July 3, 2011

Amsterdam parking rates slashed

Filed under: Automobiles by Branko Collin @ 12:29 pm

Amsterdam is the most expensive city in the world to park in. The city’s policy of driving car owners away from the centre by making their stay too expensive seems to be so successful that now an operator of private car parks has started slashing its rates.

In a bid to lure customers away from the competition P1 Parking has lowered its daily rate from 55 euro to 20 euro. The only snag is that you have to make reservations at least two in days in advance.

Competitor Q-Park and others are studying their options. Bloodthirsty financial news site Z24 is already announcing a price war.

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July 2, 2011

Dutch parodies of famous album covers

Filed under: Music by Branko Collin @ 7:36 pm

As you may have read, after the Rutte government attacked “entarte Kunst” it is now promoting “Blut und Boden” music. Dutchnews reported yesterday that “MPs on Thursday evening voted in favour of a quota for Dutch language music on Radio 2, the public broadcaster which focuses on popular music. The motion, drawn up by Martin Bosma from the anti-Islam PVV, requires programmers to make sure 35% of the music played on Radio 2 between 07.00 and 19.00 hours was produced in the Netherlands.”

The folks at the Amazing Retecool blog have used their regular Photo Fuck Friday to try and imagine what famous record covers would look like if all music had to be in Dutch. Shown here are Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the Netherlands by Ohjajoh and Foreigner’s Double Passport by Gelul.

Meanwhile, Radio 2 have announced that they have no intention of adhering to any quotas, NRC reports. Two weeks ago minister Marja van Bijsterveldt announced that public broadcasters will have to take cuts of up to 127 million euro.

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July 1, 2011

British criminals big fans of Amsterdam

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 11:03 pm


First, British students who apparently were interested in studying in the Netherlands and now the media tells us of wanted British criminals enjoying the good life in our wee country, mainly Amsterdam because it kinda looks like back home.

“In the past three years, 83 British fugitives – 10 of them wanted for murder – have been arrested in the Netherlands. But the Dutch police are getting good at catching these people and sending them back to the UK. They don’t want them here.”

Well duh! Of course we don’t want criminals here per se, silly journalist. Amsterdam sports some Irish pubs, well known food and clothing chains, and an overwhelming amount of English (Dunglish), let alone good weed and whores. ‘Costa del Crime’ they call it. What’s next?

(Links: badnewsfromthenetherlands and uk.news.yahoo.com)

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June 30, 2011

Amsterdam roller derby team’s first ever bout

Filed under: Dutch first,Sports by Orangemaster @ 12:03 pm

Back in January, we told you how the originally American all-female sport roller derby was taking off in the Netherlands. Now, the Amsterdam Derby Dames, one of the Netherlands’ eight teams (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht, Eindhoven, Enschede, Arnhem, Groningen and Limburg), will be playing its first ever bout (official competition) in Germany against the Devil Dolls Essen team of the Ruhrpott Roller Girls league.

The moment everyone has been waiting for has finally arrived: the Amsterdam Derby Dames will be playing their first official bout! Your dames are busy forming the first official team to represent the Amsterdam Derby Dames league and training hard. We’re so excited, we want to bring everyone along with us. Friends, family, loved ones, supporters, fans. We want you there! And what better way to get everyone there than to organize transportation for everyone? Well, that’s exactly what we would like to do.

There is a sign up form if you want to ride the ADD bus, but you absolutely have to fill in the form (form link here) so that they have an idea of how many people might be interested.

(Disclaimer: Orangemaster, aka Nasty Moves #76, is a member of the Amsterdam Derby Dames. Photo of mixed Dutch team scrimmage (unofficial competition) in Antwerp, Belgium)

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June 29, 2011

Six things you should know about the Dutch cookie law

Filed under: IT by Branko Collin @ 8:12 am

There seems to be a lot of misinformation going around about the fresh Dutch (Internet) cookie law, so Internet lawyer Arnoud Engelfriet set out to dispel the myths in a few excellent articles.

1. First this. The Dutch call their cookie law ‘cookiewet’ instead of ‘koekjeswet’ in spite of the Dutch origins of the English word. (The oo sound is spelled oe in Dutch.)

Says Arnoud (and I paraphrase):

2. Other ways than invasive pop-ups are OK to ask permission to plant cookies. A checkbox on a profile page, a central register, and even browser settings can be used to get and store permission. You are even allowed to use cookies for which you did not ask permission to store the fact that you got permission for other cookies.

(more…)

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June 28, 2011

Data centres in churches kept cool, churchgoers kept warm

Filed under: Design,Religion,Sustainability,Technology by Orangemaster @ 3:37 pm

Warming big old churches and cathedrals are a costly affair in the Netherlands. And when it’s too cold, sometimes they even cancel services. Sustainable consumer platform Nudge in Haarlem held a contest called ‘Holy Warming’ to collect ideas about how to warm up Sint Bavo Cathedral in a sustainable way . The winner was ‘Church on a cloud’: heat the Cathedral by putting a data centre in the cellar. The Cathedral keeps the racks cool and the computers keeps the flock warm. Amen!

(Link: bright.nl, Photo of the Saint Gertrude cathedral in Utrecht by Wikimedia user pepijntje, some rights reserved)

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June 27, 2011

Rotterdam plans to give away free bikes from stash

Filed under: Bicycles by Orangemaster @ 12:53 pm

The city of Rotterdam is currently looking into the possibility of giving people whose bikes were stolen a new bike — well no, ‘another’ bike, one that was ‘towed away’. Illegally parked bikes (yes, if you park it in the wrong place because the racks are too full or whatever, the city takes them away) are to be re-used and given to people who had their bikes stolen.

The odd reason behind this move is to encourage bike use (do we really need to do that?) and help out the ‘victims’ of theft. Very nice spin, PR people. The goal is actually to do something with all the bikes not picked up by their owners taking up space in some Rotterdam city depot somewhere.

Don’t people whose bikes were stolen just grab, steal, borrow or use another one? How many stories have I heard about how time-consuming and complicated it is to find out where your bike was ‘impounded’, never mind having to pay like 50 euro to get it back? What if I had my bike stolen in, let’s say, Gouda, and I needed a new bike?

Shame on you media for buying into this ‘let’s make Rotterdam a less scary place to live in’ when it was crowned for the fifth time most dangerous Dutch city to live in. Your Dutch city really goes downhill when you actually need PR to encourage bike use in one of the most bike-friendly countries in the world.

(Link: blikopnieuws)

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June 26, 2011

Following your competitor’s Twitter followers is now legal

Filed under: Technology by Branko Collin @ 3:52 pm

Two weeks ago the court in Amsterdam held that trying to get your competitor’s Twitter followers to follow you is indeed perfectly legal.

Mediavacature.nl (which means ‘mediajob.nl’) had asked the court to stop mediavacatures.nl from abusing their trademark. The court ruled that trying to hijack your competitor’s followers is not illegal per se (PDF, Dutch):

4.10 Twitter

The defendants admit that the Twitter account @mediavacatures is being used to follow customers of the plaintiff on Twitter. Twitter is all about following and being followed. Furthermore all data on Twitter are public. Following the followers of a competitor can therefore not be seen as an illegal act per se. What is more, profiting of somebody else’s product, effort, knowledge or insight is not illegal by itself, even if this harms the other party. This only becomes illegal if a Twitter user (intentionally or otherwise) causes confusion with the general public.

Unsurprisingly the court ended up finding for the plaintiff, but the defendant did not have to turn over their Twitter account, domain name and brand, as they were no longer allowed to keep using them anyway. The defendants call themselves MV Jobs Media now.

At Arnoud Engelfriet’s blog somebody claiming to work for Media Vacature (plaintiff) pointed out that the Twitter claim was just a small part of their set of claims.

(Illustration: Twitter logo. Link: De Pers.)

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June 25, 2011

Masturbating motorist almost frightens cyclist to death

Filed under: Bicycles,General by Branko Collin @ 1:44 pm

A fourteen year old girl on a bicycle got so scared by a man in a car next to her masturbating that she took off and almost got hit by a passing bus last Wednesday, the Den Bosch police report.

The man was in his early twenties, drove a black Seat Leon, and was of a skinny build. He wore a white vest with a broad, horizontal stripe. He had short, blond, curly hair and a pair of the most remarkably bright blue eyes. And those are all the details about him we got.

The incident took place last Wednesday around 10 p.m. at the intersection of the Zevenhontseweg and the Eekbrouwersweg in Den Bosch. Two girls were waiting to cross the intersection when a car pulled up next to them up. The occupant was watching the girls while he was pleasuring himself.

It’s not clear if the police have looked at video imagery of the bus’ on-board security cameras, but they sure would like to lay their hands on the perpetrator.

(Photo of the alleged intersection by Google Streetview.)

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June 24, 2011

University of Groningen gaining popularity with Brits

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 2:21 pm

While the slow Dutch students run off to Flanders to finish their studies, the British students in question don’t necessary plan to study up north in Groningen, but their application numbers have gone from 38 to about 100. Big whoop? Not if you can study at a good university for 2,000 euro instead of the 10,000 (9,000 pounds) they will soon have to pay in England. According to the BBC, tuition fees in England will go up from 6,000 to 9,000 pounds as of 2012.

Back in 2010 Maastricht University was busy cashing in on Brits who failed their A-level exams (British entry exams for higher education) by offering degrees in English in eight subjects, with the cost of tuition about half that charged by British universities. The idea behind Maastricht University’s move was to tap into the huge mismatch between demand and supply in the UK in general, amounting to some 150,000-200,000 students missing out on a place.

(Link: rtvnoord.nl)

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