Sunday fun reading – A couple of UK students are planning a two weeks, 18.000 miles trip this summer in US in an attempt to break about 45 dumb laws in several states, doing stuff like riding a a bike in a swimming pool and curse on a crazy-golf course in California or going whale-hunting in Utah (sic!). (via Boing Boing)
The better browser
As if you were not convinced yet, here are another 101 things that the Firefox browser can do that IE cannot.
Romanian Currency – World’s Biggest Advancer Against EUR, USD
Among nine traders, strategists and investors polled on Romania’s leu by Bloomberg, six advised buying the currency against the euro and three advised to hold it. None said sell. According to Bloomberg analysis Romanian leu is the currency with the fastest growing trend against Euro, while according with the last six months data Romanian leu is placing third worldwide, after the Polish Zlot and Brazilian Real as attractivity for foreign investors.
All these are happening more likely because the Romanian central bank will lift foreign exchange restrictions for Romanian companies to help them protect themselves against losses from steep swings in the leu against the euro and the dollar. The bank’s administration board will on Feb. 24 formally approve a decision to allow companies unrestricted access to buy foreign currency, Bloomberg.com reports.
Demand for Romania’s currency is increasing also on speculation plans to allow foreign investors to open deposits in the country will spur an inflow of funds. Romanian central bank Governor Mugur Isarescu said on Feb. 17 the government will allow foreigners to make deposits in lei, a step required for joining the European Union, by the end of June.
New York Times buys About.com
Following on a previous post on the fight for About.com, it seems that the winner is The New York Times
More coverage in The New York Times itself and Cnn.com
Internet Explorer 7.0 Beta this summer
Beta versions of Internet Explorer 7.0 will be available this summer for Longhorn and XP SP2.
During his keynote address at the annual RSA Conference today, Bill Gates, chairman and chief software architect at Microsoft Corp., announced continued innovation and technology investments including future enhancements for safer Web browsing, such as plans for a new version of Microsoft Internet Explorer for Windows XP Service Pack 2 customers.
More details on Microsoft PressPass and IEBlog
Silencing the Media
An interesting article on Transition Online about the Rigier’s Evenimentul Zilei and WAZ’s Romania Libera cases written by Tom Gallagher.
Many of the brave journalists who champion press freedom on meager salaries and in the face of regular intimidation may even be forced to leave the country. It will be hard for foreign owners to evade responsibility should that happen. And even the country’s EU accession could be delayed: When the EU issued a report on Romania’s fitness to join the club, the report listed press freedom as a special concern. And the EU envoy to Romania, Jonathan Scheele, has said Romania’s record on that issue would be an important factor in deciding whether the country would be allowed to join in 2007, as planned.
Just what was the point of all those programs to foster media freedom sponsored by the EU, the Council of Europe, and leading Western governments?
Fixed Fee for Online Music
The Arbitration Commission of the Romanian Copyright Office has decided that internet users who offer music on their site for downloading or streaming, must pay a fixed annual fee of 80 euro. If the owners of the websites charge for the music they have to pay 10% of the price of a downloaded song to the collecting society, with a minimum of 8 euro cents per track. A same scheme is set in place for the providers of ring-tones. (via CoCo: Romania: Fixed Fee for Online Music
Big fight… about.com
The fact that Primedia’s About.com is on sale is already old by now. Same that the final bids are due on Tuesday. The latest news on the case are mentioning no more no less than 5 (yeah five) huge bidders are in the game, as follows: Google (huh, no wonder:), Yahoo! (well if Google’s there, they should be too), AOL, Ask Jeeves (as Bloglines wasn’t enough) and last, but not least The New York Times itself. Big fight to follow if all of them are really in the game. The same rumors are saying that the asking price is $350 million to $500 million.
Reward or bribe?
President Bush is asking Congress to set up a $400 million fund to reward nations that have taken political and economic risks to join U.S.-led coalitions in Iraq and Afghanistan. One administration official said the fund was designed to provide help to Eastern European nations, such as Ukraine, Hungary, Romania and the Baltic states. Bush is meeting March 9 at the White House with Traian Basescu, the president of Romania, which has an estimated 700 troops in Iraq.
Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., the ranking minority member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, says the fund is indicative of the administration’s inability to attract more well-to-do nations to the coalition at the start of the conflict and that the administration had no choice but to offer them help because their societies and national budgets can’t afford the cost of being in Iraq for extended periods of time.
Via Baltimore Sun
Weblog Awards
Along with 2005 Best Business Blogging awards mentioned by Dragos, you can also check out the 2005 Bloggies Awards. The final results will be available on March 14th, but meanwhile you can take a look at the nominees grouped in various categories as: best article or essay about weblog, best web application, best photography, best food weblog, best entertainment weblog, best weblog about politics, best writing, best community weblog, best designed weblog and so on.