Firstly, because the D.P.A. 1998 is *UK* law, which (as far as I can see) has no relevance to FB (usual IANAL applies). Try looking at the D.P.A. 1988 & the Amendment Act 2003. If you're interested, keep your eyes posted on the outcome of the Irish Data Protection Commissioner's report into FB.

Secondly, if you believe that the Data Protection Act has anything at all to do with the *Protection* of your personal data, in regard to it's distribution to other parties, then you are a complete and utter naive fool. At least as far as the UK Act is concerned, it serves to

• legalise the practice of data retention and distribution;
• Allow recourse for you to correct inaccurate data; and
• allow the Government to make money by "registering" any company that needs to store data.

Forgive my cynicism, but it is simply another method of extracting 'Tax' from companies who need to store client details, and does almost nothing about protecting the availability of data that you may consider to be personal.

Although I can't comment on the iRiver Story, I do have the Cover Story. For anyone interested, these are my thoughts on it:

The technical specs were (for me) pretty much perfect. It was most definitely a purchase made on specs, rather than having the product in my hand prior to buying it. But I have a lot of niggles - which renders the device somewhat less than perfect...

First, the good stuff. DRM is not an issue - for me, at least. That is an Adobe thing, and I don't have any DRM'd PDFs. The device should handle most of the (normal) formats you can throw at it. It is touch screen, with WiFi.

But that's all. Forget the "Open Source" crap. Sure, it's linux. But the download link is an odd .jpg of the GNU preamble, with an iframe for the actual license text. The links to sources are odd javascript, pointing to old versions hosted god-knows where. I can't see the tool-chain and anything else required to actually compile a working binary. Not that that would help, because I haven't worked out how to gain root access - which you need to. The fonts installed are useless for anything other than standard US English (major complaint).

What else? Crap battery life. Turn off the WiFi, and you might get 24 hours of reading time (but I can't). I know some people complain about the touch screen, but I can live with that, just.

All in all, the average user should avoid this device like the plague. Hell, I'd even recommend the kindle above this, at least for usability (despite the kindle/1984 intrusion). *If* someone manages to write a HOWTO about jailbreaking it, and compiling user software (or iRiver have a more helpful attitude), then it *might* be an interesting toy. DRM on this device is so insignificant a problem that you can ignore it - I suspect that Google would not really want to promote this ability, anyway. It's the encrypted kernel firmware that gets my goat.

... of what format *should* be used in its place.

It is all very well claiming one format is not particularly good, but overall rather pointless if you don't argue an alternative.

So the question any .ogg user will have (since they probably chose this slightly obscure format over the more 'normal' .mp3 alternative due to the reputation of being better to listen to from an audiophile POV) is what to use instead? FLAC is fine if you have the space, but sometimes you want to compromise in order to save storage space...

Let me see, now...

"Armed Robot Drones to Join UK Police Force"

Since most of the current ones seem to be mindless automatons who shoot to kill innocent civilians, I fail to see how this will be a change to the current situation... With the possible exception that, of course, it would be ludicrous to put a machine in the dock before declaring that there was no case to answer...

You either have not read the article, or have no concept of pharmacology (or, possibly, both).

The quantity of 240mg per day is meaningless. What we are interested in is: 240mg *of what*? Try taking a daily dose of 240mg of Foxglove extract; or Ergot infected wheat. I think you'll find quite a profound effect!

This particular study used "Ginko Biloba Extract". All well and good - but what, precisely, was extracted (and what was, therefore, thrown away)? From the manufacturers website:

Therefore, by my maths, this study used an extract equivalent to 12 gram of dried leaf per day; a pretty reasonable dose - certainly considering that the same company sells 40mg capsules of EGb 761®. More importantly, patients received a *standardised* extract; We're not talking about Holland & Barrett bargain cheapo tea-leaves here!

It's a rather interesting article. Rather less surprisingly, the manufacturer of the product used in the study has not updated their "latest News" section to include these results!

This is a straw man fallacy, and completely irrelevant to the discussion, or to the purpose of Wikileaks.

Go to the about wikileaks and have a read. Look at the slashdot article itself. Both use the work 'embargo'. The Advisory Board, and the staff of Wikileaks, are not going to release the information you are suggesting. It's not the purpose to reveal future troop movements, travel plans or secret codes. They reveal what has happened in the past, and how it was ignored, or hushed up, and allowed to continue.