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The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.

– Hunter S. Thompson

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Kingdom in several (3) parts, can be bought as a whole ( not recommended), can be bought in parts.

I. Flanders highly traficated and very heterogeneous architecture (as well art nouveau as spanish hacienda style) , hard working people understanding American english ( due to an overdose of episodes of Dallas), catholic but not fanatic. Be aware some Flemish ( not to confond with Amish) are ‘ practiserende Vlamingen’ and you recognise them easily by their Lion Flags (hand model or life size flag). As a whole easy to govern provided that you dont cut mobile phone traffic or television broadcasting. If you do so you will see what. Oh yes, in possesion of a seaside (50 kilometres) and flashpilars ( ‘flitspalen’). What to say, when you meet them: it is the one and the other ( ‘t is t’ een en t’ander) in case of emergency, Say it is not true ( Zeg dat het niet waar is) in all other circumstances.

II. Brussels
Lively village with nineteen lord mayors and a government on top. The real Babylon with several coexisting minorities.Nice realestate taken by National, Regional and European institutions.Still opportunities in the Bois de la Cambre for de luxe flats. Possibility to establish farming facilities both on Grand Place, De Brouckère, Place Rogier and on the Boulevards ( contact mr. Pascal Smet). What to say when meeting with a Brussels subject: Hello good morning (Zeg, draag ik soms iets van U. Quoi tu veut ma photo!)

III. Wallonia
First become member of Parti Socialiste which makes it easier in many ways to establish your situation. Has plenty of water ( sometimes sparkling), tons of old iron, acres of woods, several homebrews, ingenious shipptraffic ( The Pending Slope of Roncquiers), The Shape head quarters (tax fee cigarettes!) and German speaking backyard. In general the Wallons are more philosophical and relaxed guys then the Flemish. Plenty of opportunities but find out yourself. What to say if you bump into a Wallon: Hide the Flemish are there!

So you see there is plenty of choice. Beware there is a 300 billion of National Debt which has still to be devided under the three, but that wil be fixed soon after the Duchess Valley Talks ( het beraad van Hertoginnendal).

Free premium: the king and his court ( costs not included)

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Iraq has cancelled the licence of the private security contractor, Blackwater USA, after it was involved in a gunfight that killed eight civilians.

I don’t get it - this has been going on for years, and now they suddenly get evicted? Sounds like they didn’t pay their blackmail money on time.

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To understand what’s really happening in Iraq, follow the oil money, which already knows that the surge has failed.

Back in January, announcing his plan to send more troops to Iraq, President Bush declared that “America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced.”

Near the top of his list was the promise that “to give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country’s economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis.”

There was a reason he placed such importance on oil: oil is pretty much the only thing Iraq has going for it. Two-thirds of Iraq’s G.D.P. and almost all its government revenue come from the oil sector. Without an agreed system for sharing oil revenues, there is no Iraq, just a collection of armed gangs fighting for control of resources.

Well, the legislation Mr. Bush promised never materialized, and on Wednesday attempts to arrive at a compromise oil law collapsed.

What’s particularly revealing is the cause of the breakdown. Last month the provincial government in Kurdistan, defying the central government, passed its own oil law; last week a Kurdish Web site announced that the provincial government had signed a production-sharing deal with the Hunt Oil Company of Dallas, and that seems to have been the last straw.

Now here’s the thing: Ray L. Hunt, the chief executive and president of Hunt Oil, is a close political ally of Mr. Bush. More than that, Mr. Hunt is a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, a key oversight body.

Some commentators have expressed surprise at the fact that a businessman with very close ties to the White House is undermining U.S. policy. But that isn’t all that surprising, given this administration’s history. Remember, Halliburton was still signing business deals with Iran years after Mr. Bush declared Iran a member of the “axis of evil.”

No, what’s interesting about this deal is the fact that Mr. Hunt, thanks to his policy position, is presumably as well-informed about the actual state of affairs in Iraq as anyone in the business world can be. By putting his money into a deal with the Kurds, despite Baghdad’s disapproval, he’s essentially betting that the Iraqi government - which hasn’t met a single one of the major benchmarks Mr. Bush laid out in January - won’t get its act together. Indeed, he’s effectively betting against the survival of Iraq as a nation in any meaningful sense of the term.

The smart money, then, knows that the surge has failed, that the war is lost, and that Iraq is going the way of Yugoslavia. And I suspect that most people in the Bush administration - maybe even Mr. Bush himself - know this, too.

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2,000-year-old Sumerian cities torn apart and plundered by robbers. The very walls of the mighty Ur of the Chaldees cracking under the strain of massive troop movements, the privatisation of looting as landlords buy up the remaining sites of ancient Mesopotamia to strip them of their artefacts and wealth. The near total destruction of Iraq’s historic past – the very cradle of human civilisation – has emerged as one of the most shameful symbols of our disastrous occupation.

Evidence amassed by archaeologists shows that even those Iraqis who trained as archaeological workers in Saddam Hussein’s regime are now using their knowledge to join the looters in digging through the ancient cities, destroying thousands of priceless jars, bottles and other artefacts in their search for gold and other treasures.

In the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, armies of looters moved in on the desert cities of southern Iraq and at least 13 Iraqi museums were plundered. Today, almost every archaeological site in southern Iraq is under the control of looters.

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Microsoft may have lost in court, but it quickly tried to win the war of media reaction via organisations like CompTIA, the Computing Technology Industry Association and ACT (the Association for Competitive Technology) which both intervened in court on its side.

A statement from CompTIA said the court decision to uphold the commission’s view that Microsoft acted anti-competitively would damage free enterprise in Europe. The Court of First Instance upheld the original verdict and €497m fine.

CompTIA anti-trust counsel Lars Liebler said: “Today’s decision by the Court of First Instance represents a significant blow to free enterprise in Europe. Rather than supporting Europe as the innovation capital of the world, the commission’s policies unchecked may turn the EU into the litigation capital of the world. This decision encourages competitors to bring legal action against each other rather than compete aggressively in the marketplace.”

On server protocols, Liebler said: “The court’s decision to uphold the commission’s order requiring Microsoft to disclose its valuable intellectual property continues the unfortunate trend within the EU to undermine intellectual property rights.

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On the other side, a statement from ECIS, European Committee for Interoperable Systems, welcomed the verdict.

Thomas Vinje, ECIS spokesman and counsel, said: “This is a great day for European businesses and consumers. At long last this decision opens the prospect for dynamic competition in the software industry. No more user lock-in, no more monopoly pricing.

“The European Commission, Commissioner Kroes, former Commissioner Monti and their officials are to be praised for their vision and persistence in the face of 10 years of foot-dragging by Microsoft.

“The time has now come for Microsoft to obey the law. No more blaming the commission for the lack of clarity, no more excuses about complexity. The provision of interoperability information is common software industry practice. Microsoft knows full well what is required and how to provide and now just needs to do it.”

Now if only the EU could allocate that money to Open Source developers… that would counter the Microsoft argument nicely…

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A sweeping review of research studies of aspartame says there is no evidence that the non-nutritive sweetener causes cancer, neurological damage or other health problems in humans.

Looking at more than 500 reports, including toxicological, clinical and epidemiological studies dating from 1970’s preclinical work to the latest studies on the high-intensity sweetener, along with use levels and regulations data, an international expert panel from 10 universities and medical schools evaluated the safety of aspartame for people of all ages and with a variety of health conditions.

Their study is published in the September issue of Critical Reviews in Toxicology. It was funded by Ajinomoto Company Inc., a manufacturer of aspartame.

Funded by a manufacturer of aspartame.

Sweet.

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Last year in Mobile County, 4,629 new cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis were reported — enough instances of the sexually transmitted diseases to account for one out of every 87 people, according to a Press-Register review of state and federal statistics.

That was about three times the rate in New York City and more than twice as high as Washington, D.C.

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A lack of education weighs heavily on a county’s rate, health officials said.

In Alabama public schools, students are taught abstinence-based sex education as part of a half credit of health education in high school. Students learn that “abstinence is the only protection against pregnancy, HIV/AIDs and STDs,” said state Department of Education spokeswoman Edith Parten. The subject of condoms, under the state course of study guidelines, is not broached, she said.

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As recently reported on Slashdot, Apple, in its infinite wisdom, has added a checksum to the iPod database apparently to restrict non-iTunes products (like Amarok via libgpod) from having the ability to add music. To me this sounds pretty familiar. This is the same thing they did to iTunes 4.5 to make it harder for other apps to read off their DAAP shares, they changed it again in iTunes 7; open source apps are still unable to read iTunes 7 DAAP shares.

But there’s better news on this iPod front.

From #gtkpod today:

<wtbw> okay guys

<wtbw> i think we’re done.

<wtbw> let me code something just to check

[30 minutes later]

<wtbw> can i hear a fuck yeah?

<wtbw> works for both mine and xamphears :>

wtbw suggested donations from thankful users go to Cancer Research UK.

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So we saw over the past few weeks some strange and rather irregular national positions coming to light. My own favorites were Cuba voting “yes” to the fast-tracking of OOXML, even though Microsoft is prohibited by the US Government from selling any software on the island that might even be able to read and write the new format, and Azerbaijan’s “yes” vote, even though OOXML as defined isn’t able to express a Web URL address in Azeri, their official language.