Europe

All your base are belong to … USA

The European Parliament has approved the controversial data transfer agreement, the bilateral PNR (passenger name register), with the US which requires European airlines to pass on passenger information, including name, contact details, payment data, itinerary, email and phone numbers to the Department of Homeland Security. Under the new agreement, PNR data will be ‘depersonalized’ after six months and would be moved into a ‘dormant database’ after five years. However the information would still be held for a further 15 years before being fully ‘anonymized.’

I’m so glad that I managed to visit the USA before it became a paranoid concentration camp. The way things go, I don’t think I’ll live long enough to visit it again, without being worried for an arrest and endless detention.

P.S.: And some people still talk about privacy. What privacy?

Drink more alcohol to save the environment!

While browsing through the news articles from a few days ago, I noticed two separate items from Cyprus Mail newspaper. These articles weren’t linked or related in any way, but in my news reader they came up right next to each other, and I think the connection is obvious.

The first article was about Cypriots drinking less alcohol than their European Union peers:

CYPRUS has among the lowest consumption of alcohol per capita in the EU but when it comes to those who do like a tipple, binge drinking is quite prevalent.

According to a report released yesterday on alcohol in the EU, compiled by the World Health Organsiation (WHO), Cypriot alcohol consumption stands at 9.3 litres per capita compared to the EU average of 12.4. Malta came in at the lowest with 8.1 litres per capita, Greece with 10.5 and the UK with 12.5.

The second article was about Cypriots producing more junk than anyone else in Europe.

CYPRUS has again topped the list in Europe as generators of the most household waste with 760kg per person on average.

In the EU27, 502 kg of municipal waste was generated per person in 2010, while 486 kg of municipal waste was treated per person. This municipal waste was treated in different ways3: 38 per cent was landfilled, 22 per cent incinerated, 25 per cent recycled and 15 per cent composted.

The amount of municipal waste generated varies significantly across member states. Cyprus, with 760 kg per person, had the highest amount of waste generated in 2010, followed by Luxembourg, Denmark and Ireland with values between 600kg and 700 kg per person, and the Netherlands, Malta, Austria, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, the United Kingdom and Portugal with values between 500kg and 600kg.

Finland, Belgium, Sweden, Greece, Slovenia, Hungary and Bulgaria had values between 400kg and 500kg, while values of below 400kg per person were recorded in Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland, Estonia and Latvia.

There! I think there is enough data to support the theory of solving the environmental crisis with alcohol consumption. Now all I need is a government grant to do some extensive drinking research.

Reduction of roaming prices in EU

Cyprus Mail shares some good news:

CYPRIOTS and other EU nationals on the move will now enjoy cheaper roaming charges under a deal struck yesterday by the European Commission and its lawmakers.

[…]

Under the new deal, charges on calls made while travelling in other EU countries cannot exceed 29 cents per minute and calls received while outside the home country should cost no more than 8 cents per minute.

Sending a text message while away has a ceiling charge of 9 cents per minute and accessing the internet, 70 cents per megabyte.

Currently under Cyta’s monthly-pay plan, roaming charges within the EU cost 41 cents per minute for an outgoing call, 12 cents per minute for a received call, 12 cents per text message, and 73 cents per megabyte for internet access. The new charges should reduce the cost of a call significantly for people using their mobile phones within the bloc. On outgoing calls alone users will save 12 cents per minute with the charge dropping from 41 cents to 29 cents.
By 2014 yesterday’s newly-agreed caps should go down by almost another third except internet costs, which would drop to 20 cents per megabyte, reports from Brussels said.

Ignoring the actual numbers, that’s music to my ears. I hope mobile Internet will go cheaper faster than that.

Pukkelpop 2010

If there is one place to be on August 19, 20, and 21st this year, it’s Pukkelpop 2010. Pukkelpop is the largest alternative music festival in Europe, with an amazing list of bands coming to perform this year and without tens of thousands of fans gathering from the whole world. Here are just some of the bands in the line-up for this August: Placebo, Iron Maiden, The Prodigy, Blink-182, Limp Bizkit, NOFX, Bad Religion, Gogol Bordello …

I’m sure this year it will a party like no other – Pukkelpop is celebrating its 25th year! Happy birthday, Pukkelpop!

P.S.: Why am I so excited about the music festival somewhere in Belgium? Because I was there last year and it was quite an experience. Events of this magnitude don’t happen every year and if you get to attend one – that’s a life-time experience.

P.P.S: No, unfortunately I won’t be able to make it this year.

Wakoopa – one of those things that I don’t get

There are things that are as obvious as daylight. There are things that I need to research and think over to understand. And there are things that feel like I’ll never understand. Wakoopa is one of them.

I first heard about Wakoopa back in April when I was in Amsterdam, at The Next Web 2008 Conference. Wakoopa is a European social network that unites people who want to share the information about software they use. If you are one of them, all you need to do is register at the network and download client software to install on your computer. Once you are done, Wakoopa will track which software you use and how (often). It will then upload these information to the social network, where you will be able to find other people who use the same software (advice? shared experience?) as well as other software that people similar to you use (expanding horizons?).

The booth of Wakoopa startup was one of the busiest at the conference. And the company went through a few investment rounds, one of which I just read about in The Next Web blog.

And I still don’t get it.

First of all, I have the feeling that software moves to the web. Not all of it and not as fast as I’d like it to, but the future seems to be pretty much web-based. Secondly, those people who are technically literate enough to find, download, and install Wakoopa, are, I belive, literate enough to figure out their issues with current software and find similar software if need be, using nothing by Google and IRC. Thirdly, there is this evergrowing privacy concern, that itches every time words “tracking” and “sharing” are used. Fourthly, there is the question of licensed software vs. pirated software, which needs to be addressed by way too many Windows users (primary target for Wakoopa software and social network). Fifthly, there are likely to be quite a few conflicts between people at work and corporate sysadmins. Sixthly, …

With all that, I can still see that there will be a few people here and there who would probably like to participate in this experiement. But, the thing that I don’t quite understand is how this experiment became so large. I mean, there are millions of investment, thousands of users, and lots and lots of hype. I don’t get it. Anyone care to explain? Or guess maybe?

P.S.: Not that I am jelous of Wakoopa or anything. They are doing something that apparently has a lot of demand, so I wish the best of luck to them.