April 23, 2004

World leaders on list of oil recipients Washington Times - To the outsider, it is hard to see what could link former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua, President Megawati Sukarnoputri of Indonesia, Russian nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovksy and Benon Sevan, the U.N. official in charge of the Iraqi oil-for-food program. According to testimony presented to the House Committee on Government Reform this week, there is at least one link: They appear on a list of 270 individuals and entities named in Iraqi oil ministry files as receiving vouchers allowing them to buy millions of barrels of oil. If you think there is any chance that IRAN is not doing the same thing with it's oil, in order to keep the UN (and EU countries) from saying anything bad about Iran's nuclear bomb program, you are living in a fantasy land. 1:35:55 PM

MPEG-4 is Dead streamingmedia.com - Given the adoption of Microsoft's Windows Media Video 9 by the DVD Forum, there's increasing reason to believe, to paraphrase an old Southern expression, that the MPEG-4 dog just won't hunt. It hasn't yet and probably never will, at least in any serious commercial way. "There is a risk that a monopolist can misbehave, but slow moving, least-common-denominator, nonproprietary, committee-developed standards are often much worse than any monopoly." - Charles H. Ferguson 1:11:33 PM

Now this is shocking.  I am not sure how long this will last, but you will be surprised to see what comes up on Google when you search for waffles. 9:15:19 AM

The young Japanese taken hostage in Iraq returned home this week, not to the warmth of a yellow ribbon embrace but to a disapproving nation's cold stare. Yasuo Fukuda, the government's spokesman: "They may have gone on their own but they must consider how many people they caused trouble to because of their action." This includes a woman who helped street children on the streets of Baghdad, and had a knife-brandishing kidnapper threatened to slit her throat on television.  Very nice. 8:32:11 AM