[Quote:]

The United States Thursday informed the Sudanese government that nuclear tests carried out about four decades ago were in Sedan, in the US state of Nevada, and not in Sudan, the Sudanese foreign minister said.

The clarification came in response to Mustafa Osman Ismail’s request Tuesday that Washington look into reports of nuclear waste allegedly buried in the country in the 1960s and 1970s.

Ismail then said the information had been posted on a news website by an unnamed US Defense Department official.

“We have no reason that makes us doubt the explanation that we have received from the US administration,” he told reporters Thursday, adding that the investigation the Sudanese authorities had begun would continue “so as to be fully reassured.”

Before obtaining clarification on the matter, several senior Sudanese government officials had fiercely criticised the United States, branding it an “evil” and “criminal” state which they blamed for the spread of cancer in their country.

[Quote:]

The Energy bill that narrowly passed the House of Representatives in April 2003 (H.R. 6) contains an amendment designed to make oil development in our nation’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge sound more palatable. One of these scams was an amendment by Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM) claiming that development would be confined to 2,000 acres.

Sounds good, right? Not really:

The bill’s 2,000 acres only included the area where oil facilities actually touched the ground, and excluded gravel mines, roads and pipelines (except their posts). It did not cover seismic or other exploration activities that would be done across the 1.5 million acre area.

Don’t be put off by the title. This is the most moving and beautiful short I have seen in a long time.

The muppets pay tribute to Jim Henson.
Fabulous choice of music.
Animation at its best.

[Quote:]

As part of The DAVE School’s one-year animation curriculum, each class spends three months creating a short film. These films are made using the same strategies and pipelines used by professional animation studios.

[Quote:]

The judge in the Michael Jackson trial delivered the punch line Friday that Jay Leno has been wanting to hear: The comedian is allowed to crack jokes at Jackson’s expense.

[..]

Leno has been finding creative ways to make jokes about Jackson without opening his mouth.

After arriving “late” for the taping of Thursday’s “Tonight Show,” Leno stepped out of a black limousine wearing SpongeBob SquarePants pajamas and accompanied by several bodyguards. One of the bodyguards held an open umbrella over Leno’s head as the comedian remained silent when asked why he was late.

[..]

Then, as he has in recent days, he called on another comedian, Drew Carey, to handle that night’s Jackson duty.

“Michael Jackson showed up to court late today wearing his pajama bottoms,” Carey told the audience. “You know what? You find the kid wearing the pajama top and we have another court case on our hands.”

[Quote:]

Iranian female police cadets stand in front of a group conducting a drill during a graduation ceremony of Iran’s police academy in Tehran March 12, 2005. REUTERS/Raheb Homavandi

Britain’s Prince William tumbles from his horse while playing against his brother Prince Harry, centre, in a charity polo match at Birdlip, England, Saturday March 12, 2005, in aid of the victims of the Indian Ocean tsnuami. The princes took to the field on opposing sides for the game , with Prince Harry finishing the match on the winning team.(AP Photo/ Chris Ison, pool)

(copied/pasted/edited from /.)

Microsoft and Burst.com announced a tentative settlement, where Microsoft will pay Californian company $60 mln for allegedly stolen multimedia streaming software. Robert X. Cringely provided the recap of the court case back in 2003 (and Slashdot discussion ensued). According to Burst claims, Microsoft entered a non-disclosure agreement with the company to learn about Burst’s multimedia streaming technology. Later the technology, for which Burst has 37 patents, has been found in Windows Media Player. When aksed to present the archives of the e-mails and all communications within the company for the trial, Microsoft somehow presented all the documents that preceded before the deal and the documents that followed it. The e-mails during the 35 weeks that negotiations were held mysteriously disappeared. In court Microsoft claimed the e-mails were erased from employee’s desktops, e-mail servers and server backups. The technology was not interesting to Microsoft, lawyers insisted, so the electronic trail of communications was erased.

This story almost worked, but then Burst’s lawyers remembered that during the SUN/MSFT trial, Microsoft testified that ALL company email was backed up off site. So the judge ordered Microsoft to search the backups for the missing emails.

Skip ahead half a year, and Microsoft claims in sworn testimony that they can’t search the backups, because each company employee can choose which backup server they wish to archive on, and the company doesn’t keep a master list of who’s emails are on which server.

Burst’s lawyers then start subpoening the backup site employees, and get testimony from the woman in charge of email backups. Her name is Candy Stark. Candy’s testimony was “Oh yeah, of course we’ve got a master spreadsheet that matches employees to servers. How else could we search the backups? Here it is right here.”

This past Thursday was when the hearing was to take place that would seal the fate of the Microsoft executives who’d given false testimony about said backup list. It was also probably going to result in the judge ordering Microsoft’s backup servers seized by the court and searched by a third party. Not surprisingly, Microsoft settled 1/2 hour before that hearing was to start.

So if you’re still buying Microsoft products, you’re buying from a company that either has no problem with lying in court, or randomly loses data. Neither is very comfortable, I think..