RSSEurope's ambitious 'single access point' for cultural media provides porn
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published November 20, 2008, 11:43 AM
In an effort to build national and multi-national pride in the cultural, artistic, and literary products of Europe throughout its vast history, the EC this morning cut the red ribbon around Europeana, its central online library.
Problem is, when you declare something "open," people do tend to come in. As of mid-afternoon GMT (mid-morning on the US East Coast), Europeana's would-be one-stop-shop for the vast collection of literary material considered the collective property of Europe's many peoples, was either completely unresponsive or too slow to be useful, perhaps due to an influx of traffic. Even pings timed out to the site's Netherlands-based IP address.
An estimated two million items, including digital books, audio recordings, and film records from each of the European Union's 27 member countries, is expected to be accessible through Europeana. Among those items is a recording of the opening ceremonies, which will apparently wait along with Shakespeare, Kazantzakis, Hugo, and everyone else for traffic to clear up.
As it turns out, the classics may not be what the library's inaugural day users are tuning in for.
In one test case, after turning off automatic timeouts on our test system, Europeana did manage to produce a partial page, which quite literally bore an almost apologetic message in the upper left corner, "we are in beta!!" Then, without us doing anything else whatsoever, its sample of "art" included two digital scans of da Vinci's Mona Lisa, interspersed with a work of art...that we cannot reproduce on BetaNews, not without offending the teachers at my daughter's school where BetaNews is often read.
In a second case on a separate test system, after 12 minutes of loading time, Europeana's front page provided the following bold explanation: "This is Europeana - a place for inspiration and ideas. Search through the cultural collections of Europe, connect to other user pathways and share your discoveries."
Discovery number one on Europeana's list -- and I wish I were making this up -- is a link to a video produced apparently in the 1980s by a fellow who calls himself Ugly George. The video takes place on the streets of New York City, features Americans, and is apparently devoted to the topic of denigrating women.
While my first thought was perhaps that the europeana.eu domain had been possibly hijacked by some enterprising prankster -- and I do have to admit, that's what Euroepeana.eu really does look like as of Thursday morning, a prank -- the Ugly George video truly was being hosted by one of Europeana's principal content providers, the French-based INA.fr, as part of an online exhibit it calls "TV porno."
Other items from this particular front page that are also being hosted by INA.fr include, simultaneously: more scans of the Mona Lisa, pages from Gutenberg bibles, an exhibit of various Levi's jeans ads that feature nudity, examples of softcore porn shown on French television through the ages (another exhibit), and excerpts from that gripping peace of European folk literature, Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf.
One of Europeana's principal backers has been Commissioner Viviane Reding, who is the public face for the continent's efforts to establish a new identity for itself around a "digital society." BetaNews readers will recall Comm. Reding as the lady who has spearheaded efforts toward a mobile digital TV standard for Europe, though when businesses choose what she has considered the wrong standard, publicly chides them for doing so and steers them toward what she has proclaimed the right path.
In a statement released this morning, Comm. Reding said, "Europeana offers a journey through time, across borders, and into new ideas of what our culture is. More than that, it will connect people to their history and, through interactive pages and tools, to each other... We should make Europeana a home for interactive creative participation at the fingertips of people who want to mould their own piece of European culture and share it with others. My objective is that in 2010, Europeana will include at least 10 million objects."
In an interview published yesterday by the International Herald-Tribune, Reding credited France with providing half the content for the charter service, citing as one example, "The collapse of the Berlin Wall is illustrated with a French TV documentary." She then credited Germany with getting its act together, in her terms, for its contribution to the digital library.
When asked whether it is Europeana's intent to compete with Google, Comm. Reding said certainly not, noting that by contrast, Europeana is organized more by category. "If you put Chopin into Google," she told the IHT, "you get several hundred thousands of examples -- in chaos. You don't know what is right and what is wrong."
The Europeana site is temporarily not accessible due to overwhelming interest after its launch (10 million hits per hour).
We are doing our utmost to reopen Europeana in a more robust version as soon as possible.
We will be back by mid-December.
For a preview on Europeana and further information.
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The Hi-Brow French have a great xpression: "avant-garde", meaning out ahead of the clods. Ugly George was 'social-networking' with sexy young women who were NOT (paid) pornstars; the French rightly found this 2B very creative...But your clod reviewer calls this "denigrating women". I demand 2 know his True Identity so that me and Ugly George Galloway can take him out behind the woodpile and thrash him soundly...
BTW, my email address is PRIVATE, please!
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Making Love and Getting High bad! Gratuitous and Insufferable Violence Good!
-USA
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What's more 'European' than porn?
LOL!
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...what?
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Oh, an interesting diversion from your usual rant of Europe = genocide. Then again with your mental abilities displaying a nipple is far worse.
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Far worse? I think its hilarious! ...and only a matter of time before you again blame the US. ;-))
I suppose that when you consider the centuries of genocide, that it did affect a larger 'market slice' in terms of sheer numbers then porn and its integral relationship with organized crime - another European tradition, but its interesting that even you call attention to the 'grand tradition'.
I mean, France does establish a grand tradition with the genocide more commonly known as the French Revolution - you know, as it closed the illustrious tradition of 'culturally sensitive' colonization and institutionalized slave trading - and then there is the Inquisition - which was far from limited to Spain, and then, well, where do we start in the litany of the 20th century genocide!?
Its so simple to counter your incessant 'its all the US' fault' rant.
Your time would be better spent familiarizing yourself with the massively parallel market segment that you think is "experimental".
LOL!
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He, like two others in particular here, repeatedly trots out his lame one-trick pony in an exercise of wanting to find the US the cause of all things he disagrees with.
Its so easy to point out that all things errant are not the cause of the US!
LOL!
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...what?
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Ah! Finally you admit the US is behind yet another screw up!
But just to pinpoint the senseless rants of your jittery mind - In the last sentence you are referring to my comments in the article about the 500 fastest supercomputers and claim none are experimental, right....?
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And his delusions continue!
The IBM AIX and Linux machines that DOMINATE the metrics are comprised of currently shipping production technology, you dimwit!
They are NOT experimental, nor is the OS and management software.
But if you had a CLUE regarding the MP marketplace, you would KNOW THIS!
And many of the clusters mentioned are also running HA-GEO (yet another technology of which you have no clue) - although they will not run that when they execute the benchmarks.
You are clueless! Stick to playing games on your rad desktop and querying porn via your cultural portal! LOL!
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kick his ass, seabass!!!
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So I guess we can we agree that you state the following:
In the pink fairy world of TexasFox, the shiny knight of wisdom, uniquely built systems competing for the crown of supercomputers count as off the shelf products as long as any generic component is used.
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The US isn't so bad or worse than any other western 1st world country (well maybe not 1st...) The problem is d***heads like you giving it a bad name. Too bad your darling Sarah was rejected, eh?
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No dimwit, they are available to anyone who chooses to purchase them as off the shelf product offerings exhibiting significantly higher performance capabilities and management capabilities.
And there are MANY in the field! Including at Intel where they develop on one! Yup, a Power based system!
That just happens to be one of IBM's product lines.
Just because you are completely and uttering ignorant of these units, you think they are experimental!
But then I am sure you must view mainframes as 'experimental' too!
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Poor baby!
Wrong again! (At least at this point it shouldn't come as a shock!)
I think McCain and Sarah sucked, just as I think GW sucks.
We all lost in this election. My only hope was for gridlock with a President from one party and a Congress from the other requiring the override of vetoes preventing more asinine legislation from being passed and signed into law in order to minimize further damage.
The only thing McCain had going for him was that he had the audacity to correctly identify the mirror image to the social engineering left wing embodied by the religious right wing 'agents of intolerance'.
We would all be better off if both groups suddenly vanished.
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Porn is heavily from The Valley in Southern California. Prior to the Van Nuys connection it was from San Fransisco.
The correct question is what is more California than porn?
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Yup, the Reeperbahn (granted, now a parody of itself) was definitely a product of SCal. Not.
And of course, we haven't even touched the tip of the flourishing white slavery trade there either.
And one could more easily make the case of California being about skateboards then porn.
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Whatever Reeperbahn is it makes no difference about where the majority of porn comes from. Billions. From the Valley. (Gosh a red light district. Well thats not exactly internet porn now is it?)
Skateboarding is not a multi-billion dollar international market. Nor was it one of the most significant drivers of commerce on the internet.
One could make a lot of cases if one has no interest in reality or relevance.
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Prostitution is legal in Germany. With social security benefits. Got a problem with it? You know they cater for needs of those who can't get it up so you have nothing to worry (ok, time to do some work... You are just criminally amusing. In fact the DEA should take you out.)
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