They finally upgraded from 1970s technology to… Unix.

Oh.

[Quote:]

SCO Group CEO Darl McBride says competition from the open source Linux operating system was a major reason why the company was forced to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Friday.

In a court filing in support of SCO’s bankruptcy petition, McBride noted that SCO’s sales of Unix-based products “have been declining over the past several years.”

The slump, McBride said, “has been primarily attributable to significant competition from alternative operating systems, including Linux.” McBride listed IBM, Red Hat, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems as distributors of Linux or other software that is “aggressively taking market share away from Unix.”

Damn Microsoft and their support of Linux!

[Quote:]

Nalini Ghuman, an up-and-coming musicologist and expert on the British composer Edward Elgar, was stopped at the San Francisco airport in August last year and, without explanation, told that she was no longer allowed to enter the United States.

[..]

After a year of letters and inquiries, Ms. Ghuman and her Mills College lawyer have been unable to find out why her residency visa was suddenly revoked, or whether she was on some security watch list. Nor does she know whether her application for a new visa, pending since last October, is being stymied by the shadow of the same unspecified problem or mistake.

[..]

Mr. Botstein, who wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in the hope of having the visa problem resolved before the music festival, said Ms. Ghuman’s case is symptomatic. “This is an example of the xenophobia, incompetence, stupidity and then bureaucratic intransigence that we are up against,” he said, also citing the case of a teacher of Arabic at Bard who missed the first weeks of the spring semester this year because of visa problems. “What is at stake is America’s pre-eminence as a place of scholarship.”

[..]

In a written account of the next eight hours that she prepared for her lawyer, Ms. Ghuman said that officers tore up her H-1B visa, which was valid through May 2008, defaced her British passport, and seemed suspicious of everything from her music cassettes to the fact that she had listed Welsh as a language she speaks. A redacted government report about the episode obtained by her lawyer under the Freedom of Information Act erroneously described her as “Hispanic.”

Here’s the short version: they saw a woman who looked vaguely Middle Eastern (they probably don’t know what Sikh means); funny accent; traditional dress; claimed to be an expert on someone called “Elgar” (again, no idea who that is). They did the math and decided that she posed some sort of MUSICOLOGICAL THREAT.

The rest is just bureaucratic ass-covering. It’s genius, really.

And if you think it’s just foreigners who are fucked this way, check this:

[Quote:]

Beginning in February 2008, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) will implement their ¨Advance Passenger Information System (APIS),¨ the gist of which is that you will need permission from the United States Government to travel on any air or sea vessel that goes to, from or through the U.S. The travel companies will not be able to issue a boarding pass until you are cleared by DHS. This applies to ALL passengers, US citizens and visitors alike. And how do you get said permission to travel? That´s for your government to know and you to never find out.

[via]

Bah, slechts negen van de tien had ik er goed…

[Quote:]

Premier Jan Peter Balkenende (CDA) roept op tot een gematigde loonkostenontwikkeling. Dat zei hij tijdens zijn persconferentie over de eerste begroting die zijn vierde kabinet dinsdag presenteert.

Helemaal mee eens! We moeten de looneisen echt beperken tot de 30% extra die het kabinet zichzelf heeft toegeschreven!

[Quote:]

The House adopted a resolution with 464 votes in favour, 158 against and 70 abstentions on the restrictions imposed by the EU on liquids that passengers can take on board aeroplanes. MEPs call upon the Commission to review urgently and – if no further conclusive facts are brought forward – to repeal Regulation (EC) No 1546/2006 (introduction of liquids onto aircraft). The particular amendment on the possible repeal was adopted with 382 votes in favour, 298 against and 15 abstentions.

In the resolution, MEPs express their concern that the costs engendered by the regulation may not be proportionate to the added value achieved by additional security provisions.

The European Parliament supports all security measures against terrorist risks in aviation. The need for high-quality security is unquestionable. However, security measures need to be “realistically” designed to minimise the risk and may not be “disproportionate”.

It would make more sense to first conduct a sanity check on a ban before putting it into place. But hey, better late than never, I guess.

The best part is this, which is likely to impact future regulations:

The House also calls upon the Commission to act, as provided for by Article 232 of the EC Treaty, by publishing and making available to citizens the verbatim text of the prohibitions and restrictions which can be applied to them, as well as the list of exceptions to the same and the reasons for the measure.

In other words: tell people what they cannot bring, and don’t let the goons make up shit on the spot.

[Quote:]

In another step to extend its dominance of online advertising, Google said Monday that it would begin selling ads on Web pages that are viewed on cellphones.

Next up: AdBlock for cell phones.

[Quote:]

A U.S. Justice Department official has been arrested on suspicion of traveling to Detroit over the weekend to have sex with a minor.

John David R. Atchison, 53, an assistant U.S. attorney from the northern district of Florida, was arraigned in U.S. District Court in Detroit Monday afternoon.

An undercover officer posed as a mother offering her child to Atchison for sex, according to police.

Prosecutors said Atchison flew from Pensacola, Fla., to Detroit on Sunday intending to have sex with the 5-year-old girl.

[..]

He described himself online as a family man.

And here are the pictures to prove it.

Except when you wear the wrong pants

[Quote:]

In the week in which General Patraeus reports back to US Congress on the impact the recent ‘surge’ is having in Iraq, a new poll reveals that more than 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens have been murdered since the invasion took place in 2003.

Previous estimates, most noticeably the one published in the Lancet in October 2006, suggested almost half this number (654,965 deaths).
These findings come from a poll released today by ORB, the British polling agency that has been tracking public opinion in Iraq since 2005. In conjunction with their Iraqi fieldwork agency a representative sample of 1,499 adults aged 18 answered the following question:-

Q How many members of your household, if any, have died as a result of the conflict in Iraq since 2003 (ie as a result of violence rather than a natural death such as old age)? Please note that I mean those who were actually living under your roof.

None 78%
One 16%
Two 5%
Three 1%
Four or more 0.002%

Given that from the 2005 census there are a total of 4,050,597 households this data suggests a total of 1,220,580 deaths since the invasion in 2003.

These results are obviously skewed.

For example, no data would be available for households in which every member has been killed.

Credit & Copyright: PatrickTaschler

Volcano Tungurahua erupted spectacularly last year. Pictured above, molten rock so hot it glows visibly pours down the sides of the 5,000-meter high Tungurahua, while a cloud of dark ash is seen being ejected toward the left. Wispy white clouds flow around the lava-lit peak, while a star-lit sky shines in the distance. The above image was captured last year as ash fell around the adventurous photographer. Located in Ecuador, Tungurahua has become active roughly every 90 years since for the last 1,300 years. Volcano Tungurahua has started erupting again this year and continues erupting at a lower lever even today.

[Quote:]

The New York Times will stop charging for access to parts of its Web site, effective at midnight Tuesday night.

[..]

What changed, The Times said, was that many more readers started coming to the site from search engines and links on other sites instead of coming directly to NYTimes.com. These indirect readers, unable to get access to articles behind the pay wall and less likely to pay subscription fees than the more loyal direct users, were seen as opportunities for more page views and increased advertising revenue.

“What wasn’t anticipated was the explosion in how much of our traffic would be generated by Google, by Yahoo and some others,” Ms. Schiller said.

Duh. That took them a long time to realize…