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The below story is a follow-on from statements made earlier from several sources, one of which was Deputy Prime Minister Karim Massimov, who stated earlier this month that the 450 and 800 Mhz frequency ranges would be licensed for use by CDMA mobile phone operators.

CDMA to be licensed in Kazakhstan - Telecoms.com Jun 4 2003 4:40PM ET

Quake kills three in southern Kazakhstan - NDTV May 23 2003 5:24AM ET

Just a note about the above story: the earthquake was apparently "felt in Almaty" which is 300 km away from the epicenter. However, when it occurred-- about 1 AM-- I was sound asleep and didn't notice anything.

April 15, 2003 - Kazakhstan is pulling the plug on Internet websites critical of the country's authoritarian government, the Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) warned on Tuesday.

"We ask you to ... end all censorship of news websites, whatever their editorial line," RSF Secretary General Robert Menard said in a letter to culture and information minister Mukhtar Kul-Mukhamed. A campaign against non-state media in this Central Asian ex-Soviet republic has attracted increasing criticism from Western governments and institutions in recent months.

PAVLODAR, Kazakhstan, April 10 (UPI) -- Severe acute respiratory syndrome might have reached Central Asia with a man taken to hospital in a northeastern Kazakh region on suspicion of having the disease.

The 30-year-old businessman from Pavlodar had visited Thailand in March, Kanat Sakiev, a local sanitarian director, told United Press International.

SARS might have reached Central Asia - UPI Apr 10 2003 1:02PM ET

NEW YORK (AP) -- A man was accused Monday of bribing senior officials from Kazakhstan with more than $20 million so his small bank in Manhattan could participate in lucrative oil deals.

According to a federal complaint unsealed Monday, James Giffen, 62, transferred millions of dollars in 1995 and 1996 to Swiss bank accounts to secure business for his company.

Just in case some poor random soul should stumble across this page just now, and for reasons incapable of being explained with mere logic, find him or or herself unwilling to leave without partaking of the unnecessary verbiage here offered, a short explanation is in order. Currently two multipart series are running here, one on computer games and one on organized sport; the general idea was to compare and contrast the two traditions drawing on personal experience.

Bolo, my introduction to network gaming, is now an obscure footnote in the annals gaming history. For most players my age or younger, the first chapter is Doom by Id Software.

After reading of the hours upon hours my brother, friends and I have spent in front of televisions and monitors, one might have believed us to be the prototypical computer geeks-- pasty, white, overweight, never venturing outside to play in the sun for even a moment. That wasn't quite true.

Earlier I wrote about how I first became interested in computer games, and how the cooperative elements of some of them interested me more than the standard gameplay.

One of the first things I did after starting in college was the school newspaper; friends of mine had quite literally been left in charge after a corruption induced vacuum of power. I quickly took advantage of the institution's antiquity to spend some money on gaming hardware... I mean, desktop publishing equipment.

It's interesting that a person can spend so much time over the course of many years engaged in an activity without ever articulating exactly why. However, more often than not, this is the case. Usually it takes someone else asking the reason for it to find out what it is. This happened to me just recently, as a friend asked what exactly about computer games appeal to me.