loving the alien.....

BBC NEWS | Politics | Remembering the departed:

"Ms Hughes told a BBC interviewer she was not aware of the alleged scam, but it later emerges she was warned about it a year ago by a Labour colleague.
She is praised by unions and her boss, David Blunkett, for her handling of the immigration brief. "

"Yes, she's done really well. We especially liked the bit when she lied to the British Public, that was great!"

Link goes to a list of Labour MPs who have resigned and whether or not they are as big a twat as we thought. Here a hint: it's 'yes'.

Hmm, interesting angle....:

"The mystery of whether Richard Clarke is telling the truth about President Bush's counterterrorism policies might be solved the same way: Which dogs aren't barking? Amid all the administration officials bombarding the airwaves with denunciations, who has stayed mum?
The answer: Secretary of State Colin Powell and CIA Director George Tenet, and their silence speaks loudly."

Yep, I picked mine up this morning. Here's a review from pcmag.co.uk:

So where to start on this lengthy roll call of qualities? The Pentium 4 processor is a good place. Although it's not the very fastest chip in Intel's line-up, the 3GHz clock speed puts it at the top end of processing prowess. Similarly, the 512Mb of memory is fast becoming standard-issue on PCs at this price level, but to label the amount average would be to misstate its usefulness. In our exacting labs tests, the machine turned in a performance that bordered on superb. Moving down the list of specifications, the Titanium 8080's 160Gb hard disk is generous, while the graphics card, a Radeon 9800XL from ATI, is one of the very latest available. Take a deep breath, though, because we've barely begun.

DVD-ROM drives are familiar in new PCs these days and DVD-writer drives, too, crop up with regularity. However, the Titanium 8080 includes both DVD-ROM and DVD-writer drives, the latter being a multi-format model from Pioneer. In other words, rather than being restricted to one or other of the main recordable DVD formats (the rival 'plus' and 'minus' standards), owners of this Medion PC will be able to read and write both.

Below these two optical drives on the machine's front is a plastic panel: depress the top of this and it slides down gracefully to expose an excess of connectivity ports. As well as affording easy access to common connections, such as headphone and microphone sockets, this bay has slots for the most common memory card formats - a delight for digital camera owners. In addition, this panel sports a couple of FireWire connectors and three of the Titanium 8080's seven USB 2 sockets (the remainder being situated around the rear).

Remarkably, thus far we've covered barely half of the Titanium's notable features. Continuing, we find a combined TV and FM-radio tuner card, meaning the PC can receive and display television broadcasts and tune in to the wireless. Talking of wireless, Medion has fitted the computer with the very latest in Wi-Fi, 802.11g, which supports fast network speeds up to 54Mbit/s.

As we're running out of space we'll strive to squeeze in mention of the machine's other fancy features, which include a cordless keyboard and mouse and a stack of pre-installed software applications. The 2004 edition of Microsoft Works Suite, Nero Burning Rom 6 and Power DVD 5 top off this fantastic package.


Not bad for £750 ;-)

out-law.com - legal news and business guides:

"The Canadian music industry has suffered a major blow in its fight against file-sharers, after a ruling yesterday by the country's Federal Court which effectively said that computer users who make music available on the internet can not be sued.
The Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) went to court in February, asking that ISPs be forced to identify 29 file-sharers, who could then be sued directly. Yesterday the court said no.
According to news site The Register, Judge Konrad von Finckenstein wrote in his ruling:
'No evidence was presented that the alleged infringers either distributed or authorised the reproduction of sound recordings. They merely placed personal copies into their shared directories which were accessible by other computer users via a P2P service.'
'I cannot see a real difference between a library that places a photocopy machine in a room full of copyrighted material and a computer user that places a personal copy on a shared directory linked to a P2P service.'"

Not that I advocate file-sharing or copyright infringement, but I do advocate forcing a worldwide antiquated industry to move with the times.

BBC NEWS | Business | Google plans rival e-mail service:

"Google, the world's most popular internet search engine, plans to offer an e-mail service called Gmail in a bid to rival Yahoo and Microsoft's Hotmail.
The new service promises to take away the need to delete unwanted messages and organise e-mail according to topic.
The service is still being tested and not yet generally available, but will be offered for free on www.gmail.com.
Google mail provides one gigabyte of storage - many times more than existing rivals that also offer free e-mail. "

So one user = 1Gb. Two users = 2GB. 1000 users = 1 Terrabyte. 1,000,000 users = 1 Pentabyte server.

Gmail, if it is real, would need at least a 10 Pentabyte server. Or, put another way, 50,000 200Gb hard drives. That's a *lot* of storage. And that's if only 10 million sign up.

A 200Gb HDD is about $100. So that's 50,000 x 100, $5 million just for storage.

I'm not *convinced* this is an April Fool's joke, but if it is it has gone *everywhere*.

BBC, Evening Standard, Slashdot etc etc etc.

Besides, there is already a product called Gmail, it is a Gnome Mail client on Linux.

BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | US vows to catch Falluja killers:

"Speaking in Baghdad to graduates from the Iraqi police academy, Mr Bremer said the Americans killed had 'not died in vain'."

Really? Just what did their deaths achieve then? Answers on the back of a £30 billion note please.

She moves her lips.

BBC NEWS | Politics | Hughes resigns over visa scam row: "The Tories had accused the Home Office of approving some visa claims from eastern Europe despite warnings they were backed by forged documents.
Ms Hughes had dismissed calls to quit, saying she had not known of the claims.
But No 10 said it was now clear she was warned about it a year ago, by Labour's deputy chief whip Bob Ainsworth, so she had 'unwittingly' misled people. "

So she knew about it a year ago? How the hell can that be 'unwittingly'?

Also: Tony Blair - "There was obviously something that went on that is wrong here"

Fucking genius. You allow 29000 people into the country when you know, you *know* they have bogus ID and he thinks that there's 'something wrong'?

biometric passports:

"Countries such as the UK, which currently do not require a visa for citizens to travel to the US, have until October of this year to ensure all passports have the capacity for biometric information by October of this year.
If they do not comply, citizens will have to get a visa before travelling to America.
Micro-chipped passports are due to be introduced in the UK in the middle of 2005. "

So, if they have to be in place by October, when do they have to be in place? ;-)

And when *will* they be in place?

Worst reporting of the day award goes to the BBC online service.

"Stanley Kubrick, The Trashmen and Robert A. Heinlein: The Unholy Trinity of the Late 20th Century; or, How I Learned To Begin Worrying And Fear The Bird":

I picked up a copy of Battlefield Vietnam at the weekend. Its a game for the PC which takes place in, yeah, ok, you get it.

One of the best things about the game is I can go into battle in a helicopter and I get to pick the music! Pressing '0' gives me a choice of 12 tracks to play, Buffalo Spingfield's 'There's something happening here' or Martha and the Vandelas 'Nowhere to run to' but my favourite, by miles, is The Trashmen with "Surfin' Bird".

It's the one that goes: "A-well, everybody's heard about The Bird, Papa Oom Mow Mow"

Download it. The article is about how that track got recorded by the way. Today is now officially 'Interesting Article Day'

And Kubrick coincidence day it seems....

Not to mention 'Mark has to edit each post 3 times because he can't type, spell or proof-read' day.

What would it be like to take a walk through the mind of Stanley Kubrick?:

"Tony takes me into a large room painted blue and filled with books. 'This used to be the cinema,' he says.
'Is it the library now?' I ask.
'Look closer at the books,' says Tony.
I do. 'Bloody hell,' I say. 'Every book in this room is about Napoleon!'
'Look in the drawers,' says Tony.
I do.
'It's all about Napoleon, too!' I say. 'Everything in here is about Napoleon!'
'Somewhere else in this house,' Tony says, 'is a cabinet full of 25,000 library cards, three inches by five inches. If you want to know what Napoleon, or Josephine, or anyone within Napoleon's inner circle was doing on the afternoon of July 23 17-whatever, you go to that card and it'll tell you.'
'Who made up the cards?' I ask.
'Stanley,' says Tony. 'With some assistants.'
'How long did it take?' I ask.
'Years,' says Tony. 'The late 1960s.'
Kubrick never made his film about Napoleon. During the years it took him to compile this research, a Rod Steiger movie called Waterloo was written, produced and released. It was a box-office failure, so MGM abandoned Napoleon and Kubrick made A Clockwork Orange instead.
'Did you do this kind of massive research for all the movies?' I ask Tony
"More or less," he says.
"OK," I say. "I understand how you might do this for Napoleon, but what about, say, The Shining?"
"Somewhere here," says Tony, "is just about every ghost book ever written, and there'll be a box containing photographs of the exteriors of maybe every mountain hotel in the world."

There is a silence. "

Wow.

Australia music indistry has best year......ever!:

"The Australian record industry has just had its best year ever. But it doesn't want you to know about it. This month ARIA announced its sales figures for last year. In its press release, it talked about Delta, it talked about falling CD singles sales, it talked about the rise in DVD sales, but at no stage did it tell us it was the industry's best year ever. Why bury the good news?
Record industry types aren't usually shy about success. But this time their success is a little embarrassing. For the past few years the industry has argued that file-sharing and CD burning is having a negative impact on sales. But, unfortunately, their own sales figures don't back up their arguments."

So, from that we infer that they are more interested in sueing file-sharers than they are in selling music.