I found a useful article here , Google gets my backing on this, it looks like there are plenty of options open to the US govt to find out the information they seek without using Google. I believe Google have a valid concern that people will think twice about using their search engine if the search data will be handed over to the US govt without good reason.

I have just read a couple of articles on client-side scripting techniques by Scott Mitchell of 'Four Guys from Rolla' fame. He really knows his stuff and offers great insight into whats going on under the covers in dotnet.

I keep reading stuff like this on the web

"you forget to mention those call Centers are in India,Pakistan and taking away US jobs."

from Channel9 's fourm

I don't think job's can be owned instead I believe they must be earned and this is achieved by running companies that are efficient in what they do.

These are Jobs that were being done by US workers which are now being done by foreign workers because they are prepared to work for less pay. Now the consumer pays less or the company makes a bigger profit. This is something all capitalist democratic countries should welcome. Protectionism just drives up prices, prevents competition and thus stifles innovation.

My Amigo Frank has just put up a blog so you should go and look at it now...

http://www.undeliverable.co.uk/

...stop reading this and click on the link above!

http://www.lubasi.org/

Lubasi is an orphanage based in Livingstone, Zambia near Victoria Falls, they care for up to sixty children between the ages of 5 - 10 who mostly have become orphans because their parents died of AIDS. 33% of the population of Livinstone has AIDS and so the traditional extended family approach to looking after these children has become overloaded.

If you are feeling charitable and have a PayPal account you can leave a donation towards the cost of running the orphanage via their website.

 

 

Recently I heard a story on radio 4 where a man had died whilst out driving his car and the AA had refused to help his family get the car started when they contacted them. The man had been a lifelong member. The AA then issued a statement saying that their operator had acted against their guidelines. The whole story was a PR nightmare for the AA.

Then the other day I found out a friend of my Mum's called Joan recently has been going through some bad times. She is a 59 year old nurse and her husband had a heart attack and died a couple of weeks before christmas. She then was told by her landlady that she should find somewhere else to live. This was because Joan's husband used to do some chores every week to reduce the cost of the rent. So my mum offered to take Joan in for a few months till she is back on her feet.

Joan told me that when she contacted BT Yahoo about cancelling her broadband they said that if she didn't transfer her account to my mum's house she would be immeadiately liable for the remaining term of the contract (£280 approx). Now it seems to me that BT Yahoo are contractually correct but that they could show a little compassion as events beyond Joan's control have left her not wanting her BT broadband account.

I am going to contact BT directly on her behalf on monday to see if I can get some sort of compromise out of them.

UPDATE: Well I submitted the above to the BT Website and one of their customer care staff contacted me today asking if I could forward Joan's Account Details to see what he could do so fingers crossed.

My perception of hard drives is that they are slow, bulky, power hungry, put out too much heat, noisy, unreliable and prone to catastrophic failure instead of graceful degradation. Given a choice I'd rather not store my precious data on such a device.

I long for the day when an evil genius invents a solid state device the size of a matchbox that stores several TB's uses the same power as ram and will put those ancient spinning things to shame when it comes to reliability.

Anybody know of any solid state devices that are showing promise at the developmental stage?

Here's someone that agrees with me

I don't like my iPod or my iPod shuffle, I hate iTunes and can't find an alternative. I recently downloaded the latest version of iTunes and it spat the dummy when I connected the shuffle saying that the firmware needed updating.

I went to download the firmware at 53MB! for a shuffle firmware update Apple get my bloatware 2005 nomination.

I am quite particular when it comes to arranging my MP3 collection and so I would like to be able to transfer files to a portable MP3 player using Windows explorer and preserve the tree structure, again with apple ipods this is a big no no.

That said they do look great.