May 6, 2004

Up Close with Longhorn PC Magazine - At this year's Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC), Microsoft released another sneak peek at its next generation operating system, code-named Longhorn. PC Magazine, along with the rest of the WinHEC attendees, received a DVD with the 4072 build. This preview is based on that build.  10:33:44 PM

UN Plans to Issue Report on Alleged Human Rights Violations in ... Voice of America, DC - The United Nations is planning to issue a report late this month on alleged human rights abuses since the coalition took control in Iraq.  Investigators are hoping to visit Baghdad to take testimony from alleged victims. Of course the UN has no intention of going to Iraq to do this.... too dangerous.   Damascus Marriott?  10:28:37 PM

(In Iraq) seventeen towns have voted (in local council elections), and in almost every case secular independents and representatives of non-religious parties did better than the Islamists.  10:10:04 PM

Libyan court orders medics to be executed by firing squad Independent -Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor were sentenced to death by firing squad by a Libyan court yesterday, prompting the European Union to call for the verdict to be reversed. The nurses, all women, said that while in custody they were beaten, tortured with electric shocks and jumped on to make them confess. Two of them claimed to have been raped.  The case originated in 1998, when children in the hospital began falling mysteriously ill. Col Gaddafi told an Aids conference in Nigeria in April 2001 that foreigners in the hospital had deliberately started the epidemic. "It is an odious crime," he said. "We have found a doctor and a group of nurses in possession of HIV, who had been requested to do experiments on the effects of the virus on children. And who charged them with this odious conspiracy? Some say it was the CIA, others say it was Mossad." 8:29:47 PM

From Sony, the Hits and Misses New York Times - WOO-WOO! Clang, clang! All aboard! Yes, kids, the train is leaving the station. It's the Online $1-a-Song Music Express, and your company had better be on it.   Apple, Napster, Musicmatch, MusicNow, BuyMusic, RealNetworks, Dell, Microsoft and even Wal-Mart have either seats or reservations. You wouldn't want to be left behind. That, apparently, was the thinking behind Sony Connect, the new online music service that opened for business on Tuesday. It's an easy-to-use but, in its debut version, almost embarrassingly crude imitation of the music services that preceded it.  Puretracks is the Canadian version, and is only 99¢ Canadian.  However, there is no one in the store right now, I just checked and they seem to be "upgrading" right now. 8:21:41 PM

NY Post - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan talks grandly of "transparency" in the so-called probe of the world body's festering Oil-for- Food scandal - but don't believe a word of it. For he seems to be running a coverup.  4:10:11 PM