A human being is a part of the whole. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison. (Albert Einstein) All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom. (Albert Einstein) After a certain high level of technical skill is achieved, science and art tend to coalesce in esthetics, plasticity, and form. The greatest scientists are artists as well. (Albert Einstein)

Hey everybody, just so you know: I'll be one of the nerds at HAR2009 as of tomorrow.

Some lunatic judge here in Amsterdam decided to block access to a website for all Dutch users. Boy is he going to regret this ridiculously useless verdict! Ignoring the sheer technical impossibility of enforcing such 'boycot', let's see what lies at the heart of the verdict: A private Dutch organisation (Stichting BREIN) managed to persuade legal authorities to block access to a bunch of servers in Sweden. In other words, if you're in The Netherlands, private organisations, with their own commercial agendas and for-profit priorities, now have control over what you can see and do online. Today it's blocking access to a site whose legality is questioned, tomorrow it's websites that criticize powerful corporations or question government policies. Yet another very dangerous step towards full internet censorship where private organisations and uninformed lawmakers control the information we receive. The free spirit of the internet is being destroyed, one lawsuit at a time, and taking its place is a bland corporate-controlled regulated monstrosity, of which the information we're allowed to consume is sanitized and policed beforehand, by strangers, whose judgement needs to be accepted by all, blindly. Let's see what the results of this will be: - Knowing the Dutch, they…