"This virus tricks the user with an old psychological tactic called reverse psychology. Apparently the curiosity created by the message has been too much for thousands of users," said anti-virus researcher Bob Atibop. According to Atibop, this isn't the first time reverse psychology has been used. In 1998, the "Don't Pee on Your Keyboard" worm caused a flood of damage.

Posted by at January 31, 2002 10:32 PM

Some 150,000 Irish children passed through the institutions, a mix of work camps and boarding schools, from the early 20th century through the 1990's, and 20,000 are alive today. More than 3,500 adults have applied for hearings at a court-run inquiry that was set up two years ago to investigate claims of abuse, and also simply to provide a sympathetic forum for people to tell their stories.

Posted by at January 31, 2002 08:04 PM

Keep this in mind: In December I was invited to testify at the first Senate Commerce Committee hearing regarding the Enron collapse. I attribute this honor not to the fact that I have any particular insight, but that people in the highest reaches of our government value what the entire Motley Fool community has to say, and are interested in the things that individual investors in American businesses are thinking.

Posted by at January 31, 2002 07:19 PM

Mr Downer's spokesman said the address would have been inappropriate because it could have been interpreted by China as official recognition for the Dalai Lama as head of Tibet's government in exile.

Posted by at January 31, 2002 07:15 PM

``In fact,'' she said, ``we found that he became quite reluctant to move his arm to the reach command once the cursor was introduced into the game. Apparently it was easier just to think about reaching.''

Posted by at January 31, 2002 06:42 PM

Britain called for the suspension because of President Robert Mugabe's crackdown on political opposition and the media. But the Commonwealth's secretary-general, Don McKinnon, says cutting Zimbabwe off would leave the international community with less influence over President Mugabe.

Posted by at January 31, 2002 01:57 PM

Saying he was in Mexico on business, Eggleton claimed he mistakenly waited to share the information with the prime minister upon his return to Canada.

Posted by at January 31, 2002 01:56 PM

According to the Chronicle, the White House, which acknowledged that aspects of the Lay memo resembled parts of the energy plan formulated by a Cheney-led task force, would not say whether the three-page memo was included in the notes Cheney refuses to make public.

Posted by at January 31, 2002 01:54 PM

The latest e-mail reiterated that "if America will not meet our demands we will kill Daniel" and "this cycle will continue and no American journalist could enter Pakistan."

Posted by at January 31, 2002 01:09 PM

My birthday is on Monday, and I really could use one of these.

Posted by at January 31, 2002 12:10 PM

Vivendi picked Moncton to make its way into private water management in Canada -- unsurprising as Vivendi is based in France, and Moncton is one of the larger French-English cities in bilingual New Brunswick. I was asked for a quick word on how to research Vivendi and what I thought.

The quickest way to find corporate dirt on the net is to search "companyname sucks" -- as in "Vivendi sucks". Not all protest sites identify themselves with "sucks", but an awful lot do. There was a vivendiuniversalsucks.com web site but it was taken away from its creator and given to Vivendi in a controversial decision by WIPO (the body governing, among other things, who has the right to use a given domain name). This is unfortunate, since "sucks" sites tend to attract a wide range of negative comment on a corporation. It's quite normal for that corporation to try to shut down a "sucks" -- the odd thing here is that WIPO, with its usual flair for random judgements, granted it.

So we're stuck with more conventional sources (Financial Times, Forbes, Fortune, The Economist). The Economist has some excellent articles on Vivendi but unfortunately, they're now in the archives, and cost about $3 USD to retrieve. That's not an unreasonable charge, but it's unsuitable for a fishing expedition.

Besides, this is one of those scenes where it doesn't matter if Vivendi is charming and talented most of the time -- because "most of the time" is not an acceptable answer to "is my water safe to drink?" So while this article from Business Mexico about their positive privatization experience is interesting, what we really need to see is the downside -- the problems in Africa and South America:

There have been striking examples of private sector failures. When Cochabama, Bolivia, turned over its water system to a private consortium led by engineering giant Bechtel, water prices increased so dramatically that riots broke out. A 17-year-old boy was killed, and thousands were injured in clashes with police. Water services were returned to public control.
After water was privatized in Puerto Rico in 1995, poor communities complained that they had no water while water giant Vivendi supplied tourist resorts and U.S. military bases with as much water as they could consume.
In Argentina, when the French company Generale de Eaux got a contract for water delivery, prices doubled and quality deteriorated. The company was forced to pull out when people refused to pay their bills.

waterindustry.org does have some good information. I would expect Environment News to have good information as well but it has surprisingly little. Global water privatization is an issue that does not seem to be getting its due airtime in North America, however.

My take on all this:

The question is not, "should water management be privatized" -- the question is "how can the public enforce fair management on whomever is in charge of the water?" Walkerton -- the little town in Ontario where seven people died of e.coli poisoning amid government cutbacks and mind bogglingly lax water care -- has shown that government can't be trusted to keep water safe.

It doesn't matter if the water is managed by a government chimpanzee or a corporate baboon as long as the result is clean, safe water with equitable distribution and fair prices.

A contract with Vivendi must must restrict how Vivendi is permitted to raise the price, include regular public evaluations of infrastructure and water quality, establish a substantial emergency/good-conduct fund which a public water management body can draw on for repairs should Vivendi be found in breach of standards, and most of all, the contract should be terminable at the city's discretion with very little notice.

If Vivendi finds those terms inconvenient, tough. It's a competitive world and somebody else will be happy to make the money and provide you with some security. I would not accept corporate water control with anything less than the above restrictions, as corporations have no natural incentive to behave well -- they can only be provided with financial ones.

Corporations like to make money. They will make it any way they can. The only way to control them is to make it economically unfeasible for them to do anything but behave themselves, and make behaving themselves have enough payoff to be worth doing. That there is money in water management has already been established. Vivendi wants money -- so the best way to control Vivendi is to make it easy to take money away from it. Other cities have failed by not making it easy enough to take money away from Vivendi when it misbehaved -- so make the good conduct fund a big fat one, Moncton.

Posted by at January 31, 2002 10:15 AM

The Moscow software firm faces $2.25 million in fines if convicted of breaking the law, enacted in 2000 to bar the creation or distribution of technology that can be used to circumvent copyright protections.

Posted by at January 31, 2002 08:31 AM

Posted by at January 31, 2002 05:15 AM