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Tuesday, April 1, 2003
![[Item Permalink]](http://radio.weblogs.com/0112083/images/ur_bullet.gif){kind=small} Traveling to Manchester -- Comment()
I'll attend a grid meeting in Manchester (UK) next Friday. I hope to get some new ideas about the real-life use of grids in research. My presentation is almost ready (I have to delete some slides to fit the time slot), and I have had some time to think about the grid applications and technologies in the process. I made the presentation with Keynote, and learned a lot of new tricks in the process. Keynote still has some rough edges, and some features are not immediately visible to the user. But I have grown to like Keynote. For example, exporting presentations to PowerPoint seems to work better than I expected.
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Opposing the war: EU rules for tenders -- Comment()
Yesterday I wrote about how to demonstrate against the US war in Iraq. One of the options was Boycott those US companies which profit the most from the killing and suffering in IraqI thought this would be unrealistic considering how American companies are everywhere. Boycotting one company is difficult, boycotting all American companies impossible. But there is a solution. Currently European Union has regulations concerning tenders (procurements). This especially applies to all tenders above a given threshold. It could be feasible to make it obligatory for the suppliers and contracting entities to show how they profit from the war in Iraq. Are their products used for offensive action, planning activities, or supporting the offensive? There could be a separate form for this, listing different categories and types of involvement in the war. I believe EU officials would love to plan this kind of requirements and corresponding forms. I hope EU would also politically accept this action. Of course, you can do this by yourself, if you are opening a tender for proposals. For example, if you are buying a lot of IT hardware from IBM, Sun, Microsoft, Apple, etc., this kind of requirement would at least make a strong statement against the war. But how to go on to propose this to the EU?
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