Independent Kosovo - the "thank you" of several world countries to Serbia

Regard this as a "my opinion" post before spraying ethnicism over it.
The day of independence of Kosovo and Metohija (17th February) is a day that every Serbian will remember, definitely more if they have lived the terrifying moments when the sirens go wild, when everyone tries to save - or better yet grab - whatever possible while the NATO began dreadful bombing over cities, military and general infrastructure buildings as well as civilians.

I will not argue the fact that both sides suffered, but in the end, no-one respected to see both sides, just what the CNN and all other western propaganda showed.

I would like to list several good links to show you my point of view:
1) What Serbia did for the world? I'll take you back several decades - Heroic actions of the Serbian people during World War II:
http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/www.byzantinesacredart.com/blog/2006/11/heroic-serbia-wwii.html

2) What happened after WWII, how it reached to demographic changes which favoured Albanian ethnics and imperialistic ideas of a "Great Albania"?
A Czech TV documentary answers most of these questions (mostly one-sided stories, but do see the video):
- http://www.apatin-city.com/4um/index.php?topic=4964.0
- http://serbblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/brave-czechs-brave-film-stolen-kosovo.html
Note: They're not my uploads. Look for "Stolen Kosovo video english" in Google if this isn't available.

Amongst others, you will see:
- French Foreign minister Bernard Kushner, Hashim Tachi, NATO officers and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).
- Madeleine Albright exchanging how-do-you-do's.
- Havier Solana disturbingly nodding to a woman that was forced away from her home.
- Atrocities.

http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/www.byzantinesacredart.com/blog/2007/03/nato-aggression-anniversary.html

3) The thank you for Serbia's heroism during WWII? NATO bombing and proclaiming Serbians as vicious murderers.

Kofi Annan endorsed NATO bombing in former Yugoslavia:
http://link.history.com/services/link/bcpid1681730307/bclid1729287264/bctid1601261895
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/un/timeline/timeline5b.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/special_report/1999/03/99/kosovo_strikes/318104.stm

It is indeed tragic that diplomacy has failed, but there are times when the use of force may be legitimate in the pursuit of peace," Annan notes, but emphasizes the Security Council should have been consulted.

(For the "diplomacy has failed" argument, see "More links" below)

4) NATO's "oops" bombings, accidentally targetting not only foreign embassies, but civilians as well: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/340966.stm
See (2) if you think you can handle watching the holocausts (the bus over the bridge, the village).

An article quoting an eye-witness at the bazaar market in Niš NATO bombed:
http://www.haroldpinter.org/home/florence.html

5) The final outcome?
- Billions of dollars in damages.
- Cultural damages, including churches:
http://www.international.icomos.org/risk/world_report/2000/yugos_2000.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7249034.stm
- Blood-lust and monuments of historic importance destroyed:
http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/www.nato-tribunal.de/varvarin/photo_documentation.htm

More links:
Albright's "Take it or leave it" plan - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eo1jJkIfWbc
Albright & Kosovo - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/special_report/1999/03/99/kosovo_strikes/315053.stm

NATO bombings operation:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Allied_Force
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Bombardment_in_the_Kosovo_War
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legitimacy_of_NATO_bombing_of_Yugoslavia
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/nato_targets/default.stm

"Humanitarian" military intervention:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanitarian_intervention
- http://www.fpif.org/briefs/vol5/v5n01hmi.html
- http://www.usip.org/pubs/peaceworks/pwks45.pdf

Other:
- http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/www.cpa.org.au/garchive/960yug.htm
- http://www.unmikonline.org/DPI/PressRelease.nsf/0/BA2CB1DFE04FAFD5C12571790054E673/$FILE/pr1555.pdf
- http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/yugoslavia/military_situation.html
- http://www.againstbombing.org/WPworldreaction.htm

As a final note, I'd like to quote this site:

Certainly the atrocious crimes of the Serbs against Kosovars should not be tolerated, but any child knows two wrongs do not make a right. The rule of law also needs to be made universal by democratic processes. Individuals must be held accountable for actions that violate the rights of others. But to use the blunt instruments of war to punish whole nations and peoples for the crimes of their leaders and supporters tends to escalate the violence and the crimes.

Last, but not least, I would like to personally condemn the single-sided independence of Kosovo, the illegal approval and the ignorance of several international laws. The other thing I would like, is simply that Ms Madeleine Albright and Havier Solana apprehend the Serbian language and try to live in the Kosovo they've so desired to create by force - without their bodyguards and escorts that is, to see just how things actually are, behind the cameras, and during the terrifying nights of raids and attacks towards the few remaining serbians in Kosovo & Metohija.

Bigger is better.. computer-wise!

Bigger is better when it comes to bits, and a really small difference to the bits addresses can make an enormous difference, although there might be some physical restrictions in order to realise some dreamy performances and capacities.

After reading this post, a very, very informative post about getting your 32-bit Ubuntu to work with more than 4GiB memory, I got a question born.. so how is all this limited? I soon dug a bit deeper about 32-bit and 64-bit differences (reading freak that I am) and got to this wikipedia article.

Logically back in the 1980's, when the first personal computers were being developed, the processors were 16-bit and 24-bit. Their memory limitation is easy to be calculated: 2¹⁶ (or 2^16, a short form without the use of superscript), likewise for 24-bit processors - they could support up to 2^24 bytes of RAM memory, so we have up to 64KiB (kibibytes) and 16MiB (mebibytes) RAM limitation respectively. Then came the 32-bit processors which could hold up to 4GiB of memory addresses.

In the meantime, Intel developed an extension called "Physical Address Extension", which in short terms it allowed 32-bit processors to use up to 36 bits, i.e. 2^36 = 64GiB (Gibibytes). A very vast improvement!

With the appearance of 64-bit processors it is possible to virtually use a really huge amount of RAM of 2^64 = 16 EiB (exbibytes or "exabytes"), but nowadays the problem is physical, as we can't produce such big amounts of memory - yet! Maybe in the near future, who knows. All I know is that I won't be the first person to test this exa-beast :)

To sum up, bytes do matter - vast colossal difference for just a few more bytes!

Note: During the writing of this post, I've learnt about the difference of Gigabyte (1000^3) and Gibibyte (1024^3), so I decided to respect the 2,4% difference and the correct use of GiB and KiB respectively using the IEC standard instead of SI :)

History: Toe-tankhamun - World's earliest prosthetic body part?

Egyptians did some fascinating stuff in the past; Built pyramids, were a prosperous and mighty nation, tried to keep the body of their dead in the best shape they could. Well there's another thing they could be accredited: a toe (of Toetankhamun ?) might give them the title of having the world's earliest functional prosthetic body part.

You'll have to admit it was something expected, since a nation that advanced had the wealth and the knowledge to attempt such an action. Genetic malformations are a natural phenomenon, since genes can be wrongly placed, replaced, removed or even drifted during cell division (hail to evolution). We've come a long way from apes to homo sapiens sapiens species. It could also be an amputation because of an infection gone worse, which of course could entitle the "Pharaoh" as defective and unable to run a kingdom without a toe (Hey, I'm just making this up! Sounds impossible, but everyone knows what religion and demagogy power can achieve).

More info here.

Today: Failed Hitler's assassination / Turkish invasion of Cyprus / Apollo 11 Moon landing

1944 - World War II: Adolf Hitler survives an assassination attempt (known as the July 20 Plot) led by German Army Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg.




1974 - Turkish occupation of Cyprus: Forces from Turkey invade Cyprus after a "coup d' etat", organised by the dictator of Greece, against president Makarios. NATO's Council praises the US and the United Kingdom for attempts to settle the dispute. Syria and Egypt put their militaries on alert.




1969 - Apollo Program: Apollo 11 lands on the Moon.

DST and Energy conservation: Why are we setting the clock back and forth

Daylight saving time (DST) is typical for North America and Europe, whereas the rest of the world nations do not use it anymore (or they've never used it). For over two centuries, "nations around the world use a variation of his concept to conserve energy and more fully enjoy the benefits of daylight" (quote).
Benjamin Franklin is credited with advancing the concept of daylight-saving time. He wanted to save candle consuming, therefore in 1784 he wrote a paper expressing the virtues of extending daylight. William Willett was actually the one who invented DST in 1905. As always, the world "wasn't ready"; Germany, and its allies were the first to use DST some 10 years later.
The thing is, one hour won't conserve much energy. People should learn that computers turned on and do nothing costs money to the person paying electricity and just reduces the world's energy reserves. TheRegister.com has several articles about it (and company green scores too!). I quote an article:

After all, research from 1E, the software company that developed the NightWatchman software, has found that computers left on overnight are responsible for the emission of around 700,000 tonnes of CO₂ every year.

You can see a list of countries/capital cities and their time here - it also displays detail DST events as well as other time/date/temperature interesting data. Also, checkout some energy conservation tips.

Today: Apollo 11 liftoff!

July 16 1969 - Apollo program: Apollo 11 launches from Cape Kennedy, Florida and will become the first manned space mission to land on the moon.
One of the historic "points of importance" as I like to call them. It's not about the actual moon landing, but it's about conquering. Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin are the conquerors of a future new world, a place where people will live, stay, work, reproduce, keep the human race going.

Sometimes events seem to surreal, unreal, or even impossible to predict and/or achieve. Apollo 11 is one of those events that are real, for which people will talk about for generations to come. I'm not talking about which nation sailed first to space, because we all know that Russians were the first to do that. The very action of space exploring is something that amuses me, and makes me really curious about the future.
If only I had a time machine to browse the future...

The pictures belong to NASA (had to say this, so they won't start sueing)

Today: Coup d'état in Cyprus

July 15th, 1974 - In Nicosia, Cyprus, Greek-sponsored nationalists launch a coup d'état, deposing President Makarios and installing Nikos Sampson as Cypriot president.

It's a tad risky to use Wikipedia for such an argumentable event, but this is how things went: Someone liked power, and since in Greece the nationalists wanted to "spread" (my opinion), they took down the president (Makarios) and installed Nikos Sampson. This was a minor event, but 5 days later, at the 20th of the same month, Turkish invasion of Cyprus took place. Allegedly (really sorry, but I'm not a follower, just a thinker), Turkish troops were there to protect the Turkish-Cypriots from some interracial disputes that were going on since 1963. A proposal to change 13 constitutional amendments by Makarios shook things up with this proposal as a background reason.

Looks like every big nation wants a "part in the tango"; tango because, whereas some 3-4 nations fight over Cyprus, there's only place for two communities: Greek-Cypriots and Turkish-Cypriots.

A real solution to the Cyprus problem will not be given by strangers. If you ask me, both communities should sit down and settle their differences; and I mean the communities, not their drunk presidents (yeah monsieurs representatives of the both communities, I've been watching your zivania and your whiskeys "as seen on TV"). Ask the people what they want, tell them what the other side wants, let them discuss, dispute, fight each other and finally come to a common ground.