Here is an example of a 419/Advance Fee Fraud scam email that uses an Islamic tone exclusively.

For some time now, I meant to write on how an empire brainwashes itscitizens with semi-convincing rhetoric, praising what evil is beingdone and portraying it as the ultimate good. Mass media, jingoism, herdmentality and conformance all converge to convince the masses.Two essays I came across recently highlight a difference between the good oldpropaganda in the Eastern Bloc, which is mostly not convincing, and themasses know it is not true, learn to ignore it, and just go on withtheir lives. In a free Western style democracy, this cannot happen.Hence the propaganda has to be convincing.

Carly Fiorina, the architect of the merger of computer technology giants, Hewlett Packard and Compaq, has been forced to leave the company she helped shape, citing differences with the board of directors.The engineering community were not sympathetic to her departure, blaming her for wrecking two companies. One has to remember that Compaq swallowed Digital less than a decade ago, killing off the excellent DEC Alpha chip, and entire lines of computing as well. Compaq also swallowed Tandem and their NonStop line.

Many words in modern Arabic dialects are originally Turkish. This articles discusses why this is the case, as well as gives lots of examples for such loan words and phrases.

As I mentioned in a pervious post in this section, for almost four years now, I have been using a FujiFilm FinePix 2400Z camera, which is a basic point and shoot consumer oriented camera with 3X optical zoom, and 2 megapixel resolution.

This camera allowed me to take some good pictures over the years. However, it was time for an upgrade, now that the technology is more mature, and for the same price point, one can get more features. Specifically, I wanted a more powerful zoom that can give better framing and get closer to subjects, specially wildlife. I also wanted more manual control of various features.

Those who have been on the internet for some time, must know the Nigerian scam. This is the one where you get an email from someone who claims he is the relative of some deceased African president/dictator/official who amassed millions of dollars and agree to give you This is known as the Advance Fee Fraud, or the 419 scam. There are many variations in this fraud, but all center on some West African country, such as Nigeria, but also include Ghana, Togo, Congo and others. Some use South Africa as well.

People send me a lot of feedback on the EGC pages.Here are some selected messages.

I'm an ex-EGC graduated in the year 1989,after 4 years in Faculty of Commerce i worked as an English teacher in EGC in junior one.Ofcourse EGC now is completely different [becoming worse], i worked there for 5 years[from 94to 99]I'm realy proud of being educated there but now i can't choose it for my daughters,i realy feel sorry for my school because as you know they used to teach us loyalty before anything. At the end i just want to thank you ,you are realy doing a great job.

A question that often arises as an objection to Open Source software is: How can I make money from software if I am giving it away for free?Let us start by a few news items first.Techworld reports that the German National Railway has successfully migrated 55,000 users to Linux. The roll out was overseen by IBM.Reuters reports that in Extremadura, Spain, 14,000 medical professionals will be given access to a system that is based on Open Source software. This is also an IBM contract for 33$ million.

In this post September 11 world we live in, terrorism is such an ill-defined, emotionally charged issue, that rarely gets discussed rationally anymore.In the early weeks after Septermber 11, the question of "Why they hate us" was systematically raised by U.S. media. As the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, this discourse all but died out, and has not been revisited since. At least not in the USA.There is a glimpse of hope elsewhere though. The International Summit of Democracy, Terrorism and Security is underway in Spain.

Regarding the Indian Ocean Tsunami of December 2004, one has to notice that the level of detail that the rest of the world had of this crisis is amazing compared to other natural disasters.One reason in my opinion is that many "normal" people own gadgets such as digital cameras and video camcorders. The people on the scene were able to take photos and footage of the disaster as it was happening.