Yog @144

The 48 hour ultimatum was delivered at 0401 Baghdad time on March 18th 2003. The US began bombing Iraq at 0530 Baghdad time on March 19th, with an attack on a site where Saddam was thought to be staying, 25.5 hours later.

If you give someone a 48 hour deadline to step down it's usually considered good form to allow them the entire 48 hours.

Well, I mean, you can't go and attack somebody exactly when they're expecting it, can you? Everyone knows that surprise is important, don't they?

How to get your way with BT:

1. Raise a complaint.
2. Tell them you won't pay your bill until the complaint is resolved (this may result in your line being disconnected if you actually don't pay the bill, but they can usually reconnect it pretty quickly once they realise they've screwed up, and it just gives you more ammunition for your complaint).
3. When they fail to resolve your complaint, ask for the number for Complaints Review.
4. Call Complaints Review. These are the people in BT who actually know how to get things done.

"a strong positive relationship between P2P file sharing and CD purchasing. That is, among Canadians actually engaged in it, P2P file sharing increases CD purchases."

Interesting analysis. I wonder whether the authors of the study, however, considered that they might have the relationship between the two factors the wrong way around, i.e. those who make more CD purchases are more likely to be involved in P2P file sharing? This would explain the "no net effect" of the second paragraph.

Nearly forgot. Also worth examining is Curious Cook, the blog of Harold McGee, who wrote the NYT article.

Sounds perfectly plausible to do in your own kitchen. I'd suggest just experimenting. I haven't done this yet, but I'm sure going to try it. The method would be something like:

* Put whatever you want the flavour of into hot (but probably not boiling in most cases) water, and keep it warm for a few hours. Experimentation required to find the ideal temperature, but shouldn't be too hard. If what you want to purify is naturally juicy, squeeze out the juice instead.
* Add a small amount of gelatin. I've seen 0.5% by volume recommended, but some experimentation may be necessary again.
* Freeze.
* Defrost over a filter and collect the liquid that runs out.

The article mentions that the technique was used by Heston Blumenthal (owner of the Fat Duck in the UK) as early as 2005. Blumenthal published a book on his cooking techniques in 2006, so this may or may not be included in it (I don't have a copy yet). See amazon page here.

This message board thread might also be helpful.

Rob Knob @43:

[The DMCA takedown notice] was a system tremendously easy to abuse.

Experience shows that it is abused.

Interestingly, this is presumably why criminal penalties (i.e. that of perjury) were incorporated for the worst foreseen abuses of it. Yet, by not actually issuing a valid notice, but merely convincing the recipient that they have, SFWA seems to have sidestepped this potential penalty.