Slashdot Mirror

Building a Computer the Size of a Credit Card
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,106247,0 0.asp

Sharp is showing off an LCD with a built-in CPU, and plans to use it in a new breed of mobile display devices by 2005.

Sharp and its partner Semiconductor Energy Laboratory unveiled Tuesday what the companies claim to be a world-first prototype of an LCD with an 8-bit CPU on its glass substrate.

Sharp runs computer on piece of glass
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/10/22/10345614 95445.html

Japan's leading liquid crystal display maker Sharp Corp said yesterday it had made an "epoch-making" step toward making ultra-flat "sheet computers" after it succeeded in running a computer on a tiny piece of glass.

The prototype it unveiled was a functioning tiny circuit board - from a Sharp central processing unit (CPU) originally made in 1977 - imprinted on a piece of glass some 15 millimetres square and one millimetre thick.

Running a PC on a piece of glass
http://cooltech.iafrica.com/technews/178311.htm

Japan's leading liquid crystal display maker Sharp Corp. said on Tuesday it had made an "epoch-making" step toward making ultra-flat "sheet computers" after it succeeded in running a computer on a tiny piece of glass.

The prototype it unveiled was a functioning tiny circuit board - from a Sharp central processing unit (CPU) originally made in 1977 - imprinted on a piece of glass some 15 millimeters (0.6 inches) square and one millimeter thick.

Yes, the NYT has to provide at least some of their content for free over the internet. Lots of other papers do it, CNN does it, here where I live the Sydney Morning Herald is all for free on the web with no registration. You can google search for all sorts of news on the web, not to mention weblogs of all kinds. As you know you can listen for news on the radio for free and you can watch them on TV, too.

The price of the paper version is just for the convenience of having your own copy to take away wherever you want to and to use as garden mulch when you are finished. If the NYT wants to survive as a prime source of news that people read, they just have to provide their content. Their registration step is annoying and couterproductive (people will write whatever they want in these little boxes, and they do) so they should get rid of it.

BTW, the providing of news is nothing, this is not the business of the NYT in spite of all apparences. Their real business is the manufacturing of consent in the interest of bigger businesses and the economy in general. Simple, really.

"Man dies after playing computer games non-stop"

Guess more people must read Slashdot than the SMH.

Lack of sleep doesn't do it, nor mass amounts of monitor radiation. He was probably overdosed on some drug. He probably died like Elvis - a pH imbalance getting hightened by his duties in the bathroom.

Besides, if this could happen to just anybody, EverQuest would have far fewer players...

As the Sydney Herald article points out (*reading* the articles! who does that anymore?), It is most likely a Kuiper-belt object, part of the very large belt of asteroids 30 AU to 50 AU from the Sun, containing many trans-Neptunian asteroid-like objects.

Indeed, wandering off-topic, but I've got karma to spare. :)

Of course, you have to make up your own mind on who's right, but it's always a good idea to get several conflicting and contrasting stories before you do. And here, I offer some contrast. First, a couple of hospital stories.

And, to top it off, a column by an Arab-American, quoting from Arabic newspapers. Think it was the Jews that forced the Palestinians into refugee camps? Read this. And another column on history by the same guy.

Don't take my word for it, though. And don't take the word of anyone else you read off of the 'net. Don't accept anything you learn as absolutely true unless you have researched it throughly, from every different angle and point of view there is, and you can integrate it, without contradiction, into the total sum of your existing knowledge.

And the web site of the SYDNEY morning herald is http://www.smh.com.au.

SYDNEY SYDNEY SYDNEY
OIH! OIH! OIH!
(our national, inspirational, feindishly hard, and totally original way cry! OK, for the national cry we replace "SYDNEY" with "AUSSIE").

Obviously this is a beta when a cricket game is the top sports story.

As a side note. The article mentioned that a "computer scientist at Sydney University helped Analyise the images to work out what the componenets were."

I had the pleasure of being a student on Alan's for some time. He was intensly interested in this sort of thing. He was involved in studying Babbage's work, and in the re-creation of Babbage's Difference Engine. I remember standing with him in front of a display case containing gears from one of these projects as he explained how they had been manufactured.

Alan Bromely died on August 16 this year after a long battle with cancer. I remember in 1998 I was studing a subject taught by Alan. Twice during one semester he was unable to give lectures due to his chemo therapy, but he continued to teach, and always had time to explain something to anyone who wanted to listen.

The Babbage project
An article in the Sydney Morning Herald
A university publication

The Economist article mentions that research on the Antikythera mechanism was carried out with Allan Bromley from the University of Sydney. This recent eulogy in the Sydney Morning Herald presents the life and achievements of this remarkable identity.

Yet another penis mutilation story

Youll enjoy it. Why are you still reading /.? Daily rotten.com is 1000000000000000000000000e+10000000000000000000000 000000000 times better

Ahh, but Christopher Reeve is starting to regain feeling. Don't bother submitting it--I tried twice.

We're getting a free ride along with the ADEOS II megasat (the Japanese get access to some of the data in return), but we're still talking significant money for development. And you're right re funding: it's no exaggeration to say that the future of Australia's space programme is at stake.

As regards Microsoft doing space/embedded systems, another quote from the original article:

"The system must be ductile - bending, not breaking - when things go wrong. In space no one can press Control/Alt/ Delete."

A. Brain, Rocket Scientist

From an article in the Sydney Morning Herald .

Only 58 centimetres square and weighing 50 kilograms, the tiny FedSat satellite is packed with five scientific experiments and all of the instruments required to communicate with Earth during its anticipated three-year life. At the heart of the satellite is a 10MHz ERC-32 processor - a SPARC-based 32-bit RISC processor developed for high-reliability space applications.

The ERC-32 sacrifices processing power for durability and reliability. It uses three chips to process a modest 10 million instructions per second and two million floating-point operations per second - less than 1 per cent of a Pentium 4's capabilities.

The pay-off is reliability: the ERC-32 uses concurrent error-detection to correct more than 95 per cent of errors.

Power-hungry microprocessors such as the Pentium 4, which runs a standard office PC bought off the shelf today, would be an intolerable burden on the solar-powered satellite. The ERC-32 consumes less than 2.25 watts at 5.5 volts.

Designed to survive extreme radiation bursts from solar flares, the ERC-32 can tolerate radiation doses up to 50,000 rad. This is 100 times the lethal dose for humans.

...A team of Australian programmers developed FedSat's onboard software, building on work done in Britain. It is written in Ada-95, a programming language designed for embedded systems and safety-critical software. All it has to work with is 16MB of RAM, 2MB of flash memory for storing the program, a 128K boot prompt and 320MB of DRAM in place of a hard disk that would never survive the launch process. All essential data is stored in three physically different locations.

The software is built in a similar way - lots of internal checks, tell-me-thrice memory, soft-failure-bit-flip-correcting daemons etc. In this case, lives aren't at stake, but the people doing the programming are used to situations where they are.

Regarding Iraq, I haven't seen a credible report of Iraqi involvement in 911, and if there has been such a report, the US Administration is doing an alarmingly nice job of keeping it quiet, which seems to be completely contrary to the desire to get some of our allies to support an invasion. The meetings with Atta have not been confirmed, and US officials don't even seem to believe them. About the WMD stuff, yeah, Iraq wants WMD, but the evidence of a real nuclear threat is severely lacking. But even if they were pursuing nukes -- get real. Iraq has as much right as any regime to pursue whatever policy its statecraft dictates. Why would we feel threatened by Iraqi nukes? They could never develop a capability that could seriously threaten American interests, not even indirectly; as self-aggrandizingly cruel as Saddam Hussein is, he is neither suicidal nor stupid. Keep in mind too his regime is secular - he has about as much reason to fear the al Qaeda types as we do; more in fact, since the Iraqi citizens are far more likely to take up his call to overthrow their government than American muslims, Chicago gangbangers and Marin county white kids included.

Finally, I don't know why you want to let Mr. binLaden dictate the terms of our conflict with him. Of course he says it's a "clash of civilizations" - but we don't have to buy into that; it only helps him. If we want to defeat him and his kind we need to make sure the rest of the Arab Muslim world doesn't believe it's a clash of civilizations. We won't be able to do that by bombing them to kingdom come.

Is that NZ horses winning Aussie Races? Hell one of them was even called "Kiwi" just in case we weren't sure.

I thought Brew had retired but he seems to be on the come back trail. SMH ref . I like the idea of "the big ask" from the land of big hairy NZ spiders.

... I get my Aussie news from smh.com.au and the other day after reading the news I decided to go see what the car market was like for Sport Coupes. I was very impressed by drive.com.au - it makes decent use of web connected databases and hypertext to provide a service that dead-tree cannot (quick comparisons, searches, specifications, web reviews, etc). It makes the shopping "experience" so much easier I can see why it is popular enough to be profitable.

BTW - the careers classifieds are quite good as well if you are in Australia and looking for a job (professional).

- HeXa

I wish Slashdot had a Rejected Stories feed. If a story announcing a press release that is a preannoucement of another press release is worth reporting on, isn't my story on the George Bush's plan to recruit 1 in 24 Americans as citizen spies newsworthy? That's more informants than the East German Stasi had at their peak.

• pedophilia - virtual child porn, after being ruled illegal, was ruled legal on appeal, as long as no actual children were involved
• rape - From what I can tell, most psychiatrists acknowledge 2 kinds of rape - 1 where the rapist derives pleasure from hurting/controlling the person(probably wouldn't translate into VR) and 1 where the rapist is merely looking for a way to get off, or convinces himself of consensuality where there isnt any. The second kind could partake in VR-sex, but in any case, since pornography is already too easy to find, I doubt they would seek it out.
• murder - Go play GTA3, SoF2, Q3, UT, CS, god, pick any acronym you want, and it will correspond to a first person shooter.
• theft - usually the majority of the thrill someone gets from stealing is in the acquisition of the goods, meaning the increase in their wealth, with notable exceptions. In the case of these exceptions, I doubt that a petty shoplifter needs VR. It's simply not cost-effective, and it won't really help any more than chewing gum helps w/ the oral fixation part of quitting smoking. Yes, it's a compulsive behavior, but knowledge that the VR is merely therapy quickly takes away any thrill/adrenaline rush incurred in stealing.

One in 24 Americans to be recruited as spies? If so, it's significant evidence of the fulfillment of Big Brother.

On a side note, I've decided that if I ever wanted to prevent a certain vision of the future from occurring, I would *not* write a book about it. It seems only to make it more likely, or at least there's absolutely no evidence that it discourages it. :)

It's especially crazy that they would write now about how mistaken Orwell was. Last year, it might have made some sense, but now... Nearly every day I hear about more and more moves by the U.S. government to loosen restrictions on police to spy on U.S. citizens. Also, there's talk about an American Empire -- how the U.S. government should rightly rule over the rest of the world, and from "mainstream" intellectuals rather than extremists.

The fact that the U.S. government is using technology to move towards totalitarianism does not mean that technology is the important ingredient. And, of course, the fact that many Americans are responding to the propaganda they're being innundated with by calling for more security doesn't suggest the absence of totalitarianism. When the Reichstag burned, most Germans were scared and were willing to give up some of their liberty for some more security. Totalitarianism only works when the people ask for it.

The problem, though, is that there's a sort of event-horizon with liberty. There's a point beyond which you have little room for resisting. And it's possible for most people to cross it without noticing. As long as nobody is shooting at you or otherwise interfering in your life, you might not notice that some of the most effective means for radically changing government have been eliminated, and that suppression of dissidents has become so efficient and effective that effective dissent becomes impossible. When you start to see the darker side of the "security" you asked for, you find that there's no turning back. In Germany, it took the destruction of the country and the deaths of millions to unseat Hitler.

Fortunately things aren't so stark as that. Supressing dissidents is never easy, and human ingenuity has a way of somtimes finding ways around "insurmountable" problems. But I think the event-horizon analogy is appropriate, because it doesn't take large scale repression to protect power and stifle resistance. There is a point where resistance and chance of success become much more difficult, and you can easily pass that point without noticing.

instead one out of 24 of your friends will be spies for your government.

US planning to recruit one in 24 Americans as citizen spies

By Ritt Goldstein
July 15 2002

Full article available at:

George Bush's Amerika

And thanks to the USTASI, you will be caught more redily. Everyone should study the original STASI of East Germany, to see its effects on that society, the way that people interacted with each other under it, and how brother could not trust brother in that aweful informant system.

Of course, it will be even worse when someone is reporting what they think is a malicious hacker, because computer illiteracy is as widespread as reading and writing illiteracy was in the Medireview days.

2002-07-11 05:31:21 Mining the Moon for Helium-3 (articles,news) (rejected)

Assuming we could pull together a coherent space program of the Apollo magnitude once again, Helium-3, a cleaner, safer, more stable isotope could be mined from the moon in abundance as an alternate nuclear fuel, according to this story from the Sydney Morning Herald. Also discussed: Lunar Tourism.

You know the shit's deep when a story about red staplers gets posted while one discussing how Helium 3 can be mined from the moon is rejected. I'd laugh if it weren't so damn tragic. Take the Karma. Might as well use it for something.

Articles rejected to date: 10/10

"He's going to try to put down some place safe. A safe landing is the key to everything right now," says the Sydney Morning Herald

The print version of the story goes on to describe a safe landing was a large open area, dotted with a few trees to avoid dragging him around.

The catch ? He was planning on flying over the Nullarbor plain in Western Australia. Nullarbor is not Australain Aboriginal - it means "No Trees" in Latin for obvious reasons.

So they are going to skip that, stay south and will probably hit South Australia in a couple of hours, continuing to clock up the miles.

Personally I think "selling out" == "trying to market your sound to get a larger audience". Art of any kind is about creation of something special that comes from within you and makes you happy. Linus would be my example of someone who did not sell out. He does the kernel because he wants to and he avoids having people tell him it must be done this way or that because of money or politics or whatever.

I would describe almost any famous musical artist as a sellout. Very few are in a position to control their own "art".

This article claims that Moby does indeed drink.

See now you are just trolling. You say "mozilla is ___so____ much better, etc..." have you actually tried to write an HTTP daemen?

I have no intention to troll. None whatsoever. And please don't put words in my mouth. I never said that quote you have above.
No. I have never tried to write an http-daemon. What does that have to do with anything?

I tried to download the zipfile you posted and as you said, it works fine in IE but not with Mozilla. I have no idea why this happens but I'm sure the mozilla team does. You have filed a bug-report so that they can fix it, right?

Why does this happen from your webserver and not from other servers that I've downloaded zipfiles from? Is it really a Mozilla error? This is an honest question, because it really seems to work elsewhere.

About the bastardizaton of html. It's no secret that Microsoft has added new tags and stuff that only works in IE. Pick up any book about web-design. In most of them it sais right there [Only works in IE].
Although I can't prove it, it wouldn't surprise me if they did the same to the http. They have some authentication-scheme that isn't a part of http don't they?

Just because I haven't done exactly the same things like You it doesn't disqualify me from having an opinion. Especially if its backed up by some facts.
Here they state that Mozilla "may be the most compliant of all current browsers."


Here they say something similar. Written in 99 they haven't tested the 1.0 release and aren't all positive. But they agree that it complies with standards.

Another link about how well Mozilla follows standards.

So, in conclusion I'd like to repeat what I said before. Mozilla isn't perfect, but it's my browser of choice until IE implements the features that I find useful in Mozilla [Gestures, Image/popup-blocking, tabs among others] and prove to be faster and better (subjectively decided by me) and can be run on the platform [OS] I run at the time.

Best regards

.haeger

That's kind of like how real players exchange jerseys after games. Sweat and all.

The Roaring Penguin article was reprinted in full in The Age (Melbourne) and the Sydney Morning Herald today. Those IT sections are read by really quite a lot of people in IT in Australia.

NSW - Labour Government
Australia - Liberal Government
(Remember, in Australia these are the opposite of what they mean in the US)

This is not to say that the NSW government was stupid introducing the legislation in the first place, but at least they'll listen to the committee's response, unlike Mr Head-in-the-sand-Howard

The NSW Government has this nice habit at the moment of rejecting Federal programs - Feds' say no Injecting rooms, NSW opens one. Fed's outlaw stem cell research, and Bob Carr says he will pass laws voiding the federal law

At the moment in Australia, all the states are Labour, and only the Federal government is Liberal. This is something like every state government in the US being Republican, and only the Federal government being Democrat

It seems to be the ideal situation for Australian voters is to make sure that you keep the federal and state governments fighting each other so they are too busy to pass legislation, and that way they interfere with you as little as possible

Considering the concurrent proposals to introduce legislation to allow banning of organisations suspected of terrorist links, am I the only one suspecting Australia is about to have a whole lot less political parties?

As scary as that possibility is fortunately it looks like is unlikely to happen, at least to the full extent of the initial bill. The anti-terrorism bill issued by Attorney-General Daryl Williams that was going to give him the ability to ban political groups/parties deemed terrorist in their actions so far has been rejected by senators. Thus forcing Williams to back down on the anti-terrorism bill.

I am not sure how this affects the proposed changes to the Telecomunications Interception Act, because I am not sure if this one big anti-terrorism bill or a series of seperate bills. Eitherway it reflects the fact that most senators in Australia are sane and wont stand for these crazy new laws, at least in their current form.

Now if only the government would come to their senses about the mistreatment of refugees, though that's whole other issue,

Considering the concurrent proposals to introduce legislation to allow banning of organisations suspected of terrorist links, am I the only one suspecting Australia is about to have a whole lot less political parties?

As scary as that possibility is fortunately it looks like is unlikely to happen, at least to the full extent of the initial bill. The anti-terrorism bill issued by Attorney-General Daryl Williams that was going to give him the ability to ban political groups/parties deemed terrorist in their actions so far has been rejected by senators. Thus forcing Williams to back down on the anti-terrorism bill.

I am not sure how this affects the proposed changes to the Telecomunications Interception Act, because I am not sure if this one big anti-terrorism bill or a series of seperate bills. Eitherway it reflects the fact that most senators in Australia are sane and wont stand for these crazy new laws, at least in their current form.

Now if only the government would come to their senses about the mistreatment of refugees, though that's whole other issue,

Firstly I don't think your comment is a troll, yes it is an opinion I don't agree with but it is a valid opinion none the less.

We may get to see for the first time in an English-speaking country the first example of the domino effect claimed by the US National Rifle Association... where banning the private possession of firearms inevitably leads to control of political speech and association ending in totalitarian democracy.

The possession of firearms is not entirely illegal in Australia. Self-loading guns are readily available but there are restrictions on high capacity self-loading rimfire rifles, self-loading centrefire rifles and shotguns and pump-action shotguns. These were the types of guns mainly used in Australian gun massacres. For more information on this consult this link.

How you can say that banning of certain types of weapons leads to control of political speech I am not sure. Sure guns are needed in the instance of a revolution against the government when it fails the people, but that is a last resort after democracy has failed.

The only suggestions I have for Aussies if this doesn't get stopped, and if it's gotten this far, your elected officials probably no longer care...

In that case you'll be glad to hear that so far these new anti-terrorism bills proposed the Attorney-General Daryl Williams have been rejected by senators forcing Williams to back down on the anti-terrorism bill. Whilst I am not sure if this is a different bill to that in this topic is an anti-terrorism bill and reflects the fact that most senators in Australia are sane and what stand for these crazy new laws.

Firstly I don't think your comment is a troll, yes it is an opinion I don't agree with but it is a valid opinion none the less.

We may get to see for the first time in an English-speaking country the first example of the domino effect claimed by the US National Rifle Association... where banning the private possession of firearms inevitably leads to control of political speech and association ending in totalitarian democracy.

The possession of firearms is not entirely illegal in Australia. Self-loading guns are readily available but there are restrictions on high capacity self-loading rimfire rifles, self-loading centrefire rifles and shotguns and pump-action shotguns. These were the types of guns mainly used in Australian gun massacres. For more information on this consult this link.

How you can say that banning of certain types of weapons leads to control of political speech I am not sure. Sure guns are needed in the instance of a revolution against the government when it fails the people, but that is a last resort after democracy has failed.

The only suggestions I have for Aussies if this doesn't get stopped, and if it's gotten this far, your elected officials probably no longer care...

In that case you'll be glad to hear that so far these new anti-terrorism bills proposed the Attorney-General Daryl Williams have been rejected by senators forcing Williams to back down on the anti-terrorism bill. Whilst I am not sure if this is a different bill to that in this topic is an anti-terrorism bill and reflects the fact that most senators in Australia are sane and what stand for these crazy new laws.

Another oilfield refilling article, this one not an editorial.

The fact that the refilling is with light gas and oil speaks to Thomas Gold's hypothesis that typical oil we see is the result of metabloism of pre-planetary hyrdocarbons by specialized bacteria. We know that some kinds of tube worms metabolize hydrocarbons.

Indeed, it is looking like "fossil fuels" are really "fuels you occasionally find fossils in".

There was an old crack-pot scientist Tom Gold who had a theory that oil is being produced as a by-product of deep-underground microbes, and is a renewable resource.

In April, there was a study that revealed that a number of previously capped oil wells around the Gulf of Mexico are "mysteriously" refilling. As my sister (a chemical engineer) explained to me, underground oil is trapped at a very high pressure; this is why oil fields can get at the oil so easily, these are spots where the pressure is literally squeezing the oil out of the ground. After a while, the pressure equalizes with respect to the admosphere, and you actually have to work to get the oil out. After more time, it becomes too cost prohibitive to remove the oil, and the well is capped (even if there is still more oil to gather!).

Well, since you've been pumping all this liquid out of the ground, there is now low pressure in the well with respect to the oil that has been dissolved into the rocks around the reservoir, and oil will seep back into the well, so that the liquid pressures are equalized... and viola, the well refills!

The Sydney Morning Herald have just done an article on this. While it doesn't cover much more than the one linked in the article, it has links to some other SMH articles. One Of them is an interview with one of the main scientists behind it, and is quite insightful. The other is a gallery of relevent photos.

The Sydney Morning Herald have just done an article on this. While it doesn't cover much more than the one linked in the article, it has links to some other SMH articles. One Of them is an interview with one of the main scientists behind it, and is quite insightful. The other is a gallery of relevent photos.

The Sydney Morning Herald have just done an article on this. While it doesn't cover much more than the one linked in the article, it has links to some other SMH articles. One Of them is an interview with one of the main scientists behind it, and is quite insightful. The other is a gallery of relevent photos.

I'd like to see who all is back from the Reagan era. I know Cheney and Rumsfeld. Admitidly two very high ranking officials, but who else. It seems a bit generous to say "a good majority

• Mitch Daniels - Office of Management and Budget Director
• Condoleezza Rice - Foreign Policy Advisor
• Robert Zoellick - US Trade Representative
• Andrew Card - Chief of Staff
• Richard A. Clarke - Special Advisor for Cyberspace Security
• Robert Joseph - Senior Director for Proliferation Strategy, Counterproliferation and Homeland Defense
• Elliot Abrams - Senior Director for Democracy, Human Rights,and International Operations
• Richard Armitage - Deputy Secretary of State (from former Bush Admin)
• Paul Wolfowitz - Deputy Secretary of Defense
• Gary R. Edson - Deputy Assistant for International Economic Affairs and Deputy National Security Advisor
• William Howard Taft, IV - Legal Advisor to the Secretary of State
• Timothy Muris - Federal Trade Commission

Just when did the US create a situation in the middle east? Look at Britain that created Israel. Look at the arab countries for attacking Israel. Look at Israel for rocketing innocent people. Look at childish leaders that can't agree on how to meet for peace, let alone discuss peace terms. There are lots of people to blame for the problems but hardly the US, unless giving hope of some sort of peace settlement is a bad thing.

You must remember that Bush came into the White House saying outright that Clinton's mistake was in meddling with the affairs of the Middle East. Up until 2 weeks ago, he pretty much wanted to ignore the issues...which lead to mass confusion on Bush's stance Which Sharon took as an OK to advance onto Palestine territory. Now recently, Powell went over there to try to resolve things, but his mission was considered by many as a failure. Both sides have lost respect for the US as a mediator.

Bush does not really care or want to be involved in the middle east. It's quite a tangled web. On one hand, part of his administration wants to fully support Israel. But on the other hand, if he does support Israel, the entire Islamic world will come down upon him. Even today's news, the Saudi Prince (our supposed Ally) just threatened to cut off ties to the US if the US does not take a harder stance on Israel. In addition, Egypt (another ally) is threatening to go to war again Israel once it gets enough financial support.

Alright...I'm done with my rambling... :-P

Unfortunately what the administration has found is that it has opened up Pandora's box and does not know how to handle it anymore. And like you said, it has fallen back 15 years to Reaganism. The thing is, a good majority of the administration are from the Reagan era. It is much easier to lead a country back during the Cold War than it is now. When you know who your enemies are and can rally support against a common enemy, you can pretty much push anything through legistlation. In the past 6 months or so, the administration has tried to find a common enemy (first terrorists, but since that is a broad term, moved onto Usama Bin ladin, and since we can't find him, moved onto al Qaeda then Taliban, etc, etc...)

Bush has had it out for China since he first stepped into office. Remember the US spy plane incident?. And honestly, China isn't doing anything worse than what the US has been doing for years. I would say distrupting and ousting a democratically elected leader of a country is a bigger crime than DDoS that is talked about in this article.

And in doing so, they have provided incentive for obtaining stem cells from elsewhere. Using adult stem cells harvested from the same person who will receive them has obvious advantage, not the least of which is the immune system factor. Score one for democracy.

It seems as though a Kevin Burmeister is involved in all this.

Read his bio here.

He had big success running Sierra's game distribution in Australia.

But then there is Sega World, a recently failed game theme park in downtown Sydney. And look, Nikki Hemming was CEO there. They were being sued by their tenants, too, for failing to deliver business.

While I'm searching, here is a Sydney article about the Kazaa/Sharman connection.

Then there is BDE, their failed 3d techology that started as a multipath-movie game idea that failed many times. Check their stock price. It failed at retail, even when it had Wal-Mart distribution, it failed online, even when it was on warner bros site, and it is making a last ditch effort as a banner technology. This is when they first started bundling their player with morpheus. Last year the morpheus download name changed to have a "-b3d" at the end.

It will be interesting if these shadowy folk will make a success after their failures.

It seems as though a Kevin Burmeister is involved in all this.

Read his bio here.

He had big success running Sierra's game distribution in Australia.

But then there is Sega World, a recently failed game theme park in downtown Sydney. And look, Nikki Hemming was CEO there. They were being sued by their tenants, too, for failing to deliver business.

While I'm searching, here is a Sydney article about the Kazaa/Sharman connection.

Then there is BDE, their failed 3d techology that started as a multipath-movie game idea that failed many times. Check their stock price. It failed at retail, even when it had Wal-Mart distribution, it failed online, even when it was on warner bros site, and it is making a last ditch effort as a banner technology. This is when they first started bundling their player with morpheus. Last year the morpheus download name changed to have a "-b3d" at the end.

It will be interesting if these shadowy folk will make a success after their failures.

In case you missed it

Are here and here. It looks like not everyone is buying into the hype of this thing.

Read this site
It was mentioned first in an /. post, a while ago, but but googled turned up the
link, and not the post itself.

This is just how capitalism works; if they rejected
to take the contract, they could have been sued
by their share holders.
But now, the guilt (if any) is spread, and every
one shares the profit.

--

The original story was in The Daily Telegraph, GOVERNMENT SPIED ON US yesterday.

It's interesting that they are now denying the spying, because a Government minister was quoted yesterday defending the spying in this AAP story run on the Sydney Morning Herald website. They seem to have edited the story now, but the original quoted Federal Workplace Relations Minister Tony Abbott saying the most interesting thing about the Telegraph report was the fact that the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) was making phone calls to the Norwegian ship!

It's completely outrageous that the Government is trying to deflect blame by questioning the MUA's motives. That completely side steps the issue. I couldn't care less what the MUA and the captain discussed, the point is that they have a right to do so. This was a political issue not a matter of
national security.

It's an ethical minefield, regardless of whether the Government's actions are in the letter of the law. I object to a taxpayer-funded spying organisation that was set up to protect Australia's national security being hijacked for political ends. A Norwegian ship captain is entitled to talk to people in Australia without being spied on unless he is suspected of terrorism or something similar. In this case, the only purpose of the eavesdropping was to formulate a political response in an election campaign.

Today there are plenty of good columns and editorials condemning the Government.

Editorial: Canberra must answer spy allegations

and Scott Burchill: Indefensible breach of privacy

Of course, we all know that governments spy on us (think Echelon) but it's more than a little grubby if the data is used for political ends.