London police launched on 25th of February a new advertising campaign. Posters and TV ads are urging Londoners to turn in people who might be taking pictures of CCTV cameras.

"Thousands of people take photos every day.

What if one of them seems odd ?

Terrorists use surveillance to help plan attacks, taking photos and making notes about security measures like the location of CCTV cameras.If you see someone doing that, we need to know.

Let experienced officers decide what action to take." 

Other posters target households:

"you see hundreds of houses every day. What if one has unusual activities and seems suspicious"

as well as mobile phone users :

"Thousands of people have mobiles. What if someone with several seems suspicious?"

What's going on in London ? Is the Metropolitan police not busy enough ? did they become completely paranoiac ? or do they need some budget increase ?

Where is this so famous British phlegm ?

As a response, many people have already redesigned the posters to point out the absurdity of them. Some samples are available on BoingBoing.

Tags: 2008, advertising, ATT, attack, blog, camera, civil liberties, counterterrorism, CTU, design, february, fon, ia, ict, im, King, lan, launch, location, london, mobile, mobile phone, nomadcom.net, officer, paranoia, PDF, phone, photo, photographers, Photography, picture, police, post, posters, public, security, snitch, suspect, terror, terrorism, uk, USA, user, wp, www, XP

The Musée de l'Elysée, a museum for photography, in Lausanne, Switzerland proposes from February to May an exhibition about "The rapid mutation of amateur photography in the digital age" called "We are all Photographers Now!".

The events wants to be interactive and invites people from all over the World to submit their photos on the exhibition's web site. A selection of pictures received will be publish then on exhibition's walls. Participants will get an email with a new photograph (what museums call an "installation view") with their photo such at it was shown on the galeries of our museum.

The event will explore and try to answer some of the following sensitive issues, such for example :

• Does the digital shift constitute a revolution, or merely an evolution?
• Does the shift represent a real democratization of photography?
• Is citizen photojournalism worthy of its name?
• Does the shift threaten the livelihood of professional photographers in fundamental ways?
• Does the shift represent a shift towards more authenticity or truthfulness — or less?

Sources :  Textually.org, About:Photography

Tags: 2007, api, arc, art, blog, ces, citizen, CTU, digital, elysée, event, example, exhibition, february, Fun, HP, ict, im, install, ITU, lan, lausanne, LED, live, manipulating, MIT, museum, nomadcom.net, Our World, photo, photographers, Photography, photojournalism, picture, sharing, shift, switzerland, threat, USA, web, world, wp, www, XP

Not very well known is the non-french speaking world, Gaston Lagaffe has turned 50 on 28th of February. The office clerk started working for Spirou Magazine in 1957. 

To celebrate this birthday, Mr Freddy Thielemans, mayor of Bruxelles, who looks like Mr De Mesmaeker, has decided to offer a day of free parameters over his the territory, paying respect to Gaston's battle again these "affreux mange-fric".
 

 

Sources:
in english : weborgers, wikipedia,
en français :  official site, special 50 ans, wikipedia,

 

Tags: 2007, 50th birthday, affreux mange fric, art, ATT, blog, ces, cities, clerk, Coup de Coeur, february, free, gaston, gaston lagaffe, HP, ia, im, King, lagaffe, lan, language, menfin, nomadcom.net, Our World, parcmetre, paris, spirou, web, world, wp, www

50 days after an earthquake which damaged under sea telecommunication cables, on February 14th Hong Kong office of the Telecommunications Authority (OFTA) reported that Internet access services in the region are back to their fully capacity. 

"The earthquakes which occurred near Taiwan on December 26, 2006, caused serious damage to six submarine cable systems supporting Hong Kong's external telecommunications services. We are pleased to note that the repair of these cable systems is completed and all our external telecommunications services, including Internet access services, have been fully restored. Our Internet service providers have recovered their external connection capacity back to the normal operational level before the earthquakes," an OFTA spokesman said today (February 14).

Sources : OFTA,  

Tags: -50 days-, 2007, access, air, art, asia, blog, cable, capacity, ces, communication, connection, earthquake, earthquakes, february, ia, internet, internet access, Internet World, lan, nomadcom.net, pair, services, submarine, taiwan, telecom, Telecommunications, undersea, www

Last friday, thai B-list actress Chotiros "Amy" Suriyawong created controversy revealing her full length black evening gown, featuring a slit up to her hip and a 3-inch-wide gap that runs up her torso during  The Thailand National Film Awards. 

On February 14th, the controversy hit the English-language press with a column by Nation editor Tulsathit Taptim, who criticized the dress but really takes to task the hypocritical authorities and executives who have called for punishment (Thammasat University, which Chotiros attends and is by reports an excellent student has taken decision to punish the actress to 15 days of community services). 

While Tulsathit Taptim titles "sexy dress exposed ugly truths about society's hypocrisy", I wonder if such big noise is not made to divert public's attention from more serious subjects such Suvarnabhumi airport debacle (cracks on runways, corruption allegations, flooding, etc..) or the Bang Na-Bang Pakong expressway scandal, among many others.

Indecency is not exclusively related to Indecent exposure.

Sources : Rotten Tomatoes,  The Nation,
More Chotiros' pictures here

Tags: 2007, actress, air, airport, Amy, ATT, award, awards, Bangkok, blog, ces, chotiros, Chotiros Suriyawong, community, controversy, Coup de Gueule, CTU, dress, editor, february, gap, HP, hypocrisy, ia, ict, im, lan, language, LED, list, nomadcom.net, Our World, picture, post, press, public, services, sexy, Suphannahong Awards, Suvarnabhumi Airport, Thailand, university, wp, www, XP

On 26th of December 2006 a 7.2 strong earthquake in Southern Taiwan damaged several telecommunication submarine cables linking China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, among others, to overseas telecommunication networks, including Internet backbone. 

More than a month later, repair work is not done yet due to bad weather conditions & poor equipment. Customers, Telecom companies & media start to express their discontent."It will be a long time before Internet access is fully recovered between Asian and the US as workers are using "technologies of the 19th century to solve problems of the 21st century," Sina.com said today

According Shanghai Daily, quoting Global Marine General Manager, none of the optical fiber in 4000m deep damaged cables have been fully repaired yet. Today's report says that work should be completed by January 30th (some other sources say end of February). Currently up to 70% of traffic from mainland China has been re-routed using alternative pathways such as satellite links, which are slow, expensive and unstable compared with cable-based connections.

This remind us the loss of satellite Intelsat IS-804 in January 2005 which left 10 countries of the Pacific rim without any communication links for days, as no backup was available) and forced 8 others to switch to their backup systems. 

Such events clearly show us what happens when main overseas communications links go down and how weak, when exists, are fallback systems.

Just imagine if such disruptions were man-made in order to turn the world back to the "telegraph age"….

More about : Reuters, Shanghai Daily, Heise Online.

Tags: 2007, access, air, art, asia, blog, cable, ces, communication, connection, connections, customer, disruption, earthquake, event, february, geography, global, HP, ia, im, internet, internet access, Internet World, King, lan, map, network, nomadcom.net, online, pair, press, problems, satellite, sco, space, story, submarine, taiwan, telecom, Telecommunications, traffic, world, wp, www, XP