PumpkinCrikey, voluntarily up early today - all thanks to pesky daylight savings. Don't forget to set your watch, oh and enjoy the pumpkin-adorned Weather Pixie!.
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Bin Laden has reappeared. It was only a matter of time really.

Prior to this, no one was really sure if he was dead or alive. In my view, that would have make him more powerful, but I have to admit that the powers-that-be have done a good job of making us "forget" about him (but not Al-Qaeda) - diminishing his power. So it was only a matter of time before he resurfaced, just to remind us that he's still around.

However, I get a number of things from the reports of his tapes. Firstly, he's actually trying to be reasonable (in a terrorist type way), by explaining his position in a way that suggests he would stop under some circumstances. But no matter how "simple" he makes it sound, that's just way to difficult for Americans who are so utterly intrenched in the opposite view point. I suspect OBL just helped Bush stay in office.

The other thing that worries me is that US officials tried to stop Al-Jazeera broadcasting the tape. What else are we missing?

As we all know, Windows backup and restore procedures are very knife and fork. However, as it turns out, to backup and restore a complete disk with both Windows and Linux on dual-boot is actually remarkably easy.

What is this? How come I get a number of hits every month from people searching for "b"? What's it all about? I must know! I must know!

"Amazing Things Your Automobile Can't Do" makes the obvious point that manufacturers arn't bringing all their features to the US for fear of litigation (just like some US doctors are refusing to treat lawyers).

The other hint I got from it was "Litigious US = percieved unsafe, high crime rate. Non-litigious Japan = perceived safe, low crime rate". Whilst there's more to it than that, there's something in it. Litigation abuses the law, which once done reduces one's respect for it. More justification for my "Ministry of Common Sense", the all-powerful body that can throw out any court case if the plaintiff lacks common sense (eg. "I put my dog in the microwave and it died. The microwave didn't say I couldn't, so I'm sueing").

Gonna miss you, mate...

It looks like Firefox has caught the eye of the industry. It's more than a browser, it's also a platform for other things. The Extensions facilities in Firefox mean it's really customisable. Better still, companies can produce extensions that provide the user with some application that doesn't require a web site. A good example is someone like Google could make a mail application like Outlook that works with GMail, using Firefox.

Greasy Chip Butty brings us yet more Internet goodness. Missile Strike - Big Mutha is an excellent rendition of Missile Command. Launching all of your missiles at once is fun, but not the best way to win.

An excellent ebay item: An invitation to a wedding I don't want to go to. If only I'dhave thought of that...

An interesting twist to telephone sex. However, this reminds me of a number of the girls I've shagged.

TV Theme World - looks good, but sloooow to download anything.

The beautiful internet brings us...

Star Wars scene differences between original, Special Edition and DVD - A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back (Return of the Jedi to come, but I hear that's got loads of naff changes, so it may be a while ;-)

Also, oil wealth can cause corruption. No shit, sherlock.

The Dean emailed these (a sequence of pictures): one two three four five.

And finally, the GLA want to implement an e-vote for the next mayor. Obviously, they've been keeping a keen eye on Florida, where 9 out of 14 machines have been reporting problems (blame humans). Clearly, perfect references for such a plan. Remember kids - just say no (here, here and here's why).

After my previous post, Slashdot reports a Bugtaq entry which details a test which crashes various browsers, although not IE (as easily).

I've downloaded and installed the CGI and given it a try with Firefox 1.0PR on Linux (Redhat FC1). Whilst the browser sometimes "hangs" downloading the page (it recovers by pressing "stop") I haven't yet managed to actually irrevocably break the it.

So it looks like a useful test, and seems to kill all kinds on Windows. However, not quite as IE-exonerating as the self-satisfied Bugtraq post might imply.
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