Ask tries U.K. guerrilla marketing campaign

This News.com article reports on an attempt at an edgy, guerrilla marketing campaign by Ask.
It seems fairly lame to me, both in the approach (trying toooooo hard to be cool and edgy) and in the arguments it makes about "information freedom". Yes, we need to be careful about handing any company a monopoly.... but what makes Ask such a great alternative?
Their site seems laden with more obtrusive advertising per results-page (than google), and less relevant results (than google or yahoo)

Ask tries U.K. guerrilla marketing campaign | News.blog | CNET News.com
More here: http://valleywag.com/tech/advertising/a-botched-revolt-against-google-244111.php

Blue Peter fakes phoneline winner

Blue Peter fakes phoneline winner | The Register:
This has been covered everywhere, of course... but I had to laff at the wonderful subheading from the Register on this:

"Here's one we made up earlier"

Petition to stop the BBC crippling it's new digital services.

I don't sign many petitions, but I signed this one.

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to prevent the BBC from making its iPlayer on-demand television service available to Windows users only, and instruct the corporation to provide its service for other operating systems also.

Go here and sign up.

MS Vista

There was lots of press coverage of the new MS Vista OS recently.
Some of my friends and family ask me for advice about technology and I usually make it clear that I generally dislike MS and their products and think they do not provide good value for money.
Increasingly both of the main options (Windows or Mac) utilise restrictive technology (e.g. DRM) to stop your computer doing what you want and doing what it is told by the content companies (i.e. music and film).
I think that Linux (see: www.getgnulinux.org) is now ready for most "civilian" users these days - although if you have some specialist needs or devices you may well be tied to a MAC or Windows.

Here are a couple of links to mainstream (i.e. not the geeky ones) reviews:

Dim Vista - Forbes.com: "Windows Vista: more than five years in the making, more than 50 million lines of code. The result? A vista slightly more inspiring than the one over the town dump. The new slogan is: 'The 'Wow' Starts Now,' and Microsoft touts new features, many filched shamelessly from Apple's Macintosh. But as with every previous version, there's no wow here, not even in ironic quotes. Vista is at best mildly annoying and at worst makes you want to rush to Redmond, Wash. and rip somebody's liver out."

NYT's David Pogue on Windows Vista : The New York Times' Tech Editor with an amusing video review (Youtube) comparing the "new features" in Windows Vista with Apple OSX.

Schneier on Security: DRM in Windows Vista: This is a bit more techy but worth reading about the restrictive technology in Vista.

Bottom line from me: Don't "upgrade" to Vista unless you really are sure you know why you want it.