Missing Mary Road

Bell Canada Inc., accused last week by Google Inc. of breaking the law by slowing broadband connections, has fired back and said if anybody is acting as the internet’s gatekeeper and furthering its own interests, it’s the search engine company.

“If there is, indeed, any gatekeeping activity on the internet, which is questionable, the gatekeeping is being performed by the internet search engines, which are typically the users’ window to the near-infinite content available worldwide,” Bell wrote in a Friday submission to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission and made public on Tuesday.

Mysterytopia: Embracing icebergs sing eerie duets
The phenomenon occurs when the huge lumps of ice scrape past each other and produce thousands of tiny “icequakes”.

BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Mexico probes online ‘hitmen ads’
“In one of them, a person describing himself as an ex-military killer offers “discreet, professional services” for $6,000 (£3,000).”

Rare ‘Star-Making Machine’ Found In Distant Universe
“extreme stellar machine — a galaxy in the very remote universe pumping out stars at a surprising rate of up to 4,000 per year”

Ae Musafir Kyoon Ghabrata Hai Mere Rikhshaw Mein Beth Jane Se
Khuda Bhi Naraz Hota Hai Kisi Ka Dil Dukhane Se

Zalim Palat Kar Dekh Tamana Hum Bhi Rakhte Hein
Tum Agar Car Rakhti Ho To Rikhshaw Hum Bhi Rakhte Hein

Jo Maa Ko Satata Hai
Wo Rikhshaw Hi Chalata Hai

Driver Ki Zindagi Ajab Khel Hai
Maut Se Bache To Central Jail Hai

Allah Allah Tera Zor Hai Mere Deewane Mein
Kal Hi Zamanat Karwaii Thi Aj Phir Se Thane Mein

Port Per Rehte Hein Sohrab Ghot Mein Sote Hein
Jab Tere Yaad Aati Hai Ji Bhar Ke Rote Hein

Kal Chodween Ki Raat Thi Balti Mein Tera Aks Dekha
Aur Phir Balti Hila Hila Kar Rat Bhar Tera Raks Dekha

Chalti Hai Ghari Urhti Hai Dhool
Jalte Hein Dushman Khelte Hein Phool

Ae Rocket Tujhe Qasam Hai Himat Na Harrna
Jaisa Bhi Khada Aee Has Kar Guzarna

Na Kar Jhagra Musafir Se , Musafir Door Se Aaya Hai
Safar Qismat Mein Likha Hai , Hokum Door Se Aaya Hai

Pata Kya Khaak Bataein Nishaan Hai Be Nishaan Hamara
Laga Bethe Jahaan Basta Wahe Samjho Makaan Apna

back in 2006, i wrote about the death of habeas corpus and what the lack thereof means to the general population globally, and how the US has done much to ignoring the rights of americans in this regard. seem like great britain is following suit and bob geldof (from the boomtown rats, live aid and the wall fame) has come up with a very serious and in-depth op-ed in the telegraph on what it means to be living in an orwellian world and how pathetically the rights of average citizens are being stolen away from us.

Still today, 800 years later, Magna Carta resonates: “To no man will we deny, To no man will we delay, Justice and Right.” Is that not grand, worthy of your vote? Is habeas corpus to be traduced in one sad moment of political expediency? Do we not clearly deny and delay Justice and Right when we imprison a person for 42 days without charge?

What existential threat do we face greater than those of the past 800 years? What great terror exists today that not civil war, not world war, nor recent other terrorisms could make our forefathers change the fundamental basis of this state? What is so dangerous that our oldest statutes could be upended for such a ha’p'orth of momentary panic?

What terrorises the terrorists is our civilisation. What those unthinking fools of fundamentalism fear most are the freedoms our representatives now strip away. This “war on terror” is against Islamist forces that reject the Enlightenment.

How can we ever succeed, if we side with our opponents in rejecting those ideals? Every moment we are spied on by the invisible watchers, every time we are monitored, every time we are logged on databanks, they win. And every time we accept it, we lose.

Why should I carry an ID card? I own my identity – nobody else. The war on terror is no answer. ID cards did not stop the bombers in Germany or Spain. Nor does it diminish crime, nor illegal immigration. And if for some mad authoritarian reason they are introduced, stand by for a brisk trade in false British ID cards.

i thought this was hilarious.

Microsoft Corp. yesterday said it would offer free technical support to small businesses that buy new PCs with Windows Vista in the next three months, its latest attempt to convince users that moving to Vista is a good idea.

and if that wasn’t enough, this was even funnier!

And if those efforts are for naught, Microsoft will help those users downgrade from Vista to Windows XP, the same maneuver several large computer makers, including Dell Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co., have used in recent months to continue offering the older operating system to buyers.

The offer, dubbed Windows Vista Small Business Assurance, is available to businesses with fewer than 50 employees or 25 PCs, and it provides free telephone support through the end of October to companies that buy new PCs with Vista Business or Vista Ultimate between now and Sept. 30, according to details posted on the Microsoft Web site.

Humans are consuming natural resources so quickly that we’re running out of elements.

The element gallium is in very short supply and the world may well run out of it in just a few years. Indium is threatened too, says Armin Reller, a materials chemist at Germany’s University of Augsburg. He estimates that our planet’s stock of indium will last no more than another decade. All the hafnium will be gone by 2017 also, and another twenty years will see the extinction of zinc. Even copper is an endangered item, since worldwide demand for it is likely to exceed available supplies by the end of the present century.

AFRICANS buy 36 billion bottles of Coke a year. Because the price is set so low—around 20-30 American cents, less than the price of the average newspaper—and because sales are so minutely analysed by Coca-Cola, the Coke bottle may be one of the continent’s best trackers of stability and prosperity.

“We see political instability first because we go down as far as we can into the market,” says Alexander Cummings, head of Coca-Cola’s Africa division. The ups and downs during Kenya’s post-election violence this year could be traced in sales of Coke in Nairobi’s slums and in western Kenya’s villages. Events in the Middle East, such as the 2006 war between Hizbullah and Israel, can dent sales in Muslim parts of Africa, though anti-American feeling usually wears off quite quickly.

Coca-Cola says it is the largest private-sector employer in Africa.

Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% – far more than previously estimated – according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian.

The damning unpublished assessment is based on the most detailed analysis of the crisis so far, carried out by an internationally-respected economist at global financial body.

The figure emphatically contradicts the US government’s claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3% to food-price rises. It will add to pressure on governments in Washington and across Europe, which have turned to plant-derived fuels to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce their dependence on imported oil.

Senior development sources believe the report, completed in April, has not been published to avoid embarrassing President George Bush.

“It would put the World Bank in a political hot-spot with the White House,” said one yesterday.

Chomskybot is a web-hosted program that generates text which appears similar to (and based on) the famously hard-to-follow linguistic work of Noam Chomsky. But unlike Chomsky’s actual work, Chomskybot’s text is devoid of meaning. Circling back on itself, piling modifiers on terms, and stretching the limits of human attention, Chomskybot generates a stream of text that’s almost meaningful — and by doing so, it’s actually kind of fun to read…until it drives you nuts. For example, try to make sense of this Chomskybot passage:

With this clarification, the theory of syntactic features developed earlier is not subject to a descriptive fact. For one thing, a subset of English sentences interesting on quite independent grounds is not to be considered in determining nondistinctness in the sense of distinctive feature theory. It must be emphasized, once again, that the fundamental error of regarding functional notions as categorial is to be regarded as a corpus of utterance tokens upon which conformity has been defined by the paired utterance test. Clearly, the systematic use of complex symbols cannot be arbitrary in an abstract underlying order. To characterize a linguistic level L, the descriptive power of the base component delimits an important distinction in language use.

Visit Chomskybot for more scary gibberish.

Read more on Chomskybot from Wikipedia, or see the official FAQ.