[Quote:]

Gholam Ghaus Z., a 41-year-old of Afghan origin from Wuppertal in western Germany, had travelled to Kabul to visit relatives. When he entered a US military supermarket to buy a shaver in January he was arrested on suspicion of terrorism. The fact that he had banknotes in different currencies and telephone cards from several countries seemed to be enough to warrant his arrest. Although hours of interrogations did not provide any evidence that he was a terrorist, Z. man has been in US custody for the almost four months.

Officials with the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, have already questioned him in Kabul. Meanwhile Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, has looked into his background in Germany and found no grounds for suspicion. “It was all totally clean,” a high-ranking security expert told SPIEGEL.

[Quote:]

Presidential candidates Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas held this debate on April 16, 1858 at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

MODERATORS:
CHARLIE GIBSON, ABC NEWS
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABC NEWS

[..]

STEPHANOPOULOS: Proceed.

LINCOLN: In my opinion, slavery will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Excuse me, did an Elijah H. Johnson attend your church?

LINCOLN: When I was a boy in Illinois forty years ago, yes. I think he was a deacon.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Are you aware that he regularly called Kentucky “a land of swine and whores”?

LINCOLN: Sounds right — his ex-wife was from Kentucky.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Why did you remain in the church after hearing those statements?

LINCOLN: I was eight.

DOUGLAS: This is an important question George — it’s an issue that certainly will be raised in the fall.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Do you denounce him?

LINCOLN: I’d like to get back to the divided house if I may.

[Quote:]

Barack Obama was greeted by the largest crowd of his campaign Friday night in Philadelphia. Some 35,000 people jammed into Independence Park to see the Democratic presidential candidate, four days before this state’s crucial April 22 primary.

[..]

The Illinois senator called Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton a “tenacious” opponent but said it was time to move beyond the politics of the 1990s.

“Her message comes down to this: We can’t really change the say-anything, do-anything, special interest-driven game in Washington, so we might as well choose a candidate who really knows how to play it,” Obama said.

[Quote:]

So far we’ve had grandmothers, dead people, disabled single mothers, and today, we can add another category to the list of those targeted by the RIAA: the homeless. Earlier this week, the RIAA decided to voluntarily dismiss the lawsuit against Chaz Berry after learning he was living in a homeless shelter—but not until after a magistrate judge denied an earlier motion for summary judgment and recommended sanctions against the RIAA’s attorneys.

[Quote:]

What do Cliff Stearns, John Shimkus and Fred Upton have in common?

They’re all members of the House telecommunications subcommittee, and they’ve each publicly accused Google of having “duped” the Federal Communications Commission by “gaming” a recent multibillion-dollar auction of wireless frequencies, shortchanging federal coffers.

They also have this in common: Each has received more than $100,000 in campaign contributions over their careers from telephone and cable interests locked in a battle with Google over the use of those frequencies.

[Quote:]

Either the New York Times headline writers and photo editors have lost their minds, or the Catholic church is in much worse trouble than I thought:

[Quote:]

[Quote:]

A 74-year-old grandmother spent the night in jail after she refused security officers’ efforts to check her at Palm Beach International Airport and then shoved a deputy, authorities said Thursday.

Elena Reichman, a Holocaust survivor who lives west of Boca Raton, is charged with felony battery on a law enforcement officer. She was released from jail after posting a $3,000 bond at 5 a.m. Thursday. It was her first arrest, state records show.

[..]

“The public needs to realize that anyone can pose a threat,” Koshetz said.

Feel safer yet?

http://pixdaus.com/

thanks, Ilya

[Quote:]

Now to the 10 most frequent lies told by IT consultants. When you hear these lines spoken you have two alternatives: 1) fire the consultant on the spot, and; 2) bring your smartest and most crotchety nerds into the room and make the consultant explain his or her statement to their satisfaction then back it up with some performance guarantee and penalty clause.

1) “This can only be accomplished through a large custom development project.”

2) “Of course your data is safe.”

3) “We’ll need a day or two for optimization and debugging.”

4) “Yes, we’ve done this before. There are several companies using this product (or technology). They really like it.”

5) “Server consolidation and virtualization will save you money.”

6) “Storage consolidation and virtualization will save you money.”

7) “The upgrade (or change) will be seamless and will not affect production.”

“The upgrade (or change) will be transparent to users.”

9) “Yes, we tested this thoroughly before installing it.”

10) “If you install Tivoli it will solve all your support problems.”

[Quote:]

A newly formed NBC Universal production unit is teaming up with an advertising agency to create programs around sponsors’ products, the company said.
NBC Universal Digital Studio will work with a division of Omnicom Group Inc. to create programs that help advertisers sell their products, the entertainment giant announced in a statement Thursday. The programming will be broadcast on NBC Universal’s digital properties, such as Web sites.

[..]

The collaboration between NBC and Omnicom offers “a unique way of giving brands a seat at the table with writers and producers in developing episodic programming that ties directly to brand needs,” Omnicom Media Group Digital chief executive Matt Spiegel said.

This is part of their war on piracy: make things so terrible that no one will want to download them.

[Quote:]

IF there’s butter and white wine in your refrigerator and Fig Newtons in the cookie jar, you’re likely to vote for Hillary Clinton. Prefer olive oil, Bear Naked granola and a latte to go? You probably like Barack Obama, too.

And if you’re leaning toward John McCain, it’s all about kicking back with a bourbon and a stuffed crust pizza while you watch the Democrats fight it out next week in Pennsylvania.

This is how they talk about social class in America without admitting that they have social classes.

The Best Six Minutes Of The Keynote Address That The National Association Of Broadcasters Didn’t Want You To Hear

[Quote:]

Dafen is a village surrounded by the thriving metropolis of Shenzhen, and the origin of most of the world’s reproduction oil paintings. In the popular imagination Dafen’s artists produce anonymous works for unknown customers, operating no differently than a faceless factory churning out counterfeits, replicas and nothing close to what would be considered art.

REGIONAL productively collaborated with the otherwise commoditized community in Dafen by asking selected individuals, some for the first time, to imagine themselves in their professional medium. The final works show the technical, creative, and professional facets of the artists identities subsumed by the styles and relationships they maintain with specific famous artists. The hybrid result of original subject with derivative style comments on originality, global cultural production and REGIONAL’s cooperation with emerging enterprise forms that are internationalizing the village.

The product of the collaboration are sets of images (seen below) comprising a digital photo of the artist in his studio, an indicative painting of their usual output and an original self-portrait. While the final works contain both the creative signature of the original masters and the emergent self-consciousness of the Dafen artists, it is equally important to note that they derived great fulfillment from using their talents freely, and were remunerated at a rate commensurate with the unique international nature of the project.

[Quote:]

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has admitted that Windows Vista is an incomplete product, even though the operating system has been on the market for more than a year.

Speaking at the firm’s annual Most Valuable Professionals event in Seattle yesterday, Big Steve told the gathered crowd that the unloved OS was “a work in progress”. According to reports, he also promised that Microsoft would learn from the mistakes it has made with Vista.

Just like they learned from the mistakes in XP when creating Vista.
Just like they learned from the mistakes in Window 95 when creating XP.
Just like they learned from the mistakes in Window for Workgroups when creating Window 95.

Oh, fuck it already. The cultural meme of people being afraid that computers would turn intelligent and take over the world died around the release of Windows 95. Surely that can’t be a coincidence..