motores de busca tornou-se mais rápida e eficiente, permitindo, em segundos, uma pesquisa de eficiência elevada.
Newspapers See Danger in Text Messaging: International editors and publishers warned Friday that nontraditional communications - such as cell phone text messages - are rapidly outflanking radio, television, and print media because of their immediacy and proximity to the public.
Blogs colliding with traditional media: Among the media credential applications for this summer's Democratic National Convention - from the TV networks, newspapers, and radio stations - is the one from 21-year-old Jesse Taylor, a pundit of the self-declared variety.
He may not be a traditional journalist, but the recent college graduate does have a blog, a website called pandagon.net, where his opinions on current events and the press draw 12,000 readers per day. And from the standpoint of Democratic National Convention organizers, that could be good enough.

ECOPOL

EU countries slip in global competitiveness ranks: The World Competitiveness Yearbook - published by leading business school IMD in Switzerland - ranks 60 countries and regions according to 323 categories that contribute to a competitive economy.
And the ranking makes disappointing reading for Europe. According to the report, the top six countries are the US, Singapore, Canada, Australia, Iceland and Hong Kong.
The top EU country - Denmark - comes in seventh. [...]
Portugal was in the same place [39º] and this report will undoubtedly cause ripples in Brussels where a high-level group is currently putting together proposals to invigorate the so-called "Lisbon strategy", which is the EU's ambitious goal to be the most competitive, knowledge-based economy in the world by 2010.

VITAMEDIAS

Esteemed journalist lectures on ethics: The media industry has been infested by the rise of pseudo-journalists who go against journalism's long tradition to serve the public with accurate information, Los Angeles Times Editor John S. Carroll told [...]
"All over the country there are offices that look like newsrooms and there are people in those offices that look for all the world just like journalists, but they are not practicing journalism," he said. "They regard the audience with a cold cynicism. They are practicing something I call a pseudo-journalism, and they view their audience as something to be manipulated."

VITAMEDIAS

Iraq bloggers ceases publishing: An interrogator at Abu Ghraib, the prison outside of Baghdad, has been writing a Weblog for the Web site of KSTP-AM, a St. Paul, Minn., radio station, but has stopped writing it since the allegations of prisoner abuse have surfaced.

07 maio 2004

.DE!

"Não podemos ter tanta gente sem instrucção. É uma tragédia nacional."
Jorge Sampaio, Presidente da República, sobre a elevada taxa de abandono escolar (in Sábado)

TECNOSFERA

Google's Orkut Personal Information Offered Outside Orkut: Bear in mind that the data is apparently fairly old. But Orkut, cracked once, leaves fears that it could be cracked again.

VITAMEDIAS

Iraq prison abuse images shake the Net: Revelations last week of U.S. troops abusing Iraqi prisoners offer the latest example of how digital technologies from cameras to the Internet are changing the rules for news gathering.

TECNOSFERA

China shuts 8,600 cybercafes over the last couple of months because of fears that the Net could corrupt the minds of youngsters.
Parents worried about 3G phones: half of all parents "strongly agree" that the phones are a "cause for concern", with eight in ten fearful that the phones will "make it more or less impossible to supervise and support children who use the Internet".

VITAMEDIAS

TiVo: How digital video recorders like TiVo let viewers watch what they want, when they want.

06 maio 2004

VITAMEDIAS

3-D TV Is Closer Than You Think: "The ability to do 3-D TV is here," says Stereographics Director of Marketing Michael Longerbeam. "I would say that in ten years it will easily be a reality."

CONTAMINANTES

Depois da "MTV Generation", eis uma primeira referência à "Blog Generation".

CULTURAS IN VITRO

When One Man's Video Art Is Another's Copyright Crime: A 34-year-old video artist living in Baltimore, Mr. Routson has a very particular method of art-making, which will soon be illegal in Maryland, as it already is in the District of Columbia and five other states, including New York and California. Like the appropriation artists of the early 1980's, who rephotographed existing photographs as a way of commenting on society, Mr. Routson makes movies of other people's movies.

VITAMEDIAS

News filed on the spot - thumbs permitting: The possibilities of reporting by mobile phone are being fully explored by Norwegian journalist Øyvind Woie, who is planning his second MMS reporting project later this year.
Mr Woie writes for Oslo-based newspaper Vårt Land and is keen to promote the possibilities of reporting by MMS - multimedia messaging - because it allows journalists to publish online instantly and unobtrusively.

VITAMEDIAS

Honey, They Shrunk the Newspaper - Reading the electronic versions of the New York Times and Washington Post
Online newspaper readers more politically active than the general online population

VITAMEDIAS

F*cked by the F*CC: I asked Robert Corn-Revere--the First Amendment attorney who recently got Lenny Bruce pardoned and who litigated against the Communications Decency Act--about the constitutionality of current regulations and new legislation. He replied: "What constitutionality?... The FCC has done its best to prolong the longevity of this doctrine by keeping it out of court."
In compelling testimony before Congress, Corn-Revere pleaded for a long-overdue constitutional review of indecency policy. He complained that the FCC's indecency (and now profanity) standards evade the tests that courts grant for obscenity: The FCC judges a work not as a whole but by just one word; it judges not by the standard of an "average person" but by that of a child; and it short-circuits due process (Stern complains that his company settled $1.71 million in fines in 1995 only because the FCC was using it to hold licenses hostage). Finally, Corn-Revere says, the enforcement is inconsistent. No one knows where the line is.

ECOPOL

Afinal, depois de o Expresso o revelar sem ainda estar activo, existe ou não o digaomanel.com, o sítio Web de Manuel Monteiro (Nova Democracia)?
Sim e está registado desta forma:
Registrant: Lourenço Lucena
Lg. Adelino Amaro da Costa, #8 – 3. Esq.
Lisboa, 1100 - Portugal

Administrative Contact (& Technical Contact & Billing Contact): Ricardo Ribeiro
Rua Marquesa de Alorna, 6 RC Dto
Lisboa, 1700 - Portugal
Phone: (351) 289395819
Fax: (351) 289395819

Record last updated on 2004-05-03
Record created on 2004-04-15
Record expires on 2005-04-15

VITAMEDIAS

VITAMEDIAS

Atenção, jornalistas, se querem "controlar ou imobilizar um indivíduo; desobstruir caminho entre outros; defender murro ou pontapé; defender e libertar-se de agarre ou estrangulamento; defender-se de ataque com pau ou faca; defender-se de um cão; defender-se de mais do que um indivíduo; sacar gravador, máquina de fotografar ou de filmar das mãos de indivíduo; reter indivíduo até à chegada das autoridades", não percam este curso.
Sem comentários porque são tantos a uma proposta destas vinda do Sindicato... dos Jornalistas!

05 maio 2004

VITAMEDIAS

Creation of the Media: one of the things, I think, that's good about the American pattern is that we generally haven't let the company or companies that dominate our prior technology from also controlling a new technology. So if you think about it, the Post Office didn't get control of the telegraph as happened in Europe, and then Western Union didn't get control of the telephone; and then Bell Telephone didn't get control of broadcasting. So we had competition across the different means of communication. Now, today, one of the things, again, that's worrying is that of course the media conglomerates span different media. We don't have that degree of separation which I think was a very healthy influence in the past.

CONTAMINANTES

The Economic Geography of Talent in USA

ECOPOL

Battle of the Photographs: Although the main purpose of the abuse was to soften up the prisoners for interrogation, the precise forms of humiliation appear to have been shaped by the insecurities and prejudices of the reservists, who had been given no training in the Geneva Conventions.
The reaction to the photographs in the Arab world was, predictably, fury and humiliation.
[Geneva Convention:
Article 12 - Les prisonniers de guerre sont au pouvoir de la Puissance ennemie, mais non des individus ou des corps de troupe qui les ont fait prisonniers. Indépendamment des responsabilités individuelles qui peuvent exister, la Puissance détentrice est responsable du traitement qui leur est appliqué. (...)
Article 13 - (...) Les prisonniers de guerre doivent de même être protégés en tout temps, notamment contre tout acte de violence ou d'intimidation, contre les insultes et la curiosité publique. (...)
Article 14 - Les prisonniers de guerre ont doit en toutes circonstances au respect de leur personne et de leur honneur.]
Army Discloses Criminal Inquiry on Prison Abuse: In the last 16 months, the Army has conducted more than 30 criminal investigations into misconduct by American captors in Iraq and Afghanistan, including 10 cases of suspicious death, 10 cases of abuse, and two deaths already determined to have been criminal homicides, the Army's vice chief of staff said Tuesday.
To date, the most severe penalties in any of the cases were less-than-honorable discharges for five Army soldiers, military officials said. No one has been sentenced to prison, they said.
The coalition’s reputation takes another hit: The scandal over abuses of Iraqi prisoners by coalition forces continues to grow. Despite promises of punishment for those found guilty of such abuse—and doubts over the veracity of photographs showing abuse by British soldiers—the damage to the coalition’s reputation may prove irreparable
Alguém sabe quem foi a fonte original que divulgou as imagens à CBS?
INVESTIGATION OF THE 800th MILITARY POLICE BRIGADE (SECRET/NO FOREIGN DISSEMINATION): CONCLUSION
1. (U) Several US Army Soldiers have committed egregious acts and grave breaches of international law at Abu Ghraib/BCCF and Camp Bucca, Iraq. Furthermore, key senior leaders in both the 800th MP Brigade and the 205th MI Brigade failed to comply with established regulations, policies, and command directives in preventing detainee abuses at Abu Ghraib (BCCF) and at Camp Bucca during the period August 2003 to February 2004.
2. (U) Approval and implementation of the recommendations of this AR 15-6 Investigation and those highlighted in previous assessments are essential to establish the conditions with the resources and personnel required to prevent future occurrences of detainee abuse.
Classification of Taguba Torture Report: Remarks of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld
Defense Department Operational Update Briefing (Also participating; Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Peter Pace) [excerpt on classification of Taguba torture report] [...]
Q: General, a quick follow-up on that, please. Could you explain to us why the Taguba report was classified secret, no foreign distribution? Those of us who have read the report, there's clearly nothing in there that's inherently secret, such as intelligence sources and methods or troop movements. Was this kept secret because it would be embarrassing to the world, particularly the Arab world?
GEN. PACE: First of all, I do not know specifically why it was labeled secret. Potentially there are parts of the hundreds and hundreds of pages of documentation that are classified. I do not know that to be a fact, but normally we will classify a document at the highest level of anything that's in that document.
But as the secretary pointed out, immediately we told the world that we thought we had a problem. So there has been no attempt to hide this. What we've been trying to do is find out the truth of the matter so we can get on about correcting; finding out who did what, and then taking a proper action.
Q: Mr. Secretary, can you say why it was classified secret? Do you know?
SEC. RUMSFELD: No, you'd have to ask the classifier.

ECOPOL

Sobre esta questão, o que a Economist diz é o seguinte:
"Nothing, so far, has been proved, certainly not as far as the UN is concerned. [Claude Hankes-Drielsma, a British financial adviser on the Iraqi Governing Council (GC)] evidence and nearly all the other allegations against the UN have so far been based on documents found in Iraqi government archives. But no one, other than he and the GC's 25 members, has seen or authenticated the documents".

04 maio 2004

CONTAMINANTES


Total Lunar Eclipse of 2004 May 04
A Lua Esconde-se na Sombra da Terra Esta Noite: [A Lua] surgirá a Este (às 20h26) já parcialmente eclipsada, elevando-se progressivamente enquanto mergulha cada vez mais na sombra até - oito minutos antes das 21h00 - ficar completamente "escondida" na sombra.

ECOPOL

The Oil-for-Food Scam: What Did Kofi Annan Know, and When Did He Know It? Suddenly, Oil-for-Food is with us again, this time splashed all over the news as the subject of scandal at the UN: bribes, kickbacks, fraud, smuggling; stories of graft involving tens of billions of dollars and countless barrels of oil, and implicating big business and high officials in dozens of countries; allegations that the head of the program himself was on the take. [...]
Unlike most of its relief programs, in which both the cost of the relief itself and UN overhead were paid for by contributions from member states, Oil-for-Food would in every respect be funded entirely out of Saddam?s oil revenues. The UN Secretariat would collect a 2.2-percent commission on every barrel of Iraqi oil sold, plus 0.8 percent to pay for UN weapons inspections in Iraq.
If the aim of this provision was to make Saddam bear the cost of his own obstinacy, the effect was to create a situation in which the UN Secretariat was paid handsomely, on commission, by Saddam?to supervise Saddam. And the bigger Oil-for-Food got, the bigger the fees collected by Annan?s office.
Oil-for-food inquiry says 'key' is $1bn UN paid itself in fees: A senior UN official who is closely involved in uncovering evidence of the scandal admitted: "The UN was not doing this work just for the good of Iraq. Cash from Saddam's government was keeping the UN going for a few years.
... But the Economist notes that, though some American congressmen are calling it "the biggest scandal ever," there's "little hard evidence" implicating anyone in wrongdoing. While seven different entities are carrying out investigations, so far most of the evidence comes from Iraqi government documents that haven't been authenticated.
Outros documentos:
- SOURCES OF REVENUE FOR SADDAM & SONS
- The Beneficiaries of Saddam's Oil Vouchers: The List of 270

ECOPOL

Gabriel Silva explica o alcance disto: "A Constituição da República Portuguesa passou a ter uma cláusula aberta, pela qual se aceita a vigência das normais jurídicas europeias, sendo que a sua aplicabilidade interna (em Portugal), passa a ser definida pelo direito da União Europeia e não já pela CRP"

VITAMEDIAS

In Improving Economy, Papers Can't Shake Circ Doldrums: Even as advertisers return with gusto to newspapers, circulation continues to be a lagging economic indicator.
Fully half of the nation's largest 38 newspapers reported weekday circulation declines [...] for the six-month period ending March 2004.

CONTAMINANTES

U.S. Is Losing Its Dominance in the Sciences: Foreign advances in basic science now often rival or even exceed America's, apparently with little public awareness of the trend or its implications for jobs, industry, national security or the vigor of the nation's intellectual and cultural life.
"The rest of the world is catching up," said John E. Jankowski, a senior analyst at the National Science Foundation, the federal agency that tracks science trends. "Science excellence is no longer the domain of just the U.S." [...]
One area of international competition involves patents. Americans still win large numbers of them, but the percentage is falling as foreigners, especially Asians, have become more active and in some fields have seized the innovation lead. The United States' share of its own industrial patents has fallen steadily over the decades and now stands at 52 percent.
A more concrete decline can be seen in published research. Physical Review, a series of top physics journals, recently tracked a reversal in which American papers, in two decades, fell from the most to a minority. Last year the total was just 29 percent, down from 61 percent in 1983.
Another downturn centers on the Nobel Prizes, an icon of scientific excellence. Traditionally, the United States, powered by heavy federal investments in basic research, the kind that pursues fundamental questions of nature, dominated the awards.
But the American share, after peaking from the 1960's through the 1990's, has fallen in the 2000's to about half, 51 percent. The rest went to Britain, Japan, Russia, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and New Zealand.
China, said Martin Blume, the journals' editor, has surged ahead by submitting more than 1,000 papers a year. "Other scientific publishers are seeing the same kind of thing," he added.
Another downturn centers on the Nobel Prizes, an icon of scientific excellence. Traditionally, the United States, powered by heavy federal investments in basic research, the kind that pursues fundamental questions of nature, dominated the awards.
But the American share, after peaking from the 1960's through the 1990's, has fallen in the 2000's to about half, 51 percent. The rest went to Britain, Japan, Russia, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and New Zealand.