The first Indian ship to carry oil from Iran with Indian insurance is scheduled to load up in Iran on Wednesday, a shipping company executive said. This is a breakthrough for the Indian government, which has scrambled to maintain vital Iranian oil imports after European sanctions blocked third-party insurance in July.

South Korea stopped importing Iranian crude in July, when the insurance sanctions hit. Two refiners told The Associated Press on Monday that they were in talks with the South Korean and Iranian governments about using Iranian tankers under Iranian insurance cover to import oil.

“Iran first made the offer,” said Eom Ik-hoon, spokesman for South Korea’s largest refiner, SK Energy, which imported 10 percent of its crude from Iran before the sanctions hit. “We are discussing details with the South Korean government, but we do not know when imports will be resumed.”

Hyundai Oil Bank Co.’s spokesman Koh In-soo said the company was also reviewing using Iranian ships and insurance, but denied earlier news reports that the crude imports may be resumed as early as September.

Via: http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/international/2012/08/15/259365.htm

So, main consequence - damage of Europe economics :-)

The city of about 210,000 residents 65 miles east of Los Angeles declared a fiscal crisis last month after a report said local government had tapped out its reserves and projected spending would top revenue by $45 million in the fiscal year that began on July 1.

The filing, made in the United States Bankruptcy Court, Central California District, states that the city has "more than $1 billion" in liabilities, and estimated that it has between 10,001 and 25,000 creditors.

It also states that San Bernardino has estimated assets of more than $1 billion.

In San Bernardino, a recent report by the city attorney said officials had falsified budget reports to the mayor and council for 13 of the last 16 years, hiding the scale of the city's debt.

Via: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/02/us-usa-bankrupty-san-bernardino-idUSBRE87105220120802

True democracy in action. Constant falsification, debt that can not be paid (and every official knew it).

Something around $1000 per item.

If they use external and custom power supply, tax must be $3000.

As prophylactic measure I propose to select 5 engineers of each manufacturer to find suitable power supplies and remotes for each item in 200 ordinary homes.
I know that life sentence is too much, but they are the authors...

Via: http://www.engadget.com/2012/07/06/windows-home-server-takes-its-final-bow/

It is very interesting how idiotic managers are doing their thing. Dumping good piece of software specially intended for the task.
Btw, I could tell you why HP stopped producing home servers - it was part of same plan that included pulling from tablets, and many other things. Idea that came to MBA heads was to cut all things with margin less than some predeterminated value. Add here usual Microsoft practice to rip money from all that have "server" in their name.
Of course this idiots already fucked current WHS version, as it has too many advanced features previously :-)

In the past, “non-practicing entities” (NPEs), popularly known as “patent trolls,” have helped small inventors profit from their inventions. Is this true today or, given the unprecedented levels of NPE litigation, do NPEs reduce innovation incentives? Using a survey of defendants and a database of litigation, this paper estimates the direct costs to defendants arising from NPE patent assertions. We estimate that firms accrued $29 billion of direct costs in 2011. Moreover, although large firms accrued over half of direct costs, most of the defendants were small or medium-sized firms, indicating that NPEs are not just a problem for large firms.

Read at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2091210#%23

Yesterday spokesperson of Fiat Industrial, Alfredo Altavilla, explained why several production facilities of Iveco (5 in total) will be closed. The presentation of the new Iveco Stralis at Fiat Industrial Village was after all not only good news, since 1075 people will lose their job. The recently announced expansion of production in Spain, where current production of Madrid and Valladolid will be expanded, can be linked back to the closing of the factories in France (Chamberry), Germany (Weiswell and Ulm, Ulm will keep the assembly of firetrucks) and Austria (Graz and Görlitz).

Btw, this promized 1200 jobs in Spain is just announced expectation (without any signed things yet) that could happen in about 4 years.

"It hurts on a personal level because I really love what I do," Apperson, who taught all subjects, told KXTV-News 10. "But professionally and politically or economically, I get why it happens."

The Sacramento City Unified School District has suffered approximately $143 million in budget cuts in recent years. School spokesperson Gabe Ross told News 10 that who gets laid off is mandated by state law and is based on seniority, not performance.

Via: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/sacramento-teacher-laid-off-144651918.html

Reducing employees by more than three quarters in three years is a bold and difficult task. What will it leave behind? Who, under this plan, will still be a US IBM employee in 2015? Top management will remain, the sales organization will endure, as will employees working on US government contracts that require workers to be US citizens. Everyone else will be gone. Everyone.

Via: http://www.cringely.com/tag/ibm/

Read this series of posts about IBM :-)

He also said that Syria should become a target for “American leadership,” in the context of ignoring UN mandates and sending in American troops to directly help rebel fighters who, as we have documented, are being directed by Al-Qaeda terrorists.

Via: http://www.prisonplanet.com/rubio-we-need-to-prepare-people-for-war-with-iran.html

Yep, the title is part of - "We must move quickly. ... If they are not all destroyed, it will be civil war without end. ... Once more the Sith will rule the galaxy! And...we shall have...peace"

Usual Microsoft approach. Fuck the developers and force them to write applications lacking normal background mode, or windowed state.
It'll take this motherfuckers 2-3 years to realise that computer is slightly different from 3-5" phone.

Especially bad is that most remaining power generation is very old and had been build in 1960-1970.

An, btw, Fitch downgraded Japan rating today.

Via: http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/18/video-sharing-sites-mysteriously-blocked-in-india/

I really have hard time understanding that Vimeo and PirateBay have in common.

In short USPS will not want to ship ANY Lithium battery after May 7. That means no iPhones, no cell phones, no iPads, Kindle or notebooks.

I am trying to find out if they might do some exceptions as this really seems like very harsh rule.

I just wanted to post it here ASAP. In case you plan to ship some electronics do it before the deadline.

http://www.shipito.com/16-shipping/23662-usps-not-allowing-lithium-battery-shipments

Via: http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-on-the-spanish-economy-2012-4#the-spanish-pmi-predicts-sharply-negative-gdp-1

Compared to 2008 income dropped from 178 bln to 171 bln (including real inflation drop will look much bigger) , expenses were 227 and dificit only 48 bln (or 26% of income).

May be it'll be all easy to cut and go back to something remotely sane, like..... Greece?

Nope, around 173 bln are spend to support poor and old in various areas (food, medicine, etc) plus 63 bln is for defence. Not much left really (and most of it is alrso money spent on quite real things).

Via: http://fms.treas.gov/mts/mts0312.pdf

Via: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-13/italian-industrial-output-falls-for-second-month-on-slump.html

My name is Jurre Hermans. I am 10 years old and live in the Netherlands. I am quite worried about the eurocrisis and look at the TV news daily. The eurocrisis is a big problem. I think about solutions. Since I read in the newspaper about your price, I thought that I would like to submit my idea. The idea might fit. So here it is: I made a picture of my solution and I will explain it to you.

Greece should leave the Euro. How do you do that? All Greek people should bring their Euro to the bank. They put it in an exchange machine (see left on my picture). You see, the Greek guy does not look happy!! The Greek man gets back Greek Drachme from the bank, their old currency.

The Bank gives all these euro’s to the Greek Government (see top left on my picture). All these euros together form a pancake or a pizza (see on top in the picture). Now the Greek government can start to pay back all their debts, everyone who has a debt gets a slice of the pizza. You see that all these euro’s in the pizza’s go the companies and banks who have given loans in Greece (see right in my picture).

Now here comes the clever part of my idea:

The Greek people do not want to exchange their Euro’s for Drachmes because they know that this Drachme will lose its value dramatically. They try to keep or hide their Euro’s. They know that if theywait a while they will get more Drachmes.

So if a Greek man tries to keep his Euros (or bring his euros to a bank in an other country like Holland or Germany) and it is discovered, he gets a penalty just as high or double as the whole amount in euros he tried to hide!!!

In this way I ensure that all Greeks bring their euros to a greek bank and so the greek government can pay back all the debts.

I hope my idea helps you!!!!

Of course if a country has paid back all his debts , he can return to the eurozone.

A bit more about myself: I am 10, love animals since I have a dog and a bird. I live in a family of 5 in Holland. I have 5 friends with whom I play all day, mostly outside.

Look! He even loves animals! Sadly love towards people are not in his arsenal.

Via: http://greece.greekreporter.com/2012/04/03/11-year-old-jurre-hermans-proposes-pizza-like-greek-euro-exit-plan/

I've done small woodworking projects before, and I think I have a pretty good idea of what I need: some wood and a few basic tools: a tape measure, a saw, a level, and a hammer.

If I were going to build a whole house, rather than just a spice rack, I'd still need a tape measure, a saw, a level, and a hammer (among other things).

So I go to the hardware store to buy the tools, and I ask the sales clerk where I can find a hammer.

"A hammer?" he asks. "Nobody really buys hammers anymore. They're kind of old fashioned."

Surprised at this development, I ask him why.

"Well, the problem with hammers is that there are so many different kinds. Sledge hammers, claw hammers, ball-peen hammers. What if you bought one kind of hammer and then realized that you needed a different kind of hammer later? You'd have to buy a separate hammer for your next task. As it turns out, most people really want a single hammer that can handle all of the different kinds of hammering tasks you might encounter in your life."

"Hmmmmmm. Well, I suppose that sounds all right. Can you show me where to find a Universal Hammer."

"No, we don't sell those anymore. They're pretty obsolete."

"Really? I thought you just said that the Universal Hammer was the wave of the future."

"As it turns out, if you make only one kind of hammer, capable of performing all the same tasks as all those different kinds of hammers, then it isn't very good at any of them. Driving a nail with a sledgehammer isn't very effective. And, if you want to kill your ex-girlfriend, there's really no substitute for a ball-peen hammer."

"That's true. So, if nobody buys Universal Hammers anymore, and if you're no longer selling all those old-fashioned kinds of hammers, what kinds of hammers do you sell?"

"Actually, we don't sell hammers at all."

"So..."

"According to our research, what people really needed wasn't a Universal Hammer after all. It's always better to have the right kind of hammer for the job. So, we started selling hammer factories, capable of producing whatever kind of hammers you might be interested in using. All you need to do is staff the hammer factory with workers, activate the machinery, buy the raw materials, pay the utility bills, and PRESTO...you'll have exactly the kind of hammer you need in no time flat."

"But I don't really want to buy a hammer factory..."

"That's good. Because we don't sell them anymore."

"But I thought you just said..."

"We discovered that most people don't actually need an entire hammer factory. Some people, for example, will never need a ball-peen hammer. (Maybe they've never had ex-girlfriends. Or maybe they killed them with icepicks instead.) So there's no point in someone buying a hammer factory that can produce every kind of hammer under the sun."

"Yeah, that makes a lot of sense."

"So, instead, we started selling schematic diagrams for hammer factories, enabling our clients to build their own hammer factories, custom engineered to manufacture only the kinds of hammers that they would actually need."

"Let me guess. You don't sell those anymore."

"Nope. Sure don't. As it turns out, people don't want to build an entire factory just to manufacture a couple of hammers. Leave the factory-building up to the factory-building experts, that's what I always say!!"

"And I would agree with you there."

"Yup. So we stopped selling those schematics and started selling hammer-factory-building factories. Each hammer factory factory is built for you by the top experts in the hammer factory factory business, so you don't need to worry about all the details that go into building a factory. Yet you still get all the benefits of having your own customized hammer factory, churning out your own customized hammers, according to your own specific hammer designs."

"Well, that doesn't really..."

"I know what you're going to say!! ...and we don't sell those anymore either. For some reason, not many people were buying the hammer factory factories, so we came up with a new solution to address the problem."

"Uh huh."

"When we stepped back and looked at the global tool infrastructure, we determined that people were frustrated with having to manage and operate a hammer factory factory, as well as the hammer factory that it produced. That kind of overhead can get pretty cumbersome when you deal with the likely scenario of also operating a tape measure factory factory, a saw factory factory, and a level factory factory, not to mention a lumber manufacturing conglomerate holding company. When we really looked at the situation, we determined that that's just too complex for someone who really just wants to build a spice rack."

"Yeah, no kidding."

"So this week, we're introducing a general-purpose tool-building factory factory factory, so that all of your different tool factory factories can be produced by a single, unified factory. The factory factory factory will produce only the tool factory factories that you actually need, and each of those factory factories will produce a single factory based on your custom tool specifications. The final set of tools that emerge from this process will be the ideal tools for your particular project. You'll have exactly the hammer you need, and exactly the right tape measure for your task, all at the press of a button (though you may also have to deploy a few configuration files to make it all work according to your expectations)."

"So you don't have any hammers? None at all?"

"No. If you really want a high-quality, industrially engineered spice rack, you desperately need something more advanced than a simple hammer from a rinky-dink hardware store."

"And this is the way everyone is doing it now? Everyone is using a general-purpose tool-building factory factory factory now, whenever they need a hammer?"

"Yes."

"Well…All right. I guess that's what I'll have to do. If this is the way things are done now, I guess I'd better learn how to do it."

"Good for you!!"

"This thing comes with documentation, right?"

Via: http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?joel.3.219431

Fo rm such approach is much better compared to simple hammers mentioned in "On forums" post.

Thing on right side.

It is not only secondary OLPF. It is ultrasonic dust cleading surface (where all dust settles and is shaken off, look at wires).

Such thing can be used as AA filter if switched on (it is ultrasonic, but it can slightly shake sensor, hence AA effect). May be some optical effect is used.

So, it looks like it's action for video can be switched off with firmware change. No need to disassemble whole thing.

Idea from: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=62429.0

P.S. I edited post slightly.

Read more: http://www.pentaxforums.com/news/pentax-lens-price-increase-2012.html

The law, announced with a barrage of other environmental measures last December, is due to be published in the Journal Officiel in the coming days and come into effect on July 1.

External lights in "non-residential" buildings would have to be switched off between 1.00 and 6.00 - and the Ecology Ministry is talking with traders' and business federations about extending the switch-off to internal lighting.

Turning off both internal and external lighting across France could save the power needed to heat and light 700,000 homes. The measure on external lighting could save the power of 260,000 households.

City centre traders' groups have called for some easing of the restrictions in the grands magasins of the Boulevard Haussmann, Champs-Elysées and in large cities - and also in areas with a lively night life - and the ministry has said it is not opposed.

However, the federation of small businesses CGPME has attacked the proposals for a "curfew" as "irrelevant and unacceptable".

It highlighted safety problems, saying: "People, without any way of knowing if an establishment is open, will be hesitant about going into a hotel, a petrol station, a discotheque or a hospital if the outside is in total darkness.

Via: http://connexionfrance.com/Shops-offices-energy-law-switch-off-Ecology-curfew-13587-view-article.html

More measures are coming by ecology activists, big supporters of closing nuclear plants and authors of food price hikes due to their "natural" fuel programs.

After declaring bankruptcy in Germany, Mike Brady rented a house at Lake Zurich in Switzerland and leased a fleet of Maserati and several Range Rovers. He was arrested on March 29 and extradited to Germany where 61 customers wanted their money back ($1 million Euros+) for non-delivered 100 and 300-kw electromagnetic motors.

After reporting on April 14th that Perendev, famous for its all-magnet motor claim and viral video, had closed its doors, I noticed a couple of comments saying that the inventor and CEO, Michael J. Brady, had been arrested.

Via: http://www.examiner.com/breakthrough-energy-in-national/perendev-magnet-motor-inventor-arrested-for-embezzlement#ixzz1q9B20FRn

See more at:
PesWiki Page
http://pesn.com/Radio/Free_Energy_Now/shows/2007/02/17/9700224_Perendev/

:-)

Specs of two cameras.

Something here is really fucked up.

Via: http://www.engadget.com/2012/03/14/samsung-researching-android-based-digital-camera/

Btw, Android is awful OS for camera. Same as iOS.
Camera OS must be based on existing realtime OS solutions, and have completely different API structure compared to common smartphone OS.

Why am i puzzled? In short, Metro apps run one at a time, generally full screen (the exception is 2 side by side), an app moved to the background gets suspended after 5 seconds and must save its state (and do it fast), given the OS might kill it in case it needs more memory (cannot they just warn the user and ask to close some apps as Android does? Too geeky?). The reason for these design decisions is to save CPU time and so increase battery life. A good idea for a phone? Maybe, but with dual core phones becoming the standard and with Android offering better multitasking, this seems a bit strange to me.

Via: http://blog.marcocantu.com/blog/puzzled_metro_windows8.html

Yep, and you also could only distribute Metro style applications via Microsoft store. Remind you of someone?

And this is how it looks in reality:

All you really need is to form strike teams, blow the oil transportation system near the city. Of course you need to set camera before all this.
And start translation with title "Sirya: Violence".
Until all countries laws will punish media, up to death sentence, for propaganda and disinformation nothing will change.

This document had been mostly secretly developed and secretly signed by many countries.

Most importantis that it widens and improves approach of DCMA.

Eliminating courts and ability to defend yourself from equation.

http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/economy/i_property/pdfs/acta1105_en.pdf

Official site: http://www.ustr.gov/acta

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Counterfeiting_Trade_Agreement