[Quote:]

EMI’s entire music catalog will be available in premium DRM-free form via iTunes in May, the music label said Monday at a press conference in London.

Higher-quality music files, which will play on any computer and any digital-audio player, will not replace the copy-protected EMI music currently sold through iTunes. Rather, they will complement the standard 99-cent iTunes downloads and will be sold at a premium: $1.29 per song.

Consumers who have already purchased EMI tracks containing Apple’s FairPlay copy protection will be able to upgrade them to the premium version for 30 cents, EMI said. Full albums in DRM-free form can be bought at the same price as standard iTunes albums.

A small step, but about time. And it’s again screwing the regular joes who can’t spell DRM. Audiophiles alreaedy knew how to get rid of the DRM from iTunes, and their only incentive is the supposed higher quality.

Jobs, who stressed the need for higher-quality music with the rise of high-fidelity home speaker systems, called EMI’s move “the next big step forward in the digital-music revolution–the movement to completely interoperable DRM-free music.” He added that “Apple will reach out to all the major and independent labels to give them the same opportunity.”

Jobs expressed confidence in Apple’s plan to offer the premium DRM-free tracks alongside standard ones. “What we’re adding is a choice–a new choice,” Jobs said regarding Apple’s decision to make available two levels of sound quality and of DRM restriction. He suggested that half of iTunes’ music tracks will be available in both DRM-loaded and DRM-free form by the end of 2007.

If you listened to the press conference, one journalist asked what the point of continuing to copy protect the 128kbps tracks is. He didn’t have an answer, other than “so we don’t raise prices for our customers”, which is exactly what they are doing.

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• The destruction of Pompeii in 79AD is the most viewed video at YouTube. The first comment is…”OMG so cool! Volcanos ROCK!”
• Attila the Hun has his own MySpace page. Nobody ever rejects his “invite a friend” emails.
• The soothsayer’s “Ides of March” email fails to get Caesar’s proper attention as it’s inadvertently filtered into his junk folder.
• But at least Caesar’s “Et tu Brute?” comment is available as a free ringtone download.
• The domain gladiator.rome sells for the record sum of 1,000,000 denarii.
• The owner of hadriansucks.rome is compelled to hand over both the domain name and selected body parts by an independent domain tribunal chaired by…Emperor Hadrian.
• “Naked Cleopatra” is the top search term on Google.
• Unfortunately, the Queen of Egypt dies an early death after misunderstanding IT’s call to embrace an ASP solution.
• Hannibal blogs his way across the Alps with posts like, “Whoops, lost another elephant today.”
• But he runs out of money when his PPC budget is plundered by an iberian click scam organized by Publius Cornelius Scipio.
• Tiber.com opens, initially selling scrolls and tablets before expanding to include togas, pottery, and do-it-yourself mosaic kits.
• Websites like handsome-literate-male-british-slave.com pollute the search listings thanks to generous commissions at the slaves.co.rome affiliate program.
• Roman programmers moan about projects outsourced to cheap coders in Mesopotamia.
• The Colosseum is renamed the eBay Colosseum, with free wireless hotspots outside the lark’s tongue restaurant.
• The volume of spam collapses when the penalty for not providing a working opt-out mechanism becomes equal billing with the lions at the eBay Colosseum.
• But we still get emails featuring Brunhilda, the lonely Visigoth, and hot deals on cheap peacock livers from Gaul.
• Nobody invents a spam filter good enough for the House of the Vestals.
• Classical geeks wear t-shirts proclaiming, “there’s no place like CXXVII.0.0.I” (bonus points if you get that one)
• Finally, Rome burns to the ground while Emperor Nero battles online with Hakkar the Soulflayer in World of Warcraft.

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The two men showed up on Tuesday afternoon to evict Suaada Saadoun’s family. One was carrying a shiny black pistol.

Ms. Saadoun was a Sunni Arab living in a Shiite enclave of western Baghdad. A widowed mother of seven, she and her family had been chased out once before. This time, she called American and Kurdish soldiers at a base less than a mile to the east.

The men tried to drive away, but the soldiers had blocked the street. They pulled the men out of the car.

“If anything happens to us, they’re the ones responsible,” said Ms. Saadoun, 49, a burly, boisterous woman in a black robe and lavender-blue head scarf.

The Americans shoved the men into a Humvee. Neighbors clapped and cheered as if their soccer team had just won a title.

The next morning, Ms. Saadoun was shot dead while walking by a bakery in the local market.

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On Monday morning’s Bill Bennett’s Morning in America radio show, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) said that there were parts of Baghdad where he and the host could go for a walk.

“There are neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods, today,” he said, when asked to highlight something positive about what American forces have been able to accomplish in Iraq.

[Quote:]

Since making those comments, McCain has visited Iraq and here he is “walking free”:

The story points out that accompanying McCain were: “100 American soldiers, with three Blackhawk helicopters, and two Apache gunships overhead.” And that’s either a fishing vest or body armour he’s wearing.

Nonetheless, McCain told reporters: “that his visit to the market today was proof that you could indeed ‘walk freely’ in some areas of Baghdad.”

The guy couldn’t stop lying if you wired his jaw shut. Video with much more details of the event is here.

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A British resident is back in the UK after being held in Guantanamo Bay for almost five years.

Bisher al-Rawi, an Iraqi national, was held at the US detention camp in Cuba on suspicion of links to terrorism while on a trip to Gambia in 2002.

In a statement Mr Rawi, a businessman from south-west London, said: “I am delighted to be back home in England, with my family.”

He added: “My nightmare is finally at an end.”

On Thursday, Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said it had been agreed with the US authorities that he would be returned to the UK, but officials have not disclosed precisely when the detainee was freed.

“As happy as I am to be home though, leaving my best friend Jamil al-Banna behind in Guantanamo Bay makes my freedom bittersweet,” Mr Rawi said in a statement released through the law firm Reprieve.

“Jamil was arrested with me in the Gambia on exactly the same unfounded allegations, yet he is still a prisoner.

[..]

His lawyer, Zachary Katznelson, gave further details on why Mr Rawi was originally arrested.

He said a “suspicious device” was found in his client’s luggage but added that it turned out to be a battery charger.

Mr Katznelson added: “So it was misinformation that started this chain of events, though unfortunately that led to him first being taken by the CIA to Afghanistan to an underground prison of 24 hour darkness with rats everywhere, to then being taken to Guantanamo – and it took years to right this wrong.”

He accused the American authorities of treating Mr Rawi with “brutality”.

Mr Katznelson went on: “Right to the end they treated him with brutality, on the way to the plane in Guantanamo – they knew he was leaving – they insisted still on shackling him, blindfolding him, putting on earmuffs so he couldn’t hear a thing and keeping him in the back of a very hot , very confined van on the way to the plane.”

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De hoofdverdachten van de steekpartij bij het Rotterdamse ROC Zadkine zijn gisteren vrijgelaten.

Het Openbaar Ministerie (OM) heeft niet voldoende bewijs om de twee Rotterdammers langer vast te houden. Ze blijven wel verdacht.

Van een van hen stelt justitie dat hij een 21-jarige Rotterdammer vorige week dinsdag met een mes in zn been stak. De medeverdachte zou gericht hebben gedreigd met een pistool. Volgens een getuige zou hij zelfs geprobeerd hebben te schieten, maar het pistool blokkeerde.

[..]

Dat het tweetal gisteren naar huis is gezonden is opmerkelijk, want de vechtpartij die uitbrak na de steekpartij is gefilmd door meerdere scholieren en de NOS.

Het OM en politie hebben moeite deze beelden bij elkaar te krijgen.

Joehoe pliesie, hier, hier, hier en hierrr.

[Quote:]

In a major break with the music industry’s longstanding antipiracy strategy, EMI Group PLC is set to announce today that it plans to sell significant amounts of its catalog without anticopying software, according to people familiar with the matter.

The London music company is to make its announcement at a London news conference featuring Apple Inc. Chief Executive Steve Jobs. EMI is to sell songs without the software — known as digital rights management — through Apple’s iTunes Store and possibly through other online outlets.