Almost 2 years after RedHat bought JBoss, Oracle has snapped up BEA for a hefty $8.5 Billion.

If you were not aware of it, there was a Drupal Association election today, and the results are out.

To simplify things, and provide some background, the Drupal Association is the non-profit body that is equivalent to a Foundation in other open source projects. It is composed of so called "Permanent Members (PM)", who as a whole are known as the General Assembly (GA). The GA elects Board Members (BM) among them to form the Board of Directors of Drupal.

Like many US presidents before him, George W. Bush is taking the exact same path.

During most of his first and second term, they are pro-Israel and pretty hawkish when it comes to the Middle East. For example, Donald Rumsfeld, defence secretary, attempted to redefine "occupied territories" in 2002, by calling them "so-called occupied territories", contrary to UN resolutions and internationa law.

NCR has acquired Touch Automation LLC, a Milwaukee, Wis. company that builds digital media rentals and sales kiosks.

"Our launch of this unparalleled digital media solution underscores our strategy of expanding in to adjacent markets to drive future growth," said Bill Nuti, president and chief executive officer of NCR.

Two Drupal sites from Australia:

by the same publishing company, Luna Media

• G Magazine is a Green lifestyle print magazine and a web site to go with it.
• Cosmos Magazine Is a magazine about science, and a web site to go with it. 

They are both published by the same company, Luna Media.

Over the years, I have written on various internet scams, including advance fee fraud, classified ads forged cheques, winning the lottery, and more. It is sad to see a lot of people fall victims to them, either out of ignorance, desperation and/or greed.

Just like the real world, virtual worlds are now the targets of scammers. Players of both EVE Online and SecondLife have suffered from scammers. This includes several investment scams on EVE Online, and a more recent SecondLife pyramid scheme.

A tough street racing law was passed last string. Anyone speeding over 50 km/hr more than the posted limit can be charged.

An 85 year old Ontario man was clocked at 161 km/hr, setting the record for the oldest person to be charged under the street racing laws. What is strange is that 20 other people 65 and older were charged too, including 2 75 year olds.

And this is happening as the coldest weather so far this winter is setting upon us. 

True to weather specialists forecasts, winter of 2007-2008 is more snowy than the last 15 years. We already had two big snow storms here in Southern Ontario, the last just today (January 1, 2008). Atlantic Canada had more storms than here.

The Waterloo Region is the 4th happiest area to live in Canada wide, and ranks #1 in Ontario.

That is according to research at the University of British Columbia by economics professor John Helliwell, who analysed 100,000 surveys by Statistics Canada.

He found that Kitchener scored 8.2 out of 10, compared to 7.8 by Toronto, Hamilton and Ottawa.

Neighborliness is what made a difference: trusting a neighbor is more likely in rural areas than in the big city. The size of Kitchener and Waterloo makes this more likely than in the big metropolitan areas.

According to the Congressional Quarterly Jeff Stein, the FBI hoped to track down Iranian terrorists by following, out of all things, Falafel sales in groceries.

The photo on this story at Wired blogs, shows Iranian dishes.

What is sad is that falafel is not part of the Iranian cuisine, being mainly a staple of the Eastern Mediterranean.