Genral Web Comments
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
InformationWeek > AMD Chips > AMD Unveils Dual-Core Chips > May 31, 2005
InformationWeek > AMD Chips > AMD Unveils Dual-Core Chips > May 31, 2005: "
SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP)--Advanced Micro Devices Inc. is launching its first PC microprocessors with two computing engines on a single chip Tuesday, further expanding its product line with a technology that's expected to be a major driver of PC performance for years to come.
The four chips to be announced Tuesday at the Computex trade show in Taiwan are targeted at high-end personal computers used for advanced tasks such as creating or editing digital media. In April, AMD introduced dual-core chips for servers and workstations.
AMD's announcement of the Athlon 64 X2 comes less than a week after Intel Corp. launched its first mainstream dual-core chips, dubbed the Pentium D.
Both companies have been in a tight race to deliver the processors since engineers realized that simply ratcheting up the clock speed of single-core chips was creating too much heat and not producing the same improvements seen in previous models."
Science News Article | Reuters.co.uk
Science News Article | Reuters.co.uk: "SEOUL (Reuters) - The Bush administration's reluctance to fully support stem cell research is impeding U.S. research that has the potential to make major medical breakthroughs, South Korea's top cloning expert said on Sunday.
Woo-Suk Hwang, the head of a team of South Korean scientists who cloned the first human embryo to use for research said in an interview with Reuters that stem cell science will advance because of its enormous potential, and will not be halted by political interests.
'The scientific effort to resolve the pain of patients with incurable conditions is very honorable, and I believe no mere individual politician or party can stop the historic trend,' Hwang said at his laboratory at Seoul National University.
'Solving these problems is a common responsibility of humanity,' he said."
Monday, May 30, 2005
NYC Council OKs 'Potty Parity' Bill - Yahoo! News
NYC Council OKs 'Potty Parity' Bill - Yahoo! News: "NEW YORK - Many new and renovated buildings in New York City will be required to have twice as many restrooms for women as men under 'potty parity' legislation passed by the City Council.
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The Women's Restroom Equity Bill, which won unanimous support in a vote Wednesday, revises a 1984 law requiring just one women's bathroom for every men's restroom. It is meant to ease women's notoriously long waits for public restrooms."
Naked Man Nabbed in Attack on Off-Duty Cop - Yahoo! News
Naked Man Nabbed in Attack on Off-Duty Cop - Yahoo! News: "UNION BEACH, N.J. - An off-duty police officer out for a jog fought off a sexual assault from a naked man who jumped out of the woods wearing only a condom, police said.
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John Dee Kelly, 39, of Jersey City, surrendered to Union Beach police Thursday, eight days after authorities issued a warrant for his arrest on charges of attempted sexual assault and lewdness. Authorities said he works as a vice president for a New York banking corporation.
He was being held at the Monmouth County Jail, Freehold Township, on $202,500 bail."
Mom Indicted for Hiring Stripper for Teen - Yahoo! News
Mom Indicted for Hiring Stripper for Teen - Yahoo! News: "NASHVILLE, Tenn. - A mother faces criminal charges after she hired a stripper to dance at her 16-year-old son's birthday party. Anette Pharris, 34, has been indicted by a grand jury on charges of contributing to the delinquency of a minor and involving a minor in obscene acts. The boy's father, the stripper and two others also face charges.
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'I tried to do something special for my son,' Pharris said. 'It didn't harm him.'
About 10 people under the age of 18 were at the birthday party in September, including minors who were not related to the family, authorities said."
Saturday, May 28, 2005
Friday, May 27, 2005
Thursday, May 26, 2005
Google AdSense site hijacked in the Google serps... oh the irony - JenSense.com
Google AdSense site hijacked in the Google serps... oh the irony - JenSense.com: "When you decide to hijack a site in the Google serps, it makes sense to do one that will benefit you in some way, while not raising yourself too high on the search engine's radar. So, it obviously makes perfect sense to go and hijack the Google AdSense site ;)"
New Scientist 11 steps to a better brain - Features
New Scientist 11 steps to a better brain - Features: "It doesn't matter how brainy you are or how much education you've had - you can still improve and expand your mind. Boosting your mental faculties doesn't have to mean studying hard or becoming a reclusive book worm. There are lots of tricks, techniques and habits, as well as changes to your lifestyle, diet and behaviour that can help you flex your grey matter and get the best out of your brain cells. And here are 11 of them."
Unlocking the GeForce 6800
Unlocking the GeForce 6800: "As we mentioned in our EVGA e-GeForce 6800 review, just recently NVIDIA and their board partners have quietly reduced board prices on their high-end GeForce 6800 products. Whereas just a few months ago NVIDIA’s best mainstream offering at the crucial $200 price point was the 8-pipeline GeForce 6600 GT, today street prices on NVIDIA’s more potent GeForce 6800 have hit the $200 mark.
This has huge ramifications for enthusiasts looking to get the most bang for their buck because the GeForce 6800 boasts a number of features that make it more powerful than the GeForce 6600 GT.
For starters, the GeForce 6800 sports a 12-pixel pipeline architecture, with five vertex engines pumping up to 406 million triangles/second (3.9 Gigatexels/sec fill rate). The GeForce 6600 GT features fewer pixel and vertex pipes, but attempts to make up for this by running at much higher clocks, 500MHz on the 6600 GT versus 325MHz on the GeForce 6800."
Wired 13.06: The Mad Genius from the Bottom of the Sea
Wired 13.06: The Mad Genius from the Bottom of the Sea: "Halfway through an important lunch meeting in Kona, Hawaii, with the lieutenant governor of the Northern Mariana Islands, John Pi�a Craven is suddenly restless. The topic under discussion is Craven's plan to use cold water pumped up from the deep ocean to provide low-cost and environmentally sustainable power, water, and food to a new residential and commercial development in the Marianas, a chain of islands some 3,000 miles to the west. But none of his colleagues expect Craven to schmooze anyway, so he ditches the group and heads to the restaurant's parking lot."
Red Hat to Open-Source Netscape Directory
Red Hat to Open-Source Netscape Directory: "NEW YORK—Microsoft is hardly the only vendor working to assemble the technology pieces that could comprise next-generation digital identity management platforms.
Next week, Red Hat is planning to release into open source the Netscape Directory technology it acquired in September 2004. That is according to Joanne Rohde, Red Hat executive vice president, who spoke on a panel here on open source."
Mad as hell, switching to Mac
Mad as hell, switching to Mac: "In the coming weeks I'm going to keep a diary of an experiment my company began at 6 p.m. April 29, 2005 - an experiment predicated on the hypothesis that the WinTel platform represents the greatest violation of the basic tenets of information security and has become a national economic security risk. I do not say this lightly, and I have never been a Microsoft basher, either. I never criticize a company without a fair bit of explanation, justification and supportive evidence.
I have come to the belief that there is a much easier, more secure way to use computers. After having spent several years focusing my security work on Ma, Pa and the Corporate Clueless, I also have come to the conclusion that if I'm having such security problems, heaven help the 98% of humanity who merely want a computer for e-mail and multimedia.
Even though I'm a security guy going on 22 years now, my day-to-day work is pretty much like everyone else's. I live on laptops and use my desktops at home and the office for geeking and experimenting. My two day-to-day laptops (two, for 24/7 backup) are my business machines. I don't need them to do a whole lot - except work reliably, which is why I am fed up with WinTel."
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
Sunday, May 22, 2005
Saturday, May 21, 2005
The Slashdot Effect - Dynamoo.com
The Slashdot Effect - Dynamoo.com: "I recently had the honour of having a site featured on Slashdot - one of the world's biggest online communities with over half a million members. Slashdot is so popular that sites often get an enormous amount of traffic as a result - called the Slashdot Effect - and this can often take a smaller sites offline, especially if they're graphically rich, in which case it becomes Slashdotted.
Being features on Slashdot is both an honour and a curse. The story I was in wasn't a particularly popular story as these things go, only a medium amount of comments. However, the traffic was still significant, and the Slashdot after-effects are worth noting."
Thursday, May 19, 2005
1.5 Inline Mode
1.5 Inline Mode: "Snort 2.3.0 RC1 integrated the intrusion prevention system (IPS) capability of snort_inline into the official Snort project. Snort_inline obtains packets from iptables instead of libpcap and then uses new rule types to help iptables pass or drop packets based on Snort rules.
In order for snort_inline to work properly, you must download and compile the iptables code to include ``make install-devel'' (http://www.iptables.org). This will install the libipq library that allows snort_inline to interface with iptables. Also, you must build and install LibNet, which is available from http://www.packetfactory.net.
There are three rule types you can use when running Snort with snort_inline:
* drop - The drop rule type will tell iptables to drop the packet and log it via usual Snort means.
* reject - The reject rule type will tell iptables to drop the packet, log it via usual Snort means, and send a TCP reset if the protocol is TCP or an icmp port unreachable if the protocol is UDP.
* sdrop - The sdrop rule type will tell iptables to drop the packet. Nothing is logged."
snort_inline
snort_inline: "What is snort_inline?
snort_inline is basically a modified version of Snort that accepts packets from iptables, via libipq, instead of libpcap. It then uses new rule types (drop, sdrop, reject) to tell iptables whether the packet should be dropped, rejected, modified, or allowed to pass based on a snort rule set. Think of this as an Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) that uses existing Intrusion Detection System (IDS) signatures to make decisions on packets that traverse snort_inline.
Contact Info
The code is currently maintained by William Metcalf. Check out the monitored snort_inline mailing list for discussions on bugs and enhancements. You must become a member in order to be able to send and receive messages to and from this mailing list. This was done in order to reduce the amount of spam. Click here and follow the directions to become a member."
Cipherdyne -- Security Software
Cipherdyne -- Security Software: "psad is a collection of three lightweight system daemons (two main daemons and one helper daemon) that run on Linux machines and analyze iptables log messages to detect port scans and other suspicious traffic.
psad incorporates many signatures from the Snort intrusion detection system to detect probes for various backdoor programs (e.g. EvilFTP, GirlFriend, SubSeven), DDoS tools (mstream, shaft), and advanced port scans (FIN, NULL, XMAS) which are easily leveraged against a machine via nmap. When combined with fwsnort, psad is capable of detecting approximately 70% of all Snort rules, including those that inspect the application portion of ip packets. In addition, psad makes use of various packet header fields associated with TCP SYN packets to passively fingerprint remote operating systems (in a manner similar to p0f) from which scans originate. For more information, see the complete list of features offered by psad.
psad is developed around three main principles:
* Good network security starts with a properly configured firewall.
* Suspicious traffic should not be detected at the expense of trying to also block such traffic.
* A significant amount of intrusion detection data can be gleaned from firewalls logs, especially if the logs provide information on nearly every field of the network and transport headers.
Frequently asked questions, such as 'How is psad different from portsentry?' are answered in the psad FAQ. Example alerts that psad will send after detecting various scan types are available in the sample alerts. For complete information, including a discussion on specifically how psad upholds the three security principles mentioned above, read the full documentation."
ebtables
ebtables: "The ebtables program is a filtering tool for a bridging firewall. The filtering is focussed on the Link Layer Ethernet frame fields. Apart from filtering, it also gives the ability to alter the Ethernet MAC addresses and implement a brouter.
This website is also a reference for the Linux bridge-nf code, which gives Linux the functionality of a bridging IP/IPv6/ARP firewall, by letting iptables/ip6tables/arptables 'see' the bridged IPv4/IPv6/ARP packets.
Both ebtables and bridge-nf are a part of the standard 2.6 kernel. A patch for the 2.4 stable kernel is maintained here, because enough people keep bugging me when Marcelo releases yet another 2.4 kernel."
HTML 4.0 Reference
HTML 4.0 Reference: "Also available: HTML 4.0 Reference in Japanese
HTML 4.0 became a W3C Recommendation in December of 1997. The new HTML standard provides a number of significant improvements over previous versions of the language while emphasizing the concepts of accessibility and structural markup.
Contents
What's New in HTML 4.0
A summary of the new features in HTML 4.0 and a look at the key concepts behind the new standard.
Structure of an HTML 4.0 Document
An explanation of elements, tags, and attributes, and how they are used in an HTML 4.0 document.
Organizational List of HTML 4.0 Elements
All HTML 4.0 elements organized by their function.
Alphabetical List of HTML 4.0 Elements
All HTML 4.0 elements listed alphabetically.
HTML 4.0 Entities
All character entity references in HTML 4.0 along with their numeric character references and rendering in your browser.
Offline Versions
Downloadable versions of this reference suitable for offline use."
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Duct tape - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Duct tape - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "Duct tape, originally known as duck tape, is a strong, fabric-based, multi-purpose adhesive tape, usually silver in color, although many other colors, including transparent, are also available, and is usually 2 inches (50 mm) wide. It was originally developed during World War II in 1942 as a waterproof sealing tape for ammunition casings. Permacel, then a division of Johnson & Johnson, used a rubber-based adhesive to help the tape resist water and a fabric backing to facilitate ripping. Because of these properties, it was also used to quickly repair military equipment, including jeeps, guns, and aircraft. Because the original tape was made of cotton duck fabric, and it repelled moisture like 'water off a duck's back', it was originally referred to as 'duck tape'. The original term came into modern usage with the introduction of 'Duck Tape', a registered trademark of Duck Products.
After the war, the housing industry boomed and people started using duct tape for many other purposes. The name 'duct tape' came from its use on heating and air conditioning ducts, a purpose for which it, ironically, has been deemed ineffective by the state of California and by building codes in most other places in the U.S. (which means professionals are restricted from using it in systems they install, but do-it-yourselfers are not). However metallized and aluminum tapes used by professionals are still often called 'duct tapes'."
Slashdot Poll
Slashdot Poll: "Based on your comment about why the US is the worst, you have never been to a cinema in Chennai, India. To be fair to the India culture, I enjoyed what would have been considered rude elsewhere and would never consider it the worst, only different.
I went to two Hindi and one Tamil movie in Chennai a few months ago with an Indian friend of mine. Two of the three theaters were huge, holding well over 500 people. Cell phones go off constantly, people are text messaging all over the place so the distraction of cell phone displays winking on and off is constant, there was a background noise as people talked, I saw laser pointers at least two or three times, and it was not unusual to hear someone yell out when something happened on the screen. And when a very pretty girl came on screen the men in the audience would go nuts whistling and yelling.
It was freakin' GREAT and I can't wait to go back (my friend is getting married in a year.)
These were people who knew how to enjoy a movie. An Indian citizen might thing all of the quiet, polite people in those quiet, polite theaters are elitists or boring and need to learn how to become part of the film, instead of going into a slack-jawed catatonic state and just being entertained.
What makes anyone think that they are the only one that knows how to enjoy a movie. Seems like a rather elitist atitude to me. If one is behaving as one of the minority in a movie theater, then it would appear that the minority is in the wrong and doesn't know what they are talking about. I would agree completly that if the majority of theater patrons are quiet, then one should also remain quiet. If the patrons are noisy and animated, join in and have a little fun and stop being such a tight-*ss"
Privacy vs. openness: A data dilemma in U.S.
Privacy vs. openness: A data dilemma in U.S.: "BALTIMORE Ted Stevens wanted to know just how much the Internet has turned private lives into open books. So the U.S. senator, a Republican from Alaska and the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, instructed his staff to steal his identity.
'I regret to say they were successful,' the senator reported at a hearing he held last week on data theft.
His staff, Stevens reported, came back not just with digital breadcrumbs on the senator, but also with insights on his daughter's rental property and some of the comings and goings of his son, a student in California. 'My staff provided me with information they got from a series of places,' he said. 'For $65, they were told, they could get my Social Security number.'"
Thottbot Plugin
Thottbot Plugin: "The thottbot plugin adds a search thottbot window to your browser.
To use the thottbot plugin, you need to be using the Mozilla Firefox web browser. It's like Internet Explorer, but more secure.
Then click here to install the thottbot plugin.
Thanks to Thott for making such a great database for WOW."
Prolexic Partners with Counterpane; Guarantees Protection From Distributed Denial of Service Attacks
Prolexic Partners with Counterpane; Guarantees Protection From Distributed Denial of Service Attacks: "Prolexic Partners with Counterpane; Guarantees Protection From Distributed Denial of Service Attacks
HOLLYWOOD, Fla., May 16, 2005 – Prolexic, the world's leading provider of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) solutions and security consulting products, joins forces with Counterpane Internet Security to provide protection against the ever-increasing sophistication, regularity and scale of DDoS attacks threatening enterprise networks globally. Counterpane, the foremost protector of network information, has added Prolexic's intrusion prevention services to its recently released Enterprise Protection Suite 2.0, a security services package that significantly enhances protection against Web and e-mail-based attacks.
'One of the greatest threats to Enterprises today is the increasing number of bots able to be used in DDoS attacks,' said Keith Laslop, vice president of business development for Prolexic. 'Our partnership allows Counterpane's service level agreements to guarantee protection against the largest, multi-gigabit DDoS attacks in the industry, something not offered by any other security service provider on the market.'"
Gone Phishing
Gone Phishing: "Epimetheus - a system for reducing the risk of phishing attacks.
So, what's this all about? It seems to me that many phishing attacks can be prevented from doing any damage, with some fairly straightforward measures.
Epimetheus was the greek titan, whose name means hindsight, or afterthought. It seems to me that too many banks fall into the trap of trying to prevent fraudulent access rather than simply mitigating its risk. It's very easy to see what the right thing to do was in hindsight, so lets use it. Intrigued? read on...
What this document is
This is a set of ideas, intended to provoke thought in the right direction. It should be used to get you into the frame of mind that will allow you to see what it is about fraudulent transactions that makes them different, and hence detectable. Every system is unique, though they all have some common characteristics. The way to get the answer you need for your particular system is to learn how to ask the right questions. Hopefully, the techniques discussed here can assist in that direction."
news @ nature.com�-�Amazonian ants ambush prey�-�Hungry ants build a 'fibreglass' trap to put food on the rack.
news @ nature.com�-�Amazonian ants ambush prey�-�Hungry ants build a 'fibreglass' trap to put food on the rack.: "Using a home-made trap, a tiny species of ant is capable of ensnaring prey much larger than itself and tearing it to pieces.
The ants (Allomerus decemarticulatus), which live in Amazonian plants called Hirtella physophora, construct a honeycomb-like structure out of their host plant's fibres from which they can stage an ambush.
The worker ants hide in the holes of this death trap with their mouths open wide, waiting for locusts, butterflies or other insects to land. When prey arrives they quickly seize its extremities, pulling on legs, arms and antennae until the hostage is rendered immobile. Once trapped, other ants from the colony arrive to sting and bite the prey until it is paralyzed (see video)."
Monday, May 16, 2005
NOAA News Online (Story 2437)
NOAA News Online (Story 2437): "May 15, 2005 — Forecasters at the NOAA Space Environment Center in Boulder, Colo., observed a geomagnetic storm on Sunday, May 15, which they classified as an extreme event, measuring G-5—the highest level—on the NOAA Space Weather Scales. (Click image for larger view of the sun from the SOHO spacecraft of the intense solar activity taken May 15, 2005, at 7:50 a.m. EDT. Click here to view high resolution version, which is a large file. Click here to view latest images. Please credit “SOHO.”)
'This event registered a 9 on the K-Index, which measures the maximum deviation of the Earth's magnetic field in a given three-hour period,' said Gayle Nelson, lead operations specialist at NOAA Space Environment Center. 'The scale ranges from 0 to 9, with 9 being the highest. This was a significant event.'"
Sunday, May 15, 2005
Adware Targets Kids - Yahoo! News
Adware Targets Kids - Yahoo! News: "Mainstream children's Web sites host a glut of adware, a security firm said this week, proof that spyware makers are targeting kids in an attempt to slip by parents and get their software onto home computers.
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Over a three-month period, said Kraig Lane, a group product manager in Symantec's consumer division, his lab took new PCs out of the box, connected them to the Internet without monkeying with any of the default settings in Windows XP SP2, then surfed well-known sites in several categories, ranging from kids and sports to news and shopping."
Saturday, May 14, 2005
Nicotine vaccine helps smokers quit, study finds - Yahoo! News
Nicotine vaccine helps smokers quit, study finds - Yahoo! News: "ORLANDO, Fla. (Reuters) - An experimental vaccine against nicotine helped smokers kick the habit, Swiss researchers reported on Saturday.
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Larger tests are needed but the test of heavy smokers suggested that 40 percent were able to quit smoking for nearly six months after receiving the vaccine, the researchers said.
Zurich-based Cytos Biotechnology AG plans phase III trials aimed at showing the vaccine is not only safe but works, and is aiming to get it on the market by 2010, Cytos Chief Executive Dr. Wolfgang Renner said."
Japanese researchers develop fuel cell running on blood - Yahoo! News
Japanese researchers develop fuel cell running on blood - Yahoo! News: "TOKYO (AFP) - A Japanese research team has developed a fuel cell that runs on blood without using toxic substances, opening the way for use in artificial hearts and other organs.
The biological fuel cell uses glucose, a sugar in blood, with a non-toxic substance used to draw electrons from glucose, said the team led by Matsuhiko Nishizawa, bio-engineering professor at the graduate school of state-run Tohoku University."
Friday, May 13, 2005
Asian states hampering bird flu checks - UN agency - Yahoo! News
Asian states hampering bird flu checks - UN agency - Yahoo! News: "ROME (Reuters) - A top U.N. agency official accused Asian nations of blocking proper monitoring of the deadly bird flu virus by giving too few samples to scientists, but denied a charge that his own agency was failing to share specimens.
The head of the Animal Health Service of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said countries were failing to export samples of the H5N1 bird flu virus that has killed more than 50 people in Asia since 2003.
Scientists say tracking genetic changes in the virus is essential, since they fear it could mutate and develop into a worldwide pandemic with the potential to kill millions of people."
Flu Shots May Soon Be Recommended for All - Yahoo! News
Flu Shots May Soon Be Recommended for All - Yahoo! News: "CHICAGO - Perhaps within five years, the government is likely to recommend annual flu shots for every American � not just young children, the elderly and other at-risk people, public health advocates predict.
The government panel that sets U.S. vaccine policy already has begun discussing 'universal immunization' as a way to boost vaccination rates and reduce flu-linked sickness and death, Dr. Scott Harper of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said at a vaccine meeting this week.
The end of a chaotic season where many people seeking flu shots were turned away because of a shortage might seem an odd time to broach the idea of vaccinating even more people."
EPA: Chemical Pollution Falls 6 Percent - Yahoo! News
EPA: Chemical Pollution Falls 6 Percent - Yahoo! News: "The EPA's annual Toxics Release Inventory began under a 1986 community right-to-know law. The biggest polluters in recent years have been hard-rock mining companies and utilities.
Purvis said the EPA, which has been considering proposals to change the public information program, should resist anything that might reduce what gets reported.
'When facilities have to report their toxic releases to the public, they reduce them,' she said. 'The Bush administration should not weaken the public's right to know.'"
Insulin identified as trigger that causes diabetes - Yahoo! News
Insulin identified as trigger that causes diabetes - Yahoo! News: "LONDON (Reuters) - Two teams of scientists identified the hormone insulin on Wednesday as the trigger that causes the more severe form of diabetes.
Researchers have been mystified about what makes the body's immune system turn against itself to attack cells in the pancreas that produce insulin, the hormone that regulates blood sugar levels.
Now they believe insulin itself is the key."
Insulin identified as trigger that causes diabetes - Yahoo! News
Insulin identified as trigger that causes diabetes - Yahoo! News: "LONDON (Reuters) - Two teams of scientists identified the hormone insulin on Wednesday as the trigger that causes the more severe form of diabetes.
Researchers have been mystified about what makes the body's immune system turn against itself to attack cells in the pancreas that produce insulin, the hormone that regulates blood sugar levels.
Now they believe insulin itself is the key."
Insulin identified as trigger that causes diabetes - Yahoo! News
Insulin identified as trigger that causes diabetes - Yahoo! News: "LONDON (Reuters) - Two teams of scientists identified the hormone insulin on Wednesday as the trigger that causes the more severe form of diabetes.
Researchers have been mystified about what makes the body's immune system turn against itself to attack cells in the pancreas that produce insulin, the hormone that regulates blood sugar levels.
Now they believe insulin itself is the key."
Novell Acquires Immunix To Add A Security Layer To Linux - Yahoo! News
Novell Acquires Immunix To Add A Security Layer To Linux - Yahoo! News: "In a move to improve the security of applications running in Linux environments, Novell has acquired Immunix Inc. and its AppArmor software. Novell announced the deal Tuesday, but didn't disclose how much it paid for Immunix.
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AppArmor is used to prevent applications operating in the Linux environment from being co-opted by viruses, worms, and other malware into doing things they shouldn't. Using application-containment technology, AppArmor keeps applications from 'masquerading,' or using ill-gotten permissions to do malicious things, says Ed Anderson, VP of product marketing for Novell's platform group."
Insulin identified as trigger that causes diabetes - Yahoo! News
Insulin identified as trigger that causes diabetes - Yahoo! News: "LONDON (Reuters) - Two teams of scientists identified the hormone insulin on Wednesday as the trigger that causes the more severe form of diabetes.
Researchers have been mystified about what makes the body's immune system turn against itself to attack cells in the pancreas that produce insulin, the hormone that regulates blood sugar levels.
Now they believe insulin itself is the key."
Insulin identified as trigger that causes diabetes - Yahoo! News
Insulin identified as trigger that causes diabetes - Yahoo! News: "LONDON (Reuters) - Two teams of scientists identified the hormone insulin on Wednesday as the trigger that causes the more severe form of diabetes.
Researchers have been mystified about what makes the body's immune system turn against itself to attack cells in the pancreas that produce insulin, the hormone that regulates blood sugar levels.
Now they believe insulin itself is the key."
Health News Article | Reuters.co.uk
Health News Article | Reuters.co.uk: "NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - If kids miss a slow-moving ball, don't write them off as non-sporty -- it's probably because their brains haven't yet developed the ability to track slow objects, new research suggests.
A group of Canadian researchers found that five-year-olds were less able to detect subtle differences in the speed of moving objects when the objects were moving slowly than when they moved more quickly.
In other words, children's brains are not very good at seeing speed when objects are moving slowly, said study author Dr. Terri L. Lewis of McMaster University in Ontario.
Consequently, they may often struggle to hit or catch slow-moving balls, or have trouble seeing how fast a car is moving toward them when preparing to cross a street, she said."
Health News Article | Reuters.co.uk
Health News Article | Reuters.co.uk: "ATLANTA (Reuters) - The quaint bedtime saying 'sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite' has become a grim mission statement for even the finest hotels in the United States amid a resurgence of the tiny bloodsucking pests.
Rising complaints about these unwelcome guests that bite in the night are leading to red faces at reception desks and an increase in the number of help calls, according to pest control firms and entomologists.
Hotels battling infestations typically request discreet and immediate service, and for good reason. Even though they don't pose a health threat, bed bugs, which live off human blood, can take a nasty bite out of a hotel's reputation and business.
'If a facility is known to have bedbugs, it certainly is going to cut into their client base,' said Frank Meek, technical director of Orkin Inc., a pest control firm that saw a 20 percent jump in bed bug-related calls in 2004."
Impotent ex-husband must pay damages - Yahoo! News
Impotent ex-husband must pay damages - Yahoo! News: "ROME (Reuters) - An impotent Italian man who kept his problem a secret from his wife until after their wedding must pay her damages for 'eroding' her right to have a family, Italy's Supreme Court has ruled.
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The woman, identified by the Italian media as Cristina S., was quick to get her marriage annulled in the 1990s after learning to her horror that her husband could not consummate it."
'Witch' was to be thrown into river? - Yahoo! News
'Witch' was to be thrown into river? - Yahoo! News: "LONDON (Reuters) - A schoolgirl told a British court Thursday she was put into a laundry bag and was going to be thrown from a third-floor apartment window into a river by her mother and aunt who thought she was a witch.
Prosecutors say the girl, brought to London from Angola by a woman claiming to be her mother, had been regularly abused by members of her family after they had become convinced she was putting curses on members of her family."
Gun Safety Class in S.C. Ends With a Bang - Yahoo! News
Gun Safety Class in S.C. Ends With a Bang - Yahoo! News: "ANDERSON, S.C. - A gunshot was fired into the floor in an Anderson County middle school after a student accidentally pulled the trigger of a deputy's holstered gun.
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The gun fired Wednesday morning after a student grabbed it as the deputy told them how hard it was to take a gun from an officer's holster, Sheriff David Crenshaw said."
BBC Backstage :: Front Page ::
BBC Backstage :: Front Page ::: "Build what you want using BBC content
backstage.bbc.co.uk is the BBC's new developer network, providing content feeds for anyone to build with. Alternatively, share your ideas on new ways to use BBC content. This is your BBC. We want to help you play.
backstage.bbc.co.uk is currently in beta as we add new feeds and APIs and develop the service further over the coming weeks and months. Join the email discussion list to tell us how we could improve the service and converse with others about BBC Backstage."
EPA: Chemical Pollution Falls 6 Percent - Yahoo! News
EPA: Chemical Pollution Falls 6 Percent - Yahoo! News: "WASHINGTON - Despite increases in levels of mercury, PCBs and dioxin, overall chemical pollution released into the environment fell more than 6 percent in the latest report issued by the Environmental Protection Agency.
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The decline was led by reductions among mining companies and chemical makers.
Some 4.44 billion pounds of toxic chemicals were released in 2003, the latest year for which figures are available, the EPA said. About 4.74 billion pounds were released in 2002, a revised figure for a year that had marked the first increase reported by EPA since 1997."
Schneier on Security: Company Continues Bad Information Security Practices
Schneier on Security: Company Continues Bad Information Security Practices: "Company Continues Bad Information Security Practices
Stories about thefts of personal data are dime-a-dozen these days, and are generally not worth writing about.
This one has an interesting coda, though.
An employee hoping to get extra work done over the weekend printed out 2004 payroll information for hundreds of SafeNet's U.S. employees, snapped it into a briefcase and placed the briefcase in a car.
The car was broken into over the weekend and the briefcase stolen -- along with the employees' names, bank account numbers and Social Security numbers that were on the printouts, a company spokeswoman confirmed yesterday.
My guess is that most readers can point out the bad security practices here. One, the Social Security numbers and bank account numbers should not be kept with the bulk of the payroll data. Ideally, they should use employee numbers and keep sensitive (but irrelevant for most of the payroll process) information separate from the bulk of the commonly processed payroll data. And two, hard copies of that sensitive information should never go home with employees.
But SafeNet won't learn from its mistake:
The company said no policies were violated, and that no new policies are being written as a result of this incident.
The irony here is that this is a security company."
Thursday, May 12, 2005
Sealants in Playgrounds May Block Arsenic - Yahoo! News
Sealants in Playgrounds May Block Arsenic - Yahoo! News: "WASHINGTON - Sealants can help reduce the cancer risk from arsenic-treated wood found primarily in playground equipment and backyard decks, government scientists report.
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Using an oil- or water-based sealant or stain at least once a year can limit the amount of arsenic in pesticide-treated lumber that can escape and come into contact with people's skin, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Results from the first year of a two-year study by the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the EPA show success in containing the pesticide, chromated copper arsenate."
Dutch academics declare research free-for-all | The Register
Dutch academics declare research free-for-all | The Register: "Scientists from all major Dutch universities officially launched a website on Tuesday where all their research material can be accessed for free. Interested parties can get hold of a total of 47,000 digital documents from 16 institutions the Digital Academic Repositories. No other nation in the world offers such easy access to its complete academic research output in digital form, the researchers claim. Obviously, commercial publishers are not amused.
DAREnet was already launched about a year ago, but for demonstration purposes only. The �2m DARE programme - a joint initiative by all the Dutch universities, the National Library of the Netherlands, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) - harvests all digital available material from local repositories, making it fully searchable. Aside from bibliographical information, the content can be full text, or even audio and video files."
Wired News: Put Some Wisdom in Your Pocket
Wired News: Put Some Wisdom in Your Pocket: "Know how long the Brooklyn Bridge is? The date of Andy Warhol's death? The height of the Sears Tower?
If you're using Cellphedia, a new cell-phone-based encyclopedia application, the answers to these and plenty of other random questions could be just a text message away. "
Latest Business News and Financial Information | Reuters.co.uk
Latest Business News and Financial Information | Reuters.co.uk: "CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - Land-access disputes between oil firms and northern Canadian native groups must be solved in six to 12 months or the companies may drop plans for a C$7 billion (3 billion pound) gas pipeline to focus on U.S. liquefied natural gas projects, a top analyst said Wednesday.
Of the two major Arctic gas projects being proposed in North America, the Mackenzie Valley pipeline faces the biggest risk of being canceled due to its high-profile delays, said Tristone Capital analyst Chris Theal, author of a new 50-page report on the prospects for northern frontier gas. "
Computer Economics: research on strategic and financial management of information systems
Computer Economics: research on strategic and financial management of information systems: "Key Advantage of Open Source is Not Cost Savings
Reduced dependence on software vendors appears more important than low cost
Frank Scavo
Computer Economics recently conducted a survey of visitors to its website regarding the perceived advantages in the use of open source software. Although not a scientific sample, the results are nevertheless startling.
As nearly everyone knows, open source software is a low cost alternative to proprietary software. For example, the open source Linux operating system is commonly seen as a low cost alternative to Microsoft�s Server 2003 operating system, or Sun�s version of Unix. The popularity of open source is seen in the fact that today the largest market share for web servers is held by the open source Apache system.
One might think, therefore, that the key advantage of open source software is its low cost of ownership. But visitors to our website didn�t think so. "
Oddly Enough Article | Reuters.co.uk
Oddly Enough Article | Reuters.co.uk: "NEW YORK (Reuters) - The cookie crumbled right for 110 people who chose Chinese food.
Betting on the numbers recommended in fortune cookies, they won from $100,000 (53,402 pounds) to half a million dollars each in a multi-state U.S. Powerball lottery, organisation director Charles Strutt said on Wednesday.
By the laws of statistical probability, there should have been only four or five winners among the 10.4 million ticket buyers in the lottery operated by the governments of 27 U.S. States, the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
But there were nearly 20 times that many, meaning $19 million had to be paid to unexpected winners in the March 30 drawing.
'Something was wrong; it was out of the realm of possibility,' Strutt told Reuters. 'So we suspected a great system error or a fraud. In the lottery business, you have to be naturally suspicious: whenever we see a statistical aberration we check it out.'
Another possibility was a recommended lucky number in the media. So bewildered staff at Multi-State Lottery Association, which runs Powerball from Uniondale, Iowa, spent the next day scanning magazines recommending lucky numbers."
Elderly Woman Survives Nine-Story Fall - Yahoo! News
Elderly Woman Survives Nine-Story Fall - Yahoo! News: "FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - A 70-year-old woman survived a nine-story fall from a condominium tower Wednesday when she landed on a canopy, officials said.
The woman was cleaning her balcony when she fell at Coral Ridge Towers and landed on a first-floor canopy, according to the Fort Lauderdale Fire-Rescue."
N.M. Man Arrested for DUI for 20th Time - Yahoo! News
N.M. Man Arrested for DUI for 20th Time - Yahoo! News: "ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - A man has been arrested for driving drunk for the 20th time, according to state Motor Vehicle Department records.
Joseph Rodarte, 47, was stopped Monday by Isleta Pueblo police for driving with a cracked headlight. Police discovered he didn't have a valid driver's license or insurance and the registration on the car he was driving had expired in 1993.
Rodarte apparently hasn't had a valid driver's license for at least 18 years, motor vehicle records show."
FBI: Twin Went to Brother's Airport Job - Yahoo! News
FBI: Twin Went to Brother's Airport Job - Yahoo! News: "SALT LAKE CITY - Identical twin brothers are in trouble with the FBI after one went to the other's job in a secure area of the Salt Lake International Airport.
The agency said Olimpiu Nedelcu looks exactly like his brother Silviu, who works as an aircraft refueler at the airport."
School Suspends Boy for Wearing Prom Dress - Yahoo! News
School Suspends Boy for Wearing Prom Dress - Yahoo! News: "LAKE GENEVA, Wis. - A high school senior who thought it would be funny to wear a dress to his prom was ticketed $249 for disorderly conduct, suspended for three days and banned from his last track meet.
School district administrator Jim Gottinger said the discipline was for more than just the dress, noting Kerry Lofy, 18, was dancing in a sexually provocative manner at the prom, according to a police report."
Health News Article | Reuters.co.uk
Health News Article | Reuters.co.uk: "NEW YORK (Reuters) - Arena Pharmaceuticals Inc. on Wednesday said its experimental obesity drug was effective in helping patients lose weight in a short-term, mid-stage clinical trial, sending its shares up more than 22 percent.
Patients taking a 15-milligram dose of Arena's oral drug, known as APD356, lost an average of 2.9 pounds (1.3 kg) after 28 days of treatment, compared with a loss of 0.7 pounds (0.3 kg) by obese patients taking a placebo.
The San Diego-based biotechnology company called the result highly statistically significant.
Shares of Arena were up $1.29 at $7.26 in early trade on the Nasdaq, after rising earlier to an 18-month high of $7.49."
Muslim parents in Mali jailed for refusing kids polio vaccines - Yahoo! News
Muslim parents in Mali jailed for refusing kids polio vaccines - Yahoo! News: "BAMAKO (AFP) - Eleven Muslim people presented before a Mali court as members of a fundamentalist sect have been given jail terms of between six months and three years for denying their children polio vaccinations, a judge said.
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Sidiki Sanogo, the justice of the peace who convicted and passed sentence on the 11 on Tuesday in the southern town of Yorosso, told AFP: 'I was only applying the law, this sect was gaining ground in the region and its members lived in a secluded hamlet, their women cloistered separately apart.'"
Sodas Keep Child Obesity Soaring - Yahoo! News
Sodas Keep Child Obesity Soaring - Yahoo! News: "WEDNESDAY, May 11 (HealthDay News) -- The ballooning weight of American youth may be driven, at least in part, by the sugary fizz of soda pop.
A new review of data and expert opinion suggests soft drink consumption greatly increases the risk of childhood obesity, according to researchers reporting in the May issue of the Journal of Pediatrics.
For example, 'the typical teen consumes approximately two 12-ounce cans of soda per day, containing 300 calories and 20 teaspoons of sugar,' study lead author Dr. Robert Murray, of Columbus Children's Hospital in Ohio, said in a prepared statement."
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
http://www.mae.cornell.edu/ccsl/research/selfrep/video/4x4ht4a.mpg
http://www.mae.cornell.edu/ccsl/research/selfrep/video/4x4ht4a.mpg
Self replicating robot.
ABC News: U.S. scientists create self-replicating robot
ABC News: U.S. scientists create self-replicating robot: "May 11, 2005 � LONDON (Reuters) - Self-replicating robots are no longer the stuff of science fiction.
Scientists at the Cornell University in Ithaca, New York have created small robots that can build copies of themselves.
Each robot consists of several 10-cm (4 inch) cubes which have identical machinery, electromagnets to attach and detach to each other and a computer program for replication. The robots can bend and pick up and stack the cubes."
Rite Aid - Pharmacy
Rite Aid - Pharmacy: "Welcome to Rite Aid's Rite Advice patient information counseling area. Here you can get a better understanding of medications including how to take the medication, the possible side effects and potential drug interactions. As always, your Rite Aid Pharmacist is ready to help you understand medications and their use. Please stop by your local Rite Aid to talk to your Rite Aid Pharmacist today. Before you continue please review our Important Note:"
SourceForge.net: Project Info - Linux Channel Bonding
SourceForge.net: Project Info - Linux Channel Bonding: "Linux kernel driver for aggregating multiple network links into a single link, using a variety of methods. Stable driver source is part of the linux kernel; source releases here are either pre-release patches, experimental or historical."
netfilter/iptables FAQ: General Questions
netfilter/iptables FAQ: General Questions: "1.9 Does netfilter/iptables support failover/HA?
The answer is a clear 'yes' and 'no'.
If you are thinking about a full failover, while all the state information is preserved: Not really. Doing state synchronization between multiple nodes is a difficult process. Harald (of the netfilter core team) has published a paper about this, but not yet found any sponsor to fund the development. Meanwhile, you can try to use our 'connection pickup' feature, which [after a failover] tries to pick up already established connections: Might be sufficient depending on the requirements.
If you do NAT and want to preserve your NAT mappings: No.
If you do statless packet filtering: Yes"
VRRPd's homepage
VRRPd's homepage: "VRRPd is an implementation of VRRPv2 as specified in rfc2338. It run in userspace for linux. In short, VRRP is a protocol which elects a master server on a LAN. If the master fails, a backup server takes over."
High-availability for Linux and Unix with CARP
High-availability for Linux and Unix with CARP: "UCARP allows a couple of hosts to share common virtual IP addresses in order to provide automatic failover. It is a portable userland implementation of the secure and patent-free Common Address Redundancy Protocol (CARP, OpenBSD's alternative to the VRRP).
Strong points of the CARP protocol are : very low overhead, cryptographically signed messages, interoperability between different operating systems and no need for any dedicated extra network link between redundant hosts."
Linux Advanced Routing & Traffic Control HOWTO
Linux Advanced Routing & Traffic Control HOWTO: "Chapter 2. Introduction
Welcome, gentle reader.
This document hopes to enlighten you on how to do more with Linux 2.2/2.4 routing. Unbeknownst to most users, you already run tools which allow you to do spectacular things. Commands like route and ifconfig are actually very thin wrappers for the very powerful iproute2 infrastructure.
I hope that this HOWTO will become as readable as the ones by Rusty Russell of (amongst other things) netfilter fame.
You can always reach us by writing to the HOWTO team. However, please consider posting to the mailing list (see the relevant section) if you have questions which are not directly related to this HOWTO. We are no free helpdesk, but we often will answer questions asked on the list.
Before losing your way in this HOWTO, if all you want to do is simple traffic shaping, skip everything and head to the Other possibilities chapter, and read about CBQ.init."
Traffic Control HOWTO
Traffic Control HOWTO: "1. Introduction to Linux Traffic Control
Linux offers a very rich set of tools for managing and manipulating the transmission of packets. The larger Linux community is very familiar with the tools available under Linux for packet mangling and firewalling (netfilter, and before that, ipchains) as well as hundreds of network services which can run on the operating system. Few inside the community and fewer outside the Linux community are aware of the tremendous power of the traffic control subsystem which has grown and matured under kernels 2.2 and 2.4.
This HOWTO purports to introduce the concepts of traffic control, the traditional elements (in general), the components of the Linux traffic control implementation and provide some guidelines . This HOWTO represents the collection, amalgamation and synthesis of the LARTC HOWTO, documentation from individual projects and importantly the LARTC mailing list over a period of study.
The impatient soul, who simply wishes to experiment right now, is recommended to the Traffic Control using tcng and HTB HOWTO and LARTC HOWTO for immediate satisfaction.
1.1. Target audience and assumptions about the reader
The target audience for this HOWTO is the network administrator or savvy home user who desires an introduction to the field of traffic control and an overview of the tools available under Linux for implementing traffic control.
I assume that the reader is comfortable with UNIX concepts and the command line and has a basic knowledge of IP networking. Users who wish to implement traffic control may require the ability to patch, compile and install a kernel or software package [1]. For users with newer kernels (2.4.20 , see also Section 5.1), however, the ability to install and use software may be all that is required.
Broadly speaking, this HOWTO was written with a sophisticated user in mind, perhaps one who has already had experience with traffic control under Linux. I assume that the reader may have no prior traffic control experience.
1.2. Conventions
This text was written in DocBook (version 4.2) with vim. All formatting has been applied by xsltproc based on DocBook XSL and LDP XSL stylesheets. Typeface formatting and display conventions are similar to most printed and electronically distributed technical documentation.
1.3. Recommended approach
I strongly recommend to the eager reader making a first foray into the discipline of traffic control, to become only casually familiar with the tc command line utility, before concentrating on tcng. The tcng software package defines an entire language for describing traffic control structures. At first, this language may seem daunting, but mastery of these basics will quickly provide the user with a much wider ability to employ (and deploy) traffic control configurations than the direct use of tc would afford.
Where possible, I'll try to prefer describing the behaviour of the Linux traffic control system in an abstract manner, although in many cases I'll need to supply the syntax of one or the other common systems for defining these structures. I may not supply examples in both the tcng language and the tc command line, so the wise user will have some familiarity with both.
1.4. Missing content, corrections and feedback
There is content yet missing from this HOWTO. In particular, the following items will be added at some point to this documentation.
*
A description and diagram of GRED, WRR, PRIO and CBQ.
*
A section of examples.
*
A section detailing the classifiers.
*
A section discussing the techniques for measuring traffic.
*
A section covering meters.
*
More details on tcng.
I welcome suggestions, corrections and feedback at
Traffic Control using tcng and HTB HOWTO
Traffic Control using tcng and HTB HOWTO: "Traffic Control Next Generation (tcng) is a project by Werner Almesberger to provide a powerful, abstract, and uniform language in which to describe traffic control structures. The tcc parser in the tcng distribution transforms tcng the language into a number of output formats. By default, tcc will read a file (specified as an argument or as STDIN) and print to STDOUT the series of tc commands (see iproute2 below) required to create the desired traffic control structure in the kernel.
Consult the parameter reference for tcng to see the supported queuing disciplines. Jacob Teplitsky, active on the LARTC mailing list and a contributor to the tcng project, wrote the htb support for tcng.
The tcc tool can produce a number of different types of output, but this document will only consider the conventional and default output. Consult the TCNG manual for more detailed information about the use of tcng.
The tcsim tool is a traffic control simulator which accepts tcng configuration files and reads a control language to simulate the behaviour of a kernel sending and receiving packets with the specified control structures. Although tcsim is a significant portion of the tcng project, tcsim will not be covered here at all."
Jesus Christ in Legal Battle in W.Va. - Yahoo! News
Jesus Christ in Legal Battle in W.Va. - Yahoo! News: "CHARLESTON, W.Va. - Even Jesus Christ can't circumvent the rules for getting a driver's license in West Virginia.
Attempts to prove his name really is Christ have led the man born as Peter Robert Phillips Jr. through a lengthy legal battle and a recent victory in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.
'This all started with him expressing his faith and his respect and love for Jesus Christ,' attorney A.P. Pishevar told The Associated Press. 'Now he needs to document it for legal reasons.'"
Viagra for the mob? This can't turn out well... - Yahoo! News
Viagra for the mob? This can't turn out well... - Yahoo! News: "NEW YORK (Reuters) - Three New York doctors were charged on Thursday with giving large amounts of Viagra and other anti-impotence drugs to mob members in return for construction and auto repair work done by mafia-controlled businesses.
Arlen Fleisher, Stephen Klass and George Shapiro, all doctors in Westchester County, a suburban area north of New York City, were accused of trading prescription drugs and drug samples with members and associates of the Gambino crime family. The one-count complaint was filed in Manhattan federal court."
Woman Gets $45K for Cat Killed by Dog - Yahoo! News
Woman Gets $45K for Cat Killed by Dog - Yahoo! News: "SEATTLE - A woman who sued a neighbor after his dog mauled her cat to death has been awarded more than $45,000.
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Retired teacher Paula Roemer's 12-year-old cat, Yofi, was attacked in her back yard in February 2004 by a chow belonging to her neighbor, Wallace Gray. The dog had repeatedly escaped in the past, according to the lawsuit.
Roemer, 71, said the death of the black and white cat left her with sleep disturbances, panic attacks and depression, causing her to begin smoking heavily. The amount awarded included $30,000 for the pet's special value and $15,000 for emotional distress."
Oddly Enough Article | Reuters.co.uk
Oddly Enough Article | Reuters.co.uk: "NAPLES, Italy (Reuters) - If you can't beat them, ban their getaway vehicles.
So goes the logic of the latest attempt to curb crime in the southern Italian city of Naples -- a scooter ban to aid police chasing common crooks who famously rob pedestrians and speed away through the historic centre's narrow alleyways.
'Our goal is to give tourists and citizens more security,' said Nicola Oddati, Naples' counsellor on traffic."
Women-only train cars irritate some men - Yahoo! News
Women-only train cars irritate some men - Yahoo! News: "TOKYO (Reuters) - A stepped-up campaign by Tokyo train operators to protect women from gropers by increasing the number of women-only carriages is angering some male commuters.
Several of the Japanese capital's railway companies introduced the single-sex carriages Monday as part of a city effort to tackle the problem of men who take advantage of overcrowding to grope female passengers.
In a Tokyo survey last year, almost two thirds of women aged between 20 and 40 said they had been groped on a train."
Oddly Enough Article | Reuters.co.uk
Oddly Enough Article | Reuters.co.uk: "LONDON (Reuters) - The transmission of a profanity-laden musical about U.S. talk-show host Jerry Springer, which swamped the BBC with a record number of complaints, was cleared by the broadcast watchdog on Monday.
Ofcom ruled that while it recognised the January screening of 'Jerry Springer: The Opera' had 'deeply offended' a large number of people the show was an 'important work and commentary on modern television.'"
Chicken Ticketed for Crossing the Road - Yahoo! News
Chicken Ticketed for Crossing the Road - Yahoo! News: "RIDGECREST, Calif. - Linc and Helena Moore may have finally learned the answer to that age-old question: Why did the chicken cross the road? Because the chicken doesn't know jaywalking is illegal.
Kern County Sheriff's Deputy J. Nicholson does know, however. The deputy issued a ticket March 26 because one of the couple's chickens allegedly impeded traffic in Johannesburg, a rural mining community near Ridgecrest, some 220 miles northeast of Los Angeles."
Brazilian Town Declares Orgasm Day - Yahoo! News
Brazilian Town Declares Orgasm Day - Yahoo! News: "RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Sex rarely makes the news in Brazil's conservative Northeast — until a small town declared an official Orgasm Day on Monday.
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Espertantina Mayor Felipe Santolia endorsed the May 9 holiday, which he said was intended to improve relationships between married couples."
Archaeologists find Britain's oldest shoe - Yahoo! News
Archaeologists find Britain's oldest shoe - Yahoo! News: "LONDON (Reuters) - Archaeologists said Tuesday they believed they had dug up Britain's oldest shoe, dating from the early Iron Age about 2,000 years ago.
The leather shoe was fairly long, suggesting its owner was a man. It was discovered in a hollowed-out tree trunk in a quarry in southwest England."
Schwarzenegger not mad at moon - Yahoo! News
Schwarzenegger not mad at moon - Yahoo! News: "LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger does not want to destroy the moon.
A U.S. political commentator has admitted he failed to check his facts when he erroneously reported on the MSNBC cable news network last month that Schwarzenegger had jokingly advocated doing away with the moon."
Good news on severed goat heads: Satan not involved - Yahoo! News
Good news on severed goat heads: Satan not involved - Yahoo! News: "VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) - A lazy worker, not a satanic cult, was responsible for severed goat heads that caused a scare at a Vancouver-area school, Canadian police said on Monday.
Police were called in after goat heads were twice found on a bench outside a school in nearby Chilliwack, British Columbia, prompting fears in the suburban community that it had been targeted by a satanic animal killing."
Survey: Hong Kong Men Lax on Hand Washing - Yahoo! News
Survey: Hong Kong Men Lax on Hand Washing - Yahoo! News: "HONG KONG - Nearly a third of Hong Kong men don't wash their hands after using the washroom, according to a survey released Tuesday by the Hong Kong Toilet Association.
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The observations of 361 washroom users also found only 4 percent of women failed to cleanse their hands afterward."
Oddly Enough Article | Reuters.co.uk
Oddly Enough Article | Reuters.co.uk: "JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa is lighting up power lines in a bid to prevent fatal collisions which are taking a toll on its national bird, the blue crane.
Fluorescent lights have been attached to lines in the mountainous Overberg region east of Cape Town, scene of many of the mid-air mishaps involving the elegant, silvery blue birds."
Court: Forced Laxative Violated Rights - Yahoo! News
Court: Forced Laxative Violated Rights - Yahoo! News: "Police in Milwaukee performed an unreasonable search and seizure when they forced a man to take laxative treatments for several hours until they recovered a baggie of heroin he swallowed, a state appeals court ruled Tuesday.
Police officers said they gave Tomas Payano-Roman the treatment at a Milwaukee hospital in 2002 because they feared the bag would break and he would die of a drug overdose."
Man Charged in Women's Underwear Theft - Yahoo! News
Man Charged in Women's Underwear Theft - Yahoo! News: "NEW WILMINGTON, Pa. - A man found outside a Westminster College dormitory over the weekend was arrested on charges of stealing the underwear of female students.
Police said James Brian Eberle, 32, was arrested Saturday near Shaw Hall dormitory and police found four pairs of women's panties and three bras stuffed into his pants. College officials had reported a suspicious man on campus days before."
British Navy Punishes Group for Nude Swim - Yahoo! News
British Navy Punishes Group for Nude Swim - Yahoo! News: "LONDON - The British navy has punished a group of officers for apparently swimming naked in the Caribbean, the Ministry of Defense said Tuesday.
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The group of about six men and one woman belong to the crew of the destroyer HMS Liverpool, which is helping rebuild the island of Grenada after Hurricane Ivan."
Inmates Told to Pay $50 to Visit Children - Yahoo! News
Inmates Told to Pay $50 to Visit Children - Yahoo! News: "HOLLIDAYSBURG, Pa. - Inmates must pay a $50 fee if they want to visit their children, a new policy that has angered jailed parents.
The fee covers the cost of transporting inmates two blocks from the Blair County Jail to the courthouse, where the visitations take place, and the cost of paying two sheriff's deputies to attend the visitations, Sheriff Larry Field said. The fee, which Field instituted last month, also cuts down on frivolous visits, he said."
Cat Survives Fire, House Explosion - Yahoo! News
Cat Survives Fire, House Explosion - Yahoo! News: "BRAZIL, Ind. - A cat survived a fire and explosion that destroyed its owners' home and injured a half-dozen firefighters. Two off-duty firefighters found the cat while checking the remnants of Ken Michael's house on behalf of his insurance company.
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'They found it up inside the box springs,' Michael said. 'We took him off to the vet and found out he was perfect.'"
Cops: Woman Tries Arson to Evict Daughters - Yahoo! News
Cops: Woman Tries Arson to Evict Daughters - Yahoo! News: "PEARL RIVER, La. - A woman tried to evict her adult daughters by torching her house after they refused to give her money to buy cocaine, authorities said Tuesday.
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Belinda Smith, 47, remained in the parish jail, booked with aggravated arson and aggravated criminal damage, sheriff's office spokesman James Hartman said.
'Belinda Smith admitted trying to burn the house and to assaulting her daughters, arguing the home is hers and she was therefore free to destroy it,' he wrote in a news release."
Ky. Man Charged With Drunken Horse Riding - Yahoo! News
Ky. Man Charged With Drunken Horse Riding - Yahoo! News: "SOMERSET, Ky. - A man has been charged with drunken driving — for riding a horse while allegedly intoxicated. Millard Greg Dwyer, 42, was arrested Sunday night after he rode his horse onto a downtown street in front of an off-duty state trooper, Somerset Police Lt. Allan Coomer said.
Trooper Martin Wesley told local officers that Dwyer looked like he was about to fall off the horse."
Car Hits House, but Toddler Keeps Sleeping - Yahoo! News
Car Hits House, but Toddler Keeps Sleeping - Yahoo! News: "NORFOLK, Va. - Wild horses might be able to wake TaylorAnn Richason, but not mere horsepower. Her whole house shook early Tuesday when a car crashed into it, destroying a sheetrock wall just inches from the 3-year-old's bed. The toddler, uninjured, slept right through it.
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Marsha Richason ran to her daughter's room to find steam wafting through it from the car's smashed radiator.
'There was an angel on my daughter's side,' she said.
The car slammed into the side of the Richasons' house about 2:30 a.m., punching a hole in the child's bedroom wall. Police had tried to pull over the car, and the driver took off, said Cpl. Kurt Stanton, a police spokesman. The driver then lost control and slammed into the Richason's home."
Oddly Enough Article | Reuters.co.uk
Oddly Enough Article | Reuters.co.uk: "SHANGHAI (Reuters) - A newly-wed couple in Shanghai have filed a complaint against a local hotel after the groom broke his arm during bedroom fun and games. Yu Haitao and bride Fang Shuling were taking part in traditional tease-the-newly-weds celebrations when Yu tumbled off the bed breaking his left arm, state media said on Wednesday.
'My husband slipped right after he stood up on the bed to get ready for the games,' Fang told the Shanghai Daily.
'It happened within seconds without any big movement.'
Yu, 28, who underwent a 20,000 yuan (1,284 pound) operation on Tuesday, and Fang said the hotel had provided unsafe facilities, the newspaper added."
Power Outage Hits EBay - Yahoo! News
Power Outage Hits EBay - Yahoo! News: "A power outage at one of EBay's major hosting facilities in the San Francisco area hit the popular online auction service late Monday, it says.
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The outage resulted in the site becoming unavailable, according to a notice posted on a secondary server just after 9 p.m. PDT Monday.
About an hour later, a second message was posted detailing the reason for the site failure and letting users know that parts of the site were again available.
'We will keep you updated on progress, and we appreciate your patience,' it concluded."
Internet News Article | Reuters.co.uk
Internet News Article | Reuters.co.uk: "GENEVA (Reuters) - American actor Morgan Freeman, winner of this year's best supporting actor Oscar for his performance in 'Million Dollar Baby', won a cybersquatting case in a ruling by an international arbitrator on Tuesday.
Freeman was found to have common law rights to the contested Internet domain name (morganfreeman.com: Quote, Profile, Research) , which had been registered by a Saint Kitts and Nevis-based web site operator."
Faults Found in Online Reporter's Stories - Yahoo! News
Faults Found in Online Reporter's Stories - Yahoo! News: "WASHINGTON - An investigation over the sourcing and accuracy of roughly 160 news stories by a freelance journalist at a leading Internet news site concluded that the existence of more than 40 people quoted in the articles could not be confirmed.
Wired News, which publishes some articles from Wired magazine, disclosed results late Monday of its review into stories by one of its frequent contributors, Michelle Delio, 37, of New York City. The stories covered subjects that ranged from computer viruses to the September 2001 terrorist attacks."
Wired News: Eat Fat to Lose Fat
Wired News: Eat Fat to Lose Fat: "Diets too low in fat may be responsible for stubborn bulges on bellies, thighs and butts, according to a new study.
Dieters trying slim down by following extremely low-fat diets may be causing the exact opposite results, according to new research from the Washington University in St. Louis. Eating at least small amounts of dietary fats, such as fish oils, might be a better way to kick-start fat-burning, say researchers."
Health News Article | Reuters.co.uk
Health News Article | Reuters.co.uk: "NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Formula feeds containing fatty acids -- specifically docosahexanoic acid (DHA) and arachidonic acid (ARA) -- may improve the development of preterm infants, new research suggests.
The findings, which appear in the Journal of Pediatrics for April, are based on a study of 361 preterm infants who were randomized to receive formula containing DHA from algal oil and ARA from fungal oil, DHA from fish oil and ARA from fungal oil, or no supplementation. The babies were compared to a group of 105 full-term breast-fed infants."
Health News Article | Reuters.co.uk
Health News Article | Reuters.co.uk: "NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - US researchers may have come up with a test that reliably detects ovarian cancer in its early stages, when it is more easily curable.
Ovarian cancer is a 'silent' disease early on, and is often not diagnosed until it is advanced and difficult to remedy.
The newly reported test measures levels of four protein markers in blood -- leptin, prolactin, osteopontin, and insulin-like growth factor-II -- according to a report in the Early Edition of the research journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The developers of the test, Dr. Gil Mor from Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, and colleagues, examined its ability to distinguish between 106 disease-free subjects and 100 ovarian cancer patients, including 24 diagnosed with early-stage disease."
Depression tied to risk of becoming diabetic - Yahoo! News
Depression tied to risk of becoming diabetic - Yahoo! News: "NEW YORK (Reuters) - Young adults with a history of depression have an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes, according to a Canadian team.
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'Our results are very important because the typical onset of depression occurs between 20 and 30 years of age,' Dr. Jeffrey A. Johnson told Reuters Health. 'These are the people who are at highest risk of developing depression and, based on our study results, they seem to have the highest risk of developing type 2 diabetes.'
Diabetes and depression often co-exist, and 'depression is associated with worse outcomes in people with diabetes,' Dr. Johnson and colleagues from the University of Alberta, Edmonton, write in the journal Diabetes Care."
ADHD Drugs Not Just for Children Any More - Yahoo! News
ADHD Drugs Not Just for Children Any More - Yahoo! News: "NEW YORK - Like dormitories and dining halls, Adderall was something Cory Clair figured he'd leave behind in college. But when he went off the medication and started a new job in January, his mind began wandering at work — just as it did in class before he was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder and prescribed the drug, a common treatment for a related problem, attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder.
'I thought I'd have it for school, and then I'd be out and wouldn't need it anymore,' said Clair, who works in public relations in New York. 'I was wrong.'"
Moms pregnant with boys may be less forgetful - Yahoo! News
Moms pregnant with boys may be less forgetful - Yahoo! News: "VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) - Mothers pregnant with boys may be less forgetful than those carrying girls, Canadian researchers said on Tuesday.
The researchers said they found evidence that women who gave birth to boys consistently outperformed moms of girls in tests that specifically taxed memory in areas of listening, computational and visualization skills."
Early HIV Treatment Extending Kids' Lives - Yahoo! News
Early HIV Treatment Extending Kids' Lives - Yahoo! News: "TUESDAY, May 10 (HealthDay News) -- New research provides more evidence that advanced treatments greatly improve the lives of children infected with the virus that causes
AIDS, especially when the drugs are given shortly after birth.
However, specialists note that thousands of children remain
HIV-positive and will need care as they face potential problems ranging from side effects to psychiatric disorders."
Statin Drug May Help Slow Alzheimer's - Yahoo! News
Statin Drug May Help Slow Alzheimer's - Yahoo! News: "TUESDAY, May 10 (HealthDay News) -- The cholesterol-lowering drug atorvastatin (
Lipitor) may help boost thinking ability and psychiatric symptoms in people with mild to moderate
Alzheimer's disease, according to preliminary research.
This small study included 67 Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients who received either atorvastatin or placebo. Sixty-three of the patients were evaluated after three months, 56 at six months, 48 at nine months, and 46 at the one-year point."
Americans Aren't Planning for Hurricanes - Yahoo! News
Americans Aren't Planning for Hurricanes - Yahoo! News: "MIAMI - Most residents along the East and Gulf coasts don't plan to take even simple steps to protect themselves and their homes from hurricanes, despite the devastation caused by five hurricanes that struck the United States last year, according to a new poll.
Fifty-six percent of those surveyed said they felt 'not too' vulnerable or 'not at all' vulnerable, according to a Mason-Dixon poll released Monday. And one in four would do nothing to prepare for a storm, even after a watch or warning was issued."
NASA Satellite Captures Black Hole Birth - Yahoo! News
NASA Satellite Captures Black Hole Birth - Yahoo! News: "GREENBELT, Md. - The birth of a black hole has been captured for the first time, a
NASA scientist said Monday.
NASA's Swift orbiting observatory detected the gamma ray burst of the collision between two dense neutron stars about early Monday and pointed its visible light and X-ray telescopes at the collision about a minute later, said Neil Gehrels, lead scientist for the Swift mission."
Monday, May 09, 2005
GreenHybrid › Mileage Database - Hybrid Electric Vehicles & Cars
GreenHybrid › Mileage Database - Hybrid Electric Vehicles & Cars
Joi Ito's Web: BSOD upgrades to RSOD in Longhorn
Joi Ito's Web: BSOD upgrades to RSOD in Longhorn: "Redscreen
Microsoft Longhorn has upgraded from the 'Blue Screen of Death' to the 'Red Screen of Death'. Nice new look.
Via Michael Kaplan via Willl
UPDATE: Willl's friend noticed that 'execution' is spelled 'exectuion'. Either this is a hoax, or they haven't spellchecked Longhorn. Can anyone out there confirm this RSOD?
UPDATE 2: It appears that Michael is an employee of Microsoft. He also informs us that the RSOD is not an 'upgrade'. Longhorn still has BSOD. RSOD is for really bad errors."
Sunday, May 08, 2005
The News-Press: Education - Charter threatens parents with lawsuit
The News-Press: Education - Charter threatens parents with lawsuit: "Charter Schools USA is threatening legal action against parents who use an Internet discussion board to air grievances about Gateway Charter.
Parent Angela Reigelman, who created the virtual forum, received a letter via FedEx on Thursday ordering her to remove the forum. The company also warned other Web contributors Thursday.
Postings on the forum address topics ranging from academics and school events to complaints about school leadership and rumor control.
Some parents bluntly state their dissatisfaction with teachers, Principal Deborah Nauss and Charter Schools USA President Jonathan Hage, who said Thursday the company will 'vigorously defend' its reputation."
Om Malik’s Broadband Blog � Google (NOT) Hacked? Just A DNS Glitch says Google
Om Malik’s Broadband Blog � Google (NOT) Hacked? Just A DNS Glitch says Google: "Recap: 6:13PM PST: Google was not hacked, but instead had a DNS problem. For some readers the site was redirecting to the SoGoSearch page. That continues to fox me, and I plan to investigate further. All services have been restored. I find it amazing: Google is now as integrated in our lives as a phone company, or heaven forbid, TV networks. Multiple experts say that the screen grab I got was result of broswers not being able to resolve to Google.com, and instead stumbled upon google.com.net (com.net is the SoGoSearch website, and they have a wildcard match). Once Google’s DNS was restored, browsers stopped the appending, and started functioning normally."
Whitedust Security Portal
Whitedust Security Portal: "Extract:
A 'killer' new Firefox exploit has been revealed today by FrSIRT who warn that this 0day exploit/vulnerability (as yet unpatched) should be rated as critical. Summery of the exploit: If a user clicks anywhere on a specially crafted page, this code will automatically create and execute a malicious batch/exe file. Proof of concept code supplied by FrSIRT.
Editorial Comment:
Firefox's increased market share is apparently now proving, as many speculated it would, to be a double edged sword, also lending weight to the argument that up until recently other browsing software (including Firefox) deemed 'more secure than MSIE' has simply been benefiting from the somewhat dubious laws of 'security through obscurity'. "
Entrez PubMed
Entrez PubMed: "Recent reports indicate that functional mouse oocytes and sperm can be derived in vitro from somatic cell lines. We hypothesize that in adult human ovaries, mesenchymal cells in the tunica albuginea (TA) are bipotent progenitors with a commitment for both primitive granulosa and germ cells. We investigated ovaries of twelve adult women (mean age 32.8 /- 4.1 SD, range 27-38 years) by single, double, and triple color immunohistochemistry. We show that cytokeratin (CK) mesenchymal cells in ovarian TA differentiate into surface epithelium (SE) cells by a mesenchymal-epithelial transition. Segments of SE directly associated with ovarian cortex are overgrown by TA, forming solid epithelial cords, which fragment into small (20 micron) epithelial nests descending into the lower ovarian cortex, before assembling with zona pellucida (ZP) oocytes. Germ cells can originate from SE cells which cover the TA. Small (10 micron) germ-like cells showing PS1 meiotically expressed oocyte carbohydrate protein are derived from SE cells via asymmetric division. They show nuclear MAPK immunoexpression, subsequently divide symmetrically, and enter adjacent cortical vessels. During vascular transport, the putative germ cells increase to oocyte size, and are picked-up by epithelial nests associated with the vessels. During follicle formation, extensions of granulosa cells enter the oocyte cytoplasm, forming a single paranuclear CK Balbiani body supplying all the mitochondria of the oocyte. In the ovarian medulla, occasional vessels show an accumulation of ZP oocytes (25-30 microns) or their remnants, suggesting that some oocytes degenerate. In contrast to males, adult human female gonads do not preserve germline type stem cells. This study expands our previous observations on the formation of germ cells in adult human ovaries. Differentiation of primitive granulosa and germ cells from the bipotent mesenchymal cell precursors of TA in adult human ovaries represents a most sophisticated adaptive mechanism created during the evolution of female reproduction. Our data indicate that the pool of primary follicles in adult human ovaries does not represent a static but a dynamic population of differentiating and regressing structures. An essential mission of such follicular turnover might be elimination of spontaneous or environmentally induced genetic alterations of oocytes in resting primary follicles."
Latest Business News and Financial Information | Reuters.co.uk
Latest Business News and Financial Information | Reuters.co.uk: "ATLANTA (Reuters) - Home Depot Inc. (HD.N: Quote, Profile, Research) , the world's largest home improvement retailer, on Friday said it may periodically sell up to $5 billion (2.6 billion pounds) in debt.
The home-goods retailer said it plans to use proceeds for general corporate purposes, including debt repayment, acquisitions and working capital, according to the filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Under a shelf registration, a company may sell securities in one or more separate offering with the size, price and terms to be determined at the time of the sale.
In a separate statement, Home Depot said that while it generates strong cash flow from operations, it was 'prudent' to have a shelf in place."
School Reduces Suspension Over Iraq Call - Yahoo! News
School Reduces Suspension Over Iraq Call - Yahoo! News: "COLUMBUS, Ga. - Following hundreds of angry phone calls and e-mails, school officials in this Army base city have reduced a suspension imposed on a student who wouldn't give up his cell phone while talking to his mom — a sergeant on duty in
Iraq.
The angry calls about the boy's suspension got so bad at one point that secretaries had to take their phones off the hook, assistant principal Alfred Parham said.
Kevin Francois, a 17-year-old junior at Spencer High School, was suspended for 10 days for disorderly conduct Wednesday after a teacher told him to give up his cell phone outside the school during his lunch break and he refused, the teen said."
Wired News: Your Identity, Open to All
Wired News: Your Identity, Open to All: "A search for personal data on ZabaSearch.com -- one of the most comprehensive personal-data search engines on the net -- tends to elicit one of two reactions from first-timers: terror or curiosity. Which reaction often depends on whether you are searching for someone else's data, or your own.
ZabaSearch queries return a wealth of info sometimes dating back more than 10 years: residential addresses, phone numbers both listed and unlisted, birth year, even satellite photos of people's homes."
Schneier on Security: New U.S. Government Cybersecurity Position
Schneier on Security: New U.S. Government Cybersecurity Position: "From InfoWorld:
The Department of Homeland Security Cybersecurity Enhancement Act, approved by the House Subcommittee on Economic Security, Infrastructure Protection and Cybersecurity, would create the position of assistant secretary for cybersecurity at DHS. The bill, sponsored by Representatives Mac Thornberry, a Texas Republican, and Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat, would also make the assistant secretary responsible for establishing a national cybersecurity threat reduction program and a national cybersecurity training program....
The top cybersecurity official at DHS has been the director of the agency's National Cyber Security Division, a lower-level position, and technology trade groups for several months have been calling for a higher-level position that could make cybersecurity a higher priority at DHS.
Sadly, this isn't going to amount to anything. Yes, it's good to have a higher-level official in charge of cybersecurity. But responsibility without authority doesn't work. A bigger bully pulpit isn't going to help without a coherent plan behind it, and we have none."
FiOS Speeds Up Web, Phone and TV Access - Yahoo! News
FiOS Speeds Up Web, Phone and TV Access - Yahoo! News: "Verizon Communications Inc. is offering a new deal in high-speed Internet service in parts of Maryland and Northern Virginia. But it's still a bit of a secret.
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Using a new, growing fiber-optic network, possibly coming to a neighborhood near you, Verizon can provide a connection faster than most digital subscriber lines or cable-modem services. The hair-thin strands of glass that make up this network can also carry up to four telephone lines to each subscriber.
What's more, FiOS, as Verizon calls its new service, can carry video signals as well. The company says it will introduce television programming in some markets by the end of the year but has not yet announced what its TV offerings will be in the Washington area, what they'll cost or when this service will go on the air (so to speak)."
Hackers figure out file extraction from Sony UMD - Yahoo! News
Hackers figure out file extraction from Sony UMD - Yahoo! News: "LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Software developers have figured out how to extract files from the Universal Media Discs used in
Sony Corp (SNE.N).'s (6758.T) new PlayStation Portable handheld video game device, though there is no way to play the games extracted from those discs.
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Some details of the exploit were posted Wednesday night on the Web site PS2nfo.com, along with lists showing all the files pulled off the game discs for 'Ridge Racers,' 'Wipeout Pure' and 'Vampire Chronicles.'
The games are not yet playable because there is no way to burn UMDs from scratch, and the PSP does not accommodate larger discs. However, the site said the ability to look through the games' file structures could still be instructive for developers."
Appeals court tosses FCC's broadcast flag rule - Yahoo! News
Appeals court tosses FCC's broadcast flag rule - Yahoo! News: "WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Friday struck down a
Federal Communications Commission rule designed to limit people from sending copies of digital television programs over the Internet.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said the
FCC had 'exceeded the scope of its delegated authority' with the 2003 rule, which would have required TV set manufacturers to start using new anti-piracy technology by July 1.
'We can find nothing in the statute, its legislative history, the applicable case law, or agency practice indicating that Congress meant to provide the sweeping authority the FCC now claims over receiver apparatus,' the three-judge appeals court panel said in its opinion."
Jail for 'Robin Hoods' who cost Microsoft millions - Yahoo! News
Jail for 'Robin Hoods' who cost Microsoft millions - Yahoo! News: "LONDON (Reuters) - Four Britons were jailed on Friday for being part of a global gang described as 'Robin Hoods' who stole expensive software from rich companies and gave it away for free over the Internet.
The group, described by prosecutors as 'sad individuals' who spent their lives in front of computers, were said to have cost firms such as Microsoft Corp. millions of dollars in profit and enraged its chairman,
Bill Gates.
Prosecutors told London's Old Bailey criminal court that the four men, motivated by a hatred of software companies, were the key players in an international ring called DrinkorDie.com, said to be one of the world's most sophisticated Web piracy groups."
Health Tip: Uncovering Child Abuse - Yahoo! News
Health Tip: Uncovering Child Abuse - Yahoo! News: "The American Medical Association lists these signs that indicate a child has possibly been or is being abused:
* A poor self-image.
* Acting out sexually.
* Aggressive, disruptive, and sometimes illegal behavior.
* Anger and rage, or feelings of sadness or other symptoms of depression.
* Self-destructive or self-abusive behavior, suicidal thoughts.
* Passive or withdrawn behavior.
* Anxiety or fears, or flashbacks and nightmares.
* School problems or failure.
* Drug and alcohol abuse."
Oddly Enough Article | Reuters.co.uk
Oddly Enough Article | Reuters.co.uk: "BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Audacious thieves in Romania have constructed a complete automated teller machine (ATM), minus the cash box, to steal the details of account holders, banking officials said.
Fake ATMs have appeared at blocks of flats or in areas of the capital where there are no banks, local papers reported.
Usually criminals only place a fake panel over an existing ATM, and do not construct a complete machine.
Police are investigating the incidents.
Romania's biggest bank, Banca Comerciala Romana (BCR), said customers should only use ATMs situated around bank branches. 'Banks do not install ATMs in blocks of flats,' BCR spokesman Cornel Cojocaru said. "
Google yanks two political ads attacking Reps. Pelosi and DeLay - Yahoo! News
Google yanks two political ads attacking Reps. Pelosi and DeLay - Yahoo! News: "A complaint this week by a conservative advocacy group over a political attack ad it tried to place on Google's Web site has again raised questions about the company's restrictive advertising policies and whether it can effectively police them.
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RightMarch.com, a conservative group based in Georgia, tried last week to place an ad on Google and its advertising network that was critical of California Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat. The ad was a direct response to one already running on Google attacking Republican Congressman Tom DeLay, the House majority leader.
Google nonetheless rejected the anti-Pelosi ad, saying it does not permit ad text that ``advocates against an individual.''"
Oddly Enough Article | Reuters.co.uk
Oddly Enough Article | Reuters.co.uk: "When authorities caught a Midwestern U.S. teenage boy stealing girls' underwear, they immediately demonised his underwear fetish, Pennsylvania State University researcher Patricia Barthalow Kosch said. Many clinicians attribute the boy's crime more to broken family relations. The crime was theft, not his sexual fantasies, conference attendees said.
Teen sexuality draws sensational headlines, but suffers from a lack of academic study, researchers said.
Kim Openshaw, a psychology professor at Utah State University in Logan, Utah, who studies teenage sex offenders, said the limited amount of research so far has found that girls make up only 5 to 10 percent of all underage sex offenders.
The numbers are underreported, Openshaw says, because many people are reluctant to acknowledge the problem.
Victims of girl sex offenders tend to be in the immediate family circle. Most perpetrators are victims of family abuse. By contrast, boy sex offenders tend to be more macho, violent and attack outside of their immediate family. "
Oddly Enough Article | Reuters.co.uk
Oddly Enough Article | Reuters.co.uk: "SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters)- From bondage to 'breath play' and zoophilia, it's not easy keeping up with society's fast-developing sexual trends.
That's why some of North America's top sexologists are hunkered down with academics and therapists at a Fisherman's Wharf hotel this weekend: to swap findings about everything from teens with underwear fetishes to transgender couples.
'These couples have problems that I didn't know how to deal with,' said Olga Perez Stable Cox, president of the Western U.S. region of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality. 'You have to understand the culture, otherwise you're an outsider, and you don't get it.'
The theme for the society's four-day conference is 'Unstudied, Understudied And Underserved Sexual Communities.' Presentations range from discussions from autoerotic asphyxiation, or 'breath play,' to zoophiles, or animal lovers, to more mainstream topics like sex motives of dating partners.
'Let me tell you, it was not easy finding these pictures,' Hunter College professor Jose E. Nanin told his audience in a seminar about 'specialised' sexual behaviour among gay men."
Oddly Enough Article | Reuters.co.uk
Oddly Enough Article | Reuters.co.uk: "SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters)- From bondage to 'breath play' and zoophilia, it's not easy keeping up with society's fast-developing sexual trends.
That's why some of North America's top sexologists are hunkered down with academics and therapists at a Fisherman's Wharf hotel this weekend: to swap findings about everything from teens with underwear fetishes to transgender couples.
'These couples have problems that I didn't know how to deal with,' said Olga Perez Stable Cox, president of the Western U.S. region of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality. 'You have to understand the culture, otherwise you're an outsider, and you don't get it.'
The theme for the society's four-day conference is 'Unstudied, Understudied And Underserved Sexual Communities.' Presentations range from discussions from autoerotic asphyxiation, or 'breath play,' to zoophiles, or animal lovers, to more mainstream topics like sex motives of dating partners.
'Let me tell you, it was not easy finding these pictures,' Hunter College professor Jose E. Nanin told his audience in a seminar about 'specialised' sexual behaviour among gay men."
Doc Says Arthritis Killed Columbus - Yahoo! News
Doc Says Arthritis Killed Columbus - Yahoo! News: "BALTIMORE - Bad food or a sexually transmitted disease probably crippled Christopher Columbus, a researcher suggested Friday.
The famed explorer was struck with a mysterious illness while returning from his first voyage to the New World, and doctors at the time blamed gout. Although he made four trips to the Americas, the disease progressively became worse and he died a crippled man.
Dr. Frank C. Arnett, a rheumatologist at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston, said Columbus more likely was struck with reactive arthritis, caused by a number of bacteria responsible for food poisoning as well as sexually transmitted diseases such as chlamydia."
Utah Study Links Obesity and Bad Knees - Yahoo! News
Utah Study Links Obesity and Bad Knees - Yahoo! News: "SALT LAKE CITY - As Americans continue to get bigger, you can add knee problems to the list of ailments they are likely to face after lugging around extra pounds.
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Being extremely overweight leads to more than half of the nation's 850,000 annual operations to repair tears in the cartilage that cushions the knee joint, according to a study from the University of Utah."
Wired News: Ovarian Cells Yield Human Eggs
Wired News: Ovarian Cells Yield Human Eggs: "Scientists in Tennessee have scraped stem cells from the surface of five women's ovaries and coaxed the cells to become human eggs.
The work, which was published in Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology, could extend a woman's fertility for a decade or more if future experiments show that the eggs are capable of becoming fertilized. The five women who volunteered for the study ranged in age from 39 to 52."
Wired News: Word's Open-Source Competition
Wired News: Word's Open-Source Competition: "The latest version of the free OpenOffice suite promises to be a strong competitor to Microsoft Office. It's still in beta, but it's already a good alternative -- and you can't argue with the price.
OpenOffice is the fruit of a collaboration between Sun Microsystems and volunteer programmers around the world. Sun bought a German company in 1999 to get office software to bundle with its computers but figured that it wasn't going to make big bucks selling the software to a wider market because of Microsoft's grip. So it released portions of the code to the public."
Wired News: Ovarian Cells Yield Human Eggs
Wired News: Ovarian Cells Yield Human Eggs: "Scientists in Tennessee have scraped stem cells from the surface of five women's ovaries and coaxed the cells to become human eggs.
The work, which was published in Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology, could extend a woman's fertility for a decade or more if future experiments show that the eggs are capable of becoming fertilized. The five women who volunteered for the study ranged in age from 39 to 52."
Wired News: Computers Grade Students' Writing
Wired News: Computers Grade Students' Writing: "COLUMBIA, Missouri -- Student essays always seem to be riddled with the same sorts of flaws. So sociology professor Ed Brent decided to hand the work off -- to a computer.
Students in Brent's Introduction to Sociology course at the University of Missouri-Columbia now submit drafts through the SAGrader software he designed. It counts the number of points he wanted his students to include and analyzes how well concepts are explained."
IMINT / DOE - Nevada Test Site
IMINT / DOE - Nevada Test Site: "Sedan Crater was formed when a 100 kt. Explosive buried under 635 feet of desert alluvium was fired at the NTS on July 6, 1962, displacing 12 million tons of earth. The crater is 320 feet deep and 1,280 feet in diameter."
Saturday, May 07, 2005
Science News Article | Reuters.co.uk
Science News Article | Reuters.co.uk: "HARBIN, China (Reuters) - A gray sculpture depicts Japanese soldiers holding a Chinese man down as an army doctor injects him with what could be bubonic plague, cholera or anthrax virus.
In another tableau, a Japanese doctor observes a person lying on the floor of a glass-walled chamber as the air pressure inside is raised to lethal levels.
Those are among the many horrific memories of Unit 731, a Japanese military base in northeast China used for germ warfare development before and during World War II, that live on at a Chinese museum built on the base's crumbling brick bones.
At least 3,000 people, including Chinese civilians, Russians, Mongolians and Koreans, were killed in tests of biological weapons and other experiments at Unit 731 between 1939 and 1945, Chinese state media say."
Nuclear Detection: Portals, fixed detectors, and NEST teams won’t work on a national scale, so what next?
Nuclear Detection: Portals, fixed detectors, and NEST teams won’t work on a national scale, so what next?
20050507-01.disarm.pdf
Study: Metabolic Syndrome Brings Big Costs - Yahoo! News
Study: Metabolic Syndrome Brings Big Costs - Yahoo! News: "TRENTON, N.J. - Americans with metabolic syndrome � a condition marked by big waistlines, diabetes, high blood pressure and cholesterol problems � account for $4 of every $10 spent on prescription drugs for adults, according to a study.
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The report by Medco Health Solutions, a huge prescription benefit manager, shows that adult use of medication for the syndrome jumped 36 percent between 2002 and 2004.
Annual prescription costs for people 20 and older with metabolic syndrome averaged $4,116 last year, 4.2 times the average amount spent on drugs for that age group, according to New Jersey-based Medco, which released the data exclusively to The Associated Press."
Wired News: Judging a Book by Its Contents
Wired News: Judging a Book by Its Contents: "The haiku-like SIPs are not the only word toys on the site. Customers can also see the 100 most common words in a book. Penny pinchers -- or those with back problems -- can check stats on how many words a volume delivers per dollar or per ounce. (Bargain hunters will love the Penguin Classics edition of War and Peace that delivers 51,707 words per dollar.)
Customers can also see how complicated the writing is (yes, post-structuralist Michel Foucault's prose is foggier than Immanuel Kant's), and how much education you need to understand a book. (To understand French philosopher Pierre Bourdieu, you'll need a second Ph.D.)
While such services seem to have little value and have generated scant publicity, except from bibliophilic thrill seekers, web watchers say the madcap stats aren't just for kicks.
'(Amazon CEO) Jeff Bezos was born on numbers,' said Nathan Torkington, an editor and conference coordinator for O'Reilly Media. 'Before starting Amazon.com, he was a Wall Street analyst. They will be looking at this thinking, 'What can we do to drive the bottom line?' There's no way they will be regarding this as, 'We are math geeks and you will enjoy the numbers, too.'' "
Oddly Enough Article | Reuters.co.uk
Oddly Enough Article | Reuters.co.uk: "SEOUL (Reuters) - Parents looking to grab a teenager's attention with a stiff punishment should confiscate their mobile phone.
A study by a top South Korean advertising firm shows that a mobile is one of a Korean teenager's most prized possessions.
Among 13- to 15-year-olds, 77.5 percent said a mobile phone was a 'must-have' item, while for those aged 16 to 18 the figure was 76.7 percent, the Cheil Communications survey showed."
Wired News: Plan B: Ignore the Science?
Wired News: Plan B: Ignore the Science?: "It's science versus politics once again in the widening fight over the 'morning after' pill known as Plan B, with medical researchers this week citing studies showing the drug does not induce abortions, as is commonly thought.
Abortion politics have repeatedly haunted discussions of so-called emergency contraception such as Plan B. It's often referred to in news stories and by anti-abortion groups as an abortion pill, and pro-life advocates have unleashed a campaign against it in the United States that has reverberated through the ranks of the Federal Drug Administration and more than a dozen state legislatures. "
Friday, May 06, 2005
FAQ: How Real ID will affect you | CNET News.com
FAQ: How Real ID will affect you | CNET News.com: "What's all the fuss with the Real ID Act about?
President Bush is expected to sign an $82 billion military spending bill soon that will, in part, create electronically readable, federally approved ID cards for Americans. The House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved the package--which includes the Real ID Act--on Thursday.
What does that mean for me?
Starting three years from now, if you live or work in the United States, you'll need a federally approved ID card to travel on an airplane, open a bank account, collect Social Security payments, or take advantage of nearly any government service. Practically speaking, your driver's license likely will have to be reissued to meet federal standards."
Morse code trumps SMS in head-to-head speed texting combat - Engadget - www.engadget.com /
Morse code trumps SMS in head-to-head speed texting combat - Engadget - www.engadget.com /: "Okay, the world title for fastest text messaging is still raging in the streets. The victor in the most recent contest was a bit of a dark horse � 93-year-old telegraph operator Gordon Hill delivered a resounding ass-whoopin� to his rival, 13-year-old Brittany Devlin, using Morse Code. Of course, Mr. Hill does have nigh on 80 years of practice under his belt, which was enough to help him triumph even despite Brittany�s liberal use of texting slang (Mr. Hill transmitted the chosen phrase verbatim). The showdown was sponsored by the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, Australia, and the rivals had to transmit the following message: �Hey, girlfriend, you can text all your best pals to tell them where you are going and what you are wearing.� Damn straight! Screw the T9, Engadget�s switching over to Morse from now on."
PhysOrg: Researchers make bendable concrete
PhysOrg: Researchers make bendable concrete: "A new type of fiber-reinforced bendable concrete will be used for the first time in Michigan this summer- and University of Michigan scientists hope that their new material will find widespread use across the country.
The new concrete looks like regular concrete, but is 500 times more resistant to cracking and 40 percent lighter in weight. Tiny fibers that comprise about 2 percent of the mixture's volume partly account for its performance. Also, the materials in the concrete itself are designed for maximum flexibility. Because of its long life, the Engineered Cement Composites (ECC) are expected to cost less in the long run, as well. "
Lightning Strikes Florida Man Twice - Yahoo! News
Lightning Strikes Florida Man Twice - Yahoo! News: "SPRING HILL, Fla. - Emory Johnson can now talk about surviving a lightning strike not once, but twice. The second jolt was much worse for the Tarpon Springs construction worker.
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Johnson was working on an air-conditioning system when rain started and he moved his tools inside at a four-unit villa being built near Spring Hill.
He stepped off a fiberglass ladder and onto the floor Wednesday as lightning hit a 50-foot pine tree outside. The bolt tore a swath of bark off the tree, moved across a pile of duct work and shot in a window."
Teacher jailed for sex with pupil - Yahoo! News
Teacher jailed for sex with pupil - Yahoo! News: "SYDNEY (Reuters) - An Australian female teacher was jailed for six months Thursday for having sex with a teenage student, with a warning from the judge that future offenders could not expect such 'lenient' treatment.
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Karen Louise Ellis, a 37-year-old physical education teacher, had earlier received a suspended sentence of 22 months after she pleaded guilty to six counts of sexual penetration with a boy aged under 16."
Band Banned From Performing 'Louie Louie' - Yahoo! News
Band Banned From Performing 'Louie Louie' - Yahoo! News: "BENTON HARBOR, Mich. - A pop culture controversy that has simmered for decades came to a head when a middle school marching band was told not to perform 'Louie Louie.'
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Benton Harbor Superintendent Paula Dawning cited the song's allegedly raunchy lyrics in ordering the McCord Middle School band not to perform it in Saturday's Grand Floral Parade, held as part of the Blossomtime Festival.
In a letter sent home with McCord students, Dawning said 'Louie Louie' was not appropriate for Benton Harbor students to play while representing the district � even though the marching band wasn't going to sing it.
Band members and parents complained to the Board of Education at its Tuesday meeting that it was too late to learn another song, The Herald-Palladium of St. Joseph reported.
'It's very stressful for us to try to come up with new songs for the band,' eighth-grader Laurice Martin told the board. 'We're trying to learn the songs from last year, but some of us weren't in the band last year.'
Dawning said that if a majority of parents supports their children playing the song, she will reconsider her decision.
'It was not that I knew at the beginning and said nothing,' Dawning said. 'I normally count on the staff to make reliable decisions. I found out because a parent called, concerned about the song being played.'
'Louie Louie,' written by Richard Berry in 1956, is one of the most recorded songs in history. The best-known, most notorious version was a hit in 1963 for the Kingsmen; the FBI spent two years investigating the lyrics before declaring they not only were not obscene but also were 'unintelligible at any speed.'"
Cops: Driver Defends Skills With Sword - Yahoo! News
Cops: Driver Defends Skills With Sword - Yahoo! News: "NASHUA, N.H. - A man is accused of defending his driving skills by pulling out a sword and popping a tire on another man's car.
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Charles O'Neil, 36, was driving slowly on the Henri Burque Highway last Sunday when someone driving behind him became annoyed, honked his horn and passed him, police said."
Pittsburgh Aviary Plans Penguin Bingo Game - Yahoo! News
Pittsburgh Aviary Plans Penguin Bingo Game - Yahoo! News: "PITTSBURGH - The National Aviary in Pittsburgh is planning to celebrate National Migratory Bird Days with various promotions, including a bizarre game of penguin bingo. "
Denise Coke Arrested on Cocaine Charges - Yahoo! News
Denise Coke Arrested on Cocaine Charges - Yahoo! News: "ROSEVILLE, Mich. - A woman identified by authorities as Denise Coke was arrested after a drug-sniffing dog discovered 33 pounds of cocaine in her vehicle.
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Roseville police acting on a tip gave Michigan State Police the description of a vehicle allegedly containing drugs. Coke, 25, of Detroit was arrested after being pulled over for speeding Tuesday night on Interstate 696."
Carjack Suspect Reports 'His' Car Stolen - Yahoo! News
Carjack Suspect Reports 'His' Car Stolen - Yahoo! News: "BALTIMORE - A suspect takes a car at gunpoint and drives it around for two weeks before the owner spots the car and has it towed. The thief then calls police to report 'his' car stolen.
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Those events seemed so improbable that Baltimore police detective Gregory Jenkins felt compelled to end his report of the incident with the admonition, 'Again, this really happened.'"
'Whore College' Offers Hands-On Training - Yahoo! News
'Whore College' Offers Hands-On Training - Yahoo! News: "SAN FRANCISCO - The 25 students in jeans and T-shirts could have been in any career that requires hustle. The classes, covering topics such as effective marketing, stress reduction and legal issues, could have been part of any professional development seminar.
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But this was 'Whore College,' and any illusion it was just another corporate how-to for young go-getters abruptly ended at the sex toy display and was stripped away for good during a graphic demonstration that put a whole new twist on the concept of hands-on training."
'Serial' Litter Bug Banned in Va. County - Yahoo! News
'Serial' Litter Bug Banned in Va. County - Yahoo! News: "BERRYVILLE, Va. - A West Virginia man � branded a 'serial litterer' by a Virginia prosecutor � was banned from a border county for two years for repeatedly driving across the state line to dump trash.
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General District Court Judge Norman deVere Morrison warned Parviz Modaber, 73, of Harpers Ferry, W.Va., he could go to jail if he violates the order."
Thursday, May 05, 2005
Kdrive
Kdrive: "Kdrive is a virtual global hard drive. Anyone can create a folder (or group) on the Kdrive. Once you create a folder you are the folder's admin. As the admin you can create accounts for other users to access your folder. Every folder has a unique name.
Folders also act as chat rooms. You can talk to everyone who is also logged into the folder. You can also send private instant messages to anyone else."
Electronic News - China to Top U.S. in Broadband Subscribers - 5/4/2005 - Electronic News - CA529685
Electronic News - China to Top U.S. in Broadband Subscribers - 5/4/2005 - Electronic News - CA529685: "If the competitiveness of nations can be measured by their broadband subscriber rolls, then the United States is on the verge of losing its leadership to China, market researchers at iSuppli Corp. suggest.
China already is rapidly approaching the United States as the country with the largest number of broadband subscribers, according to the El Segundo, Calif.-based firm, and by the end of the year, China is expected to have 34 million subscribers, compared to 39 million in the United States."
VoIP: More Than a Less-Expensive Replacement for Copper Wire - Yahoo! News
VoIP: More Than a Less-Expensive Replacement for Copper Wire - Yahoo! News: "Voice over Internet Protocol technology promises to bring less expensive telephone services to businesses and consumers, but cost savings are only one dimension of VoIP.
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Serious demand for the technology, vendors have said, will kick in when users discover that the real value of VoIP is more than just a way to make less expensive phone calls. According to the telcos and service companies pushing the technology, it is an enabler of a myriad of voice-integrated, software-based services.
A new report released by In-Stat suggests that the consumer and small-business switch to VoIP will gain steam through 2009 and reach a high point between 2010 and 2014."
Texas to cheerleaders Don't shake it anymore - Yahoo! News
Texas to cheerleaders Don't shake it anymore - Yahoo! News: "AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - Texas lawmakers sent a message to the state's high school cheerleaders on Wednesday: no more booty-shaking at the game.
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The state's House of Representatives voted 85-55 to approve a bill that would forbid sexy cheers and give the Texas Education Agency authority to punish schools that allow 'overtly sexually suggestive' routines at football games and other events."
Simple Questions Spot Kids at Secondhand Smoke Risk - Yahoo! News
Simple Questions Spot Kids at Secondhand Smoke Risk - Yahoo! News: "TUESDAY, May 3 (HealthDay News) -- Pediatricians and other health-care providers need only ask parents a few simple questions to reliably identify children at risk for exposure to secondhand smoke, researchers say.
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Researchers at Ohio State University collected hair samples from 291 children ranging between 2 weeks and 3 years of age. They then divided the children into three groups -- low, medium and high secondhand smoke exposure -- based on their hair levels of a chemical called cotinine."
Stress and mood predict kid's arthritis symptoms - Yahoo! News
Stress and mood predict kid's arthritis symptoms - Yahoo! News: "NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - In children with arthritis, stress and mood are important predictors of disease symptoms, research shows, suggesting that non-drug interventions, such as stress management and cognitive behavioral therapy, may be useful in ameliorating symptoms.
Childhood arthritis is characterized by unpredictable flares of disease symptoms such as pain, morning stiffness, fatigue, and sleep troubles. And while researchers have long suspected a link between psychosocial stress, mood, pain, and disease flares in childhood arthritis, these relationships have not been studied adequately."
Switching depression treatment can help - Yahoo! News
Switching depression treatment can help - Yahoo! News: "NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Depressed individuals who fail to respond to initial treatment with an antidepressant or psychotherapy may do better if they are switched to the alternative treatment, new study findings suggest.
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'Surprisingly few studies have evaluated the role of medication following nonresponse to psychotherapy,' the authors of the study say and 'none has evaluated the efficacy of psychotherapy following nonresponse to medication.'"
Health officials unsure about flu vaccine - Yahoo! News
Health officials unsure about flu vaccine - Yahoo! News: "WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The flu vaccine supply for the upcoming 2005-2006 influenza season is still uncertain, with one maker racing to fix a closed factory and others trying to win new U.S. licenses, health officials said on Wednesday.
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A U.S. Food and Drug Administration official said Chiron Corp. was still working on its facility in Liverpool, England, while GlaxoSmithKline was trying to get approval to supply the U.S. market for the first time."
Researchers Tested Drugs on Foster Kids - Yahoo! News
Researchers Tested Drugs on Foster Kids - Yahoo! News: "WASHINGTON - Government-funded researchers tested AIDS drugs on hundreds of foster children over the past two decades, often without providing them a basic protection afforded in federal law and required by some states, an Associated Press review has found.
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The research funded by the National Institutes of Health spanned the country. It was most widespread in the 1990s as foster care agencies sought treatments for their HIV-infected children that weren't yet available in the marketplace."
Wired News: Just Say No to Cancer Screenings
Wired News: Just Say No to Cancer Screenings: "Katie Couric, Rosie O'Donnell and Norman Schwarzkopf have all appeared on television delivering emotional pleas urging people to get screened for various types of cancer. But these public service announcements may be doing more harm than good, a new medical study claims.
In one television message, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani encourages people to get the prostate specific antigen, or PSA, test. 'Of course, we probably wouldn't be talking about this if I hadn't gotten screened....' he says. 'If you're over 50 or in a high-risk group, please get screened -- now.' "
Cheaper group tests flag infectious HIV carriers - Yahoo! News
Cheaper group tests flag infectious HIV carriers - Yahoo! News: "BOSTON (Reuters) - Health officials in North Carolina have found a cost-effective way to identify people whose infection with the AIDS virus is so recent that the standard screening test would not normally work.
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A new system pinpoints carriers earlier in the course of the disease, when they are at least 10 times more infectious than those detected by the standard test, researchers said in a study to be published on Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine."
Lawmakers kill proposed pet cloning ban - Yahoo! News
Lawmakers kill proposed pet cloning ban - Yahoo! News: "SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) - California lawmakers rejected a proposal on Tuesday that would have banned sales of cloned pets, a measure aimed at a San Francisco-area company's bid to replicate beloved family animals for profit.
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Proponents of the measure argued for the pet-clone ban because the technology was unregulated and animal shelters were already filled to capacity with potential pets."
Oddly Enough Article | Reuters.co.uk
Oddly Enough Article | Reuters.co.uk: "OSLO (Reuters) - Striptease is art like opera or ballet, an Oslo court has ruled in a victory for nightclub owners over Norway's tax authorities.
'I'm very pleased. Ninety percent of the guests here tell me that what I'm doing is art,' a female stripper at the Dream Go Go Bar in the city of Trondheim told NRK radio on Wednesday.
The court ruled this week that striptease should be treated like other artistic stage shows, ranging from stand-up comedy to opera, for which tickets are exempt from value-added tax (VAT)."
Prison Guards Seek Protection From Fluids - Yahoo! News
Prison Guards Seek Protection From Fluids - Yahoo! News: "MONTPELIER, Vt. - Vermont prisons do a good job at keeping knives and other weapons away from inmates. What they can't take away from offenders are their own bodily fluids.
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Urinating in a corrections guard's ice tea and throwing feces at the officers are the types of offenses that guards and prison administrators alike say should be punished more severely in Vermont."
Man Says Hospital Left Sponge in Shoulder - Yahoo! News
Man Says Hospital Left Sponge in Shoulder - Yahoo! News: "NORFOLK, Neb. - An man who claims a sponge was left in his shoulder following a surgery at Faith Regional Health Services is suing the hospital.
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Herman Koehler is suing for more than $75,000, alleging Faith Regional nurses neglected to remove a sponge from his left shoulder after arthroscopic surgery in June 2003."
Idaho Cities to Pay to Fix Bullet Holes - Yahoo! News
Idaho Cities to Pay to Fix Bullet Holes - Yahoo! News: "GARDEN CITY, Idaho - After officers fired 22 shots at a fleeing man without hitting him, Boise and Garden City police departments say they'll pay nearly $7,000 to repair bullet holes in homes that were hit during the wild confrontation.
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According to insurance claims filed with both departments by residents, shots fired by four officers in pursuit of 39-year-old Harlan Hale hit doors, windows, window moldings, garage doors, an all-terrain-vehicle and a clothes dryer. No one was injured in the March 9 chase."
Officer Stops Class on Drugs; Arrests Teen - Yahoo! News
Officer Stops Class on Drugs; Arrests Teen - Yahoo! News: "MUNCIE, Ind. - A state police trooper stopped a high school drug-awareness presentation to arrest a student in another part of the school on a charge of trying to sell marijuana.
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Detective Darrell Thornburg was speaking Tuesday to a Delta High School health class when administrators alerted him about possible drug dealing in the school. Students told school administrators about the 16-year-old selling the drug, Sgt. Rod Russell said."
Wednesday, May 04, 2005
N.J. Beach Town Repeals 30-Year Speedo Ban - Yahoo! News
N.J. Beach Town Repeals 30-Year Speedo Ban - Yahoo! News: "CAPE MAY, N.J. - Come on in, Speedo wearers, the water's fine: Your skimpy little swimsuits are legal now. For more than 30 years, this quaint little Victorian-themed resort at the southern tip of New Jersey said no to 'skintight, formfitting or bikini type' bathing attire on males over the age of 12.
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For an ocean resort that once required men and women to swim at different times of day, wearing heavy woolen, cover-everything swimsuits, it made sense to modernize."
Ky. Town Angry Over Unflattering A&E Show - Yahoo! News
Ky. Town Angry Over Unflattering A&E Show - Yahoo! News: "PIKEVILLE, Ky. - Residents of this eastern Kentucky town are demanding an apology from the A&E network after an episode of 'City Confidential' that they say was unflattering and unfair.
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'Obviously, being labeled the town from hell can not be interpreted in any way as positive,' City Manager Donovan Blackburn wrote in a letter to the network."
Brothers, 3 and 5, Take Van for Joyride - Yahoo! News
Brothers, 3 and 5, Take Van for Joyride - Yahoo! News: "ROCHESTER, Ind. - Two brothers, ages 3 and 5, took their mother's van on a 5-mile ride in northern Indiana, crossing a four-lane highway, before crashing into a pile of dirt and emerging unhurt, their family said.
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The boys began Saturday morning as usual watching cartoons, but later took the van keys from their mother's purse and took off, their family said. Chase and Chandler Bright both sat in the drivers seat to steer the van, leaving their mother, Heather Bright, wondering how they reached the pedals."
Teen Forced to Remove Car Sound Equipment - Yahoo! News
Teen Forced to Remove Car Sound Equipment - Yahoo! News: "ALEXANDRIA, La. - A judge has ordered a teenager who blasted his pickup truck stereo to remove all non-factory installed sound equipment for violating a noise ordinance.
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Calvin Bennett Jr., 18, got the loud-music ticket in 2004 but missed his initial court appearance. Last Monday, he was arrested for contempt of court and spent the night in jail. He appeared Tuesday before district Judge Thomas Yeager on the loud-music citation."
If only they'd learn to put the lid down... - Yahoo! News
If only they'd learn to put the lid down... - Yahoo! News: "CANBERRA (Reuters) - The line for the toilet is about to get longer.
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Fed up with the mess created by kitty litter and inspired by the cat 'Mr Jinks' in the Hollywood film 'Meet the Fockers,' an Australian woman has invented a toilet training system for cats called the 'Litter-Kwitter.'
Mother-of-two Jo Lapidge is flushed with success after teaching her family's Burmese cat, Doogal, to use the toilet.
'Doogal has fallen in, but he hasn't fallen in by accident, he has done it playing with the water,' Lapidge told Reuters."
Don't do me any more favors... - Yahoo! News
Don't do me any more favors... - Yahoo! News: "BERLIN (Reuters) - After accepting what appeared to be a kind offer from a German motorist to tow his broken car, a stranded Polish motorist was taken on a terrifying high-speed joyride at speeds of 160 kph (100 mph), police said Tuesday.
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Police said a 36-year-old German man who offered assistance proceeded to hurl down the motorway at high speeds after tying a cable to the stranded car"
India chews over horny problem of holy cows - Yahoo! News
India chews over horny problem of holy cows - Yahoo! News: "NEW DELHI (Reuters) - An Indian court has ordered officials to clean up one of the biggest menaces prowling the wide avenues, luscious parks and crowded bazaars of the capital New Delhi -- holy cows.
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About 35,000 cows and buffaloes roam free in Delhi in the heart of north India's Hindu 'cow belt,' sharing roads with hordes of monkeys, camels and stray dogs and killing scores of people every year in gorings and traffic accidents.
Most are owned by residents who let them graze on grass and rubbish dumps and sell the milk to thousands of illegal dairies supplying New Delhi's 14 million people."
Bear Claws Woman, Covers Her With Brush - Yahoo! News
Bear Claws Woman, Covers Her With Brush - Yahoo! News: "ALBRIGHTSVILLE, Pa. - A group of campers said a bear dragged a woman into the woods, clawed her and bit her, then covered her with brush and left.
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Kathleen Feeney, 21, said she was too frightened to move as the animal tore off her poncho and sweat shirt, clawed at her back and bit her head, and wondered, 'When will it stop?'
'At one point,' she said Monday, 'the bear lay down beside me.'"
Feature: The Linux Kernel Archives
Feature: The Linux Kernel Archives: "The Linux Kernel Archives are perhaps most familiar through their web interface, http://kernel.org/. The latest release of the Linux kernel is easily found here, along with patches by various Linux kernel hackers, and mirrors of other popular free and open source projects. Countless people worldwide happily rely on this archive without giving much thought to the effort behind it."
Monday, May 02, 2005
Health News Article | Reuters.co.uk
Health News Article | Reuters.co.uk: "NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Adult survivors of childhood cancer are more likely to be underweight than the general population, study findings suggest.
'The majority of underweight survivors have an underlying problem that may be contributing to their leanness that should be identified and treated,' Dr. Lillian R. Meacham, at Emory University in Atlanta, and members of the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study group, report in the medical journal Cancer.
The authors surveyed 7,195 adults who were children when they were diagnosed with cancer between 1970 and 1986; had survived for at least 5 years; and were 20 years old or older at the time of the survey.
Meacham's group found that 8.6 percent of the women and 4.1 percent of the men were underweight, defined as having a body mass index (BMI) of less than 18.5. The corresponding proportions in the general population were 4.7 percent of women and 0.9 percent of men, according to the 1995 National Health Interview Survey.
Obesity, defined as a BMI of 30 or higher, was documented in 13.4 percent of female survivors and 12.3 percent of male survivors, compared with 16.5 percent and 16.7 percent of men and women in the general population. Only survivors of acute lymphoblastic leukemia were more likely to be obese."
Health News Article | Reuters.co.uk
Health News Article | Reuters.co.uk: "NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Having the flu during pregnancy or being infected with a microbe called Parvovirus raises the risk that the baby will be born with small eyes or even no eyes, new research shows. Still, even when the flu is present, the risk of these eye problems is very, very small.
The current study adds two more organisms to the growing list of bugs that can infect the mother and cause congenital eye problems. Other microbes that have shown this association include rubella, toxoplasmosis, varicella, and cytomegalovirus.
Interestingly, infection with another bug, known as Coxsackie virus, may actually reduce the risk of these eye problems."
Health News Article | Reuters.co.uk
Health News Article | Reuters.co.uk: "NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Women who feel less sexy after a hysterectomy may get a boost from a seemingly unlikely source -- testosterone, new research reports.
U.S. investigators found that women who reported a loss of their libido after surgeons removed their uterus and ovaries tended to show improvements after using a testosterone patch for 24 weeks. For instance, half of 266 patch users said they had one extra satisfying sexual encounter every 2.5 weeks.
In contrast, 266 women who received a placebo, or inactive, patch, had only one extra satisfying encounter every 5.5 weeks.
Patch users also reported less personal distress, the authors note in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology.
Women who tried the testosterone patch were equally likely to report side effects as women who used a placebo patch. However, testosterone-takers reported more side effects related to male hormones, such as acne and voice deepening.
The study was funded by Proctor & Gamble Pharmaceuticals, which is developing a female testosterone patch called Intrinsa, designed to spark women's sexual appetite."
Iranian hardliners against easing of abortion ban - Yahoo! News
Iranian hardliners against easing of abortion ban - Yahoo! News: "TEHRAN (AFP) -
Iran's Guardians Council, a hardline-controlled body that screens all legislation, said that it was opposed to allowing abortions of children that would be born mentally or physically handicapped.
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'The Guardians Council has found that inflicting difficulties on the child is against Sharia (Islamic law),' Guardians Council spokesman Gholam Hossein Elham was quoted as saying by the official news agency IRNA.
On April 12, Iran's conservative-held parliament adopted a bill to allow abortions in limited cases despite opposition from religious right-to-life MPs."
Health News Article | Reuters.co.uk
Health News Article | Reuters.co.uk: "WASHINGTON, May 2 (Reuters) - Hospital-acquired infections are worsening in the United States, even though the problem is widely recognized, according to a report issued on Monday.
And the problem of such infections provides a good indication of which hospitals are prone to errors overall, the report, from Colorado-based Health Grades Inc, finds.
'Hospital-acquired infections rates worsened by approximately 20 percent from 2000 to 2003 and accounted for 9,552 deaths and $2.60 billion, almost 30 percent of the total excess cost related to the patient safety incidents,' the company said in its report.
Such infections include antibiotic-resistant bacteria that are very difficult to treat, including staphylococcus and streptococcus infections."
Health News Article | Reuters.co.uk
Health News Article | Reuters.co.uk: "CHICAGO (Reuters) - Deaths attributed to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome dropped by half in the 1990s due to a campaign to put babies to sleep on their backs, but recently reported declines are likely illusory, a study said on Monday.
Medical examiners, coroners and others charged with determining cause of death have been classifying more of the mysterious infant deaths as by suffocation or from unknown causes rather than from SIDS, which itself is a general term for unexplained infant death.
'There's been this general feeling out in the community of pathologists and people who certify deaths (of) reticence to assign SIDS as the cause of death,' study author Dr. Michael Malloy of the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston said in a telephone interview.
Health authorities now require a death scene investigation prior to certifying SIDS as a cause of death. Such information can yield clues to whether pillows, blankets or loose bedding might have led to suffocation. If no investigation is done, then the cause of death is usually listed as unknown."
Health Risks Escalate for Overweight Kids - Yahoo! News
Health Risks Escalate for Overweight Kids - Yahoo! News: "SATURDAY, April 30 (HealthDay News) -- Severely obese children have lipoprotein abnormalities that indicate early risk of metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease, according to new research.
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Although all obese children were found to have an increased risk, the researchers said that white children faced a higher risk than black children.
People with metabolic syndrome are more likely to have type 2 diabetes, a stroke, coronary heart disease, and peripheral vascular disease."
Group Pushes Restricting of Cold Medicine - Yahoo! News
Group Pushes Restricting of Cold Medicine - Yahoo! News: "WASHINGTON - An association representing more than 36,000 pharmacies is issuing guidelines for possible federal legislation to restrict sales of cold medications containing a substance often used in the illegal manufacture of methamphetamine — or 'speed.'
Pseudoephedrine, a main ingredient in a number of over-the-counter drugs like Sudafed, Nyquil and Sinutab, can be extracted by boiling down the cold medicines; toxic chemicals are then used to turn the substance into highly concentrated meth."
Experts Say Obesity Still a Health Risk - Yahoo! News
Experts Say Obesity Still a Health Risk - Yahoo! News: "CHICAGO - Now that the government says fat might not kill so many of us after all, is it OK to be just a little pudgy? Maybe, but before celebrating with a hot fudge sundae, keep in mind the overriding message: Being too overweight really is a serious health risk.
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The new data, released by the government two weeks ago, confirm that obesity can kill, even if the numbers are squishy, said Dr. David Katz, a Yale University obesity researcher. 'Clearly it isn't a license to gorge yourself.'"
Mystery illness of refugee children has Swedes puzzled - Yahoo! News
Mystery illness of refugee children has Swedes puzzled - Yahoo! News: "STOCKHOLM (AFP) - Hundreds of refugee children in Sweden facing possible deportation have fallen ill and stopped eating, talking and moving in a phenomenon that has become a controversial enigma for Swedish authorities.
News reports have in recent weeks broadcast dramatic footage of child asylum-seekers lying lifeless in their beds, some staring aimlessly at the ceiling and being fed through a tube as their distraught parents, helpless, look on.
A total of 410 children seeking asylum have since January 2003 experienced some form of acute depression resulting in various degrees of apathy. Most of them are between the ages of eight and 15, and in the most extreme cases they have regressed into a psychological state of total paralysis that can last a year or more."
Japanese Women Show Lower Incidence of Breast Cancer Recurrence - Yahoo! News
Japanese Women Show Lower Incidence of Breast Cancer Recurrence - Yahoo! News: "SUNDAY, May 1 (HealthDay News) -- American women of Japanese descent treated for early-stage breast cancer are less likely to suffer a recurrence of the disease than women of other ancestries.
That finding is published in the May issue of the International Journal of Radiation Oncology*Biology*Physics.
The study, done at the Kuakini Medical Center in Honolulu from 1990 to 2001, involved 896 early-stage breast cancer patients treated with lumpectomy and radiation therapy. Seventy-four percent of the study participants were of Japanese heritage. Six years after treatment, only six of the women (.67 percent) had experienced a local recurrence of their breast cancer."
Wired News: Rolling Camera Eyeballs Danger
Wired News: Rolling Camera Eyeballs Danger: "Imagine being on a SWAT team charged with disarming violent crooks in a meth lab, and knowing that every year, more than 50,000 law enforcement officers are assaulted.
It might be comforting to begin your raid by sending in an Eye Ball R1, a remote-controlled, spherical camera about the size of a baseball that can give its users a 360-degree look at the device's surroundings."
Wired News: NASA Scrubs Shuttle Launch
Wired News: NASA Scrubs Shuttle Launch: "CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida -- NASA on Friday delayed by another two months the first space shuttle flight since the Columbia disaster, saying it needs more time to ensure that the fuel tank does not shed dangerous pieces of ice at liftoff.
Discovery is now scheduled for launch no earlier than July 13. The flight had been targeted for late May."
Wired News: Testing a Sun-Powered Space Sail
Wired News: Testing a Sun-Powered Space Sail: "SANDUSKY, Ohio -- Scientists working with a synthetic material 100 times thinner than a piece of paper are testing their theory that the sun can power interplanetary spacecraft. They believe that streams of solar energy particles called photons can push a giant, reflecting sail through space the way wind pushes sailboats across water.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has invested about $30 million in space-sail technology, something that existed solely in science-fiction novels a decade ago. Yet the reflective solar sail could power missions to the sun and beyond within a decade."
Wired News: Careful How You Monkey With DNA
Wired News: Careful How You Monkey With DNA: "The laboratory creation of chimeras -- animals with mixed-species heritage -- has become so advanced that scientists have drawn up regulations to prevent the production of creatures that blur the line between animal and human.
The National Academies, a body chartered by Congress to advise the government and the public on science and technology, last week outlined guidelines for scientists who want to work with certain types of chimeras."
Wired News: Scientists: Life on Mars Likely
Wired News: Scientists: Life on Mars Likely: "Not so long ago it was unthinkable for respectable scientists to talk about life on Mars. Such talk was best left to X-Files fans. But no longer.
Evidence is building to suggest biological processes might be operating on the red planet, and life on Mars, many scientists believe, is now more a likelihood than merely a possibility."
VGER.KERNEL.ORG
VGER.KERNEL.ORG: " The mission of vger.kernel.org is to provide email list services for the linux kernel developers.
Lists and Majordomo:
As of now, subscription support is not handled at the web! There does, however, exist some useful MAILTO: urls, which might be of some assistance..
See here for:
* MAJORDOMO INFO with lots of information of its use, and what it considers TABOO in the lists.
* And in there in particular: LIST INFO, a summary of all VGER's public lists with all kinds of usefull URLs related to them, including subscribe/unsubscribe templates."
"Because It's an Once in a Lifetime Challenge-" Interview with Sony's Ken Kutaragi -- Tech-On!
"Because It's an Once in a Lifetime Challenge-" Interview with Sony's Ken Kutaragi -- Tech-On!: "Is the prototype chip that was unveiled close enough to the first image of Cell you had in your mind at the initial stage of development? How much of your targets do you think you have achieved?
It's a miracle, indeed. The chip came out far beyond my expectations. When this product was launched, I set out a number of propositions, like 'I want distant cells on earth connecting and communicating with each other organically,' 'there should be object-oriented ideas,' 'it's got to be secure,' and so on. The team was more than just marvelous in reacting to these demands. They did such a fantastic job that I'd feel ashamed to even have a thought about rating their achievement."
Toshiba Demonstrates Cell Microprocessor Simultaneously Decoding 48 MPEG-2 Streams -- Tech-On!
Toshiba Demonstrates Cell Microprocessor Simultaneously Decoding 48 MPEG-2 Streams -- Tech-On!: "Toshiba demonstrated that its Cell microprocessor, jointly developed with the Sony Group and IBM Corp., can simultaneously decode 48 SDTV format MPEG-2 streams. At the COOL Chips VIII event held in Yokohama from April 20 to 22, 2005, the company showed a film demonstrating the decoding process."
HDBlog.net � Blog Archive � When is 720p not 720p?
HDBlog.net � Blog Archive � When is 720p not 720p?: "Tom Norton, in his coverage of the Home Entertainment expo, brought something up that I was unaware of.
720p displays show native 720p signals directly, of course. They also upconvert SD signals (like DVD) up to 720p for display. And 720p displays must convert incoming 1080i signals to 720p before they can be displayed. No surprise there, this makes sense. But, Silicon Optix claims that most manufacturers do the 1080i conversion just by taking one 540 line field from each 1080i frame (which is composed of two 540 line fields) and scaling that one field up to 720p, ignoring the other field. Reason being, it takes a lot less processing power to do this than to convert the image to 1080p and scale that, which would use all the information in the original signal to derive the 720p signal. If you have a display like this, it means that you’re watching 540 lines of resolution upconverted to 720p. This is not HD, just like watching a DVD upconverted to 720p is not HD. Sure, you’ll get the full width of the 1080i resolution, but you’re only getting half the height. While this is better than DVD, it’s not HD in my mind. (Aside: Tom Norton mentions this in his review of the Screenplay 777 projector.)"
The Pseudoscience of Intelligent Design || kuro5hin.org
The Pseudoscience of Intelligent Design || kuro5hin.org: "The Dover, Pennsylvania school board recently adopted a policy requiring that high school science teachers teaching evolution tell their students that evolutionary theory, a theory that has been shown to explain the origins of life time and time again, is flawed, and that intelligent design is a valid alternative. The ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), along with the AUSCS (Americans United for the Separation of Church and State), and 11 parents, are suing the school board, accusing the board of violating the separation of church and state (Banerjee A16). They are quite right. The sole purpose of 'Intelligent Design' is to make creationism look like a scientifically credible theory, so that it can be perpetuated in public schools, among other places. Intelligent Design, however, is not supported by scientific evidence, and is invalid as a scientific theory."
Load list values for improved efficiency
Load list values for improved efficiency: "How to load drop-down list values at application start-up time
Level: Intermediate
Srinivasa Rao Karanam (srkarana@in.ibm.com)
Lead Developer, IBM Global Services, India
19 Apr 2005
Reduce the number of database hits and improve your Web application's efficiency when you load common shared list values only once. In this code-filled article, learn to load the values for drop-down lists when your Web application starts and then to share these loaded list values among all the users of your application.
If you load common shared list values only once, you can reduce the number of database hits and make your Web application more efficient. In this quick-and-easy, code-filled article, I explain how to load list values for the drop-down list at start-up time for your Web application. I also show you how to share these loaded list values among all users of the application.
You can choose from three different scenarios when your application loads a drop-down list of items:
* Every time a page displays drop-down lists, it makes a hit to the database to load the drop-down lists. If your application sends 10 requests for five drop-down lists on a page, the number of database hits is 50 (10x5). The database hit count increases proportionally to the number of requests.
* The application loads all drop-down list items at the start of the user session and uses them for the entire session. The drop-down list items are stored in the session. In a user session, the number of database hits is constant and the database hit count increases proportionally to the number of sessions.
* Your application loads all drop-down list items at application start-up and uses them for all application users. The drop-down list items are stored in the application with static reference. The number of database hits is constant for the application.
In this article, I explain how to implement the third case I mention above -- loading all items when the application starts.
Before I jump into the implementation details, though, it is important for you to understand that drop-down list values display in the HTML
Sunday, May 01, 2005
Titan II ICBM Web Page
Titan II ICBM Web Page: "This page is dedicated to the Titan II ICBM launch crews and maintenance support teams, that kept the Titan II ICBM an important and vital addition to the strategic defense of this country during the cold war. It is especially dedicated to those that lost their lives in support of this weapon system. This is a personally owned web site, and is in no way affiliated with any company, the Dept. of the Air Force or any US Government agency. The content and views expressed within this web site are strictly my own."
