Leon de Winter, a Dutch author, wrote an essay about modern terrorism and the (non-) existing criticism of Muslim societies within the Muslim community. It features an interesting read about the possible why ‘we’ are getting bombed by ‘them’.

Spiegel online has the (German) piece.

The inquirer has a nice rant about DRM and the upcoming products by Intel and Microsoft. It is a nice read, featuring all the arguments that could be summed up against those technologies (leaving out the pros for convenience).
Link.

Marginal Revolution has a nice analysis of what is wrong in Hollywood. They state the following 6 reasons (and yes I know 5 is listed twice, but a quote is a quote):

1. Hollywood cannot control its marketing costs or star salaries. The growing importance of DVDs increases the “needle in the haystack” problem for any single film and thus locks studios into more marketing, creating a vicious spiral.
2. TV is now so much better, and offers artists greater creative freedom. Why watch movies?
3. The Internet is outcompeting cinema, whether at the multiplex or on DVD.
4. Big TV screens are keeping people at home, which lowers box office receipts. This also hurts the long-term prospects of many DVDs.
5. The demand for DVDs has fallen because movie lovers have completed their core collections, just as the demands for classical CDs have fallen.
5. The demand for DVDs was due to fall in any case. Forget the collectors, you buy DVDs to have a stock on hand so you don’t have to run out to the video store on short notice. Now everyone has a stock. Stocks must be replenished every now and then, but there is no longer a large new cohort simultaneously building up a stock from scratch.

Link.

Two pieces of news stoke my attention today. Both arrived on Heise.

First of all: the European Parlament blocked the European Patents. So there will at least be a delay on that front. More information (German) can be found here.

Second: it is still legal to download from allofmp3, but it might be illegal for them to offer their downloads in Germany. So they might have to block German IPs or make you state that you are not from Germany, or whatever. The Heise page is here.

Here is a nice flash animation of a falling model. She just keeps on falling and falling until she finally lays down on a bubble. In which case you can ‘help’ her out.