The net's regulators will vote on Thursday to decide if the strict rules on so-called top level domain names, such as .com or .uk, can be relaxed. If approved, it could allow companies to turn their brands into domain names while individuals could also carve out their own corner of the net.

Hundreds of new domain names could be created by the end of the year, rising to thousands in the future. Icann says any string of letters can be registered as a domain, but there will be an independent arbitration process for people with grounds for objection.

".meme"?

Icann & Top Level Domain Names - 'Shake-up' for internet proposed

Most anyone in the free and open source software realm can tell you not only that Linux is better than Windows, but also that it is an optimal alternative to the closed-source and proprietary operating system from Microsoft. Anyone at a Linux-oriented event or group can assure you that you have no need or even legitimate reason to continue using commercial operating systems nowadays.

Indeed, GNU and Linux have radically transformed software development and systems administration in practice and in culture, but to replace Windows broadly, it is essential to accommodate the influx of commercial software refugees.

Above all else, Linux is a paradigm, or a way of doing things; rather than needing to know every detail, users can start using it and getting results by just knowing what to expect. Computer technology grows more sophisticated by the day, and to keep improving free and open source software, we need a sophisticated and flexible educational infrastructure that allows users to reach their desired goals as quickly and as easily as possible.

Linux Community Should Plant Seeds for Consumer Demand

TAKANEZAWA, Japan - Honda's new zero-emission, hydrogen fuel cell car rolled off a Japanese production line Monday and is headed to southern California, where Hollywood is already abuzz over the latest splash in green motoring. The FCX Clarity, which runs on hydrogen and electricity, emits only water and none of the gases believed to induce global warming. It is also two times more energy efficient than a gas-electric hybrid and three times that of a standard gasoline-powered car, the company says.

Honda expects to lease out a "few dozen" units this year and about 200 units within a year. In California, a three-year lease will run $600 a month, which includes maintenance and collision coverage.

Honda rolls out new zero-emission hydrogen fuel cell car

Rupert Murdoch's Fox News television station has been forced to apologise to Barack Obama for the third time in a fortnight after screening a racially tinged caption referring to his wife Michelle as his "baby mama".

The apology comes just over a week after one of Fox's anchormen expressed regret for a comment on the night that Obama won the Democratic nomination. Obama, in a show of affection, lightly touched his fist against Michelle's and the anchorwoman referred to it as a "terrorist fist jab". Previously, a Fox contributor Liz Trotta had to apologise after making a joke about Obama being assassinated.

The trio of apologies is embarrassing for Fox. Murdoch last month praised Obama but stopped short of endorsing him, though his New York Post came out for Obama in January.

Fox forced to apologise to Obama for third time in two weeks

by John Coleman

You may want to give credit where credit is due to Al Gore and his global warming campaign the next time you fill your car with gasoline, because there is a direct connection between Global Warming and four dollar a gallon gas. It is shocking, but true, to learn that the entire Global Warming frenzy is based on the environmentalist’s attack on fossil fuels, particularly gasoline. All this big time science, international meetings, thick research papers, dire threats for the future; all of it, comes down to their claim that the carbon dioxide in the exhaust from your car and in the smoke stacks from our power plants is destroying the climate of planet Earth. What an amazing fraud; what a scam.

My mission, in what is left of a long and exciting lifetime, is to stamp out this Global Warming silliness and let all of us get on with enjoying our lives and loving our planet, Earth.

Global Warming and the Price of a Gallon of Gas

The print ad, which takes up most of a newspaper page, shouts, "The Ocean Is Evaporating!" TV and Internet spots warn that the world's oceans will disappear - in about a billion years. But what appear to be public service announcements this week, delivered with a fake sternness by Mayor Richard W. Meehan, are actually an ad campaign to encourage visits to the resort town.

"We're advising citizens to book their Ocean City getaway now, before the ocean evaporates," Meehan says in the commercials; the image blurs and jumps like an old newsreel. The ads ran Sunday and Monday in TV markets from Richmond to New York. The Internet version is at http://www.morefunhere.com. The print version ran Monday in The Washington Post. The ads are part of a $1 million campaign designed for the Ocean City Department of Tourism by MGH of Owings Mills.

Earlier this year, while searching for ideas, one staffer read about a study in the Monthly Notices of the British Royal Astronomical Society. The study described how, over hundreds of millions of years, the heat of the sun will steadily increase. After about a billion years, the oceans will boil themselves dry, for reasons separate from climate change. A light went on inside creative director John Patterson's head - an enormous, scorching light. If the oceans boil, he figured, that "probably pretty much ruins things" for Ocean City. It was the start of a joke. Meehan said he felt a little funny making such frightening pronouncements in jest. "Was it kind of Orson-Welles-ish? Yeah," he said, adding that the ads have generated mostly positive responses.

Unfortunately, Ocean City's problems are likely to begin long before the oceans disappear. One of the study's authors, Klaus-Peter Schrder of the University of Guanajuato in Mexico, said in an e-mail to The Post that the earth's warming will make the oceans to expand before they boil. That will turn Ocean City into just Ocean, he says "That beach in the advert will disappear long before the 1 billion years are up," he said.

Maryland resort's mock ads warn of ocean evaporation

BMW GINA Light Visionary Model revealed

Construction of the world's tallest building, the Burj Dubai, has been delayed and will be completed only in September next year, the developer was quoted on Tuesday as saying. The tower, which is expected to reach a final height of 900 metres (2,953 feet), was due for completion in the bustling city state at the end of 2008.

"The luxury finishes that were decided on in 2004, when the tower was initially conceptualised, are now being replaced by upgraded finishes," developer Emaar said, according to the Gulf News. The Burj Dubai had already become the tallest man-made structure on the planet, when Emaar announced in April that it has surpassed the 629-metre (2,063-foot) KVLY-TV mast in the United States. Many building projects in Dubai, which is going through a construction frenzy, have been facing delays caused by shortage of building materials and skilled labour.

Signature Tower in Nashville has been delayed, as well. It appears they're still waiting to sell half of the residential apartments. The groundbreaking was supposed to happen last year, but it keeps getting rescheduled.

'Finishing touches' delay world's tallest building

By Jeremy Laurance
Sunday, 8 June 2008
The Independent

In the first official admission that the universal prevention strategy promoted by the major Aids organisations may have been misdirected, Kevin de Cock, the head of the WHO's department of HIV/Aids said there will be no generalised epidemic of Aids in the heterosexual population outside Africa.

Dr De Cock, an epidemiologist who has spent much of his career leading the battle against the disease, said understanding of the threat posed by the virus had changed. Whereas once it was seen as a risk to populations everywhere, it was now recognised that, outside sub-Saharan Africa, it was confined to high-risk groups including men who have sex with men, injecting drug users, and sex workers and their clients.

Forget the doctor's strangely coincidental name for a moment. Do we really need phrases such as "men who have sex with men" and "sex workers and their clients"? Would "homosexual males" and "prostitutes" have been considered inaccurate or offensive? These phrases are brought to you by the same people who replaced "personnel" with "human resources," and this type of language makes it difficult to take the article seriously. Political correctness is far from new, but I'll never get used to it.

But the factors driving HIV were still not fully understood, he said.

"The impact of HIV is so heterogeneous. In the US , the rate of infection among men in Washington DC is well over 100 times higher than in North Dakota, the region with the lowest rate. That is in one country. How do you explain such differences?"

Behavior, maybe?

Threat of world Aids pandemic among heterosexuals is over, report admits

The Volt, with an initial production run of 10,000, is expected to hit showrooms in 2010. After that, GM plans to build tens of thousands per year.

Good! Yes, I'm a "big vehicle" person, but I hope these electric models succeed. The sooner these become mainstream, the better. Maybe by time I'm ready to replace my truck, I can get an electric version, without sacrificing size, comfort, speed, or range.

GM's Volt