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> omega-3 fatty acids -- the kind believed to stave off heart disease.

Er...no it's not:

http://society.guardian.co.uk/health/story/0,,1738 599,00.html

Internet means end for media barons, says Murdoch - Power 'moving from the old elite to bloggers'
http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,,1730382, 00.html
Owen Gibson, media correspondent
Tuesday March 14, 2006
The Guardian

Rupert Murdoch last night sounded the death knell for the era of the media baron, comparing today's internet pioneers with explorers such as Christopher Columbus and John Cabot and hailing the arrival of a "second great age of discovery".

The News Corp media magnate nurtures a long-held distaste for "the establishment" but last night confided to one of the few clubs to which he does belong - The Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers - that he may be among the last of a dying breed.

"Power is moving away from the old elite in our industry - the editors, the chief executives and, let's face it, the proprietors," said Mr Murdoch, having flown into London from New York after celebrating his 75th birthday on Saturday.

Far from mourning its passing, he evangelised about a digital future that would put that power in the hands of those already launching a blog every second, sharing photos and music online and downloading television programmes on demand. "A new generation of media consumers has risen demanding content delivered when they want it, how they want it, and very much as they want it," he said. Indicating he had little desire to slow down despite his advancing years, he told the 603-year-old guild that he was looking forward, not back.

"It is difficult, indeed dangerous, to underestimate the huge changes this revolution will bring or the power of developing technologies to build and destroy - not just companies but whole countries."

The owner of Fox News added: "Never has the flow of information and ideas, of hard news and reasoned comment, been more important. The force of our democratic beliefs is a key weapon in the war against religious fanaticism and the terrorism it breeds."

Refusing to reminisce over a career that saw him develop a global empire stretching from DirecTV and the New York Post in the US to Sky and the Sun in the UK via assets in South America, Asia and Australia, he declared: "I believe we are at the dawn of a golden age of information - an empire of new knowledge."

But he combined his new-found enthusiasm for the digital future with a "change or die" message for the monolithic media empires of the 20th century.

"Societies or companies that expect a glorious past to shield them from the forces of change driven by advancing technology will fail and fall," he warned. "That applies as much to my own, the media industry, as to every other business on the planet." Two hundred liverymen and freemen of the trade guild were joined by family and friends who then dined in Stationers' Hall, a Grade 1 listed building near St Paul's Cathedral in London.

He had some words of hope for his industry peers buffeted by declining circulations, free titles and the internet. "I believe traditional newspapers have many years of life but, equally, I think in the future that newsprint and ink will be just one of many channels to our readers," he said, predicting a future in which "media becomes like fast food" with consumers watching news, sport and film clips as they travel, on mobile phones or handheld wireless devices.

"Great journalism will always attract readers. The words, pictures and graphics that are the stuff of journalism have to be brilliantly packaged; they must feed the mind and move the heart," he enthused.

Following its chairman's change of heart, News Corp has splashed out close to $1bn (£578m) on internet investments.

Most tellingly, the company spent $400m on MySpace.com, the social networking phenomenon that has proved hugely popular with 35m regular users on both sides of the Atlantic. Mr Murdoch has undergone a Damascene conversion, admitting he hugely underestimated th

This is a direct copy of this related story:
Vector One discuss national mapping and the UK Ordnance Survey and link to a The Guardian article. The OpenGeoData blog has a podcast with Ed Parsons, CTO of the Ordnance Survey. While GIS User host an announcement by the OS about advanced spatial address data access. From the Guardian article: "Sir Tim Berners-Lee told an Oxford University audience last week getting "basic, raw data from Ordnance Survey" online would help build the "semantic web", which he defines as a web of data using standard formats so that relevant data can be found and processed by computers."

The Guardian reran their report http://www.guardian.co.uk/fromthearchive/story/0,, 1735980,00.html of 73 years ago about the Enabling Act and the first German concentration camp (shades of Guantanamo). A few clips.

Communists to be interned in Dachau
Tuesday March 21, 1933
The President of the Munich police has informed the press that the first concentration camp holding 5,000 political prisoners is to be organised within the next few days near the town of Dachau in Bavaria. Here, he said, Communists, "Marxists" and Reichsbanner leaders who endangered the security of the State would be kept in custody. It was impossible to find room for them in the State prisons, nor was it possible to release them. Experience had shown, he said, that the moment they were released, they started their agitation again.

Absolute power for Hitler: The Cabinet at its meeting this afternoon decided on the text of the Enabling Bill which it will submit to the Reichstag. If this bill is passed, the Hitler Government will be endowed with absolute dictatorial powers. The Act will enable the Cabinet to legislate and to make laws even if these "mark a deviation from the Constitution", except that the Reichstag and the Reichsrat must not he abolished. But as these will be put out of action for four years, this provision will not inconvenience the Government, which will even have full powers at the end of four years to alter the electoral system by decree. The rights of the President formally remain unaltered, but the laws will be promulgated on the Cabinet's initiative alone. The President would lose all his functions except that of Chief of the Army, but this function, too could probably be abolished by a decree, which would place the army, the last potential opponent of the dictatorship, under the Cabinet's control. In that case the President would simply become a figurehead.

'Liblit's dissertation proposes a method for leveraging the key strength of user communities - their overwhelming numbers.`

'Of all the myths that have grown up around open source software, perhaps the most pervasive is Eric Raymond's aphorism that "Many eyes make bugs shallow",`

- Andrew Brown Dec 08 2005

I read his profile, he's Dr Barret a computer security expert, not a hacker, I can't find anything relating to a hack in Hawaii:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Neil+Barrett+hawaii +telescope

He does seem to be a normal expert.
http://money.guardian.co.uk/creditanddebt/creditca rds/story/0,1456,717426,00.html

This looks like a Microsoft inspired misinformation campaign.

Blair has signed an extradition treaty with the US that removes the need for the US to show "probable cause" before a suspect is extradited. So any British citizen can be arbitrarily seized and taken to the US for trial, at the whim of the US authorities, without them having to give any reason.

The treaty is supposed to be bilateral, so that we could seize their citizens on the same terms. But the US have not ratified their part of it, so it is being enforced entirely one-sidedly. See, for example, this story

I actually tangentially know some people involved in Video Games Adventure Service. They pretty much do whatever crazy ass thing you want them to. Here is a straight forward explanation of what the do: UK Guardian.

I've played Negone several times, and I agree. The set-up is great, but the narrative needs some real work by a proper storytelling with videogame experience to make it go beyond feeling like a giant adventure playground.

Also, The Guardian published a piece on the whole thing back in November.

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,16 376,1643772,00.html

Statistical models (used by climatologists) are bound to increase in accuracy as they deal with average temperature of the entire globe over larger time scales.

This is not about determining whether it will snow or rain in Peoria on Dec. 11, 2006.

Some links that may interest you:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,1 517946,00.html
http://www.begbroke.ox.ac.uk/climatebasics/?style= plain
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=270

We all know that female infanticide doesn't happen in China, especially not in any significant numbers.

China? Female infanticide? What a racist thing to say! That post was almost as ignorant and egregiously false as denying the Holocaust. You tell him, pomo, set that China hating fool straight!

This is the most awesome photograph ever.

Well, there is a story about Bill Gates and giving that I think may clarify his motivations here. The facts can be found at http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story /0,6903,393015,00.html

Here is the story:
Bill decided some to give away his wealth. His first idea was to bring computers to the third world. He ponied up some gigadollars and various flunkies got busy buying the kit for various god forsaken villages.

Mr. Gates feels good.

A flunky suggests (probably hopeing to gain flunky points) that Mr. Gates should go on a visit to one of the god forsaken villages and see the poor folkes learning from the computer machine.

Of Bill goes. Happy children play with microsoft products, the ultra modern computer whizzes and whirs. Mr. Gates is cheered by the crowd. He looks at the wall.

There is a plug, which the computer is using, and a fridge, which is not plugged in. Bill asks "what is wrong with the fridge?" Probably he was planning on kicking a flunky into buying a new fridge stocked with king size buds... Everyone looks shifty though.

Bill does not like this. He asks again. A small voice says "nothing", so Bill askes "why is it unplugged?"

"Well," the small voice says, "well, you see the power system will only let us have 10 amps at a time out of this socket, any more load and everything blows up." Bill starts a thinkin'.

"So, what is the fridge for?" The great man asks. A small voice replies:

"Thats what we use to store the district vaccine supply in."

"So where are they now?"

"In the fridge"

"Won't they go bad"

"Not if the power is turned back on in the next 10 minutes."

Lo. The village received a new, and good power supply, and fridge.

And lo. Did the focus of the Gates foundation change?

You betcha.

I've always wondered, though, what happened to the flunkies.

"there is only one special relationship in Washington, and that is with Israel" - one of Blair's advisers as quoted in "The Accidental American"

Dr Ellis-Behnke believes the therapy stops scar tissue forming and protects damaged nerves, allowing them to regrow only in the damaged area of the brain.

I wonder in what context it was originally reported

The appropriate link is http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,17295 79,00.html. Note the "frontpage" in the URL, and guess where it was...

I

Why are audiences plummeting in all major TV markets? According to a recent survey, the average Brit now spends more time on-line than in front of the TV. Though how much of that on-line time is spent actually watching TV is open to debate. For me, quite a lot.

What do we know today that we didn't know in November 2004?

Maybe when our governments stop hoarding data and trying to make us pay twice for it see http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1 726229,00.html and http://publicgeodata.org/Home on a side note US coverage is just as good as googles.

by democrats who believed that he should have magically detected the 9/11 plot

Nice try. There was no magic required. In fact, the government HAD detected the 9/11 plot (August PDB, anyone?). Not to mention the various sniffs the FBI had about the eventual hijackers studying takeoffs but not landings, etc. The problem was that Bush was more interested in continuing his vacation than responding to the PDB, and various of his cronies appointed to other high positions didn't see fit to follow up on other warnings.

Sean

Magically detected the 9/11 plot? MAGICALLY?

What was so magical about the 6 August 2001 President Daily Brief entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States"?

There's no guarantee that listening to these advisors would have stopped 9/11. But if 'Mr Bush was on a month-long "working holiday" at his Texas ranch' at the time, it's not unfair to say that perhaps he wasn't taking the threats seriously.

US government has already tried it, and the FCC is on our side. For now. But when South Dakota makes abortion virtually illegal, do you really trust our government to do what's in our best interests? They'll do anythign they can to get their paws on it somehow. They (the illusive "man/men for proper conjugation") are trying to get us to pay for email, for fuck's sake! It's up to us and how much BS we're willing to deal with. Sony's DRM didn't last long, now did it? The market will even itself out, or that's the going theory...

But what about the issue of sharia? Opposing it is apparently also one of the western world's raisons d'etre, according to Clarke. Terms such as "sharia" and "caliphate" have important meanings to Muslims quite different from the distorted connotations they often carry in the west. The aim of Islamic law, contrary to popular belief, is not punishment by death or amputation of body parts. It is to create a peaceful and just society, with Islamic scholars over centuries citing its core aims: the freedom to practise religion; protection of life; safeguarding intellect; maintaining lineage and individual rights. This could be the basis for an Islamic bill of rights. ...

The vision of any kind of new caliphate, shared by Muslims worldwide, is a distant one. Right now, even talk of bringing down trade barriers and free flow of people across Muslim states seems radical. But it is a vision that is needed, and one that should actually be supported by the US and Britain if they are sincere about the development of the Muslim world. The revival of a strong Muslim civilisation would be for the betterment of the whole world.

Bush: U.S. on Verge of Energy Breakthrough

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-56 35046,00.html

This wasn't published by any "London Guardian" paper. You guys that modded this up to +5, Informative got trolled.

The original article, published by The Guardian, is here. Note the distinct lack of accusations of being "shills for the establishment". Note the distinct lack of any mention whatsoever of blanket smoking bans, ASBOs, or putting cameras in people's homes. That paranoid speculation comes from here. A website so credible, its main sections are: Occult Elite | Loss Of Freedom | Scams & Cover-ups | Vote Fraud | World Government | Political Murders | Geopolitics. This is kook fodder, guys!

There is no blanket smoking ban in the UK. There will be a ban on smoking in pubs and restaraunts in Scotland very soon. Tobacco is still legal, you just can't smoke in public where people are eating and drinking.

ASBOs are Anti-Social Behaviour Orders. Basically, you can be punished for anti-social behaviour. For instance, kids who repeatedly throw bricks through their neighbours' windows. Not so scary when it's not a meaningless acronym, is it?

The age of the telescreen is upon us as surveillance cameras that festoon our streets, shopping malls and airports are now moving into our private homes as the panopticon prison is erected.

More nonsense. The UK government aren't installing cameras in anybody's homes. Not that this guy would know that - this uninformed nonsense comes not from a British source, as is claimed, but an American worried about the Occult Elite World Government.

Liberty, the group supposedly tasked with defending privacy rights in the UK, revealed itself to be a shill of the establishment in refusing to oppose the measures.

Maybe they can't oppose the measures because they exist solely as paranoid delusions. I'll admit that CCTV is widespread in the UK, but the things that this article claims are happening simply aren't. And the thing that set this guy off on his rant? It's a proposal, as the Guardian article makes clear. It is by no means law yet. I quote:

Tomorrow's transport committee session and a further meeting next week will examine how far this technology can be expanded and what use can be made of the data. Evidence will be presented by bodies representing the police and organisations that campaign on road safety.

Any attempt to widen the application of camera surveillance is likely to be strongly resisted.

Crash was a mediocre movie at best, but they spent almost as much promoting the film for oscar as they spent to make the film. check it out

So why would a video game awards show be any different? And how would a 'serious' awards show for games improve your gaming experience?

It wouldn't.

Like films, you're more likely to find quality entertainment via reccomendations from friends that share your interests. Awards shows are just another promotional oppourtunity, and will always benefit the highest bidders.

Would you please stop propagating the stupid meme that obesity is somehow exclusively an American problem?

Obesity rate triples in UK

EU leads US for men with weight problem

Coffee may not be a health drink, but Irish Coffee certainly is.

Yesterday, I read this in the Guardian. It's a very interesting article about how, over the last 10.000 years, our DNA has been altered by what we eat and where we live.

Yesterday, I read this in the Guardian. It's a very interesting article about how, over the last 10.000 years, our DNA has been altered by what we eat and where we live.

It is a criminal offence to sell fruit & veg by the pound in the UK under the Weights & Measures (Units of Measurement) Regulations 1994.

Here's the first prosecution who became a cause célbre, known as The Metric Martyr

Ironically, he's even dead now !

There is much debate over the actual legality of the act.

By the way, in case anyone actually believe this plank, there is a very good article here which details the costs associated with producing a movie:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/friday_review/story/0,36 05,544319,00.html

Exhibitors get a sliding scale cut of gross depending on how long after initial release the movie is being shown.

Huge firms: Custom-modified OOo tailored to their needs. (after all, it's open source. You can't modify MSO because you don't have the sources.)

The problem with your example is that, unlike the board members, we have access to all of Cheney's financial history. He is required, by law, to disclose any and all possible dealings and conflicts of interest that may arise out of his actions or decisions.
Heck, here, have a look: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,912515 ,00.html

That is not the case in this matter. None of them are forced to disclose anything, because the bill itself stated that the Institute was pretty much a independent entity, so the state can't regulate it.

Now, stick to the subject at hand. I know that the Administration is fair game here on /., but it has nothing to do with this case.

Hell yes. And the victims of the attacks themselves are often the ones angry at what is being done in their name.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,12780, 1638838,00.html

Tulloch, who has professorships at both Brunel and Cardiff universities, is appalled by the way the photograph was used. "This is using my image to push through draconian and utterly unnecessary terrorism legislation. Its incredibly ironic that the Sun's rhetoric is as the voice of the people yet they don't actually ask the people involved, the victims, what they think. If you want to use my image, the words coming out of my mouth would be, 'Not in my name, Tony'. I haven't read anything or seen anything in the past few months to convince me these laws are necessary."

The automatic reaction to 9/11 or any other terrorist attack should not, and must not be an automatic endorsement of new rules. It is simply wrong to try to use 'remember 9/11' to beat off rational debate.

Interesting.... I had just posted a blog about this dasani water yesterday. I thought Coca-cola had pulled it, according to an article from the Guardian I read while doing some poking around - http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,3604,117412 7,00.html Dasani = reverse osmosis filtered tap water + epsom salt/laxative (Magnesium Sulfate) + food preservative/lethal injection ingredient (Potassium Chloride) + salt (of unknown origin)

To my knowledge there has never been a problem with the UAE making such sales.

Furthermore, we have trouble the Israeli spying on the US. Jonathon Pollard was caught and imprisoned for selling information to Israel.

Have there been similar cases with Dubai?

There are other legitimate concerns about Dubai, but given that the sale of Snort involves technology, it can't really be compared to the port operations. I nearly always favor Israel in its dealings with the world, but that doesn't mean I would trust it with all our technology. I would trust it to run a port though.

Of course, there may be times when you don't want Google remembering your search history!

Great first it was killer dolphins which were released when Katrina hit... next hurricane we will have to contend with killer sharks...

I really wish the US DoD would stop fucking up the world.

There's an interesting article about the Earth Simulator and climate modeling over here.

He relished the task, launching a reign of terror which was brutal even by the standards of the Baath Party.

According to opposition groups, thousands were murdered.

Victims were made to drink petrol before being set alight or strapped to concrete blocks and tipped into the Shatt-al-Arab waterway.

Bodies were bulldozed into the ground and, according to aid agencies, Al-Majid was filmed selecting Shia prisoners for execution. It was for his earlier atrocities, though, that he gained his nickname. He masterminded chemical attacks on Iraqi Kurds in the 1980s.

On one occasion he rejected suggestions he had killed 182,000 people with the chilling reply: "No, it couldn't have been more than 100,000."

His most infamous outrage was the use of poison gas to kill thousands of Kurds at Halabja in 1988.

Human Rights Watch covers it.

The Telegraph has done a series of stories: here, here, and here:

Like thousands of other Kurds who lived in Halabja he had become inured to the frequent artillery bombardments launched by Baghdad's big guns across the valley.

It was not until he saw a yellow mist settling over the town that he realised this attack was different.

Within hours his five children had died an excruciating death. They were among about 5,000 Kurds killed by Saddam Hussein's poison gas on March 16, 1988, as he exacted a hideous revenge for their support of Iran in the Iran-Iraq war.

The Christian Science Monitor did this story:

The memory of every Iraqi Kurd is seared with vivid images of Baghdad's 1988 genocide against its own ethnic Kurds when troops loyal to the Iraqi strongman were under orders to kill every Kurdish male in northern Iraq between the ages of 18 and 55. During the Anfal campaign, rights groups say more than 100,000 men disappeared, 4,000 villages were destroyed, and 60 more villages were subject to chemical weapons attack.

Some 5,000 Kurds died during the gassing of Halabja alone. The photograph of a man shielding an infant with his body ? both killed by gas ? has become an icon of Kurdish suffering and of Iraqi war crimes.

Although a part of the defense establishment didn't believe it for a time, the State Department apparently didn't get the word even in 2001.

This site has photos.

Why this should be hard to believe when Iraq was actively using chemical weapons against the Iranians at the time, and more and more mass graves with thousands of bodies from simple mass murder each are turning up in Iraq, I'll neven know.

Saddam's government apparently even killed as many as 61,000 just in Baghdad alone.

The survey obtained Monday, which the polling firm planned to release

The church attempting to suppress ideas? Why, whatever could you mean?

The legal action has seen The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail shoot up the Amazon.co.uk bestseller chart from number 173 at lunchtime, to 102 by 2.30pm and was at 53 late this afternoon.

Stallman wrote an article about this last year. It's well worth the read.

A Swedish translation.

The BBC ripped this off from a story the Guardian did over three weeks ago:

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,169 9156,00.html

But still, scary stuff.

This is such old news, it was initially worked over by The Guardian at the start of the month, and it even got picked up by Slashdot. But it was old news even then, you've been able to do this sort of thing for years. I've talked about it a lot in my blog...

iTunes, One Billion Suckers Served

Microsoft's general counsel said "Transparency is vitally important in what can be a very opaque process in Brussels. We've decided to open this up so people can understand the issues."

Also a ZDNet article, FSF berates apathy over Microsoft antitrust case , reports that the FSFE has criticised EU IT firms for not supporting the EC in its antitrust case against Microsoft.

ZDNet report that George Greve said in a blog entry that "[the] FSFE has been working on this case for many years, from the original investigation, over the 2004 decision, to the European Court case where it is now one of two [active] remaining third parties on the side of the European Commission. I only hope that more companies will help us defending their interests in this -- to this date, FSFE has received virtually no support for this case from the industry. Consequently, all the credit belongs to the free software community, including in particular the Fellows of the FSFE."

Greve also responds to the new EU complaint by ECIS applauding it, but pointing out that this may seem inconsistent as Microsoft has already reached individual settlements with ECIS members such as RealNetworks and Sun.

Also there is a good Guardian article from a few days ago which summarises and criticises recent rebuffs by MS to the EC's decision.

Also there is an entry on Tod Bishop's Microsoft Blog, Lessig advocates Microsoft , reporting that Lessig supports Microsoft's InfoCard project.

Support? What support?

It is clearly directed at nations, not at citizens in the US.

It, along with the PATRIOT Act and the entire "war on terror", are aimed at citizens in all nations, including the US. It is merely the next installment in a long-planned, carefully orchestrated, but poorly-executed scheme to exert pressure, in true imperialist fashion, on states and substates of the US to force "Western" (really Communist) values on the entire "civilized" world, including prohibitions of "hatred" (thought crimes), "extremist" religion (religions that actually read and follow their sacred texts), and "separatist" political movements (that threaten the global economy).

Your feigned shock at the idea of the terrorists "who fight back when attacked" is entirely appropriate since that isn't what is going on at all.

It absolutely is what's going on, for almost 50 years. You need a history lesson if you think otherwise.

They are fighting to establish a new Islamic super state with a literal theocracy.

Although I, and bin Laden himself, dispute your attribution of motives, many primarily Muslim countries in and around the middle east are in need of new leadership. The US thinks it should be them. Before they stopped taking land and started building borders, Israel thought it should be them. The UK would still like to have a say. Hell, Russia thinks it should be them. And, shock and awe, the actual Muslims living there think they should have a say. Everyone is surprised when the Muslims do get a say, and they elect a theocracy or a nationalist who keeps Arab oil for Arabs, instates a "gift economy" as Bush decries, and invests in profitable enterprises such as nuclear power.

Color me uninterested if I don't give a shit who it ends up being, as long as the US doesn't waste trillions of dollars or get further accused of being in league with those Zionist dipshits and create more brown people trying to blow themselves up in the US.

They are fundamentally (or is it fundamentalist?) imperialists.

They are not imperialist. They are nationalist. Empires are composed of priviledged classes colonising and ruling over occupied territories. Nations are composed of groups of people with a common race and/or language and/or religion.

Japan was imperialist. The UK was imperialist. The USSR was imperialist. Rome was imperialist. The US was, and still is, imperialist. China is primarily nationalist. Israel is nationalist, although it began as a colony in an occupied middle east, and still has its own occupied territories and underpriviledged classes. Nazi Germany was nationalist. The vast majority of Islamic republics in the middle east are nationalist.

Is this new to you?

No, it is not "news to me". I wrote a paper on the subject in October of 2001.

I hope you don't find that "poofy hair" make the "Dear Leader" cuddly. You seem to be presenting this as if to soften his image.

I do not and I was not. I think it makes him comical, in a supervillain sort of way. I added the phrase upon review because I felt some of my descriptions may not be clear enough. Obviously I should have added more to my description of bin Laden instead.