In various countries in the EU, trains are currently not running due to strikes. Train drivers in Germany are on strike to demand a 31% (!) increase of their wages, in France the strike is to protest a reform of retirement plans, and next week there will be some protest from employees of the Dutch railway who want a 10% raise. While I cannot entirely judge if the demands of those people are reasonable in themselves, the consequences of their actions are not reasonable at all.

As you all know, Israel is attacking Lebanon in an attempt to stamp out Hezbollah. While I completely support their right to defend themselves, the actions against Lebanon creates a lot of questions, and Israeli officials have been extremely unwilling to answer them with anything other then war mongering rhetoric and outright lies. I'll try to point out the worst of them here. If Israel is as it claims to be, a member of the civilized world, then those things must be questioned. Not as an attack against them, but to prevent them from making the situation even worse and commiting what are basicly war crimes. Read on for more.

As many of you probably know, the French population voted against the proposed European constitution last sunday (may 29th). It is also likely that other countries will follow (Netherlands on june 1st, others follow later). Politicians have been loudly voicing dissapointment, and uttering stark warnings regarding the negative consequences of deciding against the porposed constitution.

Next wednesday (1st of june) I am allowed to vote on this, and I am going to vote no, just like the French did, and just like many of my fellow countrymen are likely to do. In the following 'rant' I will try to explain why I am going to vote no, and what EU politicians (and those in charge of the member states) have to do to get some working EU constitution at some point.

After having a long and interesting discussion with someone knowledgable on the patent system in the USA, I have been thinking a lot about why the whole concept of software patents feels so wrong to me as a person who deals a lot with software development.

A bit of a rant about elections in the USA as seen by an outside observer.. not the usual European anti-Bush rant tho

Thursday 24th of june, the Dutch parliament will vote on if to maintain the ministers position on EU software patents

Suggestions for a European policy for creating, maintaining and strengthening a local software industry

According to news.com Microsoft basicly patented an automated todo list generated from TODO comments in source code (the patent).
So why should a European like me care?

This article contains an outline of what is required for a faircopyright system. It is not directly based on any existing system,but of course it takes many ingredients from the Berne conventionand copyright law as it is in the USA since those 2 are relevantfor the large majority of copyrighted works in this world.