MOS will be pleased because Hed Kandi is one of the most recognisable and profitable dance music brands in the world.

Investment from a dance music committed brand like Ministry will guarantee its longevity.

John Myers, CEO of Guardian Media Group's radio business, which owned the Enterprise Records operation, agreed: "Hed Kandi is a great brand but it is clear to us that it needs to be part of a much larger and experienced record business."

Ministry’s acquisition is the latest twist in a saga that has seen Hed Kandi’s business change dramatically in the last seven months.

In June 2005, founder Mark Doyle left the company unexpectedly, reportedly due to the GMG’s lack of dance music understanding.

Chicago - the font, not the city - was designed in 1983 as a system font for the Apple Macintosh by Susan Kare. Its design has absolutely nothing to do with the city of the same name. In fact, according to Kare herself, the set of fonts she designed for Apple "were named after Philadelphia suburbs", until management decided otherwise.

(1) - "terror" (terra, terrah, terrrr, tarer, etc.)
(2) - "Saddam"
(1) - "freedom"
(1) - "Homeland"
(2) - "ethics"
(1) - "hard work"
(1) - "nukular"
(1) - "bipartisan"
(forget about 1 drink) - "New Orleans"
(1) - "Medicare"
(2) - "God" (or any euphemism)
(laugh at 1 drink) - "fiscal responsibility"
(2) - "evil / evildoers"
(1) - any non-word said as a word
(1) - Bush defends spying
(1) - camera shows a Bush daughter
(2) - camera shows a Bush daughter drinking
(1) - camera shows a special Presidential guest
(2) - camera shows a felonious special Presidential guest

(1 bottle) - "sorry"
(1 bottle) - "Abramoff"
(1 bottle) - "mistake"
(1 bottle) - "nuclear"

Sony has taken its Aibo robot dog to 'live on a farm' as part of cost-cutting exercise that also sees the demise of the company's Qualia line of pricey, high-specification products. As well as ending its line of robot pooches, the company is ending development of the previously-forthcoming Qrio robot.

In some cases, auditors recommend criminal charges be filed against the perpetrators. In others, it asks the U.S. ambassador to Iraq to recoup the money.

Dryly written audit reports describe the Coalition Provisional Authority's offices in the south-central city of Hillah being awash in bricks of $100 bills taken from a central vault without documentation.

It describes one agent who kept almost $700,000 in cash in an unlocked footlocker and mentions a U.S. soldier who gambled away as much as $60,000 in reconstruction funds in the Philippines.

"Tens of millions of dollars in cash had gone in and out of the South-Central Region vault without any tracking of who deposited or withdrew the money, and why it was taken out," says a report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, which is in the midst of a series of audits for the
Pentagon and State Department.

“The laptop DJs might be doing rocket science, and creating amazing soundscapes, but it’s totally boring for an audience to watch.”

Laptop DJing lacks entertainment value says top US DJs ‘DJs Are Alive’ also includes four other well-known jocks, Texan cowboy D:Fuse, Detroit producer Static Revenger, house spinner DJ Skribble, and Las Vegas-based vocalist Kristine W.

The collective’s aim is to perform live as a band on stage, creating something that “sounds like a DJ set, but looks like a band,” said Jesse Houk.

The group will play ‘mash up’ versions of classic club tracks and their own material with a massive set-up that includes two complete DJ rigs, drums, percussion, guitar, keyboards, sax, FX, and Kristine W. on vocals.

Another big success story was sales of mobile-phone ring tones, which now account for around 40 percent of record companies' digital revenues, Kennedy said.

"In the cellular or mobile world, there is a culture of payment" that didn't exist in the early days of the Internet, said Adam Klein, EMI Group PLC's executive vice president for strategy.

Kennedy warned that a lack of "interoperability" of different portable music devices and download systems was hampering future growth in the digital music market. Industry leader Apple Computer Inc. (AAPL)'s iPod portable player and iTunes download system use different technology than other devices.

As the fiber came spooling out of the desert soil like a fishing line, long-distance service for millions of Sprint PCS and Nextel wireless customers west of the Rockies blinked off. Transcontinental internet traffic routed over Sprint slowed to a crawl, and some corporations that relied on the carrier to link office networks found themselves electronically isolated.

In the end, a hole dug out of a dirt road outside a town called Buckeye triggered a three-and-a-half hour outage with national impact. It wasn't even a very deep hole. "We ran into their line right away," says Johansson.

Peat wetlands in northwest Europe are well-known for their bog bodies. The wetlands provide cold, acidic, oxygen-free conditions, which prevent decay and mummify human flesh.

The two new Irish bog men were named after the places where they were found: Croghan Hill and Clonycavan.

Oldcroghan man was preserved so perfectly that his discovery sparked a police murder investigation before archaeologists were called in.

Radiocarbon dating showed that he lived between 362 B.C and 175 B.C., while Clonycavan man dates from 392 B.C. to 201 B.C.

In the first days of its release, the online store is unusually rough around the edges. So far, it doesn't have much premium content, the quality is hit or miss and the interface could be better.

That said, there are some promising elements, including an architecture that has the potential to allow anyone with a video camera to post a creation and choose whether to make it available for free, a one-time charge or a one-day rental fee. Rates are determined by the content owner, not Google.

Though only a select few can do this right now, the implications could be huge once more people have access to the feature, which Google expects to be available in a few weeks.

Think of a vast online bazaar for video where an aspiring videographer or filmmaker could easily get a feel for what the market thinks of his or her talent. Google charges nothing for storage or bandwidth, though it takes 30 percent of any sales.

Hi,

President Bush admitted to personally authorizing thousands of allegedly illegal wiretaps, and he doesn't plan to stop. Circumventing the Constitution is serious business.

This is a big moment. People from across the political spectrum are standing together to protect the rule of law and the principles that are core to our identity as Americans.

Can you sign this petition to show Congress that Americans want a thorough investigation of the president's secret wiretapping program?

http://political.moveon.org/ruleoflaw/

Thanks!

The owner of the Gucci handbag plunked it down at the Fairway cash register, next to three expensive cheeses, a large filet mignon, two packages of Cocoa Puffs Milk 'n Cereal Bars and an eight-pack of apple juice boxes, and impatiently awaited her tally.

The same parents who micromanage every other aspect of their children's lives - puzzle tutoring for 4-year-olds, clarinet lessons, baby yoga - seem to stop the mini-me'ing at the lunch box. The evidence surrounds us. Syrupy shots of glucose masquerading as yogurt. Premade peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches. (I long to have been in that marketing meeting: "Working parents have no time to hoist a butter knife!") An abomination called string cheese.

"Enzo and I are very much interested in pushing boundaries, both as artists and for our audiences. Working together for the opening ceremonies of the Winter Games delivers the creative endeavor to not only entertain a huge audience, but to also introduce them to sights and sounds that they may have never experienced before," says Hawtin from his studio in Berlin.

China isn't any kind of threat. We can make it a threat. If you increase the military threats against China, then they will respond. And they're already doing it. They'll respond by building up their military forces, their offensive military capacity, and that's a threat. So, yeah, we can force them to become a threat.

[B]lockbuster, which then accounted for nearly half of the studios' rental income from new movies, would have had the opportunity to rent out DVD releases before they went on sale to the general public. In return, the studios would receive 40 percent of the rental revenues that Blockbuster earned from DVDs, which was exactly the same percentage they received for VHS rentals...

[B]lockbuster, perhaps not realizing the speed with which the digital revolution would spread, turned him down...

Nevertheless, Lieberfarb, determined to make the DVD a success, went to Plan B: pricing the DVD low enough so that it could be sold to the public in direct competition with video rentals...

Wal-Mart replaced Blockbuster as the studios' single largest source of revenue. Other mass retailers followed suit, often pricing newly released movies on DVD below their own wholesale price to draw in customers who might buy products with higher profit margins, such as plasma TVs. Blockbuster, with no other products to sell, became a casualty of this cutthroat competition for traffic. Not able to match these low prices, its rental business was decimated.

Take one drink if:

... Stare decisis is mentioned

... The word subpoena is mentioned

... A Republican refers to Alito as "consistent" and his opponents as "desperate"

... The audience breaks into fake Washingtonian laughter.

Take two drinks if:

... Someone says "White Boys Club."

... A heated argument breaks out between Senators/ A Senator loses his or her temper

... Brown v. Board of Education is brought up.

... Senator Specter, adrift on a sea of chaos, pedantically reminds everyone, "I am the Chairman of this Committee"

TSG became interested in Frey when they attempted to locate his mug shot after his Oprah appearance, had difficulty locating it, and started to dig a little deeper. Along the way, they uncovered several instances in Frey's book that appear fictionalized or significantly embellished. When contacted for the story by TSG, Frey hired a lawyer and published some of his confidential correspondance with TSG on his blog, at the same time commenting:

So let the haters hate, let the doubters doubt, I stand by my book, and my life, and I won’t dignify this bullshit with any sort of further response.

TSG alleges that he also admitted in those conversations that parts of his book were untrue.

The 38 million subscribers to MySpace, which News Corp bought for $629m (£355m) last July, discovered that when they wrote to each other about rival video-swapping site YouTube, the words were automatically deleted, and attempts to download video images from YouTube led to blank screens.

The explanation did not, however, calm the bloggers. "There was an outcry by some members after MySpace's acquisition by News Corp. People were afraid they might start monitoring or censoring MySpace," Ellis Yu wrote to the Blog Herald. "At the time, their CEO said nothing like that would happen. Well, now it has. MySpace was built on an open community and now they're trying to censor us, putting business interests above its members!"

Morgan learned the hard way, when he was fired today from Bauer’s Life & Style Weekly, where he had been the news editor.

Spad writes "It's not a typo, The Inquirer (amongst others) is reporting that an Iowa-based ISP has been awarded $11.2 billion in a case against spammer James McCalla, who was found guilty of sending over 280 million illegal spam emails. Under state law, the ISP was entitled to $10 per illegal e-mail sent."

[A]ccording to IRS publication 525, that the spammer will owe taxes on the forgiven debt.

Let's see... $11.2 billion, at the highest tax bracket of 35%, that's $3.92 billion he'll owe the IRS.

IRS publication 525:

Canceled Debts Generally, if a debt you owe is canceled or forgiven, other than as a gift or bequest, you must include the canceled amount in your income. You have no income from the canceled debt if it is intended as a gift to you. A debt includes any indebtedness for which you are liable or which attaches to property you hold.

If the debt is a nonbusiness debt, report the canceled amount on Form 1040, line 21. If it is a business debt, report the amount on Schedule C or Schedule C-EZ (Form 1040) (or on Schedule F (Form 1040), Profit or Loss From Farming, if the debt is farm debt and you are a farmer).

The political ramifications of the Abramoff probe were apparent, with minority Democrats intending to make ethics a campaign issue in this election year. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said Abramoff's confession in court was "not a surprise because this Republican Congress is the most corrupt in history and the American people are paying the price."

The mine, with more than 270 safety citations in the last two years, is the latest example of how workers' risks are balanced against company profits in an industry with pervasive political clout and patronage inroads in government regulatory agencies. Many of the Sago citations were serious enough to potentially set off accidental explosions and shaft collapses, and more than a dozen involved violations that mine operators knew about but failed to correct, according to government records.

"[MySpace CEO] DeWolfe learned while at Xdrive that people will sign up for almost anything that they find useful, and they could care less about the fine print." [...]

Given Dewolfe's experiences at Xdrive a valuable lesson had been learned: there is no money in giving millions of people costly web hosting space for free, but there is in owning demographic info ranging from just someone's e-mail address to personal information for targeting advertising at them.

I have nothing against the people who run MySpace personally, I just find it odd that they are so secretive. I mean pretty much all major websites and companies have a common knowledge story about who and how the company came to be. Amazon, eBay, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Yahoo, etc. We’ve all heard stories about how these companies started. We’ve all seen these companies grow very obviously in front of our eyes with their CEO’s and founders in plain view. Yet MySpace pops up over night and not a word is mentioned about who and what they’re doing. Even if they were the most humble people on the planet, you would still think we would publicly know some kind of mission statement or something.

Written on Uma Thurman's Ulla dress is "William Ivey Long is the most overrated costume designer in Broadway history."