Veni | Вени

Urban Legends is the place to visit before you decide to believe one of the rumours that circulate on the Internet. Did you know that camel-hunting is specifically prohibited by law in Arizona? Or that a condemned prisoner is legally entitled to go free if the first attempt to execute him fails? Check to see if it’s true.

Jaanus is a cool Estonian, one of the peope behind the technologies that run Skype.
I use Skype a lot (not as much as I use my SIP), and some of their features are really good. Well, the free phone calls within the US until Dec. 31st 2006 were also good feature.

Joi writes about the new chairman position he takes. You could read more about Creative Commons or see what Creative Commons does in Bulgaria.

I am happy that both Joi and Larry Lessig made it to Bulgaria in the last 18 months. Their presentations and experience are inspiration for lots of Bulgarians.

I don’t even want to comment on that terrible news. The whole case lasts now for 8 years, and it may take some more. You may wish to read some of the responses worldwide not only to the news of the day, but also to the history. Check the UC Berkeley Bulgaria Club.

See what some of the key people have to say on the verdict:

Bulgarian President Parvanov and Prime Minister Stanishev:
official statement (brief / full text, doc file)
video from both (11 Mb, .wmv)

BBC: In quotes: Reaction to Libya HIV trial verdict

Reuters.

CNN: Libya to execute HIV medics

UPDATE from 18:48 Sofia time
The reaction worldwide is now basically in the same direction. The nurses are innocent. The Court did not take into account a number of evidences from leading world-known scientists, and the death sentence is a political decision, not a cort one. Reuters, International Herald Tribune (they remind of the accusation that the Bulgarian nurses have infected the kids, because they were CIA agents!), and Forbes, among others continue the coverage. Until now, few hours after the verdict, there are more than 500 publications on this topic. Just Google with key words.

I am not talking about SIP, Skype or other similar technologies.
I am talking about Future Phone. You dial the access numbers, located in the USA. They are +1-712-945-1111 or +1-712-858-8883, and you can then place a phone call – FREE OF CHARGE - to any number worldwide.
Well, Bulgaria was on the list for some time, but now is down :-(
Still, its’ good for ANTARCTICA, ARGENTINA, AUSTRALIA, AUSTRIA, BANGLADESH, BELGIUM, BRAZIL, CANADA, CHILE | CYPRUS | CZECH REPUBLIC, DENMARK | ESTONIA | FRANCE, GERMANY | GREECE | GUAM, HUNGARY | ICELAND | IRELAND, ISRAEL | ITALY | LUXEMBOURG, MALAYSIA | NETHERLANDS, NEW ZEALAND | NORWAY | PANAMA, PERU | POLAND | PORTUGAL, PUERTO RICO | RUSSIA | SINGAPORE, SOUTH KOREA | SPAIN | SWEDEN, SWITZERLAND | THAILAND, TURKEY | UNITED KINGDOM, VATICAN CITY | VENEZUELA.

Sound good, but there’s a catch? There isn’t. It’s working, and it’s free. Just like 1-800-FREE-411 is a free directory service in the USA (if you just dial 411 from your phone, you will pay typically $ 1 or more). The catch there is there’s a 20-seconds advertisment, played over the phone. Worth waiting in order to save a dollar or two.

My colleague Patrick Vande Walle writes about it.

The French newspaper Le Monde reports that the incumbent operator France Télécom will start deploying 100 Mbit/s Internet connections to the home in the Paris area, starting next March. Its competitor, Free, has similar projects.

In Bulgaria, as we know, the high-speed access is 100 Mbps for the end-users for quite a while. Interesting – the richest country of the EU – Luxembourg – considers 3 Mbps “high-speed”, and the poorest – Bulgaria – considers 100 Mbps already as an old technology, and users are looking for 1000 Mbps.

Last month I wrote about the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) involvement in the Net Neutrality discussion.

The FTC announced couple of weeks ago about a workshop to take place in February in Washington, DC. It may be worth going, or at least watching it via the webcast. Here’s more from the press release.

The Federal Trade Commission will host a two-day public workshop on “Broadband Connectivity Competition Policy” in Washington, DC on February 13 and 14, 2007. The workshop will bring together experts from business, government, and the technology sector, consumer advocates, and academics to explore competition and consumer protection issues relating to broadband Internet access, including so-called “network neutrality.”
Read more…

I’ve read in the Thursday edition of the Sega daily an article by a colleague – Krassimir Karakachanov, leader of the VMRO political party. The headline is “How long are we going to support the anti-Bulgarian elit in Macedonia?” I wrote the newspaper the following letter (published in the issue from Saturday, Dec. 16, and translated with some edits below):

According to Krassi, there’s an anti-Bulgarian campaign, that has started with the attempts to register OMO-ilinden-pirin (another political party). But isn’t it logical that the people, registering the OMO-party, actually don’t want it to exist? Is it really so difficult to find 500 people to sign in declarations for establishment of a party? It’s not difficult, of course. But if a party is registered, and exists, it has to participate in elections, and when it loses them, that will be its end. That’s why it seems more important for this party not to be registered, to stay with some irregularities, which will hardly be fixed. The interests not to register OMO-ilinden, are not the Bulgarian state’s interests. To say that the court rejects the application because the party was of the so-called Macedonian minority (wheter it exists or not, is a different question), is just silly. But the Skopie media do the same like their colleagues in Bulgaria – they make stupid noise. What could you sell better to a country like Macedonia with serious economic problem and 40 % unemployment, but nationalism?
The history should be left for discssions to the historians. The great friend of my Grandpa – prof. Dimitar Gotsev – already had the opportunity to discuss the history with his colleagues from Skopie. Let them sit down and discuss as much as they wish who was stealing history from whom.
Read more…

Creative Commons turns four on Dec. 16th.
As Larry Lessig says, “on December 16, 2002, in San Francisco, we launched this licensing project. Within a year, there were a million licenses. Within two years, 12m. Within three years, around 40m. At four, Google reports us close to 150 million licenses.”

Bulgaria is part of the big CC family – thanks to ISOC-Bulgaria, and to several people, who made the CC possible! Special thanks go to Dessi Pefeva, who was the project lead on CC.

My friend Ethan writes a lot about Africa. It’s good to check his blog regularly.