The monopoly has been removed here in the Netherlands, and the old monopolist -- now owned by TNT -- is going broke. States granted a monopoly on mail delivery in return for a commitment to deliver to every address -- the private companies only want the easy work, delivering in towns and cities. Once the former monopolist goes broke, mail delivery in rural areas will stop forever. To prevent this from happening, the Dutch government will eventually have to legislate -- tinkering with the business models of the competitors -- or accept that if you live in a village or on a farm, you have to drive to the nearest town to pick up your mail.

What allocation? You may as well fill your boots. Run your intertube red hot 24/7.

I was always taught that writing the code wasn't the difficult part of programming. The hard part was figuring out what code to write. That's where the "new Sanskrit" comes in.

Dear Mr Taxpayer, Your raw data is ready -- 220,000 DVDs -- where do you want them?

The correct term is digital elevation model.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_elevation_model

My mistake. Got my maps and my models muddled.

data sets will be provided under COFUR (Cost Of Fulfilling User Request) conditions

Not, rabbits -- hares.

With stupidity, the gods themselves struggle in vain.

It works through cloud cover and at night.

Don't worry. The reflection from your tinfoil hat will blind the radar over your house.

Infoterra GmbH will be responsible for commercial sales of the data. The German Aerospace Center deal with the scientific utilization.

The telescope was designed and built under the management of the German Aerospace Center with funding from the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Technologie; BMWi).