Coconut Revolution (Bougainville: Our Island, Our Fight)

This is an incredible modern-day story of a native peoples' victory over Western globalization.

Sick of seeing their environment ruined and their people exploited by the Panguna Mine, the Pacific island of Bougainville rose up against the giant mining corporation, Rio Tinto Zinc. The newly formed Bougainville Revolutionary Army began fighting with bows and arrows and sticks and stones against a heavily armed adversary. In an attempt to put down the rebellion the Papua New Guinean Army swiftly established a gunboat blockade around the island.
But with no shipments allowed in or out, how did new electricity networks spring up on the island? And how were the people of Bougainville able to drive around the island without any source of petrol or diesel?

Watch as the world's first eco-revolution unfolds within the blockade. A David and Goliath story for the 21st century. A multi-award winning documentary

Behaviour-Driven Development

BehaviourDrivenDevelopment - Behaviour-Driven Development

Behaviour-Driven Development (BDD) is an evolution in the thinking behind TestDrivenDevelopment and AcceptanceTestDrivenPlanning.

It brings together strands from TestDrivenDevelopment and DomainDrivenDesign into an integrated whole, making the relationship between these two powerful approaches to software development more evident.

It aims to help focus development on the delivery of prioritised, verifiable business value by providing a common vocabulary (also referred to as a UbiquitousLanguage) that spans the divide between Business and Technology.

It presents a framework of activity based on three core principles:

1.Business and Technology should refer to the same system in the same way - ItsAllBehaviour
2.Any system should have an identified, verifiable value to the business - WheresTheBusinessValue
3.Up-front analysis, design and planning all have a diminishing return - EnoughIsEnough

Beyond Test Driven Development: Behaviour Driven Development

Beyond Test Driven Development: Behaviour Driven Development

Google TechTalks March 17, 2006 Dave Astels Dave Astels (co-author of "A Practical Guide to eXtreme Programming" and author of Jolt Award winning "Test-driven Development: A Practical Guide") has over 2 decades of experience in the software field, most of that involved with object-oriented technologies and techniques. Dave has been studying, practicing, teaching, evangelising, and coaching XP and Agile Processes since 1998. Dave's experience ranges from embedded process control systems to consumer products (both consumer electronics and shrinkwrapped software) to energy trading systems. Dave is an independant software consultant specializing in the areas of agile process, programming practices, and object design/architecture. Dave is one of the thought leaders in the area of TDD, and now BDD. ABSTRACT Test Driven Development (TDD) has become quite well known. Many developers are getting benefit from the practice. But it is possible that we can get even more value. A new practice is getting attention these days: Behaviour Driven Development (BDD). BDD removes all vestiges of testing and instead focuses on specifying the behaviour desired in the system being built. This talk will be focus on Ruby and will introduce a new BDD framework: rSpec. The ideas, however, are language independent.

The Brain that changes itself

Amazing video about the capacity of the brain to "rewire" itself. The player is quite simply shite, but it is definitely worth watching. You can find the video here.

high quality free people search engines

25 Free People Search Engines to find Anyone in the World | FinderMind

high quality free people search engines to help you reconnect with friends, family, school friends or any other person from your past.

Illegal downloads and dodgy figures

Bad Science: Illegal downloads and dodgy figures | Ben Goldacre | Comment is free | The Guardian

You are killing our creative industries. "Downloading costs billions," said the Sun. "MORE than 7 million Brits use illegal downloading sites that cost the economy billions of pounds, government advisers said today. Researchers found more than a million people using a download site in ONE day and estimated that in a year they would use £120bn worth of material."
...

So where do these notions of so many billions in lost revenue come from?
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The report was commissioned by a government body called Sabip, the Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property. On the billions lost it says: "Estimates as to the overall lost revenues if we include all creative industries whose products can be copied digitally, or counterfeited, reach £10bn (IP rights, 2004), conservatively, as our figure is from 2004, and a loss of 4,000 jobs."
...
I hunted down the full Ciber documents, found the references section, and followed the web link, which led to a 2004 press release from a private legal firm called Rouse who specialise in intellectual property law. This press release was not about the £10bn figure. It was, in fact, a one-page document, which simply welcomed the government setting up an intellectual property theft strategy. In a short section headed "background", among five other points, it says: "Rights owners have estimated that last year alone counterfeiting and piracy cost the UK economy £10bn and 4,000 jobs." An industry estimate, as an aside, in a press release. Genius.
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In any case, that's £175 a week or £8,750 a year potentially not being spent by millions of people. Is this really lost revenue for the economy, as reported in the press?
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Oh, but the figures were wrong: it was actually 473m items and £12bn (so the item value was still £25) but the wrong figures were in the original executive summary, and the press release. They changed them quietly, after the errors were pointed out by a BBC journalist.

I asked what steps they [Sabip, note by sambris] took to notify journalists of their error, which exaggerated their findings by a factor of 10 and were reported around the world. Sabip refused to answer questions in emails, insisted on a phone call, told me that they had taken steps but wouldn't say what and explained something about how they couldn't be held responsible for lazy journalism, then, bizarrely, after 10 minutes, tried to tell me retrospectively that the call was off the record. I think it's OK to be confused and disappointed by this. Like I said: as far as I'm concerned, everything from this industry is false, until proven otherwise.

How Pirates Shook European Politics

How Pirates Shook European Politics

With 7.1 percent of the vote, the Swedish Pirate Party has shocked its critics and secured a seat in the European Parliament. The Pirates received more votes from those under 30 than any other party in the European elections yesterday, and this was celebrated with pints of rum and loads of pirate chants.