One Canuck's Radio Weblog

  Wednesday, 11 August 2004

.< 9:38:41 PM >
Guantanamo Prisoner Says He Was a Cook (AP)

AP - An Afghan prisoner made an impassioned plea for his release Wednesday, telling a U.S. military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay that he worked as an assistant cook for Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime but was never an enemy of America. [Yahoo! News - World]

< 9:36:43 PM >

Read some of Ernest Buckler's work
• More Chapter Ones

Interesting that this should show up now. With the sucess of the Nowlan biography Dad is considering doing a biography of Buckler.

< 8:42:49 PM >

The Lebrecht Weekly - Latest Web Article
Norman Lebrecht on the Carnegie Hall mystique. [LaScena-Features]

< 8:39:44 PM >

Nasa to try to save the Hubble telescope by sending Canadian robot to fix it. [Guardian Unlimited] 'Goddard scientists have expressed interest in the Canadian Space Agency's Special Purpose Dextrous Manipulator, or Dextre, built to service the International Space Station. It can open panel doors, change batteries and perform other tasks with its two robotic arms.'

< 8:36:39 PM >

MADRID (Reuters) - Police evacuated thousands of holidaymakers from beaches at a Spanish Mediterranean resort on Wednesday after a purported ETA bomb threat raised fears of a summer bombing campaign by Basque separatists. [Reuters: World] 'The alarm came days after two small bombs exploded at seaside resorts in the north of the country and after the government warned ETA bombers may be aiming to strike at the key tourism industry.'

Hmmm. I had missed the news about the earlier bombing. Cait had been in the north of Spain and planning to go to the beach.

< 8:30:52 PM >

Iraq destroyed its nuclear weapons programme in 1991 and never restarted it, says a former key official. [BBC News | World | UK Edition]

< 8:26:41 PM >

Refugee claims at lowest level in 10 years

The number of people making refugee claims in Canada dropped by 30 per cent in the first six months of this year, to the lowest level in a decade. FULL STORY [CBC News] '"Canada settles more persons per capita than any other country," he said. "Of all the countries that set targets, Canada has been the only one I can think of that exceeds targets. The United States last year fell dramatically."'

< 8:23:52 PM >

U.S. to kick out illegal immigrants faster

Illegal immigrants who cross the Canadian or Mexican borders into the United States will be deported more quickly and without the chance to appeal to an immigration judge under a new American policy announced this week. FULL STORY [CBC News]

< 8:22:41 PM >

The US government reports a larger-than-expected $69.16bn budget deficit in July, as it nears record levels for the year. [BBC News | World | UK Edition]

< 7:16:11 PM >

Michael Church, The Independent, 8/9/2004 [La Scena Musicale - News]
Alfred Brendel's illustrious Proms career will end at a concert next week. Fear of live transmissions has brought a glorious era to a close

< 7:09:53 PM >

Is music safe on compact disc?, Tom Bishop , BBC , 8/7/2004 [La Scena Musicale - News]

Yes

< 6:40:41 PM >

< 3:31:52 PM >

If you're willing to fork over more than $200 for a scanner -- for breathing new life into tired, old photos or for scanning slides or negatives -- you're likely looking for the exceptional image quality, speed, and flexibility associated with a midrange flatbed scanner. [MacCentral]

< 3:25:29 PM >

PortalPlayer, whose chip powers Apple's MP3 player, files for IPO. Paperwork gives glimpse of potential evolution of iPod. [CNET News.com]

< 3:24:51 PM >

Dan Gillmor argues in his new book We the Media that journalism is stronger than ever because of the Web. But Hollywood is strengthening its grasp on copyrights, threatening speech and freedom. Xeni Jardin interviews the author. [Wired News]

< 3:21:50 PM >

[snip] not only are my to do lists keeping me focused on important tasks, using the weblog approach allows me to document as I go. It's a nice and simple personal knowledge base.
[Chad Dickerson]

< 12:51:04 PM >

Warner Brothers is working with an MP3 blog called Music For Robots, encouraging them to post tracks from its catalog.

The Secret Machines - Nowhere Again. I know what you're saying. The Secret Machines, this is old news. Well, actually, it's not. This is a new development, because not only do we have permission to post this track, but Warner Brothers Records contacted us and wanted to help out. Crazy, right?

Link

(Thanks, Joe!) [Boing Boing]

< 12:50:21 PM >

GeekCorps founder Ethan Zuckerman (whose org sends volunteers nerds from around the world to Africa to help extend technology to some of the world's poorest nations) has a great essay up about the ways in which blogs currently fail to bridge the gap to Africa and how this can be changed.Link [Boing Boing]

< 11:01:15 AM >

Stephen Evans reports from New York on what life is like in a city constantly on a high state of alert. [BBC News | World | UK Edition]

< 10:32:23 AM >

AP - Mexican authorities are investigating the sale of fake or substandard medicine in a border town so popular among Americans seeking cheap medications that it has more pharmacies than streets. [Yahoo! News - World]

< 10:26:37 AM >

The roll-out of the hybrid DualDisc DVD-Audio/CD format later this year - the music industry's effort to spark consumer interest in high-resolution multichannel music - may be hampered by Germany's DVD Plus International, which claims ownership of the technology (The Register, 9-Aug-2004) [DVD Audio Daily]

< 1:11:32 AM >

Stuart Hughes, whose work you may know from some deeply personal accounts out of the Iraq war, is covering the Olympics via weblog. Stuart says, "I'm at the Olympics in Athens for the BBC but I'm giving the behind the scenes skinny you don't get from the news sites on my personal blog. This evening I've uploaded my first Olympic videoblog." [Boing Boing]

< 12:59:54 AM >

Morons

< 12:51:09 AM >

First time buyers are contributing to the high growth rates in the consumer digital camera market, and industry analysts InfoTrends/CAP Ventures predicts two more years of strong growth before sales peak. Digital camera sales are expected to reach 22.8 million in the US by the end of this year, a 42% growth over 2003. InfoTrends also predicts that the average price of cameras is set to rise. This is due to the popularity of point and shoot cameras and sub-$1000 digital SLRs ... [Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)]

< 12:49:35 AM >

Creating a layout with CSS can be quite complicated. And even though some WYSIWYG HTML editors offer visual authoring, many Web designers prefer to code by hand. Layout Master 1.1 is a powerful editing tool designed to help remedy that problem. By Lee Underwood. 0722 [WebReference News]

< 12:48:53 AM >

Our objectives for this project are:
To make it completely effortless for complete neophytes to download torrent files.
To make it as easy as possible for people who have websites to set up their own torrent tracker
To make sharing a torrent as fast and easy as posting a file to a website.


.< 12:47:18 AM >
Copyrighting the President

Does Big Media have a vested interest in protecting Bush? You betcha. By Lawrence Lessig from Wired magazine. [Wired News]

< 12:45:20 AM >

Taiwanese manufacturers are planning to launch a new memory card format clamied to offer transfer speeds of120MB per second, 10 times faster than Secure Digital cards. It is also claimed the capacity of the card will reach 2 Terabytes (TB). The 'μcard', which is the same size as an SD card, will be unveiled at Taipei International Electronics Show, Taitronics, October 8-12. [Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)]