Slashdot Mirror

Your hyperlink makes no sense at all. Didn't you even read taco's sermon?

Let's look at the text containing the link:

The Guardian Gamesblog writes of a new Persuasive Games game called 'Disaffected'.

Now, the article linked to is titled "Undermining the advertisers" and it is about a game titled "Disaffected". For ten points: Based on the above text, and the subject of the article, which is the appropriate linking style?

1. The Guardian Gamesblog writes of a new Persuasive Games game called 'Disaffected'.
2. The Guardian Gamesblog writes of a new Persuasive Games game called 'Disaffected'.
3. Profit!
4. The Guardian Gamesblog writes of a new Persuasive Games game called 'Disaffected'.

Hint: It's not #3. And it's not #1. The article is not about a new company called "Persuasive Games". It's about the game Disaffected (and to a lesser extent, Persuasive's founder.) The link should be descriptive of the content of the link. Thus, it's not #4 either. Doesn't leave much...

How can Taco hold users to a higher standard than the so-called editors?

End note: It would actually have been more proper to link the whole sentence than the text that actually got linked. It's descriptive. A minimalist link that I do not think would be appropriate for slashdot (because it is not very descriptive) would be "The Guardian Gamesblog writes" which would at least tell you what you were clicking.

Sorry....posted wrong link in the parent.

Correct link can be found here.

As the line runs, it's amazing what can count as insightful these days.

Unfortunately, I'm afraid the wine trade is going to win on this one, because it's proven rubbish :

http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/badscience/story/0, ,1656827,00.html

Let us consider that the device did work, and could really change the taste of wine.
Let us also consider the fact that wine critics have often been proven unable to distinguish cheap supermarket plonk from upmarket wines.
If that is the case, what do you gain by using such a device?
The only advantage would be if there was genuine objective way in which some wines WERE measurably better than others. Which would mean that the wine experts could have a point.

While I'm on the subject, I'd like to dispense with the idea that expensive wine is all a con. I made that discovery early one morning, when a friend of mine who worked as a sous-chef in a major hotel turned up after his shift with a bottle of rather expensive red that had been sent back (the nice thing for him was that in that situation the opened bottles went to staff as they can't be resold). It was my first experience of any wine above the $10 mark, and the difference was noticeable, which wasn't the best discovery of my life. Gosh, sometimes the expensive things rich people have are actually better. Who'd have thought it!

>Until I see the results of a few double-blind studies on the effects of this device, I'm suspending >judgement.

Not on this specific device, but one has been conducted on the general principle :

http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/badscience/story/0, ,1656827,00.html

Same guy is now calling for a trial on expensive hi-fi power cables.

For a good debunking of a similar wine aging device, see

http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/badscience/story/0, 12980,1656827,00.html

There is an amusing report of a proper double-blind trial. Conclusion? Doesn't make any difference.

The article talks about resignations from the group's 'advisory board' which implies that the board is part of the group, they are apparently missing something.

I first read about this yesterday here and according to them that 'group' has one registered member, Andrew Jones.

Group?

The first company into almost any field will fail. But if it leaves enough patents behind it, these may strangle all its successors. Patenting ideas rewards failure and makes success more difficult. You can't argue that they are needed as incentives. Bill Gates made his fortune in a world without software patents - and if that's not big enough to act as an incentive, nothing is.

For comparison, in Britain 0.03% of us will die[1] in ALL possible mishaps this year. That takes account of murder, car crashes, being eaten by ferocious llamas and so on and so forth.

In Britain, people are more concerned about living next to the neighbours from hell and being attacked in our outside their own homes:

Bullying campaign linked to fire that killed girl's parents

City dealer murdered by intruders

CCTV of murdered lawyer released

Yet, you can be locked up for making comments about a police horse:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/oxfordshire/460 6022.stm

or defending your own property:
Tony Martin

Of course it's not a backdoor, in more exciting news a whale swims up the Thames.

> Suuuurrre they did. Why don't you submit a link from a credible source, numbnuts.

Sorry, I forgot my opponents are all idiots and can't handle high tech like Google. But I'm here trying to help ya out so..

Credible.. How about the WaPo?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac3/ContentServer?pa gename=article&articleid=A61251-2001Oct2&node=nati on/specials/attacked/archive

Headline: U.S. Was Foiled Multiple Times in Efforts To Capture Bin Laden or Have Him Killed

Slight;y less cannonical for you lefties, but mainstream media nonetheless, I give you The Guardian:

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story /0,6903,560624,00.html

Headline: Resentful west spurned Sudan's key terror files

A little more bloggish, but Horowitz runs a fairly reputable operation, he ain't some idiot in his pajamas

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.a sp?ID=9721

Headline: How Clinton Kept Bin Laden Free

Speaking of The Office (original version), and iTunes. Ricky Gervais has a podcast. See: http://www.guardian.co.uk/rickygervais/

I suspect the controversy over MDMA is potentially the main reason why most researchers would choose not to mention the active ingredient in their PTSD pill.

Sadly your overconfidence is due to your being completely misinformed on every single point. Sadly whistling in the dark isnt going to get you very far when things go pear shaped. You like many of your countrymen are in denial. A quick course in the relevant facts will cure this. The following will serve as an easy introduction.

Particularly comprehensive, contains many links to unimpeachable sources to corroborate the arguments made here:

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/

On the problems with the US dollar:

http://www.markswatson.com/Depression1.html

And here is a repudiation of the biodiesel argument from George Monbiot, a one-time proponent of that technology.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5349045-103 677,00.html

While you are briefly considering whether you can be bothered to put in the effort required to replace the opinions you've been fed by establishment sources with something based on genuine facts and figures, consider this: global resource acquisition is a zero sum game. But I am from the UK and in the long term, the worse it goes for the US, very likely the better it will go for us here in Europe. So why am I bothering to try and warn you? Good question. I don't really know - especially given the tendency of some you guys to shoot the messenger.

Some guy named John Fremlin in 1964[1] said that the Earth could theoretically sustain 60 million billion people[2]. Yes. Thats 6x10^14. Now if we give each of those sardi^H^H^H^H^Hpeople a living space of 0.5 by 0.5 meters, that would mean we need abut 150 000 000 km^2. Luckily, the surface area of the earth is 148,939,063.133 km^2[3]. Hey! We'll have some left over for a Walmart!

[1] How many people can the world support, John H Fremlin, New Scientist, 24, 285-287, (29 October 1964).
[2] Guardian.co.uk: Debate heats up over Earth's population
[3] Wikipedia: Earth

In my days as a hunt saboteur I have seen high ranking policemen defend the right of sabs to wear balaclavas (ski masks) and other identity obscuring clothing.

Contrary to popular belief you run in to quite a few sympathetic coppers in that line of protest. Especially after they'ved been ordered about by a few Audrey Hamilton's.

OT : I know a lot of Americans like their hunting and those of you who don't care one way or the other about hunting, I just want to make the point that in England hunting is not just a sport, it's a heritage. A heritage of murder, execution, force land clearance and other negative behaviour that resonates through our society and legal structure to this day. Reformation of society should be a constant and land ownership is central to this.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/freedom/Story/0,2763,144 3881,00.html

The claim is presumably based on the principle that the fixtures are "created" and therefore subject to copyright. If you accept that, then why should other companies be able to profit from that act of creation without recognising the rights of the creators? I imagine that this would be particularly persuasive in the case of a pools company like Littlewoods, whose entire business model was based on the football fixtures list, yet didn't really put anything back into the game at all (at least not on a corporate level: in fact, members of the Moores family, who own Littlewoods, have been involved in the ownership of both Liverpool and Everton football clubs - Everton are the other big football club in Liverpool, for the benefit of non-UK readers - at various times).

Of course, the contrary point of view would be that compiling a fixture list is simply a cost of doing business for the football industry at large, and that any publication of fixture dates is a form of publicity for which the game should be grateful. This, however, would be inconsistent with the prevailing attitude in football, which is wring every last penny out of anyone they can by whatever means are available.

It may be that the status quo only holds up because no-one has challenged the 1959 case. After all, the sort of media outlet which publishes the entire fixture list for every club (i.e. national newspapers, football magazines and websites etc.) probably regards £6000 (the figure mentioned in the Guardian) as small potatoes compared to the aggravation of going to court. Legal action only ever seems to be threatened against these one-man-and-a-dog sort of operations.

The key difference between the situation here and what MLB is trying to do, though, is that baseball stats are matters of historical fact. Barry Bonds either did or did not hit 73 homers. Kerry Wood did or did not fan 20 Astros in a game. I don't see how that can be "owned".

No - i'm afraid not. Something similar has happened in the UK to do with the printing of Football [Soccer] fixture lists. http://football.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,975 3,1671699,00.html?

So when, at the beginning of this season, the site received what Grant and Rowson felt were threatening legal letters demanding the removal of offensive content they were shocked. They refused, their server was contacted and BSaD was taken off the internet until Grant and Rowson backed down. The heinous material that caused the problems? Watford FC's fixtures for 2005-06. "We were extremely surprised and did feel bullied," Rowson says. "We do the fanzine for the love of writing about football, with about 1,000 regular hits weekly. We never thought the outside world was even aware of us."
That was reckoning without the keen commercial enforcers at DataCo. This is a company owned by the Premier and Football Leagues, whose job is to charge for publication of the fixture lists, as well as the increasing volume of other data, including match statistics, to which the clubs claim copyright

It's more like sending C&D notices to force small fry to cough up the cash.

Linky

Yep, hanging back was exactly what the USA did in World War II. You say there were 250,000 American casualties in the war? The Russians lost 17 million people; the U.S.'s mere quarter million is chicken feed in comparison.

In fact, it has been argued that the U.S. stayed out of WW II until it became obvious, a year and a half after the destruction of much of the Wehrmacht in the Battle of Stalingrad, that the Soviet Union was about to win. And then the U.S. finally invaded Normandy on June 6, 1944 -- to stop the Soviets from taking over Europe, not to defeat the already stumbling Nazis.

Pro-Nazi sentiment was actually pretty strong in the U.S. in those days, believe it or not. IBM was a noted collaborator. So was George W. Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush, who was convicted for helping to finance Hitler's rise to power.

So American triumphalism about WW II really grates on those of us who know the truth.

So you might ask, how come that you can find such damning data on a site called "gunowner.org" ? And how can they use them to support the idea that gun control = higher crimes ? Easy: they conflate homicides with suicides ! When you add suicides to homicides, you find fewer victims in the US than in other countries ! Ergo, gun control kills people, QED !

Americans conveniently overlook the fact that Europeans have chosen to be a bit more socialist in their economic policies in order to build kinder and gentler societies. Just compare the crime rates between the USA and Europe. The Europeans have largely succeeded.

Basing policy on technology that doesn't exist seems rather silly at this point.

If the energy crisis is so severe, why isn't America investing in things like pebble bed reactors? With the Iraq war potentially costing $2 trillion dollars, that's a lot of money that could be invested in alternative energy sources.

Oh gee...26% of the adult population smokes in England. Talk about a lucky guess. It's almost like winning the lotto with a guess like that. I think I'll go buy some tickets.

Yup, 72. Islam is remarkably resistant to inflation in such things, since no fundamentalist would change the numbers in the original passage.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/wtccrash/story/0,1300,55 2388,00.html

BTW, does anyone else see the resemblance between Richard Dawkins and Oolon Colluphid in Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy?

With as scientifically ignorant as many venture capitalists are, I wouldn't use that as a barometer of plausibility.

I think Randall Mills was on slasdot a while back, but I read about him several years ago in Robert Park's book Voodoo Science: The Road From Foolishness To Fraud.

Mills has been around for years and years, with no evidence that there's anything behind his crank inventions, but "Dr Mills says that his company, Blacklight Power, has tens of millions of dollars in investment lined up to bring the idea to market"

If that's true, there are going to be a lot of severely disappointed people.

Mohamed? Is that you?

even though nuclear power releases less radioactive material than burning coal.

Yeah, until the waste containers start leaking and leach material into water tables.

Don't get me wrong; I'm all for nuclear power, but I'm not convinced that we've got a decent mechanism for storing the waste yet. Maybe we could team up with these guys.

Incidentally, is there a nuclear physicist in the house? How does the waste from pebble reactors compare to traditional rod reactors when it comes to waste disposal? --- SER

No, this would be according to a Guardian/ICM poll using a random sampling of 1,004 adults, according to Guardian Unlimited.

I'm not aware of any available opinion polling from the govt. itself.

First of all - have you actually read any Chinese laws? No? You can get them in translation, and they are not really all that draconian;

*AHEM*

From the RConversation blog:

"In the final days of December, Anti became a vocal supporter of journalists at the Beijing Daily News who walked off the job after the top editors were fired for their increasingly daring investigative coverage, including some recent reporting on the recent police shootings of village protestors in the Southern China. (For all the gory details on the current press crackdown click here, here, here, and here.)

In other words, Microsoft is scratching China's back in supporting the slaughter of innocents, and shutting the mouth of whoever tries to bring that to the public.

If that's not Draconian, my friend, then I don't know what the eff it is.

http://www.heritage.org/Research/MiddleEast/wm217. cfm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/10/11/AR2005101101384.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,11882,132 3967,00.html
I'm not saying other countries weren't involved in the same thing (they were, Russia is notable, there were even Americans caught up in scandal) but France did have some shady deals, and some corruption.

Eg, Microbiologists raising doubts? It must be a cover-up

There are times when it's just great to be alive: you're running through the archives, the wind's in your hair, suddenly you stumble on a gem from last year's Sunday Mirror and it just makes you bless the day you decided to become a sarcastic and hateful campaigning science journalist.

How many microbiologists does it take to change a tabloid story?

The Economist is also worth noting. It not infrequently gets things wrong, but it's less of a joke than most of the U.S. media.

Guardian, Independent, Times.
And Google News.

Regardless of overall quality, non-US press can be a useful supplement for US readers, as their set of unsayable/unshowable things is different than that of the US press. Eg, avoiding the "breakfast rule" for photos (can't have appetite-disturbing photos... even of war), or the Independent's story today

Lobbying is Washington's grubby secret. Some say lobbying is part of the democratic process. Others claim it is legalised bribery, even corruption. But love it or loathe it, it is the way Washington works. ... The trade-off is simple. Corporate and other donors provide cash in a bid to secure the legislation they want.

The blog First Draft by Tim Porter is an insider's exploration of the press' problems.

The grandparent's experience is one I've seen a lot. You notice a direct correlation between how much you know about a domain, and how badly the press are bungling it. When one experiences this in several diverse domains... well, the temptation is to generalize.

Paul Graham's recent The Submarine discusses one source of intentional bogosity.

Eg, Microbiologists raising doubts? It must be a cover-up

There are times when it's just great to be alive: you're running through the archives, the wind's in your hair, suddenly you stumble on a gem from last year's Sunday Mirror and it just makes you bless the day you decided to become a sarcastic and hateful campaigning science journalist.

How many microbiologists does it take to change a tabloid story?

The Economist is also worth noting. It not infrequently gets things wrong, but it's less of a joke than most of the U.S. media.

Guardian, Independent, Times.
And Google News.

Regardless of overall quality, non-US press can be a useful supplement for US readers, as their set of unsayable/unshowable things is different than that of the US press. Eg, avoiding the "breakfast rule" for photos (can't have appetite-disturbing photos... even of war), or the Independent's story today

Lobbying is Washington's grubby secret. Some say lobbying is part of the democratic process. Others claim it is legalised bribery, even corruption. But love it or loathe it, it is the way Washington works. ... The trade-off is simple. Corporate and other donors provide cash in a bid to secure the legislation they want.

The blog First Draft by Tim Porter is an insider's exploration of the press' problems.

The grandparent's experience is one I've seen a lot. You notice a direct correlation between how much you know about a domain, and how badly the press are bungling it. When one experiences this in several diverse domains... well, the temptation is to generalize.

Paul Graham's recent The Submarine discusses one source of intentional bogosity.

Eg, Microbiologists raising doubts? It must be a cover-up

There are times when it's just great to be alive: you're running through the archives, the wind's in your hair, suddenly you stumble on a gem from last year's Sunday Mirror and it just makes you bless the day you decided to become a sarcastic and hateful campaigning science journalist.

How many microbiologists does it take to change a tabloid story?

The Economist is also worth noting. It not infrequently gets things wrong, but it's less of a joke than most of the U.S. media.

Guardian, Independent, Times.
And Google News.

Regardless of overall quality, non-US press can be a useful supplement for US readers, as their set of unsayable/unshowable things is different than that of the US press. Eg, avoiding the "breakfast rule" for photos (can't have appetite-disturbing photos... even of war), or the Independent's story today

Lobbying is Washington's grubby secret. Some say lobbying is part of the democratic process. Others claim it is legalised bribery, even corruption. But love it or loathe it, it is the way Washington works. ... The trade-off is simple. Corporate and other donors provide cash in a bid to secure the legislation they want.

The blog First Draft by Tim Porter is an insider's exploration of the press' problems.

The grandparent's experience is one I've seen a lot. You notice a direct correlation between how much you know about a domain, and how badly the press are bungling it. When one experiences this in several diverse domains... well, the temptation is to generalize.

Paul Graham's recent The Submarine discusses one source of intentional bogosity.

Eg, Microbiologists raising doubts? It must be a cover-up

There are times when it's just great to be alive: you're running through the archives, the wind's in your hair, suddenly you stumble on a gem from last year's Sunday Mirror and it just makes you bless the day you decided to become a sarcastic and hateful campaigning science journalist.

How many microbiologists does it take to change a tabloid story?

The Economist is also worth noting. It not infrequently gets things wrong, but it's less of a joke than most of the U.S. media.

Guardian, Independent, Times.
And Google News.

Regardless of overall quality, non-US press can be a useful supplement for US readers, as their set of unsayable/unshowable things is different than that of the US press. Eg, avoiding the "breakfast rule" for photos (can't have appetite-disturbing photos... even of war), or the Independent's story today

Lobbying is Washington's grubby secret. Some say lobbying is part of the democratic process. Others claim it is legalised bribery, even corruption. But love it or loathe it, it is the way Washington works. ... The trade-off is simple. Corporate and other donors provide cash in a bid to secure the legislation they want.

The blog First Draft by Tim Porter is an insider's exploration of the press' problems.

The grandparent's experience is one I've seen a lot. You notice a direct correlation between how much you know about a domain, and how badly the press are bungling it. When one experiences this in several diverse domains... well, the temptation is to generalize.

Paul Graham's recent The Submarine discusses one source of intentional bogosity.

Ok, so according to this article (http://www.guardian.co.uk/US_election_race/Story/ 0,2763,410902,00.html) the ballots were supposed to be kept under lock and key and never counted. Which is obviously incorrect, as can be seen here (http://www.amstat.org/misc/PresidentialElectionBa llots.pdf), that Florida has a Sunshine law which allows all of its ballots to be examined. The guardian article had other errors.

Quote:
"The more immediate victim however, besides Al Gore and the system, is the supreme court itself. As the liberal lion of the bench, John Paul Stevens, put it in his strident, dissenting opinion: 'Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the law.'"

He was talking about the USSC ruling undermining the Flordia Supreme Court ruling, making it seem like their ruling had been done for partisan reasons. The article makes it seem like he's making the opposite claim, which is deceptive. I've read over the Flordia Supreme Court decision and consider it very reasonable and based on the correct interpretation of the law, so I understand where Justice Stevens was coming from on this.

Here's the results of one newspaper recount:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/media/media_watch/jan- june01/recount_4-3.html

Here's the results of another:
http://www.norc.uchicago.edu/fl/index.asp

Both found that Bush probably would have won if the recounts had gone through anyway (with margins of error, it's impossible to tell, of course). NORC was disingenuous in claiming that 4 methords would have given Bush the victory, and 4 Gore, when the Gore methods mainly involved determining intent on overcounts, which is illegal in every county in America. (I.e. if someone voted for both Buchanan and Gore, then claiming it is a vote for Gore. Sure, it's probably what happened, but it's still illegal.)

-FL

Corrected link to the story...

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,690 3,1037031,00.html

...the report predicts that Europe's Muslim population is set to increase from around 13% today to between 22% and 37% of the population by 2025, potentially triggering tensions.The Scotsman

The Salafist Preaching and Combat Group is an offshoot of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), which has been responsible for many killings in Algeria. It is led by Hassan Hattab, formerly the "emir" (commander) of the GIA's second region. An intelligence document seen by the Guardian asserts that Hattab was a member of the leadership group that authorised the GIA's bloody terrorists attacks on Paris in 1995. The Guardian

Guido Steinberg, a terrorism expert working in the office of German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, summed up the situation with these words: "Terrorism is coming home." And it's coming home to those countries whose governments may have believed they were immune from terror because for years they have provided safe haven to notorious Islamic extremists. Der Spiegel

PARIS, France (CNN) -- Two senior al Qaeda figures helped train the people now suspected of planning chemical and biological attacks in France and the United Kingdom, European intelligence and judicial sources tell CNN.

One of those figures is Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the man singled out by President Bush as a link between the terrorist group and Iraq.

The other is Abu Khabab whose voice has been identified by intelligence sources as the man on a videotape showing al Qaeda operatives performing chemical weapons experiments on dogs.

The information comes after a recent wave of arrests in France, the United Kingdom, Italy and Spain that investigators say helped uncover several cells of Islamic terrorists who had the material to make chemical and biological weapons. And, investigators say, the terrorists were apparently ready to use them. (France, Italy, Spain)CNN, Feb 15, 2003

Jihadist networks span Europe from Poland to Portugal, thanks to the spread of radical Islam among the descendants of guest workers once recruited to shore up Europe's postwar economic miracle. In smoky coffeehouses in Rotterdam and Copenhagen, makeshift prayer halls in Hamburg and Brussels, Islamic bookstalls in Birmingham and "Londonistan," and the prisons of Madrid, Milan, and Marseilles, immigrants or their descendants are volunteering for jihad against the West. It was a Dutch Muslim of Moroccan descent, born and socialized in Europe, who murdered the filmmaker Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam last November. A Nixon Center study of 373 mujahideen in western Europe and North America between 1993 and 2004 found more

The site has been getting UK national press attention for the last four months, with regular press releases for progress updates: http://browse.guardian.co.uk/search?search=million dollarhomepage

You can read the patent yourself if you don't believe me. They claim the rights to do anything with the BRCA1 gene. Legally, you have to send your genetic sample to Myriad Genetics and pay them ~$3000 to even sequence the gene. Here's claim number one, which should demonstrate my point:

1. A method for detecting a germline alteration in a BRCA1 gene, said alteration selected from the group consisting of the alterations set forth in Tables 12A, 14, 18 or 19 in a human which comprises analyzing a sequence of a BRCA1 gene or BRCA1 RNA from a human sample or analyzing a sequence of BRCA1 cDNA made from mRNA from said human sample with the proviso that said germline alteration is not a deletion of 4 nucleotides corresponding to base numbers 4184-4187 of SEQ ID NO:1.

How is patenting a mutation of a gene any different from patenting a gene? You're still patenting a genetic sequence. I think it's fair to say that mutations in just about any gene can cause pathogenic effects, but if those mutations occur naturally, why should anyone be able to patent them? The sequence would exist whether Myriad discovered it or not. They don't have any new technology--just a sequence. Instead of coming up with something novel, they claim the rights to use pre-existing technology to detect a common variant (~3% of the population) of the BRCA1 gene. Claim 10 is just one example:

10. The method of claim 1 wherein a germline alteration is detected by amplifying BRCA1 gene nucleic acids in said sample, hybridizing the amplified nucleic acids to a BRCA1 DNA probe which specifically hybridizes to nucleic acids containing at least one of said alterations and not to wild-type BRCA1 sequences and detecting the presence of a hybridization product, wherein a presence of said product indicates the presence of said germline alteration.

The Guardian is the online newspaper of the year but doesn't get a mention in that article - speaks volumes I think.

Huh. Try The Guardian, especially the ball-by-ball and minute-by-minute cricket commentary.

Huh. Try The Guardian, especially the ball-by-ball and minute-by-minute cricket commentary.

#1 Convincing people that their software truly allows people to innovate and create (as it does in some countries,) yet at the same time doing the opposite by censoring and restricting users in other countries.

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/online/weblogs/st ory/0,14024,1506602,00.html

Well, the real news is they are launching the first satelite tomorow

Thats exactly the change made that I meant when I referred to a 'kill switch'. During negotiations with the US it was determined and agreed that a change of frequency was required to allow the US to block Galileo without blocking GPS. This change was made specifically in response to US concerns. Tell me thats not a concession to a party unrelated to the project?

You forget that GPS has had recent changes making it near impossible to jam military receivers, while Galileo does not have these modifications. Thus Galileo could be jammed totally while GPS remains usable to the military with compatable receivers.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,110 2126,00.html

It's news because the first satellite is due to be launched tomorrow (tonight, US time):

More hybrid and bio diesel technology from the big Automakers

This is a scary one. The UK can produce enough biodiesel in an environmentally friendly manner (waste cooking oil) to supply 1/380 of its road transport fuel. After that, the most common form of biodiesel supply is oil palms. And this supply is an environmental disaster in itself - huge forests felled and burned to create space for the trees, peat bogs dried out.

God knows what kind of destruction will take place if this "environmentally friendly" fuel supply takes off in the US.

cLive ;-)

...everyone knows that Santa comes from Greenland, not Lapland!

I guess NBC got tired of M$'s demanding ways. Either that, or M$ wasn't really doing anything with the TV division...and they just were using it for marketing.
Try the Guardian for better news, or the BBC. The Brits got one thing right in my opinion: good *newsworthy* journalism. (And yeah, I'm ignoring their tabloid division...lol.)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/ http://news.bbc.co.uk/

That is a rather rosy view of technology. It may well be that China will have a different system of govt in 10 years but it probably won't be because of bloggers. Remember that the protestors in Tiananmen square didn't need cellphones and blogs to organise one of the critical protests in the Chinese freedom movement. So often it seems that technologies are taken by governments and used against their citizens - a prime example is the plan for the British govt to monitor all road movements of vehicles with licencse plates (see http://www.guardian.co.uk/transport/Story/0,,15932 63,00.html discussed on /.) Add this to logs kept of cellphone calls (coupled with triangulation), the ubiqitous CCTV cameras here and increasingly vague criminal notions like "antisocial behaviour" and you have a recipe for technological totalitarianism.