The Plitical Compass

Today i found this web-site. Really interesting :D
Have you checked your Plitical style? Click and Check!!

The test is entirely anonymous. None of your personal details are required, and nothing about your result is recorded or logged in any way. The answers are only used to calculate your reading, and cannot be accessed by anyone, ever.

The idea was developed by a political journalist with a university counselling background, assisted by a professor of social history. They're indebted to people like Wilhelm Reich and Theodor Adorno for their ground-breaking work in this field. We believe that, in an age of diminishing ideology, a new generation in particular will get a better idea of where they stand politically - and the sort of political company they keep. So are you ready to take the test? Remember that there's no right, wrong or ideal response. It's simply a measure of attitudes and inevitable human contradictions to provide a more integrated definition of where people and parties are really at. Click here to start.

@@ps!!
Economic Left/Right: -0.88
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -1.23

Communities and Technologies Conference

Communities Vs Networks, as the extremes of a continuum of social containers for innovation

Our research and workshop proposal comes from the observation that in much of the scientific literature in the field of sociology of innovation, the concept of community and the concept of network are used in a very undifferentiated way.

This workshop proposal aims at raising the reflection and discussion about the opportunity of differentiating the use of these concepts, linking them to the concept of innovation in an original way: if communities represents social containers for specialization-based (and hence linear) innovation, networks are the place for boundary spanning learning and, as a consequence, for breakthrough innovation.

The objective of the proposed workshop is that of shaping a new research and knowledge exchange network, not only to shape original theoretic perspectives but also to reflect upon possible new application fields or case studies.





Think! and Link!!

Work, Dance, Love like what?

Work like you don't need the money
Dance like no one is watching
Love like you've never been hurt before

Hum..

Is Blogging an alternative plan of Freedom of Press in Singapore[2]?

Before reading my opinion please check these Internet Usage & Population Statistics < Link1 & Link2 >

Looking at it positively, there is much infinite space for growth & improvement. In future blogs could change our society in much bigger way. The power of blogs is not weak and emaciated in our future - i guess.

Turning to our point
Is Blogging possible as alternative plan of Freedom of Press in Singapore?
The blogs/blogging powor comes from Dissemination & Sharing information faster than other media can. In this case we have to check the influence & possibility of blogs.
Do you think the views of blogs affect a lot of people?
I think, so sad, it’s hard to get good affection on the blogs but judging from the regular commentators I would say that the few people we do reach & affect are already themselves. And there could be hundreds of people out there who never comment or otherwise identify themselves, but we wouldn’t know.

Secondly, possibility, the problems could be that many Singaporeans are not very interested in politics (include Freedom of Press) as stated by Dr Randy Kluver. (I said in my previous posting) and the Singapore Dilemma ( Singaporean media is government controlled )

Here we have to check Dr Randy Kluver saying. It has been true so far.
But thinks are beginning to change. These days I found a lot of Singapore political blogs -Not only did middle-age have political blogs, but also young people were voicing their political views. And as public opinion is getting stronger, S-government could be pay careful attention to the trends of public opinion and strong probably; S-government has to make an alternative plan for us. Hum.. but to be honest, not very much at present.


Blogs/Bloggings are insignificant compared to other media & other sources of information for our society now. I tell myself again "It's just the beginning."



Six Recommendations to Ensure Freedom of Expression on the Internet

I have seen to this article a long time ago. And now I am recalling Human Rights.


Reporters Without Borders and the OSCE make six recommendations to ensure freedom of expression on the Internet.This declaration by Reporters Without Borders and the representative of the OSCE (Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe) on Freedom of the Media aims to deal with the main issues facing countries seeking to regulate online activity.

Reporters Without Borders thinks the six recommendations go beyond Europe and concern every country. It hopes they will provoke discussion in the run-up to the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).

Full text of the Declaration :

1. Any law about the flow of information online must be anchored in the right to freedom of expression as defined in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

2. In a democratic and open society it is up to the citizens to decide what they wish to access and view on the Internet. Filtering or rating of online content by governments is unacceptable. Filters should only be installed by Internet users themselves. Any policy of filtering, be it at a national or local level, conflicts with the principle of free flow of information.

3. Any requirement to register websites with governmental authorities is not acceptable. Unlike licensing scarce resources such as broadcasting frequencies, an abundant infrastructure like the Internet does not justify official assignment of licenses. On the contrary, mandatory registration of online publications might stifle the free exchange of ideas, opinions, and information on the Internet.

4. A technical service provider must not be held responsible for the mere conduit or hosting of content unless the hosting provider refuses to obey a court ruling. A decision on whether a website is legal or illegal can only be taken by a judge, not by a service provider. Such proceedings should guarantee transparency, accountability and the right to appeal.

5. All Internet content should be subject to the legislation of the country of its origin ("upload rule") and not to the legislation of the country where it is downloaded.

6. The Internet combines various types of media, and new publishing tools such as blogging are developing. Internet writers and online journalists should be legally protected under the basic principle of the right to freedom of expression and the complementary rights of privacy and protection of sources.



I believe that freedom in the 21st century means the liberty of individuals, regardless of age, race, gender, or class, to express themselves in their own words, and to use those words to shape history. I am young, and I am free. I speak not always articulate, not often right, but always in my own words. I speak, and I listen.

Is Blogging an alternative plan of Freedom of Press in Singapore[1]?

The main purpose of blogs is to enable individuals to have a space to express their own opinions and views about important and not-so-important matters around them. In the US especially, blogs have actively been used for political purposes. For example, Garett Graff was probably the first blogger to be given a daily White House pass based on his blogging of Washington news media.

Singaporean bloggers tend to focus more on personal and daily issues, some of the more popular local blogs. However, there are a few which are dedicated to topics related to travel, culture, language and technology such as Commentary Singapore and Singapore Ink. This in itself is an issue that seems to be widely discussed within the Singapore blogging community.

There are two possible reasons for the lack of politically related activity of Singaporean bloggers in comparison to their counter-parts in other parts of the world.

Firstly, as stated by Dr Randy Kluver from the Singapore Internet Research Center it could be that Singaporeans are not very interested in politics or secondly, Singaporeans just need more time to develop into 'citizen jounalists' as explained by Mr Brown, another popular Singaporean blogger.
Singapore has over 22,000 registered blogs ranking it as one of the top ten countries with the largest number of registered blogs according to Bloggers Blog. In Iran alone surprisingly, there are more than 100,000 registered blogs according to Time Magazine.

refer to http://www.ntu.edu.sg/sci/sirc/index.html

In addition, the third possible answer is valid. Namely that politics, in Singaporean has as a result of media attention on defamation cases and banning of NGO memebers from speaking, has been 'criminalised'. < Link >

Now we are here. Is it possible as alternative plan of Freedom of Press in Singapore?

Freedom of Press Ranking Report 2004

Government sometimes withhold information and sometimes lie to the people. In a free society, however, it is desirable to keep this to a minimum.
The difference between what is withheld or false and what is released and is true is sometimes referred to as the 'credibility gap.' Newspapers and magazines help inform the public and narrow the credibility gap.
Freedom of the Press is inseparable from Freedom of Information. As the citizen has a right to know, the press has a right to tell him. And the right of the press to tell is also its duty to tell the truth.

Tuesday, May 17, 2005
Asean's Press Freedom
by Erwan Shah Bin Abdullah @ Wolfgang Holzem

It is often said, that the “Pen is mightier than the sword”. While this may be true in many countries due to press freedom and laws that allow freedom of speech, in some countries within ASEAN the “Sword” still rules the “Pen”.

While freedom of the press is one of the main pillars of many developed countries—such as Hong Kong, the US, Germany, UK or even Australia, the same thing cannot be said about some of the member nations of the Assocation of Southeast Asian Nations.

In 1989, ASEAN countries created a “Programme For the Enhancement of Press Cooperation Among ASEAN Countries” to address issues relating to the cooperation amongst the various ASEAN press and news networks. It was believed that General Suharto of Indonesia, Mr. Lee Kwan Yew of Singapore and Dr. Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia called for the Programme.
The ASEAN countries unanimously agreed on several issues that were put forward in that program.

Amongst other things, there was the issue of foreign media. It was agreed that ASEAN countries would:

a.) “seek ways to ensure that press reports on ASEAN countries in the foreign media are more balanced and objective” and
b.) “that the foreign media take into consideration the values and sensitivities of ASEAN peoples before writing reports on ASEAN members countries.”

These two clauses perhaps were the final death knells for the freedom of press in ASEAN because they gave authority to the governments of ASEAN countries the green light to manipulate the local and foreign media (or more specifically, Western media) that are impartial in their reporting compared to the local media.

The pact would have given the governments of the ASEAN members nations the right to “edit”, “delete”, “manipulate” news that they feel are inappropriate to their regime.

Freedom of the press is not a favorable phrase with some ASEAN countries and this pact, instead of encouraging press freedom ended up supporting censorship of the press!< More >

That's too much!!

Today morning i got a this message.
Copy here:

I hv been keep missing u. I know u r still in my heart.
U r still very important to me.
I know u still LOVE me..so do i. To find me, call quickly.

I really didn't know it was a fraudulent mail.
Indeed, i'm wating someone and when i saw this sms..could you image?

Sacrifice Needed for Unification

Many Koreans and foreigners may wonder as they watch the six-party talks drag on whether it is at all possible for North and South Korea to ever reunite, given the fundamental differences in their ideologies of how it should take place.

The division of the two countries only serves to remind us of how necessary and appropriate reunification would be. As even Jesus pointed out thousands of years ago, division is a crippling disease that no one benefits from.

We see that unification only creates peace whereas division, for example, in the case of a divorce between a man and a woman, leads to the eventual break-up and destruction of the family.
Indeed, this idea of unification seems not only a desire of all Korea and Koreans, but a desire that burns deep within the heart of man. The idea of becoming one is expressed in all of the great religions of the world.

If we consider what God’s will may be for the two Koreas, we might recognize that it would favor unification, just as it would do so on the relationships between father and son, husband and wife, parents and children, world and country, for there we would all be united with God and God with us, and was that not, after all, the real crux of Jesus’ message when he talked about himself being one with God and us all having to be like him?

Still, the question remains, is the goal of unification possible, and how can the international community help the two Koreas achieve unification? Without doubt, the answer would seem to be: yes, unification is possible. Jesus’ example provides us the answer as to how it can be attained. The way that goal can be achieved is therefore clear, and can be summed up in one word _ sacrifice.

Sacrificing the differing ideologies and visions for the sake of unification may present the solution to what may seem to be an unsolvable problem. If the two Koreas could do this, and certainly this would require great humility from both sides of the divided peninsula, and if the world around it were able to follow suit and supported the idea of unification, perhaps the frustration, vexation and anguish of so many people might erode. Maybe the answer to a lot of the problems of the world, not only Korea, may become a little clearer for us all.

Old Boy

One day in 1988, an ordinary man named OH Dae-su, who lived with his wife and adorable daughter, was kidnapped and later waked up to find himself in a private makeshift prison.

Dae-su made numerous attempts to escape and to commit suicide, but they all ended up in failure. All the while Dae-su asked himself what had made a man hated him so much enough to imprison him without any reason.
While suffering from his debacle, Dae-su was shocking when he watched the news and heard that his beloved wife had been brutally murdered.

At this very moment, Dae-su swore to take revenge on the man who had destroyed his happy life. Fifteen years had passed and Dae-su was released with a wallet filled with money and a mobile phone. An unknown man called Dae-su and asked him to figure out why he had been imprisoned.

PLOT:

A man, with a lovely wife and child, wakes up to find that he is locked up in a room/prison for a reason about which he's never told, by someone who he's never told about.

Fifteen years later, he is let go, only with more questions than answers. He spends the rest of the film trying to find out who incarcerated him for all those hellish years and for what reason-and in relation to that...to get revenge!!!

The future of blogging

Recently, blogs have been credited with everything from CBS News anchorman Dan Rather's departure, to unauthorized previews of the latest Apple Computer products, to new transparency in presidential campaigns. The big question is whether blogs, short for Web logs, have the staying power to become more than just online diaries.


Will bloggers upend the mainstream media? What legal protections should bloggers have? Is there a blogger business model? While no definitive answers exist just yet, experts at Wharton advise questioners to be patient. Blogging, they note, will be around for a long time.


Wharton legal studies professor Dan Hunter puts blogging right up there with the printing press when it comes to sharing ideas and disseminating information. "This is not a fad," Hunter says. "It's the rise of amateur content, which is replacing the centralized, controlled content done by professionals."


The growth rate of blogs is impressive. Technorati, a search engine that monitors blogs, tracked more than 8 million online diaries as of March 21, up from 100,000 just two years ago. A new blog is created every 7.4 seconds. That adds up to 12,000 new blogs a day, 275,000 posts a day and 10,800 updates an hour.


"At its most basic level, it's a technology that is lowering the cost of publishing" and turning out to be "the next extension of the Web," says Wharton legal studies professor Kevin Werbach. "Blogging is still in its early days. It's analogous to where the Web was in 1995 and 1996. It's not clear how it will turn out."


What is clear is that opportunities for blogging abound. Companies can use bloggers to put a more human face on interactions between employees and customers; marketers can create buzz through blogs; and bloggers can act as fact checkers for the mainstream media.


more informaion<Link>



Two things are certain:

Blogging will remain disruptive to the traditional media, and new uses will surface.
"You are going to see blogging move to video and instant messaging," says Werbach.
"It's just the beginning."

Steps to a Strong Strategy

1. If you don’t make a difference, you don’t matter.

2. You can’t make a difference to everyone.

3. Strategy must enable your organization to make a difference that matters to a critical mass of the "right" customers.

4. Strategy connects the purpose and values of your organization with those of its customers and other external stakeholders.

5. It may be easy to clone a product, but it’s impossible to clone a community. So a vital goal of strategy is to create and sustain a unique community.

6. Purpose and values hold a community together, drive teams to seek their potential, and provide the context in which individuals will volunteer their imagination and spirit.

7. Shared ideas lead to shared meaning. The more openly and honestly ideas are shared, the greater the level of trust will be, the more efforts will be aligned – and the more ideas will emerge.

8. People value work that makes them feel valued. When they make strategy, they matter. And they own the results, so effective execution is more likely.

9. Strategic management is conversation. It informs, focuses attention and effort, triggers fresh insights, lights up the imagination, energizes people, and inspires performance.

10. Strategic conversation provides a context for personal and group learning. Your message must be compelling, simple, clear, and believable, or you won’t sell it. It must also be complex and challenging, or no one will buy it. And it must be repeated with relentless consistency.


from Making Sense of Strategy, by Tony Manning

Why blood really is thicker than water?

Have you ever thought that?

The reasons are here.

Keep your eyes!!

UNTIL about a century ago, the old Gaelic naming tradition still applied widely in Scotland. By these rules, the first son was named after his paternal grandfather, the second after his father, the third after a father's brother, with the equivalent rules on the maternal side applying to daughters.

I actually owe my first name to a revolt on the part of my mother who refused to have yet another George in the family - otherwise, if my father had had his way, I was about to be the fifth George Dunbar in a row.

But why should naming have followed these kinds of rules?

One obvious answer is that bearing the same name identifies family membership. This much is self-evident from the way we use surnames. And some surnames are clearly considerably better for this than others. While Bakers and Smiths must sadly conclude that they are unlikely to be related to strangers bearing the same name, the many variants on Gaelic family names do provide clear indications of common ancestry, partly because of their many variants.

Many name lineages are of quite modest size, and many had quite localised origins. The seaport up the road from Edinburgh notwithstanding, Dunbar is a Moray name and was rare elsewhere. A mere 16,000 or so people have held this name in the three centuries since birth (mainly baptismal) registrations became common.

Studies of parish registers from the Krummhörn area in northwest Germany show that children who survived the first year of life had more Christian names than those who did not: since names were conferred when the child was baptised on its eighth day of life, this suggests that parents already knew who would survive and who not, and hence for which children it was worth making the effort of soliciting godparents.

This sense of implied kinship even seems to persist today. This was put to direct test in a recent study carried out by evolutionary psychologists from Canada's McMaster University. They used the US census to select a set of common and rare English surnames and first names, and then e-mailed nearly 3,000 Hotmail accounts with different combinations of these names asking for help with a project on local sports team mascots, ostensibly from someone with the same or different combination of names. The test was whether the recipients took the trouble of replying. Just 2 per cent of recipients replied when they shared neither first nor surnames, but 12 per cent did so when they shared both. Shared surnames (6 per cent replies) did better than just shared first names (4 per cent of replies).

But when the names were rare in the population at large, reply rates soared to 27 and 13 per cent, respectively, when sender and recipient shared both names or just their surname. As many as a third of those replying when rare names were shared commented on the coincidence, often asking about family origins.

I recognise these response patterns in my own behaviour. Finding someone with the surname Dunbar invariably arouses my interest. But I am only mildly excited when I come across a MacDonald - surely the commonest of all Scottish surnames - even though it has been a middle name for several generations in my lineage.

Evolutionary biologists have long understood the significance of kinship (shared descent from a common ancestor) in animal and human biology. The essence of this is summed up in what has become known as Hamilton's Rule, one of the cornerstones of modern evolutionary biology named after the late WD Hamilton. While a PhD student in the 1960s, he pointed out that two individuals have a common genetic interest in each other that is proportional to the likelihood of their sharing a given gene by descent from a common ancestor, and hence that, when all else is equal, they should be more likely to behave altruistically towards each other than less closely related individuals.

Blood, as the saying goes, is thicker than water. It is a finding demonstrated by observation and experiment in organisms ranging from tadpoles to humans. Naming patterns seem to capitalise on this. In fact, the biological intuition of relatedness seems to be so strong that, in the absence of anything else, shared names can trigger sentiments of kinship even where none actually exists.

by ROBIN DUNBAR

Odeo

People are quickly changing.
some of ppl, they read texts thru RSS aggregator.

Along with the popularity with iPod and its casting,
Odeo started aggregating the audio feed.
(Looks cool and comfy.)

You just can subscribe audio feed,
and the what you have to do is,
JUST TO LISTEN TO IT.


go to http://www.odeo.com/

Landing on Google News Home Page

Google News is rising in popularity and that means publishers want their content syndicated in Google News, I know I do (Matt???). A thread at Cre8asite Forums named Tips on getting on the Google News homepage asks the member base for advice on how to get your articles featured on the home page of Google News.

This assumes you have been approved for syndication at Google News. After that, Bill Slawski gives his rundown of patents and articles written about this topic. I’ll try to summarize the thread here for you.

The most juicy part of the thread is when Bill links to Systems and methods for improving the ranking of news articles patent application by some of Google’s engineers including Krishna Bharat. Bill summarizes:


One or more metric values based at least in part on at least one of a number of articles produced by the source during a first time period,

- an average length of an article produced by the source,
- an amount of important coverage that the source produces in a second time period,
- a breaking news score,- an amount of network traffic to the source,
- a human opinion of the source,
- circulation statistics of the source,
- a size of a staff associated with the source,
- a number of bureaus associated with the source,
- a number of original named entities in a group of articles associated with the source,
- a breadth of coverage by the source,
- a number of different countries from which network traffic to the source originates, and
- a writing style used by the source;

and determining a quality value for each source of the plurality of sources based at least in part on the determined one or more metric values for the source.

But moderator ProjectPHP is most probably right;

Despite what anyone tells you, Google put a lot of editorial control on News.google.com, and my guess would be that, unless you are triple approved by everyone including Sergey, you will have buckley’s of getting on those pages.

-
Barry Schwartz is the Editor of Search Engine Roundtable and President of RustyBrick, Inc., a Web services firm specializing in customized online technology that helps companies decrease costs and increase sales.


Posted by — Barry Schwartz, Rusty Brick, Inc. and SERoundtable




Should think about their rules.

War Games & Peace in Northeast Asia

High Waves in Asia
China-Russia Joint Military Drill Requires Close Attention


Many Koreans must be uneasy watching China and Russia conduct a massive military manoeuver near their country. This apprehension will grow further to hear the United States, Japan and Taiwan push for a counter drill. It's as if the major military powers revived the Cold War in Northeast Asia to gain global hegemony in the 21st century.

The arms race, along with North Korea's nuclear gamble and rising nationalism in the region, make this the most volatile part of the world. Beijing and Moscow say other countries need not worry as their joint drill is aimed at thwarting terrorism and separatist uprisings.
This is hardly plausible, however, because of the scale and intensity of the training, the first Russo-Chinese drill in 47 years. A Chinese military gazette has hinted that the imaginary adversaries are the U.S., Japan and South Korea. Actually, China and Russia turned down Seoul's request to observe the exercise, although it is held in waters surrounding the Korean Peninsula.

Both countries have different priorities. China aims to reconfirm its sovereignty over Taiwan while Russia is more interested in selling new weapons to its southern neighbor.
But unmistakable to Washington is the display of their combined military might and the possibility of a military alliance. India will also hold separate joint drills with the two countries in a ''triangular alliance'' against the U.S.-Japan alliance.
The continental powers are seeking a multipolar global order instead of the current unipolar system under the U.S.


One might recall _ with reason _ a century ago, the peninsula has been a battlefield since it is a gateway for Japan to invade the continent. More recently, the southern half was the "bulwark of the free world'' against expanding communism. Some military and political experts see in the ongoing Sino-Russia drill a preparation in the case of North Korea's abrupt collapse.


It is vital for the two Koreas to stop their rivalry and move toward reconciliation to prevent the peninsula from becoming an arena of global power struggles against the people's wishes. This is also why the six-nation talks on Pyongyang's nuclear programs should end peacefully at all costs. The escalating arms buildup in turn shows the difficulties South Korea has in playing a balancing role in this region. Seoul has few other choices but to keep enhancing both military and diplomatic capabilities.


All of this happens as historians warn of the end of the globalization era and the advent of another wartime cycle. The Defense Ministry says the exercise is just to strengthen the two countries' joint operation of weapons and units. This easygoing attitude is in sharp contrast to Washington and Tokyo's discomfort.