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A ChannelNewsAsia story is discussing a 'dinosaur' sighting in webcam pictures of a remote New Zealand volcano. The latest live webcam picture shows the offending creature, with Geonet spokesperson John Callan saying: "Some wag has glued a [toy] pink dinosaur in front of our digital camera", even though "...most people do not go ashore on the uninhabited, rumbling" White Island, east of Auckland, where the webcam is located. Apparently, the dinosaur will stay for now, since authorities "are not planning on removing it, counting on the sulphur and high acid environment to deal to the creature." The pink dinosaur is a blowup doll of Dino from the flintstones.

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New City Upcoming City of Heroes Patch Additions:

New City Zones
* The Rikti Crash Site
* Peregrine Island, home of Portal Corp

The Sewer Trial Room
* Battle the massive beast that dwells in the depths of the city

Instanced outdoor missions
* Fight rooftop to rooftop in the neighborhoods of Paragon City

Enhanced indoor missions
* Missions with a twist� don�t let your guard down.

Tweak your hero�s costume
* Refresh your look to keep yourself in the public eye

New Villain groups
* The ultra high-tech Malta Group
* The wicked Carnival of Shadows
* The super-powered Praetorians

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A little investigative journalism can go a long way, and Moses Avalon has turned up something rather curious: the numbers that the RIAA uses to talk about "sales" are actually just numbers relating to shipments. The gist of it is pretty simple: the RIAA has their own tracking system based on units shipped, while Nielsen Ratings bases their Soundscan tracking system on actual barcode-scanned purchases. The problem is that Soundscan shows a 10% increase in music sales when comparing the first quarter of 2004 to 1Q 2003. Yet, the RIAA insists that music sales are down. Avalon suggests that sales aren't down, only shipments are. How can that be possible? Simple: in the past, the RIAA always shipped considerably more units than were sold. Why the change? Retails stores simply want less inventory, so they order less, even though they are selling more.

Roger Goff, an Entertainment lawyer in Los Angeles confirms that, indeed, retail has reacted this way in the Post-Napster era. "Retail used to buy 10 weeks-worth [of records] and now they realize, in most cases, they don't have to carry more than two weeks-worth." In other words, retail has adapted to more of an "on demand" model (similar to the Internet) as opposed to the, accepting-tons-of-product-shoved-down-the-pipeline model record companies imposed on them in the past.

In other words, the supposedly woeful state of CD sales isn't all that woeful after all. Retail outlets have been working hard to keep up with online competition, and part of that has meant following the rule of Dell: don't have inventory if you can avoid it.

The problem is, if this report is correct, then something seriously wrong is afoot. If more units are being sold and fewer units are being shipped, then that means the total cost-per-CD is actually in the RIAA's favor. That is, with all things being equal, more sales and fewer shipments ads up to more profit than before, because there's less overrun and less returns from retailers who can't move product. Thanks to Jack for sending this in.

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no worries mate, i'm having a blast with a bunch of old school games... and some newer ones... i look forward to catching you online one night for some online gaming. had fun starcrafting the other night. in the mean time however, my isp changed my ip, will that affect how i peruse your ftp? also do isps randomly change your ip? or did they pick me for d/l lots a stuff?

anywho w/ respect to the ftp i'll email you my updated ip, AND don't forget to add it to your teamspeak client....my p/w for my teamspeak server is mooyow so if ryans! server is down, or u just wanna see if me or some of my buds are yakking it up while playing MOHAA hop on in and shoot the breese.

later bud