] Kansas really is flatter than a pancake, U.S. geographers
] reported on Monday.
]
] A scientific comparison of the topography of Kansas to a
] pancake shows the state, known for its vast, even fields,
] is in fact really, really flat, geographer Mark Fonstad
] of Southwest Texas State University and colleagues found.
]
] "While driving across the American Midwest, it is common
] to hear travelers remark, 'This state is as flat as a
] pancake,'" they wrote in their report, published in the
] Annals of Improbable Research.
]
] "Simply put, our results show that Kansas is considerably
] flatter than a pancake."

Your tax dollars at work.

Study: Kansas is flatter than pancake

] Australia (CNN) -- Ever wanted to wish upon a star? Well,
] you have 70,000 million million million to choose from.
]
] That's the total number of stars in the known universe,
] according to a study by Australian astronomers.
]
] It's also about 10 times as many stars as grains of sand
] on all the world's beaches and deserts.
]
] The figure -- 7 followed by 22 zeros or, more accurately,
] 70 sextillion -- was calculated by a team of stargazers
] based at the Australian National University.
]
] Speaking at the General Assembly of the International
] Astronomical Union meeting in Sydney, Dr Simon Driver
] said the number was drawn up based on a survey of one
] strip of sky, rather than trying to count every
] individual star.
]
] The team used two of the world's most powerful
] telescopes, one at the Anglo-Australian Observatory in
] northern New South Wales state and one in the Canary
] Islands, to carry out their survey.
]
] Within the strip of sky some 10,000 galaxies were
] pinpointed and detailed measurements of their brightness
] taken to calculate how many stars they contained.

Mind you - this is only the universe visible to earth! Who knows what that figure might really be?

QUICK! Someone register "sextillion.com" before the pr0n sites or squatters catch on. DOH! Too late!!

LB

Astronomers pick a sky high number

] With the record labels at war with online song swappers,
] PC users who wanted to go straight and do the right thing
] had no inexpensive, easy-to-use way to buy songs
] legitimately until today.
]
] Online retailer Buy.com, which sells computers, books,
] gadgets, CDs and DVDs, adds downloads to its mix today.
] BuyMusic.com will stock 350,000 songs for as little as 79
] cents each, though most sell for 99 cents or $1.19. All
] can be transferred to portables or burned to CDs.

Apple just missed their launch window for iTunes on the PC...

Laughing Boy

Unlimited downloads are now PC

] We all know about the Napster issue, the perfume company,
] the lipstick company, the tire makers... Metallica has
] sued them all. Rightly or wrongly, no one is judging
] that. However, the idea behind this parody was to gauge,
] after all that litigation, just how willing America was
] to buy a story as extraordinay -- as outlandish -- as
] them claiming ownership of a 2-chord progression.

A follow-up on the Metallica lawsuit. It was all made up. Now get back to work.

Unfaith On Metallica Hoax, 7/18/03

] The public has grown increasingly uneasy with President
] Bush's handling of the economy and the situation in Iraq,
] a new poll suggests.
]
] Bush's overall job approval dropped 8 points since May to
] 55 percent, according to a new CNN-Time poll.
]
] A majority in this poll, 52 percent, said the president
] is doing a poor job of handling the economy, and just
] four in 10 say the U.S.-led military campaign in Iraq has
] been a success. That's down from 52 percent who felt that
] way in late March.

QUICK GEORGE - bomb someone else to boost those numbers back up there! Or are you going to wait till a month before the election?

Laughing Boy

Bush's approval rating sags

] Now I'm sure you're asking yourself, "how bad could it
] be?" Okay, let me tell you. It all started innocently
] enough, I sat down on a cold ring of porceline, picked up
] a mag, and got to work. What followed will haunt me every
] time I enter the facilities

WARNING: This is absolutely disgusting and at the same time so funny I just couldn't stop laughing. I will say this is very foul so check with caution.

That was one nasty dump you gave me, Mr Waffle House cook

Cafe Press now sells books. Fairly cheap too when you consider how much kinkos charges for this. You no longer need a book publisher as long as you can market yourself.

Publish books for Free

] Goodbye "e-mail", the French government says, and hello
] "courriel" -- the term that linguistically sensitive
] France is now using to refer to electronic mail in
] official documents.
]
] The Culture Ministry has announced a ban on the use of
] "e-mail" in all government ministries, documents,
] publications or Web sites, the latest step to stem an
] incursion of English words into the French lexicon.
]
] The ministry's General Commission on Terminology and
] Neology insists Internet surfers in France are broadly
] using the term "courrier electronique" (electronic mail)
] instead of e-mail -- a claim some industry experts
] dispute. "Courriel" is a fusion of the two words.
]
] "Evocative, with a very French sound, the word 'courriel'
] is broadly used in the press and competes advantageously
] with the borrowed 'mail' in English," the commission has
] ruled.

I'm told "computer" is a banned word as well. France really IS the butt hole of the western world.

Laughing Boy

France bans 'e-mail' from vocabulary

Hijexx wrote:
] MONTREAL — Metallica are taking legal action against
] independant Canadian rock band Unfaith over what they feel is
] unsanctioned usage of two chords the band has been using since
] 1982 : E and F.
]
] "People are going to get on our case again for this, but try
] to see it from our point of view just once," stated
] Metallica's Lars Ulrich. "We're not saying we own those two
] chords, individually - that would be ridiculous. We're just
] saying that in that specific order, people have grown to
] associate E, F with our music."

Oh my fucking GOD! What a bunch of sell-out losers. 2 chords plagurism does not make.

And who did YOU rip that progression off from Lars, huh?

LB

RE: Metallica Sue Canadian Band over E, F Chords

(SCO) w00t! i bought unix! im gonna b so rich!
(novell) /msg atnt haha. idiot.
(novell) whoops. was that out loud?
(atnt) rotfl
(ibm) lol
(SCO) why r u laffin at me?
(novell) dude, unix is so 10 years ago. linux is in now.
(SCO) wtf?
(SCO) hey guyz, i bought caldera, I have linux now.
(red_hat) haha, your linux sucks.
(novell) lol
(atnt) lol
(ibm) lol
(SCO) no wayz, i will sell more linux than u!
(ibm) your linux sucks, you should look at SuSE
(SuSE) Ja. Wir bilden gutes Linux für IBM.
(SCO) can we do linux with you?
(SuSE) Ich bin nicht sicher...
(ibm) *cough*
(SuSE) Gut lassen Sie uns vereinigen.
* SuSE is now SuSE[UL]
* SCO is now caldera[UL]
(turbolinux) can we play?
(conectiva) we're bored... we'll go too.
(ibm) sure!
* turbolinux is now turbolinux[UL]
* conectiva is now conectiva[UL]
(ibm) redhat: you should join!
(SuSE[UL]) Ja! Wir sind vereinigtes Linux. Widerstand ist vergeblich.
(red_hat) haha. no.
(red_hat) lamers.
(ibm) what about you debian?
(debian) we'll discuss it and let you know in 5 years.
(caldera[UL]) no one wants my linux!
(turbolinux[UL]) i got owned.
(caldera[UL]) u all tricked me. linux is lame.
* caldera[UL] is now known as SCO
(SCO) i'm going back to unix.
(SGI) yeah! want to do unix with me?
(SCO) haha. no. lamer.
(novell) lol
(ibm) snap!
(SGI) :~(
(SCO) hey, u shut up. im gonna sue u ibm.
(ibm) wtf?
(SCO) yea, you stole all the good stuff from unix.
(red_hat) lol
(SuSE[UL]) heraus laut lachen
(ibm) lol
(SCO) shutup. i'm gonna email all your friends and tell them you suck.
(ibm) go ahead. baby.
(SCO) andandand... i revoke your unix! how do you like that?
(ibm) oh no, you didn't. AIX is forever.
(novell) actually, we still own unix, you can't do that.
(SCO) wtf? we bought it from u.
(novell) whoops. our bad.
(SCO) i own u. haha
(SCO) ibm: give me all your AIX now!
(ibm) whatever. lamer.
* ibm sets mode +b SCO!*@*
* SCO has been kicked from #os (own this.)

what if the sco case was on irc?