] The Round Rock, Texas, company has moved aggressively to
] shift technical support to centers in countries such as
] India, but complaints about the quality of technical
] support have caused the company to move support for its
] Optiplex desktops and Latitude notebooks back to U.S.
] call centers in Texas, Idaho and Tennessee, among others,
] said Jon Weisblatt, a Dell spokesman.

InfoWorld: Dell shifts some support calls to US after complaints: November 24, 2003: By : End-user Hardware

]
] CAPE CANAVERAL -- NASA is considering a plan to retire
] its aging space shuttles around 2010 and convert any
] remaining orbiters into unmanned cargo carriers.

Not much new here ... but good to hear that NASA is trying to do something about this...

NASA may automate shuttles to haul cargo

] There's a traditional definition of a shyster: a lawyer
] who, when the law is against him, pounds on the facts;
] when the facts are against him, pounds on the law; and
] when both the facts and the law are against him, pounds
] on the table. The SCO Group's continuing attempts to
] increase its market value at the expense of free software
] developers, distributors and users through outlandish
] legal theories and unsubstantiated factual claims show
] that the old saying hasn't lost its relevance.

SCO: Without Fear and Without Research

] A tropical fish that fluoresces bright red is set to
] become the first genetically modified pet to go on sale
] in the US. Alan Blake and colleagues at Yorktown
] Technologies LP say the GloFish will be available from
] January 2004.

Glowing red GM fish to sell in US

] A new species of baleen whale has been discovered. The
] stunning find, made after researchers studied the body
] shape and genetics of a few leviathan skeletons gathering
] dust for the last 25 years in a Japanese museum, brings
] the total number of known species in the main genus of
] baleen whale to eight.

Japanese discover new whale species

] LONDON (Reuters) - Face transplants are technically
] possible and could arguably be less difficult than
] reattaching a severed finger, surgeons said on Wednesday,
] but they called for more research into the risks involved
] before they are attempted.

Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage

] Getting approval for the restraining order filed by the
] Online Privacy Group (OPG), a non-profit Web hosting
] company and ISP out of San Francisco, is the legal first
] step to determine whether Diebold has the constitutional
] right to make an ISP shut down a customer's Web site
] because it contains information that highlights the
] vulnerabilities of its e-voting machines.

Maybe this is a good sign...

Judge Needs Time For E-Voting Decision

] Starting Nov. 24, consumers will be able to switch their
] home telephone numbers to their mobile phones, the
] Federal Communications Commission ruled yesterday. The
] order sets the stage for a scramble by traditional phone
] companies seeking to keep their customers as they face
] fierce competition from cellular providers and a growing
] threat from Internet-based phone services.

While this is pro-consumer, I think its the wrong answer from a technical standpoint. Once again, if we had a directory service above the phone network that every telephone terminal could access, we wouldn't need to remember numeric addresses -- and furthermore, the physical network targets of the logical addresses could be very dynamic.

There was a system -- I want to say at Lucent in Cambridge -- where the users had RFID tags and the network followed them; your calls are routed to whatever terminal you happen to be sitting next to, currently.

F.C.C. Backs Phone Number Portability

] IOWA CITY, Nov. 10 — Senator John Kerry announced on Monday that
] he had fired his campaign manager as he struggled to revive a
] candidacy that has tumbled from a dominant position in the
] Democratic presidential contest.

I think its about time for Kerry to go away ... for better or worse, the competition is basically boiled down to Clark and Dean ... everyone else is wasting our time.

Kerry Dismisses Campaign Chief

Decius wrote:
] ] For the first time in our history, American citizens have
] ] been seized by the executive branch of government and put
] ] in prison without being charged with a crime, without
] ] having the right to a trial, without being able to see a
] ] lawyer, and without even being able to contact their
] ] families.
]
] Increasingly I must insist that brevity is genius, but many of
] you will enjoy watching Gore rip the President a new one for
] paragraph after paragraph, even if the material might be
] redundant for you. If 9-11 made everyone more radical, here
] you can really see how deep the chasm is between the left and
] the right. What I will say is most interesting is that Gore is
] even fair. He is careful, for example, to acknowledge that
] some of the sections of the Patriot act aren't
] unreasonable.... And yet he still has much to complain about.

Now that Gore's political career is basically over, I think this is a great role for him: throwing shit at the adminstration. He has (some) credibility and nothing to lose -- and the administration has everything to lose.

RE: Al Gore reads the administration the riot act.