"People who download music illegally also spend an average of £77 a year buying it legitimately, a survey has found.

Those who claimed not to use peer-to-peer filesharing sites such as The Pirate Bay spent a yearly average of just £44.

Almost one in 10 of those questioned aged between 16 and 50 said they downloaded music illegally.

However, eight out of 10 of that group also bought CDs, vinyl and as MP3s."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8337887.stm

"A group of academics on Friday considered the ultimate engineering challenge: building machines to stabilize the earth's climate.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology convened a symposium here to discuss the potential benefits and pitfalls of geoengineering, also called climate engineering. Everything from shooting light-blocking particles into the atmosphere to "artificial trees" is being seriously studied, despite trepidation among researchers and opposition from others."

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10387137-54.html

Former FBI contract-translator-turned whistleblower Sibel Edmonds and former FBI counter-intelligence officer John M. Cole discuss State Department cooperation with the “mujahedeen” in the Central Asian Turkic countries through the Turkish military and intelligence in the time before 9/11, a State Department order to release suspicious Uzbeks and Turks after the attack, the neocons’ and realists’ joint-attempt to negotiate the invasion of Iraq from Turkey in the summer of 2001, Edmonds’s overall credibility and level of access to information in her role as “language specialist” for the FBI, espionage within the FBI and why it continues unabated, Cole’s “conservative estimate” of 125 worthwhile investigations into Israeli espionage in the U.S. which quashed by political pressure from above, Edmonds’s accusations that Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and Marc Grossman have been participating in the stealing and fencing of nuclear secrets to Turkish and Israeli agents for years...

http://antiwar.com/radio/2009/10/26/sibel-edmonds-and-john-m-cole/

>>	Junior Field Reporter 09/11/02(Mon)02:11 No.2613   File: 1257156703853.jpg -(70739 B, 500x376) Thumbnail displayed, click image for full size. The transcript is here: http://original.antiwar.com/scott/2009/11/01/fbi-whistleblower-names-names/print/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1224377/British-nuclear-experts-17th-floor-UN-death-plunge-suicide.html

A British nuclear expert who fell from the 17th floor of a United Nations building did not commit suicide and may have been hurled to his death, says a doctor who carried out a second post-mortem examination.

Timothy Hampton, 47, a scientist involved in monitoring nuclear activity, was found dead last week at the bottom of a stairwell in Vienna.

An initial autopsy concluded that there were ‘no suspicious circumstances’. But it is understood that Mr Hampton’s widow Olena Gryshcuk and her family were deeply unhappy with that verdict.

Now a doctor who undertook a second post-mortem examination on behalf of the family believes she has found evidence that Mr Hampton did not die by his own hands.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/30/confidential_congress_report_leaked/

A confidential memo from one of the most secretive panels in Congress was leaked on a peer-to-peer file-sharing network, publicly detailing sensitive probes involving more than 30 lawmakers and aides.

In July, the same month the confidential memo was prepared, a separate House committee held hearings on whether federal laws were needed to protect federal employees from accidental file sharing. Legislators have grown so worried about inadvertent leaking of documents over P2P networks they've considered draconian bills that could render entire web browsers and operating systems illegal.

"U.S. authorities seized nine failed banks on Friday, the most in a single day since the financial crisis began and the latest stark sign that substantial parts of the nation's banking industry are being crippled by bad loans.

The move brought the total number of failed banks in 2009 to 115 -- their highest annual level since 1992 -- with analysts expecting more to come. Among the lenders seized Friday was Los Angeles-based California National Bank, in what was the fourth-largest U.S. bank failure this year."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091031/bs_nm/us_usbancorp

"A Wisconsin man with his fourth drunken driving charge pending added a new charge after failing a breathalyzer test-but he's hoping to get off after explaining that results were not from drinking, but from eating a steak with Jack Daniels sauce."

http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7016852220?Wisconsin%20Man%20Blames%20Failed%20Breathalyzer%20Test%20On%20Steak%20Sauce

"Won Kim, the VP of OLED sales and marketing over at LG laid out the company roadmap for the next few years, and it all seems pretty feasible.

They plan to release twenty inch OLED televisions in 2010, thirty inch televisions the following year, and finally scale up to forty inch models in 2012. Oh, and Kim says that OLED panels will be cheaper than LCD in only six years. According to Kim, the forty inch and larger OLED panels coming to market in 2012 will still be fairly expensive, but manufacturing costs will decrease until 2016 when “OLED panels will cost less than LCD panels.”"

http://www.avrev.com/home-theater-news/industry-trade-news/lg-s-details-oled-roadmap-oled-cheaper-than-lcd-in-2016.html

"The UK's former chief drugs adviser has accused Gordon Brown of reclassifying cannabis for political reasons.

Prof David Nutt also predicted there would be further resignations from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs after he was made to quit as its head.

The professor said Mr Brown had "made up his mind" to make cannabis a Class B drug, despite evidence to the contrary.

The home secretary said he had "lost confidence" in Prof Nutt, accusing him of "lobbying for a change in policy".

Earlier this week, Prof Nutt used a lecture at King's College, London, to say that smoking cannabis created only a "relatively small risk" of psychotic illness and it was actually less harmful than nicotine or alcohol.

But on Friday he was forced to quit after receiving a letter from Home Secretary Alan Johnson who said his comments had undermined the scientific independence of the council."

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Junior Field Reporter 09/10/31(Sat)15:27 No.2602   File: 1257028042270.jpg -(152352 B, 450x563) Thumbnail displayed, click image for full size. It is NEVER overrated for a politician wanting to pimp his "tough on X" stance. Isn't this reclassification the work of "The Mistress" Wacky Jacqui (now resigned)?

"A coating developed at the University of Pittsburgh repels freezing rain and could be applied easily to roads, planes and power lines, researchers said.

The nano particle coating developed in the Swanson School of Engineering belongs to a class of water repellants known as superhydrophobic coatings, doctoral student Liangliang Cao said in a release Thursday.

The coating was inspired by water-resistant Lotus leaves, which have microscopic ridges that reduce the surface area to which water can adhere, Cao said."

http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2009/10/30/Nano-particle-coating-repels-ice/UPI-14331256930905/