Caught My Attention

Firm wants to rid Net of suffixes

"AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A Dutch technology company has breathed life into a project to rid the Internet of suffixes such as .com, and instead offer single names which can be countries, company names or fantasy words.

Such a system, which enables countries, individuals and firms to have a Web address which consists of a single name, offers flexibility and is language and character independent.

"The plan is to offer names in any character set," said Erik Seeboldt, managing director of Amsterdam-based UnifiedRoot.

UnifiedRoot offers practically unlimited numbers of suffixes, unlike the short list of suffixes currently in use. Its offer is different from other "alternative root" providers such as New.net which offers to register names in front of a small range of new suffixes, such as .club and .law.

"We've already had thousands of registrations in a single day," said Seeboldt after the official opening of his 100-strong company which has installed 13 Internet domain name system (DNS) root servers on four continents."

Iraq says pullout will lead to violence

"TOKYO (Reuters) - Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari urged Japan on Friday to keep its troops in southern Iraq, saying an early pullout of coalition forces would lead to more violence by insurgents.

Zebari said his war-torn country had made progress on improving security, but added it faced a crucial period ahead of the December 15 parliamentary election.

"The difficult part has gone in my view. We're very close to reaching a more stable form of government and of security," Zebari told a news conference following a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.

"Now, any premature withdrawal will send the wrong message to the terrorists, to the opposition ... that this coalition is fracturing and running, that their policies and strategies of undermining this process is winning."

He said he could not give a time frame for when the coalition forces would be able to leave Iraq, but added that it would be at least months after the new Iraqi government was formed.

U.S. defense officials said this week that the Pentagon planned to reduce the number of U.S. troops in Iraq, currently 155,000, to about 138,000 after next month's election. This could be reduced further to about 100,000 next summer if conditions allowed."

A threesome is not every man's dream!

A recent survey has poured cold water on what everyone believed till now was every man's dreams, by finding that though one in ten men would agree to have a gay threesome, if they were paid a 100,000 pounds for it, a whopping 83 percent of them would turn down an offer of sex with their wives and a sexy girl friend, even if the opportunity ever presented itself.

According to The Sun, the poll, conducted by women's magazine, Morealso, also found that 75 percent of men also claimed that they would remain faithful to their male friends and never sleep with their wives/girlfriends, even if there was a 100 percent guarantee of never getting caught.

And although women seem to think that men always beat around the bush when it comes to calling a relationship off, the poll shows that only 14 percent of men actually said that elaborate lying is the best way to call it quits. And, only 2 percent thought that using text messages to dump their girlfriends was a good idea.

However, when it comes to their family jewels, the survey showed that all men would rather lose their arm, than lose their penis.(ANI)

Confessions of a photocopier repairman

"Photocopier supplier Canon is warning customers to take better care of their office equipment during the Christmas period, claiming that the festive season traditionally leads to a 25 percent hike in service calls due to incidents such as the classic backside copying prank.

Such a stunt, a mainstay of the office party, often results in cracked glass on the copier, with 32 percent of Canon technicians claiming to have been called out to fix glass plates during the Christmas period after attempts to copy body parts went wrong.

Tim Andrews, a Canon employee from London, said: "We always fit lots of new glass to copiers after New Year due to 'rear-end copying.'"

In fact, Canon claims a shocking 46 percent of service calls are in response to non-work-related breakages.

Geoff Bush from the north of England said one case he'd attended, where a young lady had cracked the glass mid-scan, also jammed the scanner so that it wasn't until the machine was fixed and her colleagues all sober that copies of her backside starting pouring from the machine.

Partly in response to this trend--or perhaps because of the "supersizing" of the western physique--Canon has now increased the thickness of its glass by an extra millimeter.

However, one of the most alarming tales comes to us from service engineer Steven Mannion of northern England. "I had to repair a machine with a photocopy of a man's groin jammed in it," Mannion said. "