Palm Pre cameo on Dutch carrier Hi's website much ado about nothing, says spokesman
[Thanks, Wesley]
netherlands posts
We've seen in-wheel motors in the past, but implementing the technology is not without its share of challenges. On one hand, it's difficult to coordinate motors that have no mechanical connection to each other, while on the other hand electric motors are designed to spin much faster than the wheels, in order to generate the desired power -- adding complexity while decreasing efficiency. A company in the Netherlands called e-Traction may have those problems licked, and now they've developed a diesel-electric hybrid bus that they say offers fifty percent better fuel economy over existing diesel buses. The vehicle also employs a GPS-based system that switches off the diesel engine entirely while operating in areas with dense traffic, reducing emissions. The company has been awarded contracts to retrofit seven commercial buses with the technology, and hopes to branch out soon into garbage trucks -- because nothing says 'green' like hauling junk off to a landfill.
If you don't like spoilers then look away, now -- seems Forbes has all the details related to iRex's 22 September announcement. The Netherlands-based group is set to release an evolved iLiad e-reader called the iRex Reader 1000. Like Plastic Logic, iRex is targeting business users with its new 10.2-inch E-Ink e-reader able to display "any file format" including PDF, Word, and HTML-rendered documents -- sorry, no video, no color. The Reader 1000 brings a stylus with touch-screen for making notes and markups for up to 80 hours on a single charge. The base Reader 1000 is boldly expected to start at $650 (compared to the $359, 6-inch Kindle). It then ramps to $750 for the writable screen version before topping out at $850 to add WiFi, Bluetooth, and 3G data connection. Now get to it CIOs, we suspect you'll need some time to argue the case why some personnel require a laptop, smartphone, and e-reader to get through the day.
April 2008. That's the date when the notoriously progressive Dutch government goes open source. The plan was approved unanimously yesterday in a meeting of two parliamentary commissions. The policy dictates that government organizations at the national level must be ready to save documents in the Open Document Format (ODF) by April, and the state and local level by 2009. Use of proprietary software and file formats from the likes of Microsoft will have to be justified under the new policy. The government expects to save $8.8 million a year on city housing registers alone by making the switch. Tough week, eh Microsoft? You'll have to get your OpenDocument plug-ins for MS Office ISO approved on the quick if you want to avoid further trouble.
Last we heard from the seemingly endless Nokia / Qualcomm kvetch-fest, the former company was soliciting the ITC's help in barring US Qualcomm chip imports, but for those wishing on their lucky stars that this spat would simply vanish into the night, we've got marginally good news. Apparently, a trio of judges in a Dutch court ruled that it didn't have jurisdiction to rule on the phone maker's claims outside of The Netherlands, thus, the patent-licensing case against Qualcomm was dismissed. Aside from claiming that its "jurisdiction was limited," the court also stated that Nokia's gripe was "too broad to give a reasoned decision." Of note, a German court also dismissed the case just last month on "similar grounds," but if you were counting on Nokia to just take the news in stride, we doubt you'll be pleased to hear that it's already "considering if it will appeal the decision."
The Dutch Ministry of Justice recently announced that special knee locks to prevent prisoner escapes could be tested later this year if parliament gives its approval. In the Netherlands, a "furlough" system is used to gradually reintroduce prisoners that have committed serious offenses back to society: instead of letting prisoners out when their term ends, they are accompanied by a guard to visit relatives, and gradually given more freedom until it is deemed that they are ready for unsupervised parole. Unfortunately, there have been several cases where prisoners on leave committed serious offenses like rape and murder by slipping away from their guards. The purpose of this test is to see whether a knee locking system -- which prevents a prisoner from moving if they move a certain distance away from their guard -- can prevent these kind of unfortunate cases. As draconian as this system may sound, it's probably the most humane of all the solutions that were looked at: prisoners could potentially have had to wear gadgets that gave them electric shocks or injected drugs to prevent them from escaping. The best part about this whole case is what justice ministry spokesman Wim van der Weegen compared the system to: illegally parked cars. Probably not the best analogy he could have used -- badly parked car = potentially inconvenient. Escaped prisoner = potentially capable of murder -- but we'll give Wim the benefit of the doubt this time, and mark it up as lost in translation.








