Video of a Dell PC and Apple Powerbook booting OS X at the same time. Guess which one gets to the desktop first?
read more | digg storyTag Archives: General
Will The RIAA Target Homemade CDs?
“The digital equivalent of homemade tapes are the next target of the Recording Industry Association of America.”
Wow… Talk about thick headed. The RIAA is determined to completely destroy it’s entire customer base, but this is the norm lately…
read more | digg storyUntitled
GAITHERSBURG, Md. (AP) – Investigators say a man who was wearing
headphones was hit and killed by a freight train early today.
Twenty-nine-year-old Daniel Snoddy was found by the tracks near
the 11-thousand-500 block of Game Preserve Road in Gaithersburg.
Police say he died at the scene.
This morning’s incident caused delays on the MARC Brunswick
Line, but normal service is expected this afternoon.
It’s the latest incident involving trains in Montgomery County.
On March first, an Amtrak train hit two men as they walked along
the tracks in Rockville. One died on the spot, while police
announced today that the other has since died. And less than a
month ago, a man was hit and killed by a train in Kensington.
Victims Sue Thailand, U.S., Accor Over Tsunami
Monday, March 07, 2005 9:20 a.m. ET
VIENNA (Reuters) – U.S. and Austrian lawyers have filed a lawsuit demanding Thailand, U.S. forecasters and the French Accor group answer accusations they failed in a duty to warn populations hit by December’s Tsunami disaster, a lawyer said Monday.
The lawsuit was filed Friday at a New York district court on behalf of tsunami victims by lawyers including U.S. attorney Edward Fagan, internationally renowned for 1990s lawsuits against Swiss banks over Holocaust-era accounts. It demanded an account of their actions on Dec. 26.
Story Tools
Single-page version of this story optimized for printing Email this story to a friend or colleague
More Wire Service Stories
* Breaking News
* Business
* Entertainment
* Politics
* Science
* Sports
* Technology
* World
“We expect a hearing within 30 days,” Austrian lawyer Gerhard Podovsovnik told Reuters.
“We don’t earn any money on the lawsuit. We want to help people,” he said. “We are suing to get information.”
The disaster left about 300,000 people dead or missing in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Maldives, Bangladesh and East Africa. Hundreds of thousands lost their homes.
The text of the lawsuit is available on the Web site www.tsunamivictimsgroup.com.
The U.S. and Austrian lawyers filed the lawsuit on behalf of around 60 named plaintiffs from Austria, Germany, France, Netherlands and elsewhere. Podovsovnik said they were also acting on behalf of at least 40 more not named.
The lawsuit suggests the Thai government and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which operates a Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii, failed to issue the requisite warnings.
SLOW WARNINGS
“Respondent NOAA did not notify all involved countries which lay in the tsunami’s path. From public information it appears that … NOAA failed to issue an alert that would notify countries where the tsunami hit that the deadly wave was coming,” the lawsuit said.
“Published reports emerged that upon receipt of the NOAA alert and other data, the seismological and oceanographic experts of Thailand spent more than one hour talking about what the risk may or may not have been, instead of immediately issuing a warning to their population,” it said.
It also accused Thailand of failing to notify Sri Lanka that a tsunami wave was headed its way.
Among the charges leveled against Accor, the owner of the Sofitel hotel chain, was failure to equip its luxury resort and spa in Khao Lak, Thailand with state-of-the-art seismic detection and warning systems, despite its location “in an earthquake and tsunami fault zone.”
Last month, Accor issued a statement denying media reports of possible negligence in connection with the tsunami disaster. “The allegations concerning Accor are completely unfounded,” Accor said on its Web Site.
Hooters, Rival Argue Over Stealing Ideas
Associated Press
ORLANDO, Fla. – Hooters of America and a rival restaurant chain began arguing in federal court over who has rights to the concept of using scantily clad women to sell food and beer.
Atlanta-based Hooters of America accuses Ker’s WingHouse of Kissimmee of poaching the idea coined when it opened its first sports bar in Clearwater in 1983, Hooters lawyer Steve Hill said in opening statements Wednesday in Orlando.
“The evidence will show WingHouse has copied the Hooter girl almost from head to toe,” Hill said. “For want of a better expression, the Hooter girl is our Ronald McDonald.”
But Crawford Ker said he based his chain on Knockers, a failing restaurant with an all-female staff in Largo that he took over after retiring from the NFL, according to pretrial deposition.
He opened his first restaurant in 1994 and now has 15 locations, including five in the Orlando area. The chain had revenues of $26 million last year.
“Hooters wants to use the court system to accomplish what it can’t do in the marketplace. It’s going to ask you to create a monopoly,” Ker lawyer Don Conwell said Wednesday. “They’re a 25-year-old chain. There’s new blood coming into town and they’re not up to the competition.”
Hooters said in a trade dress infringement lawsuit filed last year that Ker’s WingHouse stole everything from the design of its parchment menus to staff calendars and celebrity photographs on the walls.
Hooters said other ideas swiped by its rival include hula hoops for waitresses, Christmas lights and surfboards hanging from the ceiling and traffic-style signs on the walls warning “Double Curves” and “Caution: Blonde Thinking.”
Hooters earns more than $750 million a year from nearly 400 restaurants and that success has inspired a host of copycats, Hooters Senior Vice President Michael McNeil said.
“We believe we are defending the integrity of our intellectual property rights,” McNeil said outside the courtroom Wednesday.
Scientists warn of ‘ethnic weapons’
Sounds like science-fiction, possibly not for long.
Clinton eyes U.N. post
Does anyone else smell the apocalypse coming?
Christopher Reeve/Superman Dead at 52
MOUNT KISCO, New York (AP) — Actor Christopher Reeve, the star of the “Superman” movies whose near-fatal riding accident nine years ago turned him into a worldwide advocate for spinal cord research, died of heart failure, his publicist said. He was 52.
We always thought you would walk again one day, but I supposed you are now. We’ll all miss you.
Orgies are the way to ease social tensions, claims US judge
He is the conservative bastion of the US supreme court, a favourite of President Bush, and a hunting partner of the vice-president. He has argued vociferously against abortion rights, and in favour of anti-sodomy laws.
But it turns out that there is another side to Justice Antonin Scalia: he thinks Americans ought to be having more orgies.
Challenged about his views on sexual morality, Justice Scalia surprised his audience at Harvard University, telling them: “I even take the position that sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged.”
It seems unlikely that this is what President Bush meant when he promised to appoint more judges like Scalia to the court, should the opportunity arise. Crucially, Justice Scalia is one of the judges in favour of overturning Roe v Wade, the landmark judgment protecting abortion as a constitutional right.
One audience member also asked the judge “whether you have any gay friends, and, if not, whether you’d like to be my friend,” the Harvard Crimson newspaper reported.
“I probably do have some gay friends, but I have never pressed the point,” Justice Scalia responded. He offered no clue to the logic behind his claim that orgies eliminate social tensions.
Nobody asked him whether he was familiar with Rick Moody’s novel The Ice Storm, turned into a movie by Ang Lee, which appeared to suggest the exact opposite.
Oliver Burkeman in New York
Friday October 1, 2004
The Guardian
Klingons For Kerry.
In other news, people still living in parents basement support Kerry.