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Not only Europe, but Australia http://www.smh.com.au/news/games/no-playstation-fo r-christmas/2006/09/06/1157222189890.html/...

(and probably many other places)

Now they are really in trouble.

At least one airline, QANTAS, has banned using dell laptops on battery power in flight for this very reason.

Why do we keep hearing the myth that we need GE for more food?

Perelman did not leave his position at the Steklov Institute as the article suggests, but rather, he was not allowed to return to his position. I believe that he already had a fairly reclusive and modest personality, and as was pointed out by the Sydney Morning Herald, the extremity of this nature was prompted when the faculty of the Steklov Institute declined to re-elect him as a member; his peers and close colleagues rejected him, the paper quotes a friend as saying that Perelman was made to feel as an "absolutely ungifted and untalented person". Wikipedia has more, saying that this stemmed "apparently in part out of continuing doubt over his claims regarding the geometrization conjecture".

There are few things more bitter than being betrayed by one, let alone a majority or all of your associates. I know all too well how that kind of utterly profound pain can easily turn one of your greatest passions in life (be it a pursuit or a person) into a source for nothing other than misery.

There is a much better reuters article here - I suggest you read that rather than the linked article.

The first four paragraphs of the article contain the story (not too much there) - the rest is fluff - and inaccurate fluff at that - I'm going to go completely OT to look at some of the absurdities it contains:

The Brazilian case highlights an issue that has been brewing for sometime over the information that search engine and other internet companies keep on their databases about their users.

No, it doesn't highlight that - the cases are not similar in any form, other than both involving large internet companies

The recent blunder made by AOL in which the internet company erroneously published 20 million search requests....

Erroneously? AOL deliberately published the search requests.

Early this year, Google successfully defended a subpoena from the US Department of Justice to hand over its data in another child porn investigation case.

Calling that a "Child porn investigation case" is one of the most misleading statements I've ever heard. It was a "porn on the 'net fishing expedition."

Dead On, Mate. A software project with three quarters of a million lines of code is surely going to have hundreds of open SPRs at the time of its release. If things are going well, most of them are going to be relatively unimportant. Still, You have to wonder if the FBI's CIO knows much about real software projects and how they work.

I prowled around the Internet trying to find any sort of bio on Azmi. Here's what I came up with http://www.federalnewsradio.com/?nid=5&sid=760419. His background isn't awful, but neither is it especially reassuring. There's nothing there that says to me that this isn't a guy with an expensive haircut and no proven technical or administrative ability. But he could also be fighting the good fight against heavy odds. No way to tell I think. At least he doesn't seem to be a political appointee.

Nothing against Mr Azmi, but apparently if has been common knowledge that VCF was a fiasco since early 2005. See http://www.smh.com.au/news/Breaking/New-FBI-softwa re-may-be-unusable/2005/01/14/1105582686258.html I'm sure that the problems are not Azmi's fault. Given the timeline, I don't see how they could be. But he's had two and a half years to recognize that there is a problem and get the project back on track. I have to wonder if he is the right guy to try to fix this mess.

Dead On, Mate. A software project with three quarters of a million lines of code is surely going to have hundreds of open SPRs at the time of its release. If things are going well, most of them are going to be relatively unimportant. Still, You have to wonder if the FBI's CIO knows much about real software projects and how they work.

I prowled around the Internet trying to find any sort of bio on Azmi. Here's what I came up with http://www.federalnewsradio.com/?nid=5&sid=760419. His background isn't awful, but neither is it especially reassuring. There's nothing there that says to me that this isn't a guy with an expensive haircut and no proven technical or administrative ability. But he could also be fighting the good fight against heavy odds. No way to tell I think. At least he doesn't seem to be a political appointee.

Nothing against Mr Azmi, but apparently if has been common knowledge that VCF was a fiasco since early 2005. See http://www.smh.com.au/news/Breaking/New-FBI-softwa re-may-be-unusable/2005/01/14/1105582686258.html I'm sure that the problems are not Azmi's fault. Given the timeline, I don't see how they could be. But he's had two and a half years to recognize that there is a problem and get the project back on track. I have to wonder if he is the right guy to try to fix this mess.

Thousands of people did die today... Due to car accidents, cancer, and poverty. If we're just trying to stop deaths, we should focus on making safer cars, researching cancer, and helping those less fortunate than ourselves.

I suspect, however, that all of this terrorism hype isn't about stopping deaths.

You've got it spot on, it isn't about stopping "deaths", randomly distributed accidents, excess deaths due to poor life style choices like eating too much cheese on your onion rings every day, or disease. It is about stopping deliberate, calculated mass murder. Terrorist incidents are infrequent due to active preventative measures, not because it has a low naturally occurring frequency.

We don't even know for sure that there was going to be a terrorist attack.

By repeated observation, the British like most people in Western society have learned that when young Muslim men between the ages of 18-40 accumulate explosives, hold secretive meetings, receive large sums of wired money, and follow up by studying airline schedules, and plots to blow up aircraft in midflight, it is unlikely to lead to a spontaneous soccer match, .... at least not one you would care to attend. A terrorist attack, on the other hand, seems to be a distinct possibility. Some well informed people might even spot something resembling a pattern or two. Of course, who knows? Maybe they just wanted to go "dancing". But hey, believe what you want.

The US and UK governments are far from being trustworthy.

You left out Australia, Spain, Russia, Morocco, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Germany, Italy, Egypt, Philippines, Afghanistan, and quite a few more countries that are having problem with Islamist terrorist organizations.

The US government has contemplated "simulated" terrorist attacks to change public opinion.

Well, here is a shocker: the US government tries to change or influence public opinion or behavior pretty much every day on all kinds of matters: diet, exercise, tax code compliance, joining the military, better methods to raise corn, reducing pollution, reducing drunk driving, avoiding travel to various foreign countries, and so on. The fact almost 45 years ago a handful of anti-Communist zealots managed to get a draft paper for a dubious plan like Northwoods to the President where it was immediately shot down (with no doubt that one or more of the words: crazy, stupid, insane, criminal, were in the air) is a wonderful example of US democracy and civilian control of the military in action. The system worked. Or is that bad? Unless you are proposing total thought control, which has plenty of problems of its own, there will always be ideas that need to be shot down in government.

You know, it strikes me as odd that you would seemingly trust the government to deliver all manner of social welfare services, health care, and medicines, when you believe that same government is untrustworthy and is trying to fool you or maybe even kill you.

1. The current "foiled attack" is quite obviously fictional:
A senior congressional source told CNN that the plot was believed to hinge on mixing an energy drink with a gel-like substance inflight to create a potent explosive capable of being ignited by an MP3 player or mobile phone.
Unhook your brain from the government propaganda and think about that for a second. Energy drink + gel + MP3 player/mobile phone = terrorist attack? That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.

2. Operation Northwoods demonstrates that the US government would consider faking terrorist attacks. It's not the only example of the US government being dishonest, so can we at least agree that they can't be trusted, in general? I can cite more examples, if you really want, but I think we can agree on this.

3. I don't deny that there are terrorists who want to attack the US/UK, but what I intend to point out is that whenever an attack is "foiled", that may just be political propaganda. When an attack happens, it may be that the government had a role in it, if it suits their political agenda. That role might involve execution, or might just involve letting it happen despite knowing about it. No one can be sure about this. It almost happened in 1962. What has changed so much about the US government since 1962 that makes them most trustworthy today?

http://www.smh.com.au/news/World/Aussies-in-airpor t-chaos-after-UK-threat/2006/08/10/1154803030431.h tml

get fucked, this is insane.

when are "Sheeple" in the west going to wake up to themselves this is a loosing
battle.

I've had it with these "increased security measures", everywhere that you go
in the subways in NY now they are saying bags subject to search, I cant wait
for someone to stop me, without a warrant they can ask me to leave the
subway but no way are they searching my stuff without probably cause.

exactly what is the reason we are fighting terrorism for in the first place?

Dean

Please point me to a specific clause in the Windows EULA that proves that this isn't a complete fabrication. Please. Prove me wrong.

It's easier for me to cite other people's opinions than it is to dig through M$'s obnoxious EULAs.

Here's one 2003 study which validates practices others have found looking at tools like fastfind even further back. M$'s EULA fun has been going on for a while. They usually pretend they are looking for copyright violations in their snooping. Here's more:

• Forced "upgrade" of EULA
• Remote Admin "rights"

It could be true that non free software requires such invasive practices to maintain itself in the world. That's just one more reason to avoid it.

I don't see why not. We expect other countries to extradite their citizens for breaking US laws. It seems only fair. While in most cases they've broken the law in both countries, that's not always true.

Roars and voted sexiest car by Top Gear:

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/is-this-the-world s-sexiest-car/2006/07/26/1153816233705.html

What's a better example of stealing something in plain sight of everyone than stealing two mainframes with confidential data from a secured server room belonging to Australian customs.

They went in, presented fake credentials, worked in the room a couple of hours, took two machines and nobody suspected a thing until someone noticed the servers were down.

Anyone can top that?

a bit late but ive just seen this article on the front page of the sydney morning herald.

Aussie jailed in net lure sting
Lucas McKay DAVID BRAITHWAITE 2:33pm | Australian who emailed photos of his genitals to a US teen jailed after detectives posed online as a 14-year-old.

I read you post yesterday and when i saw this article i almoast pissed myself

article here

In 2004 the AAPT team were planning on using a kite sail the same as this in the annual Sydney to Hobart (Australia) ocean yacht race.

info and photos here:

http://www.kitepower.com.au/news/index.php?id=1,61 ,0,0,1,0
http://www.smh.com.au/news/Sport/Lets-go-sail-a-ki te/2004/12/07/1102182277209.html
http://www.smh.com.au/photogallery/2004/12/15/1102 787123880.html

Due to heavy weather and headwinds predicted for the race I believe they didnt even take it out with them but they did testing prior to the race which was apparently successful. New laws were made to outlaw the kite sail for the next years race so I dont knwo if it was ever actually used in competition.

In 2004 the AAPT team were planning on using a kite sail the same as this in the annual Sydney to Hobart (Australia) ocean yacht race.

info and photos here:

http://www.kitepower.com.au/news/index.php?id=1,61 ,0,0,1,0
http://www.smh.com.au/news/Sport/Lets-go-sail-a-ki te/2004/12/07/1102182277209.html
http://www.smh.com.au/photogallery/2004/12/15/1102 787123880.html

Due to heavy weather and headwinds predicted for the race I believe they didnt even take it out with them but they did testing prior to the race which was apparently successful. New laws were made to outlaw the kite sail for the next years race so I dont knwo if it was ever actually used in competition.

It's Da MAN!! He be puttin us DOWN!!

At least they're not trying to sue you for back wages.

The question is why are we talking about it at all?

Because people keep calling it theft. Others think it is a very important distiction. You wrote:

...pedantic distinctions between ripping people off indirectly vs going into their house to do it.

Here is the problem. Calling it theft has affected the way you think about it. Copying is not always infringement. Infringement does not always affect the copyright holder negatively (even if it is illegal, or even wrong). Theft, however, is always theft. It always removes the owners property. Calling copyright infringement theft causes people to categorise it and think about it in ways that are in significant conflict with reality. They then vote/legislate/act according to this erroneous thinking, affecting us all negatively. That is why we are willing to go over and over this distinction.

There was recently an unsigned band the Arctic Monkeys in the UK who had the fastest selling album. They got this because they had given some CD's out at gigs they had done. Fan's shared the CD by p2p. Enough people who heard it liked it and bought the CD to put them at the top of the UK charts. I think they were not "ripped off" as you put it. I'm not saying this makes copyright infringement ok, but if it was theft, it would never benefit the copyright holders in this way.

If people are to understand what copyright infringement is (and it is currently an very important issue, with new laws and effects all over the world, and impacted by the net), it is necessary for them to think of it accurately. If they think it is theft, they cannot do so. It is not just semantics, it is necessary. It is like getting people to discuss new laws about theft, but continually repeating that theft is rape, and the difference is entirely semantic. It is not, they are different actions with different effects.

FWIW, the FBI did bust someone from Pepsi for trying to steal the recipe for Coca-cola! Priorities.

No hat required.

There was a time when I would of agreed with the parent. At that time I regarded Senator Alston as the worlds greatest luddite, too. But in retrospect, it doesn't stand up to analysis.

When the government wanted to regulate the Internet, they have been very effective. The anti-spam act was, after a few prosecutions 100% successful. They hounded wayward DNS registrars into obligation, and similarly with phishing web sites. What drove the point home for me was the internet gambling laws. Can you imagine a better way to keep gambling money in Australia than this?

Yes they appear to have done things that, if you accept their stated aims, were odd. For example, the web page classification system they put in place could never of worked. (For the non-Aussies out their, the law was/is that potentially offensive web pages had to get a classification from the same body that classified films. The cost per page was the same as getting an entire film classified - approx $3000.) Now either the government was totally brain dead, or it was deliberately designed to not work. Why design something that would not work at all? Well it is effectively that same as not doing it, as far as the internet users are concerned. After the dust settled the observed effect was 0. If the observed effect is 0, then by election time no one is going to remember it anyway. Certainly it isn't going to effect their vote. So why do in the first place? Well it wasn't for the reasons they said, obviously. But I do recall they needed Senator Harradine's vote on GST. Harradine was to say the least a highly religious man. For example, he opposed family planning on religious grounds.

Ditto for family porn filters. How to you appease the moral minority on porn, while not actually interfering with any voting persons daily dose? Since people who want to view porn make up roughly the half voting population, this is quite a dilemma. How about making it mandatory for ISP's to provide porn filters for free? Absolutely no one is inconvenienced by this - not the ISP's, not the users - no one, simply because no one takes up the offer. Yet it was championed as mandatory porn filtering.

Far from being brain dead, as far as I can tell Howard's government is ruthlessly efficient when it comes to controlling the internet. They know what works, and they know to finesse a sop when required. When they really want to take down a web page, they do it, law or no law. Love it or hate it, these are not the actions of people who don't understand the internet.

So what are they doing now? As a famous politician who once ran sunny Queensland said, they are feeding the chooks. I was always wondered where that came from. After reading the posts here it suddenly hit me. After feeding, it appears the said chooks run around like, well, chooks with their heads cut off. The resulting commotion makes a great smoke screen. The government can get along with the real job at hand in peace and quiet. In retrospect when you look at the children overboard affair and other things, it appear the Howard government has honed this technique into a fine art.

There was a time when I would of agreed with the parent. At that time I regarded Senator Alston as the worlds greatest luddite, too. But in retrospect, it doesn't stand up to analysis.

When the government wanted to regulate the Internet, they have been very effective. The anti-spam act was, after a few prosecutions 100% successful. They hounded wayward DNS registrars into obligation, and similarly with phishing web sites. What drove the point home for me was the internet gambling laws. Can you imagine a better way to keep gambling money in Australia than this?

Yes they appear to have done things that, if you accept their stated aims, were odd. For example, the web page classification system they put in place could never of worked. (For the non-Aussies out their, the law was/is that potentially offensive web pages had to get a classification from the same body that classified films. The cost per page was the same as getting an entire film classified - approx $3000.) Now either the government was totally brain dead, or it was deliberately designed to not work. Why design something that would not work at all? Well it is effectively that same as not doing it, as far as the internet users are concerned. After the dust settled the observed effect was 0. If the observed effect is 0, then by election time no one is going to remember it anyway. Certainly it isn't going to effect their vote. So why do in the first place? Well it wasn't for the reasons they said, obviously. But I do recall they needed Senator Harradine's vote on GST. Harradine was to say the least a highly religious man. For example, he opposed family planning on religious grounds.

Ditto for family porn filters. How to you appease the moral minority on porn, while not actually interfering with any voting persons daily dose? Since people who want to view porn make up roughly the half voting population, this is quite a dilemma. How about making it mandatory for ISP's to provide porn filters for free? Absolutely no one is inconvenienced by this - not the ISP's, not the users - no one, simply because no one takes up the offer. Yet it was championed as mandatory porn filtering.

Far from being brain dead, as far as I can tell Howard's government is ruthlessly efficient when it comes to controlling the internet. They know what works, and they know to finesse a sop when required. When they really want to take down a web page, they do it, law or no law. Love it or hate it, these are not the actions of people who don't understand the internet.

So what are they doing now? As a famous politician who once ran sunny Queensland said, they are feeding the chooks. I was always wondered where that came from. After reading the posts here it suddenly hit me. After feeding, it appears the said chooks run around like, well, chooks with their heads cut off. The resulting commotion makes a great smoke screen. The government can get along with the real job at hand in peace and quiet. In retrospect when you look at the children overboard affair and other things, it appear the Howard government has honed this technique into a fine art.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard is calling on Network Ten to cancel its edition of Big Brother. (various news services)

HELEN COONAN: It is not technically broadcasting within the meaning of the Broadcasting Act and Schedule Five of the Act. So what we are doing is we are now going to extend by legislation the content rules to other sorts of services, new and emerging services, over converged platforms such as mobile and the internet.

The Liberals (just a name, they're not really liberal) know they're going to need the Family First's (Australia's fundamentalist political party) support over the next few years. This sort of posturing is their way of pandering to the religious nuts without actually changing anything. In reality, the Libs are pretty much owned by the big media outlets and won't be doing anything to annoy them - as evidenced by their response to attempted media reform.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/business/media-reforms- whittled-down-to-a-runt/2006/06/29/1151174330032.h tml

No charges - see here. And if you watch the footage and consider the circumstances, it bedazzles me how it can be blown out of proportion that much. They are three young adults who have been living together for 70 days, 24 hours a day. The girl and the 2 guys were very comfortable with each other and slept in the same bed, with her being topless and all of them hugging. There was some sort of sexual tension between them, so this did not come out of nowhere. The girl even said "Are you going to turkeyslap me now?" so she saw it coming. In the end she did tell them to stop and so they did.
 
It is a TV show and there is a lot of bullshit and manipulation through the way it is broadcast. However, these people do live their lives in there and form relationships that are probably stronger than one can imagine watching 10 minute blurbs of footage each day.
 
  The politicians are just proving that it is not the TV show, but rather themselves who deserve the title Big Brother!

What a terrible article to link on the issue. It has next to nothing to say about any kind of regulation of online content other than that content broadcast live online is not covered by current laws. It seems quite sensible to bring this in line with other laws governing online content - it's what those other laws are which is the sticking point. The relevent federal minister's statement on the events can be found here - a link I found in a good blog post (on the news site linked in the summary) here. I would say that this is a classic case of governmental over-reaction and bumbling misunderstanding, but you can't really tell that from the article linked in the summary. In fact, I would say that the real fallout from it hasn't been seen yet - we'll see what legislation brings.

They're not facing charges. Police say there isn't enough evidence.

More here.

These apparently use a new method of separating out and multiplying the needed stemcells, and so far seem to making good progress - the patient is already experiencing improved quality of life.

In other news the Australian Defence Force has committed 6 billion for purchase of the new flying robots.
See http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/04/30/10832245 88493.html

However, sometimes your address information is a little out of date and it can go a bit askew.

The Robot Dog Soccer World Cup is the event in the robotics world.

*sigh* /.'s attitude of "It's okay to copy anything I want" is really, really getting tiring.

The MPAA's commercial propaganda claiming "It's not okay to copy anything at any time" is also really tiresome.

... is saying to the producers "I want your product, but don't want to pay for it".

Your assumption is playing right into the MPAA's biased view of the world. Try to think outside their box. Don't think of the elephant.

People have been sharing since the dawn of time and it's the MPAA's self serving view of the world that needs some revision.

Your suggestion won't make much difference in fixing the problem. The MPAA will continue do anything that maximises there profit, particularly on the sunk cost of the movies they already continue to repeatedly sell. Whether piracy is occurring will hardly affect that at all. And that has been true for every generation of copying technology.

---

It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work.
It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons.
Reform IP law and stop the M$/RIAA abuse.

MOD PARENT UP!!! Excellent links.

Quote from the first linked article: "In MLIS, an infrared laser is directed at uranium hexafluoride gas. The laser excites uranium 235 hexafluoride gas, while not disturbing the uranium 238 hexafluoride gas."

In 1972 or 1973, I built an apparatus to test whether a flowing gas carbon monoxide laser could excite uranium 235 hexafluoride. My little project was shut down without explanation.

The Silex web site gives almost no information. The "about Silex" web page misspells the word neutrons as "neutrins".

It could be that the U.S. government has been successful at laser enrichment, but has published misleading information about the project. The article linked by Slashdot says, "One US effort involving 500 scientists gave up after spending $2 billion." That doesn't make sense. You know very early, without spending a lot of money, whether you have a laser tuned to the right frequency.

--
Taxpayer Karma: If you contribute money to kill people, expect your own quality of life to diminish.

http://www.smh.com.au/ had a writeup about this which said that Norton Internet Security guarded against this flaw in Norton AntiVirus. Go figure on the implications of that.

Have some huge contraption made ready such that a huge explosion at some specific point can be used to set up potential energy reservoirs which then can be tapped slowly and efficiently. Now, explode anything, and now we do have a means to obtain energy from the same.

Here's a few links showing the explosions we've used. Some even involved fusion reactions.
image1
image2
image3
image4
image5

What percentage of that sex is voluntary? Women forced into prostitution, rape victims and wives don't usually have the option of refusing sex. Hell, in some particularly screwed-up societies, it's believed that having sex with a virgin will cure you of AIDS... so you end up with many children being raped by people with AIDS.

problem? solution: the anti-sex condom.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/1769 642.stm
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/east/01 /19/china.plane.bug/index.html
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/15/10501725 99474.html

They wanted to bring the country into a civil war with the Golden Mosque bombings and related attacks, they have failed.

What news sources are you consuming? The amount of violence in Iraq certainly qualifies as low intensity civil war by any conventional measure. And the situation has been continuously deteriorating. Denying this will just set us up for a colossal failure. Even Alawi who has been the US most favorite Iraqi politician (not counting Chalabi) has said as much. Now even Basra is starting to come unglued. A trend that started last year when militias infiltrated the police force is now playing out. A development that was entirely predictable when the US failed to unarm and disband the Shia militias while dissolving the old Iraqi army (probably the worst blunder of the whole occupation saga - and there have been so many!).

The Basra security situation is very bad news.

Sorry my friend, but I will certainly take the former Iraqi PM's assement over yours. You may want to check out some broader spectrum of news sites to protect yourself from falling for spin.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports and my old bookmarks quickly confirmed that street maps for Australian cities are finally on the map.

I'm guessing I might now have to upgrade my prototype application to use version 2 of the Maps API to get the street maps to show there.

• You can only watch a recorded TV show once
• You can't get someone else to format shift for you (eg can't go help your mum do it)
• You can't loan a recorded TV show to a friend
• You can't make a backup of a CD you own - unless you back it up into a different format

Twits.

In short, people will continue doing what they're currently doing - ignoring the laws because they're dumb, and drawing their own lines as to what's right and wrong. Which isn't a good thing for *anyone*.

And if you video something you have to erase it after you've watched it once.
And you can't lend a video to a friend or family.

All we've really done is swapped one absurd and unworkable rule for a new set of absurd and unworkable rules.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmn,

They're not unrelated - an Australian recently Auctioned New Zealand off on Ebay

I have no frigging clue how the "world's second android" game is played, but maybe these guys didn't think that one counts because it's missing. Still, the same people who did PKD-Bot already made an Einstein android (The article says it has "frubber" in it!) so I think the claim here is bogus, especially since this one can't walk or anything particularly novel. Maybe they mean it's the second Asian android or something?

"how many android men have been developed?"

Just one that I know of, but he seems to have wandered off somewhere.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/author-android-go es-missing/2006/02/13/1139679514495.html

(Cue "Men don't ask for directions, even mechanical ones" jokes)

I'm not sure if 62 is anywhere near correct when it comes to China jailing internet dissent. Who's to know? China is very secretive and evasive when it comes to releasing numbers, even numbers that most governments take pretty seriously.

And who cares about whether the "jailable offense" is on the internet, or in a newspaper, or in a diary? If the Chinese government thinks a citizen has the word "democracy" (for example) in their head, there is a good chance they can just lock them up, throw away the key, and nobody will ever know.

Or not. It's impossible for anyone outside of the "Inner Party" to know what's really going on. And even Western governments have a tendency to say things that are a little... off... of the real truth...

Indeed, and it might get even worse. (or better, depending on whether you want Vista to be a success or not)

From the article:
Researchers at Gartner said in a report Tuesday that they believe Windows Vista won't be broadly available until sometime between March and June of 2007. Gartner is basing its projections on the progress the Redmond company has made in getting test versions of Vista out the door. In a statement on Tuesday, Microsoft said it disagreed with Gartner's views and was still on track to meet its revised released schedule.

Are you loyal enough to quit your job and follow Madonna wherever she goes?

Email is quite frequently used in court cases to establish intent. intent. Hell, if it wasn't useful, then why is this story important?

Now I'm not a lawyer, but I do know that emails ARE important.

Feloneous

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/poor-mozart-died- a-rich-genius/2006/04/05/1143916594763.html

FOR centuries he has been portrayed as an impoverished genius, who wrote begging letters to friends and ended up in a pauper's grave. But a new exhibition claims that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart lived a solidly upper-crust life and was among the top earners in 18th-century Vienna.

Documents on display at Vienna's musical society, the Musikverein, reveal that he earned 10,000 florins a year, a huge sum.

"His income put him in the top 5 per cent of the population," Otto Biba, the exhibition's curator, said. "During this period you could lead a very comfortable upper-class life on 500 florins a year. A labourer earned just 25 florins a year."

"The 21st century needs to rescue Mozart from the lingering 19th-century romantic image of him as a struggling artist. The truth is that Mozart was a genius, but a genius who earned lots of money towards the end of his life. Sometimes he had heavy debts too. It must have been through gaming; there isn't proof, but there is no other explanation."

Mozart gained income by giving piano lessons and concerts and working as a private imperial musician. He had a billiard table and regularly visited his hairdresser. He also had a generous parking space for his carriage and lived for most of his time in Vienna in a seven-room apartment, the exhibition shows.

The documents on display include an invoice for 800 florins from his royal patron, Joseph II.

The composer lived in Vienna between 1781 and 1791, the year of his death, aged 35. He was interred in a regular communal grave in accordance with contemporary practice, Mr Biba said.

The exhibition, Mozart: A Composer in Vienna, runs until June 30. It displays bills and receipts from the last decade of Mozart's life, and is part of a year of events in Austria celebrating the 250th anniversary of the composer's birth in Salzburg on 27 January 1756.

The Guardian

-Sj53

Given that 'Straya, the Deputy Sheriff shares so many cultural, social and political similarities with the U.S., it's simply not a surprise to those of us in the region that they're implementing similar domestic policies.

The most surprising aspect is the sheer admiration that the 'Strayan people hold for the U.S. and their collective willingness to become a subservient client state to U.S. interests.

They truly are the Americans of the South Pacific and not just in terms of public policy. The 'Strayan people are almost indistinguisable from their American counterparts in terms of attitude and behaviour.