London’s Metropolitan Police have decided to make an exception to the rules against public disorder and assault, and will allow shoe-throwing by Muslims at demonstrations. Since the throwing of shoes as a sign of disapproval arises from cultural differences, in a concession to multiculturalism Scotland Yard feels obliged to allow Muslim residents to engage in the practice.In other news, the sovereign debt crisis is reaching alarming proportions in Western nations, with public pensions providing an indefinite extra burden on top of more standard forms of debt. Japan is also in real danger of bankruptcy.
Meanwhile, New Zealand is seriously considering becoming a part of Australia.
Thanks to Barry Rubin, C. Cantoni, Gaia, Henrik, ICLA, Insubria, JD, KGS, Sean O’Brian, TB, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.
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I hadn't realised that O'Connor had stepped down, so checked up on his successor and found this in wiki:-
In March 2009, he allowed the Catholic chapel at the college to be used for the commemoration of the birth of the Islamic prophet Muhammad with interfaith debate in the college chapel, sparking some local controversy. Nichols defended the location of the celebration, saying through his spokesman, "Christian/Muslim dialogue is an important part of the Catholic Church's agenda."
Checked again and found a post about this by Damian Thompson in the Telegraph online. Some of the comments are.... interesting.
I hadn't realised the Catholic church (in the UK anyway) had gone so far down the multi route. But then, I've only recently started reading about any of this. Better late than never, I guess.
"London’s Metropolitan Police have decided to make an exception to the rules against public disorder and assault, and will allow shoe-throwing by Muslims at demonstrations."
Surreal! It's as if it is beyond ironic... I know it's sad but I laughed with it.
The Saudis are falling over themselves to hate Israel. One cleric wanter to visit Jerusalem and film one of his shows there, but he was banned because no Saudi is allowed to visit Israel. But why was he going to Israel? For interfaith reconciliation? To show Muslims how their countries can thrive? To build bridges between peoples and religions? No, he was going there to claim Jerusalem for Muslims! And they wouldn't let him to even that!
Source
Now the Big Brother society creeps even closer. You see a computer program has been developed that filters out inappropriate pictures and videos. A fair guess on my behalf is that motoons or any other depiction of the mahound itself will constitute as inappropriate. Or what do you think?
There are a few of the factors likely to cause problems on the Internet. Siamak Ayani is the head of a small Swedish technology company that has developed a system that directly looking up inappropriate pictures on different sites and blocks them.
Ten years ago, it was not a major problem with the pictures on the internet. While there were plenty of photos with pornographic, violent and other things that many thought was offensive. But the images were in most cases put there by those who ran the site and there was still some control on what turned up.
Over the past few years has increasingly been on its head. Much of the time we spend on the internet goes to social networking sites like Facebook and video services like Youtube.
Here are the users themselves who create the content. It gives a tremendous diversity but it also opens the door to the ports of images on the websites that most people do not want to see there.
For site owners, it is sometimes a big problem. How to manually go through all the images is an enormous and expensive task. In practice, they often rely on others to sound the alarm if something questionable has been entered.
It was to deal with this problem as six people who read Electrical Engineering at KTH teamed up and formed the company Oculusai. Together they have developed a system that builds on the particular industrial robots recognize different objects.
Their imaging technology simply makes a site owner automatically, as soon as the pictures are posted, find and stop the images you do not want there. Too much nudity or a swastika halt. Now if you want it.
System has attracted attention internationally and has Oculusai including by U.S. IT magazine Red Herring named one of the world's one hundred hottest start-up IT companies.
"We started three years ago, before Facebook became huge. When we talked to some different site owners and realized it was a big problem for them that some users posted offensive images, "says Siamak Ayani, CEO, and founder of the Oculusai.
Since we were mainly on auction sites and dating sites. Error images which can lead to many not want to use the sites as to protect themselves examined some site owners all pictures manually, a costly and time consuming process. In addition, many users are frustrated when their pictures do not come out right away.
-With the social networking sites has become even more difficult. Facebook puts people up 30 million images a day, nearly 1 billion images per month. Then you can not examine everything manually in advance, "says Siamak Ayani.
"There is of course no completely secure system. But it will find the images that obviously should be stopped and may be reluctant to send the manual for further assessment.
The software itself is a prerequisite for the entire work. But it also requires a lot of computing power, a resource that has fallen rapidly in price.
-Much of what we do would not have been possible a few years ago when we did not have as much computing power.
So far the company has mostly sold its technology to dating sites in various parts of the world.
-So far we have spent considerable time developing the product. 2010 will be a very important year for us. Now is the time to expand and gain more customers, "said Siamak Ayani.
<a href="http://www.svd.se/naringsliv/special/innovation/innovation-ny-teknik-satter-p-for-porr-och-vald_4554165.svd>New filter</a>
Robin,
Your URL was malformed (missing closing quote) so I'm redoing it for you.
New filter
Site admins,
Is there any way to make the comment entry box larger? Its ridiculously small and is probably the leading cause of typographic errors here.
Gary --
No, unfortunately not. Blogger controls all such matters. I have no say in it.
Baron,
I had a feeling that was the case since the commenting mechanism appears the same on other Blogger sites.
I don't suppose there's any interest in installing Intense Debate as the commenting mechanism? It supports Blogger (but not Blogger Classic).
You can find a description of its features here.
The comment input and display areas would be set to the column width that contains them. It supports replies and, since it uses Ajax, the page doesn't reload to add a comment.
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