From YouTube, here.

“The music industry will give up copyright protection on digital music before the end of the year, enabling every downloaded song to be played on every type of digital music player and finally unleashing the profit potential of widespread, legally downloaded, paid-for music .. This is the bold, optimistic prediction of David Pakman, the bold, [...]

“The funeral pyre was moments from being lit when a movement on the bier triggered panic among staff at the crematorium in southern India. Then, as they rushed to examine the elderly woman under the shroud, her three sons suddenly abandoned their ‘mourning’ and fled … In a shocking example of India’s growing disregard for [...]

“Here’s an old economist conundrum about queues … when you queue [for a water fountain] – I get no benefit from your pain. When you pay, I probably do … It may not be a good argument for road pricing, but it does explain why economists tend to think of the price mechanism as a [...]

From CNET News.com, here. Via CNET’s Buzz Out Loud podcast, here.

“The UK and US have held high level talks on the possibility of putting a ‘Son of Star Wars’ anti-ballistic missile defence system on British soil … An article in The Economist claims Prime Minister Tony Blair has lobbied President George Bush for the system … But government sources have told the BBC that talks [...]

“At a concert by the Palestinian Rapperz (PR) last summer, Islamic youths, outraged by the group’s arm thrusts and crotch grabs, rushed onstage and beat up its four members. Soon after, a Palestinian M.C. known as Sompol was also assailed for immorality … And yet rap is thriving … evolving into a gritty hybrid expression [...]

“A predatory commercial company seeking to scavenge a staggering $55 million from Zambia after buying up a ‘bad debt’ of $3.3 million has been reluctantly awarded an estimated $15 million by a British court … That’s rich pickings from a desperately poor country, and ‘vulture fund’ Donegal International should redeem this shameful episode and not [...]

James Merlin from Minnesota runs the SETI@home screensaver/analysis software on his computers. Every so often, it pings the University of California servers and logs the IP address of the computer it’s running on. When his wife’s laptop was stolen, he checked the SETI@home database and found that his stolen computer was still pinging UC - [...]

Reproduced by permission from Chris of The Book of Biff, here.