That's because, with three GOP candidates locked in a tough primary, Memphis Democratic Congressman Harold Ford suddenly has a real chance of winning--and becoming the first black senator from the South to be elected since 1874. Indeed, a recent poll by the Ford campaign showed him besting each of his three rivals in head-to-head match-ups.

2006 elections are going to be fascinating to watch.

How Democrat Harold Ford could claim a Republican Senate seat

The Netflix Fan Blog discovered the William Shatner DVD Fan Club. For $47.99 per year you get a new movie, personally selected by Shatner, each month (you get one free movie with signup)

Hacking NetFlix : William Shatner DVD Club

Seven northeastern U.S. states have signed the country's first plan to create a market for heat-trapping carbon dioxide by curbing emissions at power plants, New York Gov. George Pataki said on Tuesday.

In a break with fellow Republican
President George W. Bush, Pataki helped create the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, in which participating states agree to curb emissions starting in 2009, with cuts in emissions starting in 2016.

Other members of the RGGI are Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Vermont. Membership is open to other U.S. states.

Seven states sign CO2 plan in break with Bush - Yahoo! News

Seagate Technology on Wednesday said it would buy rival computer disk-drive maker Maxtor Corp. for $1.9 billion in stock, aiming to cut combined costs and drive development of new products.

In the deal, which would give Seagate an estimated 42-45 percent share of the disk drive market, Maxtor shareholders will receive 0.37 shares of Seagate common stock for each Maxtor share they own.

Seagate shareholders will own about 84 percent and Maxtor shareholders about 16 percent of the new combined company.

Seagate said its executive management team will continue to serve in their current roles and the combined company will retain the Seagate name.

The deal comes as Maxtor, whose biggest customer is No. 1 personal computer maker Dell Inc., has been restructuring and battling increasingly stiff competition.

Seagate to buy Maxtor for $1.9 bln in stock - Yahoo! News

Colin Pillinger, the lead scientist on the mission, said the latest images from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft suggested Beagle plunged into a crater near its planned landing site.

Close... whoops.

Scientist behind failed Beagle probe believes he's located wreckage on Mars - Yahoo! News

Police said the man had probably been drinking home-made alcohol for several days because of the impossibility of reaching his blood-alcohol level of 0.9 percent in just a day.

They said the man was alive when he was run over by a car, creating a probable although unenviable record for alcohol consumption in hard-drinking Latvia.

Drunk had twice the lethal alcohol level - Yahoo! News

recently in China for AVAR 2005, the annual meeting of antivirus researchers from Asia and the Pacific. While I was there I did some parallel research on wireless networks in two of China's major cities, Tianjin and Peking.

Viruslist.com - Wardriving in China

Jeremy Wright purports a common misconception about new companies doing business online: That you need 99.999% uptime or you’re toast. Not so. Basecamp doesn’t have that. I think our uptime is more like 98% or 99%. Guess what, we’re still here!

Wright correctly states that those final last percent are incredibly expensive. To go from 98% to 99% can cost thousands of dollars. To go from 99% to 99.9% tens of thousands more. Now contrast that with the value. What kind of service are you providing? Does the world end if you’re down for 30 minutes?

Don't scale: 99.999% uptime is for Wal-Mart - Signal vs. Noise (by 37signals)

A study (supposedly co-authored by Fed Chair Alan Greenspan) estimated that "Americans withdrew $600 billion in equity from their homes in 2004, or 7% of their disposable income." Greenie's study estimated "consumers spend about 51% of the cash they extract." Goldman's estimates were that consumers spend ~68% of the cash they extract through home-equity loans and refinancing (most of the rest is used to pay down credit-card debt or invest).

The Big Picture: Read it here first: Real-Estate Boom Soon May Sputter As an Engine of Retail Sales

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