County commissioners were discussing problems with the central collections office that is used to process traffic ticket payments and handle other paperwork normally done by the JP Courts.
Commissioner Kenneth Mayfield, who is white, said it seemed that central collections "has become a black hole" because paperwork reportedly has become lost in the office.
Commissioner John Wiley Price, who is black, interrupted him with a loud "Excuse me!" He then corrected his colleague, saying the office has become a "white hole."

NEW evidence has cast doubt on claims that the world's ice-caps are melting, it emerged last night.

Satellite data shows that concerns over the levels of sea ice may have been premature.

It was feared that the polar caps were vanishing because of the effects of global warming.

But figures from the respected US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show that almost all the "lost" ice has come back.

EcoWorld: What is your criticism of the IPCC?

Pielke: Mainly the fact that the same individuals who are doing primary research into humans' impact on the climate system are being permitted to lead the assessment of that research. Suppose a group of scientists introduced a drug they claimed could save many lives: There were side effects, of course, but the scientists claimed the drug's benefits far outweighed its risks. If the government then asked these same scientists to form an assessment committee to evaluate their claim (and the committee consisted of colleagues of the scientists who made the original claim as well as the drug's developers), an uproar would occur, and there would be protests. It would represent a clear conflict of interest. Yet this is what has happened with the IPCC process. To date, either few people recognize this conflict, or those that do choose to ignore it because the recommendations of the IPCC fit their policy and political agenda. In either case, scientific rigor has been sacrificed, and poor policy and political decisions will inevitably follow.

In what amounts to a monumental reversal of policy, Microsoft said Monday in a press release — so it's in writing — and publicly at TechEd in Barcelona that it's changing its licensing terms and will no longer restrict developers "to building solutions on top of Visual Studio for Windows and other Microsoft platforms only."

Microsoft said it plans to create one of its shared source licensing programs for the Premier-level partners in its VSIP program so they can see VS IDE source code for debugging purposes and to simplify the process of integrating their products with the thing.

The move obviously suggests that Microsoft is under increasing pressure from the open source movement and is acting to protect its precious developer base.

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The plan has been uncovered by signals intelligence specialists at Britain's Government Communications Headquarters and at the equally ultra-secret National Security Agency base at Menwith Hill near Harrogate in the north of the country.
Using a state-of-the-art software program called Moonpenny, the specialists have tracked the activities of the Chinese People's Liberation Army scientists based at their underground headquarters in the Western Hills outside Beijing. The scientists have been briefed to achieve "electronic dominance" not only in the Pacific but over all China's global military rivals in the U.S., Britain, Russia and South Korea.

Computer geeks, tree-hugging environmentalists driving electron-powered vehicles, soon could challenge world's fastest-accelerating vehicles in the $1 billion drag-racing industry

When the starting light flashed, the Datsun, known as White Zombie, shot silently past the Corvette and kept widening the lead as the two cars faded into the distance. "Oh man, right off the [starting] line he had me," said the Corvette's owner, Robert Akers, shaking his head.

The move is supposed to be completed by February, when a directive from the White House's Office of Management and Budget goes into effect, forcing government agencies and military branches to conform to a Windows security configuration designed for the Air Force two years ago. As of June 30, all federal software contracts must specify that applications run optimally on the configuration.

Yet going to a single configuration could eliminate more than 80% of government agencies' known PC vulnerabilities, estimates Clint Kreitner, CEO of the Center for Internet Security, who worked with the National Security Agency, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and other agencies to develop the spec, known as the Federal Desktop Core Configuration. A single configuration would make patching easier and bring laggard agencies up to a higher security standard.

Defence Ministry spokesman Harald Kammerbauer said the film makers "will not be allowed to film at German military sites if Count Stauffenberg is played by Tom Cruise, who has publicly professed to being a member of the Scientology cult".

As the evidence for this has accumulated, several fairly contorted and unsatisfying efforts have been aimed at solving the puzzle. Cramer has proposed an explanation that doesn't violate the speed of light but does kind of mess with the traditional concept of time.

A man charged with killing a 25-year-old Boise State University student met him on Internet gaming sites and then used the Web to track him down, according to court records.
...
Authorities say Delling embarked on a 6,000-mile Western road trip that left two people dead and another seriously injured.