] The British entrepreneur and adventurer Richard Branson
] announced Monday he has signed a deal with U.S. company
] Mojave Aerospace Ventures (MAV) to put paying travelers
] into space.

I think we all saw this coming. If it plays out, the $10M is peanuts, as all the X-Prize competitors have said.

Technology News: Science: Richard Branson Plans Commercial Space Flights

] Seldom do I really answer those who criticize my work. In
] fact, the entire development of my career has been fueled
] by my ability to ignore denigrating and trivializing
] criticism as I realize my dreams and my goals. However
] there is something compelling about Amazon's willingness
] to publish just about anything, and the sheer outrageous
] stupidity of many things you've said here that actually
] touches my proletarian and Democratic soul. Also I use
] and enjoy Amazon and I do read the reviews of other
] people's books in many fields. In sum, I believe in what
] happens here. And so, I speak. First off, let me say that
] this is addressed only to some of you, who have posted
] outrageously negative comments here, and not to all. You
] are interrogating this text from the wrong perspective.
] Indeed, you aren't even reading it. You are projecting
] your own limitations on it.

Anne Rice doesn't like people trashing her latest novel on Amazon.

But really, she should know that regarding criticism -- and the inevitable trolls -- the only way to win is not to play at all
(hers is comment between 211-220 when sorted oldest-first if this link doesn't work)

Amazon.com: Books: Blood Canticle (The Vampire Chronicles)

] Peter Higginson, security executive for Coors Brewers,
] agreed: "It's better to have them on the inside than on
] the outside. I think it's a good thing, but you'd have to
] keep them happy to stop them doing what they might have
] done before. It comes down to how much you trust your
] employees. But it could put HR in a tough spot for not
] employing someone on the basis of their background."

How these reporters decide who to interview for a quote must be pretty interesting. I can understand interviewing security company and HR execs... but how do you decide to drop a line to the head of security of a brewery for an article about hiring virii writers?

Would you hire a hacker? - ZDNet UK News

] Canton, MA September 17, 2004 - Kryptonite today
] announced it will provide free product upgrades for
] certain locks purchased since September 2002, in response
] to consumer concerns about tubular cylinder lock
] technology.

Hands down, Bug of the Week.

Welcome to Kryptonite

] The minute your mail starts flowing, a dedicated team of
] over a hundred trained Screening and Preselection
] Specialists, working 24 hours a day**, will begin
] manually reviewing, hand-picking and approving important
] correspondence, vigilantly discarding all junk mail.

Like Pigeon-Ranking. Would be effective, if a dreary job.

Can you imagine what you'd actually have to pay people to spend their lives skimming email and deleting spam? I know when I clean out my sites' spamtraps, after about 1000 messages I want to KILL.

eProvisia LLC - Spam Eradicator

] The following chart plots every single piece of spam and
] virus email that arrived at my work email address since
] April 1997. Blue dots are spam and red dots are email
] viruses. The horizontal axis is time, and the vertical
] axis is size of mail (on a logarithmic scale). Darker
] dots represent more messages. (Messages larger than 1MB
] have been treated as if they were 1MB.)

A visual history of spam (and virus) email

] A team of Dutch and American surgeon claim they are ready
] to perform a face transplant, a procedure considered
] controversial by some medical ethicists.
]
] "There arrives a point in time when the procedure should
] simply be done. We submit that that time is now,"
] the doctors wrote in The American Journal of Bioethics.

Scotsman.com News - Latest News - Surgeons Ready to Perform Face Transplant

] International is unveiling its new pickup, the largest
] ever. The International CXT is nearly twice the size of a
] Ford F-350 Super Duty pickup -- and it makes full-size
] SUV's look like Mini Coopers.

WPXI.com - Automotive - New Truck Makes Hummer Look Small

] The old bromide that promises you can't get a computer
] virus by looking at an image file crumbled a bit further
] Tuesday when Microsoft announced a critical vulnerability
] in its software's handling of the ubiquitous JPEG
] graphics format.

Microsoft security... making the theoretically implausible possible.

SecurityFocus HOME News: Microsoft warns of poisoned picture peril

] A television journalist was shot dead as he made a live
] broadcast from Baghdad yesterday when United States
] helicopters fired on a crowd that had gathered round the
] burning wreckage of an American armoured vehicle.

Hard to spin or deny that...

Telegraph | News | TV reporter killed by US fire during live Baghdad broadcast