Eideard

Do they have a coaches corner?

Supporters of a German football club are the latest to be invited to extend their loyalty further with the opening of a cemetery reserved just for them. Hamburg HSV has opened a specially designated cemetery within earshot of its Nordbank arena where fans can be buried in club colours on a football stand-shaped lawn reached via a goal-shaped entrance.

The idea for the cemetery, which can take up to 500 graves, came after repeated requests from fans wanting to have their ashes strewn on the pitch of the Bundesliga club, or like Everton fans, buried beneath the penalty spot.

But as the scattering of ashes is illegal in Germany, the concept of offering burial plots close to HSV’s stadium was born.

The club has given licences to several undertakers who could carry out “HSV-recognised” burials, including the singing of the club’s anthem, Hamburg My Pearl, and stonemasons who would chisel gravestones to suit the fans’ wishes.

I’ve a mate or two who are Celtic fans who would love to go out in this style.

eBay has scored an important victory in court as a federal judge said companies such as jeweler Tiffany & Co. are responsible for policing their trademarks online, not auction platforms like eBay.

Tiffany had sued eBay over the sale of counterfeit jewelry on eBay’s sites.

U.S. District Judge Richard J. Sullivan in New York said in a Monday ruling that eBay can’t be held liable for trademark infringement “based solely on their generalized knowledge that trademark infringement might be occurring on their Web sites…”

The Tiffany ruling was a welcome twist for eBay, which recently lost a different case stemming from counterfeit luxury goods. Last month, a French court ordered eBay to pay more than $61 million to LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA, which complained it was hurt by sale of knockoff bags, perfume and clothes. EBay is appealing that ruling.

Sooner or later, courts around the world will have to move to some globalization of their own.

With commerce flowing from national production standards through international distribution – protocols and responsibilities have to move towards conformity.

Game designers ain’t the best musicians in the world…

Nintendo plans to launch a music game for its hit Wii game console this year, taking it into the fast-growing software segment pioneered by “Guitar Hero.

“Wii Music” will let players simulate more than 60 different instruments. Activision’s “Guitar Hero” turned the music-playing genre into arguably the hottest category for video games.

“Guitar Hero” already plays on all three game consoles, including the Wii, helping to build the industry’s appeal among players beyond core fighting and race-style titles.

60 instruments!? You could be your own ELO…

There is no better way to get a blogger talking than by telling him what he cannot publish, although you might forgive a government prosecutor for thinking otherwise.

A grand jury subpoena sent by prosecutors in New York this year sought information to help identify people blogging anonymously on a Web site about New York politics called Room 8.

The subpoena carried a warning in capital letters that disclosing its very existence “could impede the investigation being conducted and thereby interfere with law enforcement” – implying that if the bloggers blabbed, they could be prosecuted…

This, of course, is a blogger’s nightmare: enforced silence and the prospect of jail time.

The district attorney eventually withdrew the subpoena and lifted the warning after the bloggers threatened to sue. But the fact that the tactic was used at all has raised alarm bells for some free speech advocates.

Tactic sound familiar?

Self important segments of the political/legal establishment are learning from the Patriot Act.

Verifying software in the brake control system of Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner is the latest problem holding back the new plane’s first test flight, the troubled program’s chief said.

The first of the 787s, originally meant to fly last summer, has been held back by three major production delays due to parts shortages and incomplete work from suppliers arriving at its assembly plant near Seattle.

The plane is still on track for a first flight in the fourth quarter — in line with the last schedule announced in April — but the newest “air bubble” in the timetable is in the brake systems, Pat Shanahan said at a briefing at Farnborough Airshow…

“It’s not that the brakes don’t work, it’s the traceability of the software,” Shanahan said, explaining that Crane Company, the provider, had to go back and rewrite certain parts of the brake control software to verify it for the certification process.

“I’m confident it will be done. It’s General Electric,” Shanahan said.

Uh – anyone else here ever work for General Electric? I won’t say if this does or doesn’t inspire me with confidence.

It began with a twitter from one of Capitol Hill’s best-known technophiles.

“I just learned the Dems are trying to censor Congressmen’s ability to use Twitter Qik YouTube Utterz etc — outrageous and I will fight them,” Representative John Culberson, Republican of Texas, wrote last Tuesday on his personal page on Twitter…

A few hours after he posted his first complaint, Mr. Culberson logged back on: “Before I could post a Tweet I would have to get approval of the twits that run the House!” And an hour later: “The Dems will do this unless the Internet community stops them.”

Mr. Culberson was responding to a proposal by Representative Michael E. Capuano, chairman of the franking committee, that would impose new guidelines on legislators who post videos on external Web sites like YouTube.
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Young Catholics attending World Youth Day celebrations in Sydney may find themselves swamped with offers of free condoms after a court overturned legislation giving police the power to arrest anyone who “annoys” pilgrims.

Activists opposed to the church’s stance on contraception and abortion successfully appealed against the laws, passed by the New South Wales government…

Three judges agreed, saying the measures designed to help police keep order during the six-day festivities “should not be interpreted as conferring powers that are repugnant to fundamental rights and freedoms”.

University students Rachel Evans and Amber Pike, who challenged the legislation, said they and other protesters would now hand out condoms, stickers and leaflets to pilgrims. “Symbolic coat-hangers”, designed to draw attention to the problem of backyard abortions, would also be distributed.

I’m pleased – phew! Not even surprised – that the Australian courts overturned this egregious butt-kissing piece of law.

Even though there have been significant changes drawing a measure of power away from political conservatives in recent elections in Oz – the idgit effect persists.

A U.S. watch list of terrorism suspects has passed 1 million records, corresponding to about 400,000 people, and a leading civil liberties group says the number is far too high to be effective.

The Bush administration disagreed and called the list one of the most effective tools implemented after the September 11 hijacked plane attacks — when a federal “no-fly” list contained just 16 people considered threats to aviation.

The American Civil Liberties Union publicized the 1 million milestone with a news conference and release…

“America’s new million-record watch list is a perfect symbol for what’s wrong with this administration’s approach to security: it’s unfair, out-of-control, a waste of resources (and) treats the rights of the innocent as an afterthought.”

The cowards who maintain the aura of terrorism as a political tool are consistent in their inability to either justify their smarmy database – or maintain it according to any reasonable standards. Of course.

The other half of the coin is the loyal opposition who haven’t the backbone, insight or confidence in a democratic society to offer up a thoroughgoing assault on the sedition police.

Jeff Carstensen was spooked when he learned his grandmother planned to buy him a $100,000 life insurance policy — and name herself the beneficiary.

“She told me that people of our stature have insurance policies on each other,” he said. “That way, if something happens to you, you take care of me, and if something happens to me, I take care of you. It was all too suspicious. So I got out of there any way I could, as soon as I could.”

As he and everyone else who came into Betty Neumar’s orbit have learned, he apparently had good reason.

The 76-year-old Georgia woman sits in a North Carolina jail, accused of hiring a hit man to kill fourth husband Harold Gentry.

Authorities are re-examining the deaths of her first child and four of the five men she married, including Gentry.

She collected at least $20,000 in 1986 when Harold Gentry was shot to death in his home. A year earlier, she had collected $10,000 in life insurance when her son died.

She also had a life insurance policy on husband No. 5, John Neumar, who died in October. The official cause of death was listed as sepsis, but authorities are investigating whether he was poisoned.

And the tale goes on and on – back into a life that defies statistics. How many close relatives can you have who meet violent ends? And no one notices?

Thanks, K B

Dozens of partygoers at an outdoor rave near Moscow last week have lost partial vision after a laser light show burned their retinas, say Russian health officials.

Moscow city health department officials confirmed 12 cases of laser-blindness at the Central Ophthalmological Clinic, and daily newspaper Kommersant said another 17 were registered at City Hospital 32 in the centre of the capital.

“They all have retinal burns, scarring is visible on them. Loss of vision in individual cases is as high as 80 percent, and regaining it is already impossible,” Kommersant quoted a treating ophthalmologist as saying.

Everyone involved in running the show is very busy blaming everyone else who was involved. Excepting, of course, those who’ve already skipped town.