*) What did happen in the government during the tsunami in Thailand? Why do we need to keep these e-mails secret for 50 years?

Ask the administration. But they're not secret for 50 years, they're temporarily sealed for 3 (now 2) years pending investigation on whether the law should be changed re: backup copies. I don't think it's going to happen in the end.

*) What did happen to Raoul Wallenberg?

By Soviet accounts, he was executed in Lubyanka prison in 1947.

*) Why is a big part of the Palme murder still classified?

Because it remains an active police investigation.

If I recall correctly, in Sweden the servers of political parties, served from their political offices, are immune to prosecution for a variety of offenses. It's intended to protect the freedom of independent parties. It just adds another layer of shielding on top of Sweden's other protections.

Not quite. Members of parliament there, as in many countries, have immunity from prosecution. But the Pirate Party is not, as of yet, represented in the Swedish parliament. There's a 4% of the popular-vote threshold for entry.

That said, Sweden has much more powerful transparency laws than most nations. Prior restraint on publication is banned, with the exception of cinema* and matters of national security. This can be challenged in court of course, like every democratic country they have due process. Every government document is public (per the constitution) unless explicitly classified, and has to be handed over, without question or delay. (E.g. anyone can waltz in to Rosenbad, the executive offices, and ask for a copy of the Prime Minister's e-mail from the last week). Classification requires explicit action (which again can be challenged in court) and is limited to national security, personal privacy, documents which are still under preparation, and a few other fairly obvious exceptions.

Source protection is exceptionally strong; If a classified document is leaked, it is illegal (unconstitutional, even) for the government to investigate, much less prosecute, the source of the leak. The only exceptions are essentially if the leak constitutes espionage or treason, or if it was an intentional violation of confidentiality (the latter is difficult to prove in court). In short, their government is severely limited in its powers to stop even its own leaks, much less leaks of information pertaining to foreign governments.

(* Cinema releases have to pass a ratings board that has the authority to cut footage or even ban releases. It's fairly inactive, today they only cut a few minutes of footage in total every year, almost exclusively for violence, not profanity or nudity. I believe the last movie that was banned from cinematic viewing altogether was the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, 36 years ago)

You'll never know if you have a real competent spy around.

I know! It's just the same with the half-dozen ninja assassins lurking in my apartment!

But they're there. I can feel it.

Fortelling assassinations! (This originally being a refutal of Drosnin's "Bible Code" nonsense)

Seriously, in any given cirumstance I'd be extremely skeptical of this stuff. But in this case we don't really know whether all of "Plato's" writings were actually written by Plato, and certainly not if they're verbatim. Given that ancient Greek had five grammatical cases, it didn't have very strict word order (much like Latin). So it's even less of a coincidence if someone manages to string the words together into comprehensible sentences.

I doubt this will be the revolution Dr Kennedy thinks it will be. It'd be interesting to hear what others have to say. But of course, this is a press release, not a real article.

or the servers that are being cooled?

Why not? In the opposite situation to AC, I know the PDC supercomputing center in Stockholm, Sweden feeds the surplus heat from their machines into the local district heating system.
Perhaps even more originally, those crafty Swedes have also hooked up their crematoriums!

I dunno why, but I suddenly pictured a bunch of embarrassed Swedes whistling as they quietly move the town over a few hundred meters.

Well, it's not the first town we've moved! Malmberget and Grängesberg are a few others. And Falun (one of the world's largest copper mines from the 7th century until it closed in 1992) collapsed in 1687 resulting in a hole 1.5 km in diameter right next to the town. (Miraculously, nobody was injured because it occured during one of their few holidays).

Here's a pic I took in Grängesberg (the largest ore body in Sweden second only to Kiruna), whose old town center had to be evacuated in the 1970's. The farther wall of the building has fallen into the open pit (and in the background, one can glimpse the mine office and one of the main shaft elevators). The pit behind it is well over 100 meters deep. That mine was shut down in 1991, and even though it filled at rates of tens of thousands of cubic meters of water per month, it took 18 years to fill up after the pumps were switched off.

/Unabashed mine geek.

For the inhabitants of Mönsterås, Sweden.
The town name means 'patterned ridge', but to date they've have had to put up with the domain "Monsteras" - which means "monster-carcass".
(å, ä, ö/ø in the Scandinavian languages are considered to be their own unique characters, not accented 'a's and 'o's.)

Uh, wow. And I suppose the big "Sunshine News" logo was actually in the room? And the guy just repeated the exact same action twice??

It's EDITED, you dolt! You think a news organization would put that online _without_ censoring the naughty bits??

Well, no, Moore's Law was never passed by any legislative authority, no.

As for a scientific law, 'laws' in science are like version numbers in software:
There's no agreed-upon definition whatsoever, but for some reason, people still seem to attribute massive importance to them for some reason.

If anything a 'law' is a scientific statement that dates from the 18th or 19th century, more or less.
Hooke's law is an empirical approximation.
The Ideal Gas law is exact, but only as a theoretical limit.
Ohm's law is actually a definition (of resistance).
The Laws of Thermodynamics are (likely) the most fundamental properties of nature that we know of.

The only thing these have in common is that they're from before the 20th century, really.

Hmm, yes, but how does the supposedly soon-to-be-open-source VP8 codec stack up?

And if YouTube moves to VP8.. will Microsoft have a choice?